Scene of an axe attack on forensic science

Like all good crime dramas the story of the Forensic Science Service recently had an unexpected twist.

Set up 30 or so years ago with specialist centres up and down the country, it has become home to dedicated scientists whose pioneering developments in DNA technology and crime scene analysis brought police investigations into the 21st-century.

It was the work of this Government-owned organisation, much of it carried out in a warren of 1970s buildings on a Wetherby industrial estate, which has been the key in solving 220 cold cases in the last eight years.

Its expertise was drafted in to identify the victims of both Hurricane Katrina and the Boxing Day tsunami.

Those successes might have left the scientists who spend their days staring down microscopes and painstakingly examining evidence dating back decades thinking they were as protected as the Wetherby centre, nestled anonymously near to a carpet warehouse and surrounded by a steel fence topped with razor wire. However, the run-up to Christmas brought some unexpected news.

In December, the Home Office announced the FSS was to be wound up. The reason: it was losing money, according to Crime Reduction Minister James Brokenshire, about £2m a month. The FSS, which nationally employs 1,600 staff, admitted it had got into financial difficulties, but claimed it had raised concerns early on and was “disappointed” with the Government’s decision.

Since the announcement two months ago, few details about exactly how the FSS will be dismantled have emerged, but it will close by March next year and its supporters have become increasingly vocal.

Sir Alec Jeffreys, the geneticist who developed DNA fingerprinting techniques, wrote an impassioned letter to the New Scientist. The logic justifying the closure, he said, “remains opaque” and he warned the UK risked being left without any focus for research and no ability to conduct investigations, beyond routine analyses provided by the private sector. Sir Alec is not alone and at heart of the opposition against the winding up lies the question, what price can be put on justice?

Back in Wetherby, it is, for the moment, business as usual. In the labyrinth of labs, a pair of scientists are working on a recent haul of cannabis, determining its strength and street value, while a few doors up another is looking for traces of blood on a pair of jogging bottoms. The day-to-day activities might not have the glamour of an episode of CSI, but the cases which have passed through the centre since it first opened would provide enough material for an entire season of dramas. One of those who has been there since almost the start is Gillian Leak. As an 18-year-old in the 1970s she wrote on spec to police in Harrogate asking if they were any opportunities for work behind the front line. Her details were passed to Wetherby’s FSS and Gillian, who grew up on an East Leeds estate, landed herself a job at the very time when the shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper had been cast over the county.

“It was odd really, I caught the bus to work right near to where one of the bodies had been found,” she says. “Back then everyone worked in one big room, and while I started on the bottom rung of the ladder, I was involved in everything from sex cases to murders and safe blasting. It was a big learning curve, but just completely fascinating.”

Gillian completed her degree part-time and having amassed decades of experience, she is now one of the world’s leading blood pattern analysts. One of the reasons given for the dismantling of the service has been the knock-on effects of cuts to police budgets. With less money to spend on forensic consultancy, forces are increasingly taking work in-house. Yet without access to the FSS’s specialist knowledge, the short-term savings may look less prudent in the long-run.

“You can tell a lot about a crime scene by looking at the patterns of blood,” says Gillian.

“By narrowing down the order of events it helps identify the areas where DNA analysis should be focused. Basically, rather than staring at a blank canvas, you can point people to the areas where they are most likely to find vital DNA material.”

The cases Gillian has worked on reads like a roll call of some of the country’s most notorious criminals. From the successful conviction in 1994 of Robert Black for the murder of three schoolgirls, including Morley’s Sarah Harper, to Martin Brown, the man who escaped justice for almost two decades before DNA linked him to the killing of taxi driver Keith Slater in 1988, the painstaking work which goes on at Wetherby brings its own rewards.

“You’re looking for that piece of evidence which can tip the balance,” says Gillian. “While you never forget you’re dealing with someone else’s grief, it’s always a magic moment when you get that call to say you’ve cracked it.”

One of the main concerns about dismantling the FSS is what will happen to its national archive, which contains more than 1.5m case files, alongside the microscope slides and fibre tapings which have proved so vital in cold case work.

“It’s amazing what information you can now retrieve from a slide of saliva dating back decades, and we are taking new strides forward all the time,” says Cathy Turner, resident DNA technology expert at Wetherby. “But the trick is often knowing when to say ‘no’. There are some cold cases which you have to set aside, knowing that you are much likely to get a better result when technology becomes even more sophisticated.”

Most of those working at Wetherby don’t want to be drawn into the politics of the decision, they just want to do their job.

However, the news earlier this month that police forces had been told to refrigerate blood and urine samples in drink driving cases until another testing service could be found, seems to confirm fears the transition is unlikely to be smooth.

“Criminal justice in England and Wales is heading for a car crash with police budgets cut, courts closing and the pressure for forensic science to be done on the cheap,” says Mike Clancy, deputy general secretary of the Prospect union which represents many of the FSS staff. “Our fear that cost will determine justice has become all too real.”

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