hammer-802296_1920

Daval case: investigation and use of Bluestar

by NewsPress articlesReal Cases solved with BLUESTAR® FORENSICUncategorized

Daval trial: life sentence requested against Jonathann Daval accused of a "terrible" crime, relive the sixth morning of the trial

L’est Républicain : 21.11.2020

“When I am told that a young, healthy woman has disappeared while jogging, I take this case very seriously. I am already worried” Emmanuel Dupic then asks the investigators to do a more thorough hearing of Jonathann Daval. “A hearing that will be important because it allows us to have doubts. We will ask him to show us his wounds: we note traces on his body. Bites or scratches. These elements have strongly disturbed me. “

“That is why we will conduct, from Sunday, a search with many means, such as Bluestar, to reveal the traces of blood.”

Daval trial: life sentence requested against Jonathann Daval accused of a “terrible” crime, relive the sixth morning of the trial (Audio)

Read the original article
el-salvador-2379443_1920

Case of a missing youth: raids and investigation procedures continue

by NewsPress articlesReal Cases solved with BLUESTAR® FORENSIC

The procedure was carried out jointly with police personnel from the Forensic Science Department and the 43rd Central Police Station of Jhugua Ñaro and the Brigade.

Nantudi : 1 October 2020

Prosecutors Daisy Sánchez of the Itá Criminal Unit and Joel Cazal of the Specialised Anti-Kidnapping Unit, conducted a new raid in the investigation of the disappearance of young Dahiana Espinoza Colmán (20), since last Friday 18 September. They collected important data for the investigation.

“After performing the chemiluminescence test for blood with bluestar forensic reagents, a black leather boot, the key packets and the pen cutter were found inside the cab of the vehicle, which were lifted and will be sent to the laboratory for their further study”

The procedure was carried out jointly with the police personnel of the Forensic Science and 43rd Central Police Station of Jhugua Ñaro and the Brigade. (Audio)

Read the original article

Policeman’s Memory : a barbaric crime!

by Real Cases solved with BLUESTAR® FORENSIC

By Fadel ATAALLAH - POLICE magazine N° 57 Octobre 2009

This article reports on a criminal case solved by senior police officer Abdelmoula Choukrallah, head of the 3rd investigation group at the SPPJ Marrakech – Morocco.

The use of Bluestar revealed a real carnage:

“On the morning of 30 October 2008, I was informed by the Traffic Room of the discovery of shreds of meat scattered in a vacant lot located on the road linking the Azli district to that of M’hamid, shreds visibly of human origin. I immediately went to the scene, accompanied by my assistants, to discover one of the most macabre spectacles I have ever seen…”.

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
VK
Telegram
WhatsApp
Email
Print

Scientific advances have made a blood trail speak for itself

by NewsPress articlesReal Cases solved with BLUESTAR® FORENSIC

Maëlys: how scientific progress made a microscopic trace of blood talk

FRANCE 3 : 09.12.2019

They escaped the meticulous cleaning of Nordahl Lelandais. Then, at first, from the attention of the investigators. It is micro traces of blood, discovered under floor mats, in the trunk of the Audi A3 of the suspect of the homicide of Maëlys de Araujo, which allowed to confound him and to extract a confession.

In the last ten years, science has made spectacular progress in making tiny bloodstains speak for themselves. “In 2000, a trace of half a centimetre was needed to identify a victim, but today it can be done when the traces are not visible to the human eye,” explains Colonel Patrick Touron, the director of the Gendarmerie’s criminal research institute (IRCGN).

Nylon instead of cotton

For a criminal, it is becoming increasingly difficult to remove evidence. “The blade of a knife may have been carefully cleaned, and by taking the object apart, we can find traces inside the handle that will be useful, even if there is not much left. Or in the case,” says Marie-Gaëlle Le Pajolec, co-director of the Institut Génétique Nantes Atlantique (IGNA).

Over the past ten years, the whole chain leading to the identification of victims from their blood has evolved, starting with the detection of blood cells. “Blood developers such as Bluestar allow us to find invisible traces. There are also devices that trigger lights at particular wavelengths,” continues Marie-Gaëlle Le Pajolec. These are the kind of tools that were used to find the micro traces of Maëlys’ blood.

The next step, sampling, has also been perfected. “We used to use swabs with cotton stems where moulds could grow. Today, we use swabs with nylon stems that dry much faster,” adds the IGNA expert.

Study the projections

Extracting DNA from the cells and duplicating it for investigative purposes (‘amplifying’ it in scientific language) is also made easier. “Blood is a very rich material in DNA. From very small traces, it is now possible to obtain fingerprints. For DNA extraction, we have much more efficient kits than ten years ago,” says Marie-Gaëlle Le Pajolec. This stage, which used to take a week, now only takes a few hours…

Investigators can also count on the experts in morpho-analysis of blood traces from three French centres, including the IRCGN and the IGNA. This discipline, developed in France since the end of the 1990s, makes it possible to develop scenarios based on blood projections: was the victim hit? Were there several protagonists? As in the case of Maëlys, the size, shape and distribution of each drop of blood are carefully examined.

Read the original article :
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
VK
Telegram
WhatsApp
Email
Print

Chief Warrant Officer Benitez left a bloody trail

by NewsPress articlesReal Cases solved with BLUESTAR® FORENSIC

The clues are accumulating around Chief Warrant Officer Benitez and his involvement in the disappearance of Allison and her mother Marie-Josée on 14 July in Perpignan.

Midi Libre : 27.09.2013

What can you do with eight litres of bleach, if not a major cleaning? In the middle of July, Francisco Benitez obviously had a big cleaning to do, since he bought this large quantity of disinfectant and corrosive product, with properties well known to crime fans, in Perpignan.

 © DR

Bleach degrades DNA and makes it difficult for experts to search for traces of blood that have been erased at the scene of the crime with special products such as Luminol or Bluestar.

Lots of blood

“He had to cut them up. We have the impression that it bled a lot”, explains a Parisian policeman, associated with the investigation led by the SRPJ of Montpellier on the disappearance of Allison and her mother Marie-Josée, on July 14 in Perpignan. Because there is a lot of blood in the elements gathered over the last two months by the investigators. First of all in the clues, taken during the searches in the family flat, as well as in the barracks of the Foreign Legion. “Stains invisible to the naked eye”, revealed at the family home. Allison’s blood, “in the drainpipe” of the family freezer, in “the seal of the window” of the washing machine, but also inside the flat occupied by the legionnaire in the barracks, said a source close to the case. The forensic identification technicians also found some at the foot of his bed in his bedroom: again, it was that of his own daughter.

A witness says

But there is also the blood that several witnesses saw and told the investigators about. Three days after the double disappearance, Francisco Benitez asked one of his comrades to come and help him carry the freezer that he had suddenly decided to donate to the barracks. The man later told the police that he had seen blood in a blocked sink in the Benitez flat.

Missing sheets at the barracks

Dark traces, taken from a tumble dryer used by the soldiers, are still being analysed. The disappearance in July of some thirty bed sheets from the barracks also intrigues the investigators: could they have been used to wrap bodies, or body parts? And then there is this sentence pronounced by the chief warrant officer in front of another soldier, which today takes on a sinister resonance. At the end of July, the latter was surprised to see him hosing down a blood-stained floor mat and sheets in a barracks washing machine. Francisco Benitez replied: “I defrosted some meat. “

Read the original article here!

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
VK
Telegram
WhatsApp
Email
Print

The Flactif case: An investigation solved with Bluestar

by NewsPress articlesReal Cases solved with BLUESTAR® FORENSIC

At a crime scene, he makes the bloodstains talk

“When I entered the Flactif house, I immediately noticed the traces of sponge strokes in the small living room and suspected that the chalet had been cleaned thoroughly. “Warrant Officer Philippe Esperança, 39 years old, will never forget this 18 April 2003.

 A French specialist in the morpho-analysis of bloodstains, he had to wait his turn to go through the house with a fine-tooth comb: “We only intervene when all the other findings are complete. “

The Bluestar, world star

The result was worth it. “Like at every crime scene, I sprayed our usual product, Bluestar. Its great quality is that it leaves the DNA prints intact,” explains Philippe Esperança. Another advantage is that it allows us to work in semi-darkness, whereas previously we had to work in total darkness. In three days in the chalet, the analysis of the few visible traces of blood and the use of this chemical revealed five bleeding sites – as many as there were victims – and one storage site. “The hypothesis of a quintuple murder on the spot was emerging. “From that moment on, my gendarme colleagues stopped looking for the Flactif family elsewhere than in Grand-Bornand. “

DNA analyses showed that among the bloodstains, some of them tiny, there were those of the five members of the Flactif family. But also traces left by employees or visitors to the chalet in recent years. Plus two unknown DNAs. One was David Hotyat’s.

Since helping to solve the Grand-Bornand mystery, Philippe Esperança has lectured around the world and worked with the Americans at the FBI. Trained as an entomologist (study of insects), he was a naturalist at the Jardin des plantes before becoming a gendarme. After three years of training in Canada, he created the blood trace morpho-analysis service at the IRCGN (1) in Rosny-sous-Bois in 1999. And as the previous chemical products did not suit him, he developed Bluestar himself. “This product went around the world in one year. It is so powerful that DNA has been identified on machine-washed clothes and in a high-pressure kitchen. “The oldest blood trace found in France in a criminal case was 17 years ago.

About 100 cases per year

Philippe Esperança can give you a lecture on the difference between the shape of degraded blood traces (when a hand has moved them from one place to another); passive blood traces, due to gravity, and projected blood traces, when a force – that of the aggressor – is added to gravity. “As the blood sprays quite far, these analyses can allow us to calculate the trajectory of the blow, the position of the victim or the aggressor, the nature of the weapon used, the distinction between a blow and a shock, etc. “During a suicide in a cornfield near Toulouse, specialists had found drops of blood carried by insects.

The week we met him, Philippe Esparança had three crime reconstructions on his agenda, including one in Guadeloupe, and two testimonies in a criminal court. “Our colleagues in the gendarmerie, and even the investigating judges directly, call us on about a hundred cases a year. “But the gendarmes are not there “only” to serve the prosecution. Warrant Officer Esperança remembers concluding that a drunkard had died in an accident after falling on a bottle of champagne. In March 2005, before the Nantes assizes, his expertise also contributed to the acquittal of Joaquim, a young man accused of the murder of a friend. “For us, it was a suicide. “

Michel TANNEAU.

(1) Criminal Research Institute of the Gendarmerie Nationale.

Jealousy – RTL – 16/09/2003

The scenario of what happened on April 11 at the Flactif’s chalet is being confirmed, written by the investigators according to the confessions of suspect n°1, dissatisfied tenant, shuffled from one flat to another by his landlord. Well decided, his scenario in place, David Hotyat enters alone in the chalet between 18h30 and 21h in the kitchen where Xavier Flactif and two of his children are. He fired his 6.35 revolver. The mother hears the shots and is shot as she goes up the stairs. He shot the last child upstairs in his room, he would have told during his hearing, it is there that the investigators find the most clues: blood, pieces of teeth, and a shell of the revolver. It is on this order of the victims that David Hotyat contradicts himself, suggesting that there are still grey areas. He explained that he then burned the bodies of Xavier Flactif, his wife and their children in a forest in the region, after having loaded them into a vehicle and driven 10 km away. He then returned to Grand Bornand, seemingly out of the blue, making up a story to explain their disappearance.

How David Hotyat was identified

The Gendarmerie’s criminal research institute was dealing with traces of blood in the empty Flactif chalet, traces of blood that had been washed away. In spite of everything, the scientists of the gendarmerie first managed to identify the origin of this blood, it belonged to the five members of the Flactif family, and then very thorough analyses made it possible to establish that the blood of several of the members of the family was mixed with another blood, another genetic trace, it is this genetic trace, this DNA belongs to David Hotyat.

It is because this DNA was found mixed with the blood of several of the victims that the gendarmes, before the arrest, were already convinced that the owner of this genetic trace was the murderer. It was thanks to this DNA that the gendarmes were able to trace the case. Since May, the gendarmes have taken DNA samples from 130 people, business relations, craftsmen and people close to Flactif. This is how the investigators were able to target the main suspect.

France Info – 17/09/03

David Hotyat was confirmed by DNA samples taken from nearly 130 people who had relations with Xavier Flactif and his family, or who lived in the region. David Hotyat’s genetic fingerprint matched the mysterious sixth DNA found in the chalet alongside the fingerprints of the five family members. The property developer, his wife, Graziella Ortolano, and their three children were last seen on 11 April in the late afternoon. Investigations found multiple traces of blood belonging to the family members, a shell casing and splinters of teeth in their cottage. Blood also belonging to the missing persons was found in Xavier Flactif’s vehicle, abandoned near Geneva-Cointrin airport on the Swiss side on 13 May.

According to Alexandra Lefèvre, Hotyat told her that he had first shot two children, alone at the chalet, then their mother, the last child and finally the father. As he was cleaning up the traces of blood, with a flashlight in his mouth, Hotyat, overcome with nausea, was disturbed by the call of a tenant of Flactif and then the arrival of a pizza delivery man…

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
VK
Telegram
WhatsApp
Email