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Forensic Science: The Murder Case Of Leanne Holland

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The murder case of Leanne Holland exposed the ways in which forensic science were both a help and a hindrance to the conviction and subsequent overturning of the verdict, against Graham Stafford. The body of 12-year-old Leanne Holland was found battered and partially naked in scrub 30m off Redbank Plains Rd on September 26, 1991. She went missing on Monday morning on September 23, 1991. According to descriptions, she was last seen wearing a long-sleeved purple jumper, black skirt and no shoes as she headed towards shops just 500m from her Alice St home in Goodna. When found, her body was unrecognisable according to the Police Officer in charge of the investigation, Inspector Wayne King. Within three days (Thursday 26) of the body being discovered, …show more content…

He found that Police procedures with regard to evidence referencing, police chain of custody and overall collection of evidence. He stated that the Queensland Police Force failed the most rudimentary collection protocols and this lead to confusion in the labelling of exhibits and their actual obtaining from the accused. He further pointed out that searches were conducted in a manner that exposed the primary and secondary crime scenes to contamination. A video of the Police search showed that none of the officers involved wore protective clothing, gloves or booties; that swab testing of the car showed that the officer involved in collection conducted the Sangur strip test and actually allowed his fingers to come in contact, thus providing a false positive indication for human blood, when it was noticed that he had a small cut on his finger; fingerprint collection was done before testing for human enzymes which also could have produced a false positive due to the chemical makeup of the powder used (the force used Magnapowder which has a metallic composition and this reacted with the test strips); photographs of the boot floor showed that none of the items were laid out on white protective paper. This would also have prevented cross contamination and enabled the collection of any evidence that fell from the boot. These photographs also failed to show the hair that Police stated was found in the boot. Missed by the first officer and located on secondary inspection suggests contamination of the

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