The Infinite Monkey Cage - How to Commit the Perfect Murder

Episode Date: March 11, 2023

Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined by comedian Susan Calman, Prof Sue Black and Dr Julia Shaw as they invent Infinite Monkey Cluedo, and discover whether they can commit the perfect murder, or whether the latest forensic science will always be able to piece the clues together. They reveal whether the perfect crime or perfect criminal really exists and how we might spot them, and how the latest forensic techniques have transformed even decades-old murder cases. The panel also discuss how the courtroom has changed with the development of ever-more advanced forensic techniques, but also where the weakness in the science might lie. Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Robin Inks. And I'm Brian Cox. And when we met, it was murder. Because today is our heart-to-heart special. Robbie's also a big fan of Columbo, by the way.

And my wife is a big fan of you. She's not. Actually, she's annoyed with you at the moment. You took me on too many tour dates last year. Even she actually wanted me home eventually, and that's very rare. She sent me a thank you card, actually. Make it 200 dates next year. And Brian, as you know, is also a big fan of just standing on mountaintops, wistfully looking across peaks towards the star,

and occasionally, secretly, just pushing other mountaineers off. So we thought we'd combine both of our interests and today's show is about how to commit the perfect crime. And this will lead to Infinite Monkey Cluedo, in which Professor Cox kills Reverend Robin in the observatory with a six-inch refractor. That reference, by the way, was for the Freudians in the audience. Anyway, why are you using inches?

Brexit. Now, we should make it clear, by the way, at this point, that though we will be talking about how to commit the perfect murder, the BBC takes no responsibility for the length of sentence you're given and your prison stay. Yeah. In today's show, we're exploring forensic science and psychology. What makes a murderer, and is there such a thing as the perfect crime?

To help us find out, we are joined by a criminal psychologist, a forensic scientist, and someone who is known for doing a quite amazing foxtrot to kill a queen. And they are... I'm Dr Julia Shaw, criminal psychologist at University College London. And my favourite fictional detective is the detective in Blade Runner, who has to investigate not just where the replicants are and find them and deactivate them, but questioning the very nature of reality itself and where the memories in the replicants even come from. Follow that one if you can.

So I'm Professor Sue Black. I'm a forensic anthropologist. I'm president at St. John's College in Oxford. And my favorite fictional detective probably has to be Rebus, for those of you who know the mind of Ian Rankin. And I think I relate to Rebus because he's stubborn, he's irritating, he's he's stubborn he's irritating he's miserable and he's just a damn doer scot. I'm Susan Kalman I'm a television presenter and my favourite fictional detective is the greatest fictional detective of all time, and I will literally fight in the car park anyone who disagrees, DCI Jane Tennyson. I had a cat, fun fact, called DCI Jane Tennyson. And I put so many pictures of that cat on social media. At one point when you Googled DCI Jane Tennyson,

a picture of my cat came up before Helen Mirren. I also now have a cat called Ruth Bader Ginsburg, so I'm trying for the same. And this is our panel. And, Susan, thank you very much, because you had a bit of a difficult journey down, and you managed to get here. Yes.

Not only have you travelled all the way from Glasgow, but you're also going to go back on the train that is the kind of the Lady Vanishes, mysterious possible murder train, isn't it? And the thing that's interesting is, a lovely experience is, I'm the voice of the sleeper train, so I hear myself saying, toilet door locked

do you normally do that though when you just go to the toilet anyway i do i did it in the voiceovers in a special um someone i admired deeply kirsty walks kind of because kirsty walk has authority and warmth. So when I say, welcome to Glasgow, I've done it in kind of a more Kirsty Wark-ish way so people believe me. This is the thing that Susan was saying, when the train was stuck at Rugby and it was, what, an hour and a half and people kept coming up to you and saying,

what's going on, Susan? Because she's on the telly, they presumed she'd know. Yes. Because I do travel shows, I had a large queue of people. They were ignoring the Advante West Coast people and instead going, because they know my name, so I was like, Susan, do you know when the next train's going? And I'd go,

I don't. And then they would just stay there and look at me. It's not because, it's because you're the voice of the toilet door. That's right. It is. So if you ever go on the sleeper train, you can hear me telling you the toilet door is locked,

or, more alarmingly, toilet door is unlocked. Do you sometimes do that? If you're on the train tonight and you get bored... I'm sorry to go on the train tonight and say, the toilet door is unlocked. If you're on the train tonight and you get bored... I'm sorry...you need to go up and get your hot tea and go, tell me, do I as I want? I'm almost hoping you have insomnia just for that jake to happen. I've never thought of doing that, but I'd be delighted to do that. Sue?

Yes? Yeah, I know, every now and again we actually get to the show, but we veer away again very quickly. Go for it. Is there such a thing as the perfect crime or the perfect murder? Well, probably, but we we veer away again very quickly go for it is there such a thing as the perfect crime or the perfect murder well probably but we don't know what it is because if it was perfect we haven't found it out so it's only the imperfect crimes that we do actually detect is is this such a thing as a as a perfect or a good criminal then is there a particular

character type that makes yes i think i'd make a good murderer's assistant. So I'd like to think I have the problem with actually doing the deed and dispatching somebody. My husband could probably do it and he's certainly threatened to do it to some of our daughter's boyfriends. And if he had, I would have had no trouble dismembering them and getting rid of the pieces. So I think we could make a perfect team. I've suddenly remembered we didn't put a warning out before this. I'm beginning to realise we most definitely should have done.

Is there, Julia, a particular personality type that lends itself to criminality? I mean, I would agree with Sue that the perfect murder exists probably, but we haven't discovered it.

I would also go and do the things that aren't statistically likely. So detectives are likely to look for a man, for example, for a murderer. Then they're likely to look in the vicinity of where you have lived or where that person lives. So do it far away from home and ideally do it with a weapon that can't be tracked.

So definitely don't do it with a gun. But in terms of the personality profile, there's the assumption that being psychopathic is going to be good for you, which it might be because you're high on callousness and low on empathy, which makes it easier to hurt people. But most murders are committed by people who,

it's a fight that gets out of control it's more someone who's aggressive hot-tempered and it's not a psychopath it's a passion isn't it it's a moment of passion murder is on television so much and more often than not the murders that we see on television in terms of in dramas is incredibly well prepared it's a you know half the show is about someone planning it is that thing again of you know someone puts an umbrella under the chimney and connects it to a record player that's playing the 1812 Overture and coincides the murder with the sound of the cannons. But that must be, I mean, not just that example,

otherwise that level of preparation is very, very rare. Most murders are not anticipated. So it is a moment of argument, it's alcohol-fuelled, it's drug-fuelled, whatever it may be, and suddenly you're faced with a situation which has gone beyond where you ever expected it to go, and you're left with a body. What do you do with it? If I can give you a bit of advice,

should you ever find yourself in that position? Don't dismember. Don't. It's awfully messy. I know. Can I borrow your pen? Yeah. And then people think, I'll go and drop the body parts in different places. Every time you do that, you've gone from one potential crime scene to about six,

so you're more likely to be caught. So don't. Do you know what? One of the things I'm really enjoying about this conversation already, and it's just started, I'm fascinated, because one day this might come in useful.

I've never done a show where the audience are just going, oh. Because the thing about it, I think, is that most people have at some point even fleetingly considered murdering someone. You've considered it. You've considered it. You've thought about it.

More than once, Susan. We've all, fleetingly, and most of us say that's silly but we have potentially thought about it and i think most of the people who think about it and like the distinguished guest over there have absolutely no knowledge apart from what they've seen on the television which would make them believe that they could commit the perfect crime because if you've watched all of these programs surely you have the background for me genuinely people go, well

is that not true? I categorise my friends it's interesting what you were saying Sue about your husband, into would they help me if I committed a murder? I'd help you and would you? I wouldn't. We've got

the same name. This is strangers on a train already. There's a sleeper leaving tonight and if they've both got tickets... Can I just ask, do you also classify your Oxford colleagues in such a way? I couldn't possibly comment on that. But I think

what Julia's saying, which is interesting, is it's about who you are, as to whether or not people could guess you were the type of person who would commit it. The closest I think you can get to a perfect crime or murder is that no-one would suspect you of doing that in the first place. And I think it's that, if you're a naturally happy, smiley woman

who presents travel shows on the television, no-one would ever suspect me of committing a hidden crime. Oh, you've got that so wrong. You are the second person that I would expect to do a murder. The first, that woman called Jane, who does all that singing on cruises. I reckon that's what it is. I mean, in a way, as long as Jane's the first suspect, I'll be OK, cos I'll have time to get away, but...

But the murder's just the first bit. It's the clear-up of the murder that's the really interesting bit. I was going to ask you, cos you said don't. You tell us what not to do. Do not dismember the body and distribute it. I really don't like you saying that, cos I've never heard you... Cos I think of you as being always saying lovely things about the wonderful

world. Suddenly hearing you go, do not dismember the body. And also because it does sound like it's a public information. What a horrible mix of things going on there. I could do it on the train. They'll do it on the train. You can't.

If you do commit a murder on this virgin train. Do not alight from the train until the train has stopped and do not. You can't. You can't. If you do commit a murder on this urgent train... Do not alight from the train until the train has stopped and do not dismember the board. And certainly do not put it down, the toilet, without locking the door. So, it's a bit of rail information for the audience here. None of you get the 11.15 to Glasgow. That's all I'm saying.

So, what is your advice? Don't do it in the first place is the best bit of advice. So what is your advice? Don't do it in the first place is the best bit of advice. That's taken us way too long. Don't do it. But what if I've accidentally... ..accidentally killed somebody? And I think we should clarify not in a public place, because if it's in a public place, then games are bogey, CCTV. It's in a public place because if it's in a public place then games are bogey, CCTV

it's in a private place Let's get it more specific so what private place is it? It's the sleeper Carrie No, I think it's the toilet I think the murder is done when the person goes to go, I was certain I locked the door

and that's when she does the stab at least the unlocking of the door for the double checking. Let's say it's my house. What should I do? I know I shouldn't have done it, blah, blah, blah. How do I not get caught? Ah, well, you see, you added the second bit there because the first thing you should

do is, of course, phone 999 and say, you know, I've done something really bad. Yes. But if we assume that you've got no conscience and you'd like to get away with it, really the most important things are what not to do. Don't bury it in your garden. Your neighbours will see you.

Don't put it behind the bath panels. It will smell within a few days, especially if you've got your central heating on. You know, don't these days sue you know you probably haven't got a suitcase that's big enough to get the body into it but you you want to get it away from the premises okay but then you need to think about where do you go with the premises your car with with the automatic number plate recognition they're going to be able to follow wherever your car goes. You need to go off-road.

Most bodies are found within a certain distance of a road because they're really heavy, unwieldy things to move about. It is really difficult to dispose of a body. Mercifully. Unless you've got an incinerator. And not a fireplace. No. Not enough. Fireplaces don't work.

Don't be foolish. Couldn't you say it was a Santa accident? I think he just fell while the farm was there. Look at the bag of presents that's next to there. Based on your experience in court, though, so those, you've described them, the mistakes that people make having committed a crime. Is that the common outcome,

that there are basically simple mistakes, reasonably easy to gather the evidence? By and large, providing you've got the body, and that's the difficult thing. So if you know somebody's been murdered, finding the body can be the difficult thing. So, I mean, there's a case in Scotland from the 1970s. They're still trying to find where those bodies are.

The individual's now been convicted for it, but there's no body. It's really difficult to get a conviction in the absence of a body. Julia, I'm just thinking about the fact that, again, in some of the early work of yours that I've read as well, we have a desire, we're all kind of talking, we've all shown that we have what you might call a certain amount of murder imagination, even if we might not commit the act.

Homicidal ideation. Murder fantasies. There's research on them. Homicidal ideation, right. So that idea is, first of all, I think when we see a lot of the way the newspapers deal with people who might commit terrible acts, is there is a desire to believe

that people who might commit a murder, et cetera, they're somehow separate, so we can look on and go, oh, well, they must have the evil gene, or whatever it might be. But actually, in terms of what we know about people who might commit extreme acts, you know, how different are they to every single person sitting in this audience apart from him?

A lot of the work that I do focuses on deconstructing that difference between sort of the evil people, the evil monsters who do these heinous things like murder, and us, the good citizens of the world who don't do those kinds of things, who would never do those kinds of things. And I think that division of good versus evil, which we're taught from childhood on, really,

which I also think we should be deconstructing from childhood on, is hugely problematic because it leads to the dehumanization of people who have made bad decisions for whatever reason and done bad things. I think all of us are capable of murder, given the right or, if you will, wrong circumstances. And we've seen it play out over and over in history, right? You see neighbors turn on each other in war. You see people suddenly capable of what they think is defending their child,

but turns out to be murder because maybe they're suffering from a delusion. So there's lots of things that people are capable of doing if either their reality changes inside their minds or their reality changes in the physical world around them. And that in the moment feels like the best thing to do or it's a fight that gets out of hand. We assume, because the consequences are severe, that the reasons and the motivation for the act must also be extreme.

And yet, when you look at the reasons, it's a fight over two pounds. And that's also why all of us are capable of it, because it's not the separate thing from... It's's well within the the normal experiences and feelings that humans have and susanna um you spent time on death row yes um visiting could you elaborate so a very long time ago i i did a law degree and i completed it and was a lawyer for a while before I gave it up to join the glamorous world of stand-up. And I did a course in American constitutional law as part of my degree. And I won a scholarship to go and work at an appellate centre in North Carolina, where we were trying to get people's sentences commuted from death to life without parole.

So at the very least, they weren't death to life without parole so at the very least they weren't going to be put to death by the state and this was back in 1996 so forensics were not as advanced I mean I didn't have a mobile phone while I was at university so the people I was encountering are people exactly like you've been talking about largely where they had encountered a situation and had reacted and had killed somebody I did encounter a couple of serial killers as we called a woman who poisoned as is typical often for women six or seven of her husbands and a gentleman who... It's one of these kind of curious things.

It's why I love crime fiction, but I also am aware of the fact it's not real. So I went into Death Row Raleigh Prison to meet a gentleman who had killed a number of women. And he used to go to trailer parks, and if the women were blonde, he'd let them live, and if they were dark-haired and dark-eyed, he'd kill them because he was killing his mother to a certain extent.

Lots of stuff going on. They didn't tell me this before I went in because they wanted to see how he would react to me. So, but the thing about him was you could sit next to him on the train or in the pub. I completely agree. There are no monsters to a certain extent. There are really odd situations

where people are absolutely horrific, you know. But a lot of the people we would consider horrific lived amongst us for a long time before they were caught. And so they are just like us and I think that's actually one of the things that's most frightening and most fascinating is they are just like us and you cannot tell we had to meet the victims families as well to understand the damage that had been done but these people were the same as me to a certain extent and so what what what you're saying is i completely understand it because i probably could have been friends with

some of these people it's interesting julie that as susan said there that you encounter murderers and they are in many ways people like us. I'd actually correct that and not just say people like us, but they are us. So what's the role of a criminal psychologist? So in court, for example, or during an investigation, what are you bringing to that process? So there's lots of different sub-disciplines within criminal psychology and my specialism is in false memory, so memories of things that didn't actually happen. And in particular, I look at the evidence

in front of me as to whether an investigation was conducted appropriately when it comes to the interview. So were the right questions asked during a memory that was being recalled? So you've got a witness in front of you, is the detective, the police officer, the person who's doing the interview, are they asking appropriate questions? Or are they leading and suggestive and problematic questions? Are they feeding the witness pieces of evidence, for example? Are they lying to the witness if we go to places like the States? You can just make up evidence.

You can just create fake evidence. Say, we've got CCTV footage of you. We've got your fingerprints at the scene, which is luckily not allowed here. But there's still things that can happen here which are really leading and suggestive. And we know can lead people to say things either slightly differently than they remember

or can lead them to say things that they don't remember at all. And the problem is that for people who are developing false memories, they don't know that it's happening. And so you start with, yeah, I think I remember that. And the problem is that for people who are developing false memories, they don't know that it's happening. And so you start with, yeah, I think I remember that. And the police officer says, do you remember the white jacket? And you go, no, maybe. Yeah, maybe. The next time you're interviewed, what do you say? There was a white jacket. What do you say on the stand? I definitely remember the white jacket. Now, if that's a crucial piece of evidence, then that is a false memory that that person has. And they're recalling it confidently, it's going to be believed and potentially going to lead to a wrongful conviction.

So I look at the process through which memories were elicited, and I look at whether or not that was appropriate or not, and whether or not the memory could be false. It seems quite almost fantastical to me that through suggestion, through questioning, I could remember something and feel absolutely confident I remember something that I did not remember that had not happened. Is that more likely in a stressful situation or is it actually just that anybody is susceptible to that process under any conditions? We're all great at fabricating realities. We're very creative. Our brains are beautiful storytellers. They really like consistency. They like consistent, coherent narratives. And so we turn experiences or pieces

of experiences as we remember them into these linear narratives. And what that means is that all of our brains can add bits that we're maybe not sure initially that we guess, we sort of guess at them, the guesstimates, the maybes. Are we filling in the gaps? Filling in the gaps, for example. But then there's also... So my PhD involved, or my PhD research involved, implanting false memories into people's minds of committing crimes.

So I'd convince you that you assaulted someone with a weapon. Susan's not happy. If it's OK, I'm going to avoid eye contact with you. So really, genuinely convincing... There are cases where someone was convinced they had committed a serious crime. 70% of the participants in my research told me, fully confessed to crimes that they'd never committed

that never happened. And other people watched the videos, other participants, and they couldn't tell the difference between the same person recalling an event that actually happened and this false memory. I was interested, Susan, because you're a lawyer. I mean, is this a relatively modern point of view in law? Was that available to you when you were practising in the 90s? No, I mean, all of this stuff, and I find it's really, really interesting point of view in law because was that available to you when you were practicing in the 90s i mean

all of this stuff and i find it it's really really interesting because i did a forensics course at university which is nothing like what's happening just now and i think when you look at the way police interviewed people there's a very famous case in in glasgow called the bible john murders and it continues to be quite a notorious case and and the way the scene was treated the way the victims were treated in terms of the preconceptions that the police had because I know there's a big thing about if the police have a preconception about the victim and they will often deal with it in a different way often with women particularly who are considered you know to have been going out late at night or whatever.

But it wasn't, and I find it terrifying, because memory is one of the most terrifying things. Your own memory. I had a vivid dream last night of when I was 13 and in the chorus of the Pirates of Penzance. I don't know if I was. Do you know what I mean? But I woke up thinking, that was great.

And I remember, was I in the Pirates of Penzance? And the thing is that memories can be so vivid. Even if you think of an interaction of last time you and I met, Robin, we may remember it entirely differently. I can't even remember which car park it was now. The point is, I think, that the best

lawyers also play on that. The point of all of this fundamentally when it gets to court is doubt. And that's the thing you always have to remember is, is there a doubt in your mind that the person has done what they've done? And lawyers will either say the police did what julia's talking about or say that there's a number of different ways that the evidence because the thing is juries trust forensics

almost implicitly and too much i don't know if they do so if you were to imagine sitting in a court saying now we're going to hear from a scientist there wouldn't be a ripple of excitement in the room because they think oh scientists white coats boffins if you say now we're going to hear from the forensic scientist everybody sits up and thinks oh this will be this will be interesting and so there's already a sort of level of expectation of forensic science in that courtroom and you're so so right, Susan, it is an arena, it's a play, and there are actors, and some actors have rules that the others don't know about.

And so we can only ever answer the question we're asked. If they don't ask the right question, we can't get the answer over. And so you find the ways to make it clear to to your own counsel that maybe there's a question they should be asking and you hope that they'll pick up on it and often they don't because you can remember our lawyers are not scientifically trained now they're now there are judges in a in a typical if there is such a thing there probably isn't but a typical murder trial i was going to say but in a in a murder trial how much emphasis and weight is given to the forensic evidence

because obviously when this system evolved i don't know how many hundreds of years ago there was probably no such thing i guess as forensic evidence and now it's getting more and more detailed and more and more advanced so how much weight is placed on the forensic evidence now by and large there's a lot of weight placed on the forensic evidence now by and large there's a lot of weight placed on the forensic science but each and every case is very different so if if you look for example at the murder of of lee rigby so the fusilier who who was murdered in london there was so much cctv footage and so many cameras actually very little of what happened was in doubt because it was all recorded whereas if you look at

something like the murder of Geoffrey Howe, which was, again, it was a dismemberment why we were involved, then the forensic science was absolutely critical to the final outcome. So it does depend on each and every case. But I think there is an awareness or a pseudo-awareness in the juries, who are of course the public, that they come to the jury thinking that they are forensically aware because they've watched Silent Witness. And so they know exactly what it means to get... Could you just clarify that? The documentary Silent Witness? They know exactly that you can get a DNA sample in 40 minutes

because that's the length of an episode. But the reality is that it may take you weeks to get it. So often we're the biggest disappointment to the jury on the planet. You know, you mentioned DNA evidence, because I suppose really naively you would think that now you would do something like that. You'd say, here is the DNA, it's your DNA, you are the murderer. So what are the subtleties surrounding DNA evidence?

If I'm ever accused of murder, can you do it? Because that was the sweetest, gentlest accusation. You did it. You did it. Every single show he makes, he's just building up his alibi. But it couldn't have been him. He seemed like the sweetest particle physicist I ever saw. Can you take us a bit through the history

and how DNA evidence has evolved and what are the flaws, the potential flaws? Yeah, so I'm old enough to have done cases before we had DNA coming into the police courts. And it was Alec Jeffries in Leicester who had his great eureka moment where, God bless him, he was doing medical genetics experiments and he couldn't get them to work. So he was pulling his hair out. He didn't

have much, but he was pulling it out. And he realized the reason he couldn't get it to work is everybody's DNA was different. And at that point, we just didn't know that. Now, that was really important because the DNA research had all been undertaken through medical genetics. So the research was really well funded, which meant that the research was sound. A lot of forensic science is not terribly well funded in terms of research. So it's a little bit sketchy in some places compared to others. But the DNA was very well founded. And so early on, the police were able to say, that's a really interesting scientific technique.

I wonder if we could use it. And that's what forensic science does. It's a magpie. It steals everybody else's science and then applies it. Because there's no such thing as forensic science. There is science. And when it goes into the courtroom, it becomes forensic science. And that's the only thing that makes it forensic science. And when it goes into the courtroom, it becomes forensic science. And that's the only thing that makes it forensic science. So when DNA came in, there was a little

bit of disbelief that this was going to be the great sort of panacea that was going to solve everything. But very quickly, we realized just how important it became. And we're now at a position where literally you just need nano, nano levels of dna because you can take a single cell and you can replicate it and the dna is there so we have no trouble now finding the dna what we don't understand so much is how it got there so that if you are in a bar for argument's sake and it's a loud bar. And you shout to be heard. So literally around you, you're spraying everybody with your DNA.

It's a lovely thought. And you're taking away Susan's DNA with you. You're welcome. Thank you. It's very pretty DNA. You're very welcome. It's very well-behaved DNA. And you take it away with you.

You go home and you commit a crime. Susan's DNA can now be at that crime scene. She's never been at the crime scene, but her DNA is there. So the interpretation of the DNA is what's important. And we understand very little about transfer, so how it gets from one person to another, and sometimes even beyond a two-person contact, in fact, to a third or a fourth-person contact, and then how long does it persist?

We don't actually know. I'm quite notorious for terrifying crew members on the shows I do because the one thing that always stuck with me when I did forensics briefly was Locard's theorem. And I love it, I love it, I's theorem and I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it every contact leaves a trace I love it I think emotionally it's true as well I take it emotionally every contact you make with a human being leaves a trace but physically it's always stuck with me and I always say to sound guys and sound people, because they're sometimes in my bra.

And if someone's making me up and I go, do you know if something happens to me, your DNA's in my underwear. And they say, no, it's fine, it's just a forensic principle of every contact leaves a trace. And they go, uh-huh. Because they literally, and, it's fine, it's just a forensic principle of every contact leaves a trace. And they go, uh-huh. Because they literally, and if I was found, if something happened to me and I was found,

and I work with a lovely guy called Jamie, salt of the earth, but if you swabbed, I did a dance at the end of the Christmas cruising special, and he had to put the microphone inside my underwear. Right? Yes. Well, he didn't need twos. He had to, for the line of the dress.

What exactly were you recording then? So it wasn't voice. So I had... So the mic didn't show in a low-cut dress, and so he had to basically gaffer tape this mic into my pants. Now, at that point, if something happens to me, literally his DNA is saliva on my back. He was just breathing.

But... Heavily. There are... There are points where, if something had happened to me and you had excellently swabbed my clothing, how did Jamie's DNA get into my bra and my underwear? I'm picturing your Apple Watch also, your heart rate goes up, up, up. You're like, see, this is when it began.

I was wearing what I technically call my dance pants to suck everything in, so I was breathing very heavily myself. We've talked about DNA evidence, so in forensic science, there's a progression. Technology gets better, we get better at interpreting the evidence. In criminal psychology, where's the cutting edge at the moment and which directions is research in that area pushing towards so there's some controversial stuff happening in neuroscience or neuro law where sort of the intersection of

trying to introduce brain scans for example into legal settings often met with pushback because it's often used for things like lie detection. Is that the equivalent of a polygraph, which you said earlier just does not work at all? Big fans, yeah. It's not used on television, but it's just nonsense. But if you scan my brain, can you tell if I'm lying? No.

Well, it depends. So I might be able to see that you're creating something, that you're fabricating something, that your brain is thinking of something new as opposed to something old, but it doesn't tell me any more than that. Much like the polygraph can tell me that your arousal's going up, not in the sexy way,

that your heart rate's going up, that you're maybe perspiring, right? That sort of those kinds of things that it's measuring, which are often related to how nervous you are, which can be related to lying, isn't necessarily similarly with MRI stuff but I think the most important applications of cognitive science much like you were saying that you're sort of it's all science and the only reason it's forensic psychology is because it's applied psychology and so we just also steal from other psychological

areas. For example, I was asked today whether there's any research on false memories and neurodivergence and whether people who are neurodivergent are more likely to be seen as unreliable witnesses and whether there's any adjustments made for interviewing. So if you are autistic, for example, is there appropriate or reasonable adjustments that are made in how you're asked questions in the courtroom because how you're asked questions might be more likely to affect how you present and oh one thing we really love doing is in courtrooms is judging how people present we get so judgy we bring all our biases with us and we go oh i don't believe him and it can be based on you don't like how he's looking to the left you don't like like her hat you don't like whatever it is and we bring those

biases in and so that matters hugely and as far as I know that research hasn't been done and so once it has been done we can bring that in and people like me can help train police to better interview we can help in courtrooms to bring that evidence in and say, hey, actually, maybe this wasn't done appropriately. So this evidence isn't as reliable. So there's lots of places where we can then take that research and bring it in. It's too interesting when you say that sometimes we look at people and we go, oh, they look like they've done it. You know, there's that kind of thing. And I do think, again, how popular culture very often draws very simplistic images of people who are villainous or murderous. You know, we still have that tradition. If someone has any kind of facial anomaly or someone has some kind of often draws very simplistic images of people who are villainous or murderous you know we still have

that tradition if if if someone has any kind of facial anomaly or someone has some kind of deform you know there's no as far as i can see there's no evidence to say that that is in any way or you know just someone looks a bit lumpy or whatever it might be there are so many ways in which and in fact and i that worries me that worries me that sometimes people who are already perhaps on the outside are made even further outside, and we make these snap judgments based on popular... I mean, is that fair to say? It's called the devil effect, which is that people who look bad are bad.

And it's that assumption that if you have a disability, for example, you look like the villain. Think of stereotypical Batman villains, right? There's a charity called Not Your Villain, which is just saying stop casting villains as people with visible disabilities you are stigmatizing further a group that is already often stigmatized just just to finish see to get back to infinite monkey cludo so let's say let's say that professor cox has indeed um done away with the reverend robin in the observatory with the six inch refractor

um how how am i most likely to get caught where is it happening it's in an observatory an observatory well hopefully they've got no cctv no because okay so unlikely then um you're going to have to get rid of the body it's getting rid of the body you're going to get caught. It's always getting rid of the body. That's the key, the most difficult thing. That's the most difficult thing. Because they're messy things, bodies. Once you pierce them with something,

whether it's a knife or a tractor, whatever it may be, the innards come out and they make a mess and they get slippery and people get a bit put off by it. And I'm really full of stuff as well. One of those people who's, yeah. In the muscular category, absolutely. That's the hard thing, is getting rid of the body. Yeah.

That's where you're going to get caught. And I think you'd said, actually, that there are experts that you can employ if it's a gangland kind of there are people whose job it is yeah so dispose of bodies that you encounter in court yeah we had a murder case and the body parts were found in two different counties and when we we came to to look at the body parts we looked at them my colleague and i and said this is someone who knows what they're doing because when you go to dismember a body if you don't know what you're doing you tend to go and pick up the knife and you try to cut through something and find that

bone is really difficult to go through this individual had jointed the body and so that's the point which the police say what sort of people and you go well human anatomists forensic anthropologists surgeons vets you know those sorts of things and we got all the way through to the courtroom and the the individual that they had charged with the murder was a doorkeeper he was a bouncer and all the way through his defense was he's a bouncer I've got no butcher experience I've got none of this and And eventually, at some point, through the courtroom procedures, he decided he would change his plea to guilty. And that was the point at which he turned to his counsel and said, well, it's not as if I haven't

done it before. And his job was that he had been trained how to dismember bodies. So where you have drug gangs and if there is a body that they need to get rid of. So somebody will be the murderer. The body will then be taken to the back door of the nightclub and this individual was a cutter. His job was to dismember the body and the cutter then would pass the body parts to the dumper and the dumper was employed to get rid of the body parts. Now our brave chap decided that he would cut out the dumper because he didn't want to spend money on somebody else and he'd do it himself and that was how he got caught.

So his expertise was brilliant but he chose to take on the expertise of somebody else and that was where he was an amateur and the body parts were found so easily. That was frugality that ruined him. I can save a couple of quid. Never scrimp and save on a good dumping.

No. The door is closed and locked. Now, we also asked our audience a question, and today that question was, if you could solve one crime, what would it be? What have you got, Brian? Stopping people wearing sandals with socks that was uh what's going on with all the astrophysicists called brian who

are good at rock music conspiracy it's quite flirtatious on this i'd like to make it clear i did not write this. Gerry wrote this. Who abducted Brian Cox and replaced him with a younger version as there's no way he continued to look that young? I mean, the delivery was deliberately done in that fashion. I was going to say, who was that? Who was that? Did you have a name?

Name and phone number. Gerry. The crime against fashion, that's Robin's cardigan. Well, wearing two very lovely badges today as well. Why do one of the people like my... Do you know the right people like my cardigans? And our final one is, who killed the strawberry? We still never know.

Thanks to our panel, Sue Black, Julia Shaw and Susan Calman. Sue Black, Julia Shaw and Susan Calman. Well, so there we go. That's how to commit the perfect crime. And next week, we're joined by Sally Gunnell to learn how to run fast. So we've got everything covered. And in the final episode, Joe Brown will be joining us to show us

how to hide a file in a Victoria sponge. Till now, nice again. Nature Bang. Hello. Hello. And welcome to Nature Bang. I'm nature, bang. Bang, bang. Hello. Hello. And welcome to Nature Bang. I'm Becky Ripley. I'm Emily Knight.

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