A forensic team has tackled a famous case from 1930 -
the ‘Blazing Car Murder’
, which sounds like it came right out of the plot of a Sherlock Holmes novel. On November 6th, 1930, a man was murdered in a car fire in in Hardingstone, Northamptonshire. Alfred Rouse was convicted of the crime and hanged at Bedford Gaol in March 1931. Home Office-appointed pathologist Bernard Spilsbury and another local pathologist, limited by the science and technology of their day, were unable to identify the victim due to the burns, but they reported that lavender colored material and light brown hair were found at the scene and they wrote that the victim’s jawbone was removed to assist with possible identification and tissue samples taken for microscopical examination.