Explore notes from the casefile — unusual cases, historical crimes and the darker side of human behavior.
John List murdered five members of his family in 1971, lived under a false identity for nearly 18 years, and was eventually captured after an America’s Most Wanted tip.
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Investigators said a Boston arson ring linked more than 160 fires between repeated use of cigarette-and-match time-delay devices and the removal of nearby street fire-alarm boxes.
Read more →R. v. Parks was a landmark Canadian Supreme Court case that upheld Kenneth Parks’s acquittal after he argued that he was sleepwalking and therefore not acting voluntarily.
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The article explains how audio forensics uses incidental background sounds in recordings to help narrow the time, place, or source of an event.
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Blue palo verde seed pods found in Mark Bogan’s truck bed were DNA-tested and matched a specific tree linked to the crime scene in the Denise Johnson murder case.
Read more →It turned a private family tragedy into public evidence of racial violence and helped force national attention on the brutality behind Emmett Till’s death.
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A forged painting attributed to Heinrich Campendonk was exposed when forensic tests found titanium white in a work dated 1914, helping unravel Wolfgang Beltracchi’s art forgery scheme.
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In 1980, a boy found $5,800 in decaying $20 bills from the D.B. Cooper ransom on a Columbia River sandbar, creating a key but disputed clue in the unsolved hijacking case.
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The article explains how MKUltra used front organizations, safehouses, and destroyed records to conceal non-consensual drug experiments, later exposed by investigations and surviving documents.
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Forensic investigators can compare microscopic toolmarks in heat-sealed plastic bag seams to determine whether separate drug packages were likely sealed by the same machine.
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The article explains how custody escapes can exploit ordinary features of nearby public infrastructure and transitional spaces, rather than relying on dramatic breaches of secure facilities.
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In August 2005, thieves stole about 164 million reais from Brazil’s Banco Central by digging a tunnel into the vault instead of entering through the bank.
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Investigators helped identify Ted Kaczynski by comparing distinctive phrases and writing patterns in the Unabomber manifesto with his known writings, aided in part by concerns raised by his brother and sister-in-law.
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John Dillinger escaped from the Crown Point, Indiana jail on March 3, 1934 by bluffing guards into believing he had a gun, an episode that exposed major security failures and helped intensify the federal manhunt.
Read more →This article highlights how ordinary business and personal records can provide key evidence in theft investigations by establishing possession, timing, access, and transaction patterns.
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The Soham murders case used forensic pollen and plant traces from Ian Huntley’s car to help link it to the disposal site where Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were found.
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Saudi customs said it intercepted 178,274 Captagon pills hidden inside imported beehives.
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers found nearly 18 pounds of alleged cocaine hidden inside four wheels of cheese during a vehicle inspection.
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The McDonald’s Monopoly promotion was rigged by Jerome Jacobson, a security insider who stole rare winning game pieces and routed them to accomplices who claimed major prizes.
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Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán escaped from Altiplano prison through a purpose-built underground tunnel built from his shower area to a house outside the prison compound.
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Al Capone was convicted in 1931 for federal income tax evasion, showing that investigators could use financial records and spending patterns to prove illegal income when violent-crime charges were harder to secure.
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A forged will can be exposed when forensic examiners determine the paper it was printed on was manufactured after the will’s stated date.
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A 1973 bank hostage crisis in Stockholm led to the coinage of the term “Stockholm syndrome” and remains a debated example of hostage behavior.
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Leatherslade Farm became a key piece of evidence in the Great Train Robbery investigation when police found fingerprints and other traces left by the gang after their hideout cleanup failed.
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The 2003 Antwerp Diamond Heist involved thieves breaching the Antwerp Diamond Center’s vault and escaping with an estimated $100 million in diamonds, gold, and jewels.
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This list explains how forensic investigators can recover usable DNA from unexpected or degraded materials, showing that evidence can survive in unusual substrates and still help link people to crimes.
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Anna Sorokin, known as Anna Delvey, used forged financial documents and false claims of wealth to obtain credit, services, and access from Manhattan hotels, clubs, and institutions, leading to her 2019 conviction.
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Los Angeles prosecutors said a mortuary employee and alleged accomplices tried to obtain about $1.2 million in life-insurance payouts by using false death certificates and an empty-casket funeral for people who were not actually dead.
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Wolfgang Beltracchi’s forgery scheme succeeded not just because of painted fakes, but because fabricated provenance, labels, and documents made the works seem historically authentic.
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John Drewe helped pass forged paintings as authentic by planting false provenance records in trusted museum archives.
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