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They called her 'the phantom of Heilbronn'

P

pmv

Lifer
Apparently the German police spent over a decade trying to find an untraceable serial killer - the DNA samples found at multiple murders (with very different MOs) showed it was a woman of East European heritage. But witnesses all gave contradictory descriptions of her appearance and the police couldn't track her down. Sounded very much like a female Keyser Soze.

Eventually in a lucky break they found a match for the DNA - it turned out to match that of a woman working at the factory that manufactured the cotton swabs that the German police used to take DNA samples (these particular swabs weren't supposed to be used for that purpose and were not certified "clean").

BBC NEWS | Europe | 'DNA bungle' haunts German police

news.bbc.co.uk news.bbc.co.uk


(I nicked this story from the podcast of the QI TV program...not really P&N as it's a ten-year old story so not N, but still thought it was funny in a very grim kind of way)
 
Excerpt from story's first paragraph:


Police in Germany have admitted that a woman they have been hunting for more than 15 years never in fact existed.
Dubbed the "phantom of Heilbronn", the woman was described by police as the country's most dangerous woman.
Investigators had connected her to six murders and an unsolved death based on DNA traces found at the scene.
Police now acknowledge swabs used to collect DNA samples were contaminated by an innocent woman working in a factory in Bavaria.
 
People always blame all these different things on why the police are incompetent, violent etc. But really it just boils down to the fact that rarely do smart people become cops.
 
BudAshes said:
People always blame all these different things on why the police are incompetent, violent etc. But really it just boils down to the fact that rarely do smart people become cops.
Click to expand...
That is by municipally design, no? Remember the old 60-Minutes episode about the man that couldn't get hired as a cop because of his IQ? The city's position was he'd get bored too quickly and that their investment in him would be lost early.
 
BudAshes said:
People always blame all these different things on why the police are incompetent, violent etc. But really it just boils down to the fact that rarely do smart people become cops.
Click to expand...

My experience is that there are certain professions/jobs that are just extremely tough jobs that are really, really hard to do well. Police, mental-health professions, and teaching, in particular. And for all of those, a great many people in them deal with that fact by just doing them badly. Because there aren't enough people in existence who have the talent to do them well.

Certain jobs people want for the social-status and, more subtly, for the self-image it gives them. A great many people in those jobs are in them to meet their own needs, not those of those they are supposed to be serving.

"All professions are conspiracies against the laity" as, I think, George Bernard Shaw said.


(Which is appending a slightly more serious point - one I happen to have been thinking about recently, reflecting of my own bad experiences of certain professions - to what I actually just thought was a weird/darkly funny news story)
 
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