Forensic ecologist Patricia Wiltshire has worked on over 300 criminal investigations, solving many using previously overlooked clues from nature, but one case proved to be her most bizarre
Britain’s leading forensic ecologist Patricia Wiltshire has helped solved many gruesome and baffling murders over her 25-year career. The expert uses previously ignored clues from nature such as pollen and mould spores to unlock the secrets behind cases where police have drawn a blank.
She helped tie Ian Huntley to the Soham murders and was pivotal in the Sarah Payne case, two of over 300 investigations involving murder, rape and other violent crimes to which she has brought her expertise. But when the burnt body of a man was found in bracken ferns near Tirphil, Caerphilly, in 2006, she at first couldn’t understand why do many things weren’t adding up.
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Patricia had been brought in to the investigation in the hope that she could find something to link the crime with two suspects.
She recalls: “I wasn’t told all the details, but I would have thought the dogs should have had an easy job finding the corpse as it was only 100 yards from the road and burnt human flesh smells decidedly like roast pork”. In fact, the body of Barrie Horrell, a 31-year-old man with learning difficulties, was so badly charred that medics could not determine the violent act that killed him.
To add to the mystery, Patricia identified 130 types of pollen and spores from the road to the body, many of which could not have been produced anywhere near there. “Others were even alien to Britain,” she says. “I didn’t have a clue how they got there.”
But Patricia soon picked up some clues. The amount of ‘alien’ pollen suggested that more than one person had been involved in dragging and burning the corpse.
Police had seized a pair of suede shoes and a pair of green and white trainers from the suspects, Mr Horrell’s cousins Lee and Brett Davies, and she knew that materials like suede and synthetic fabrics can trap pollen – so she asked to have the footwear as quickly as possible. The pollen on the shoes matched the type of pollen found in the crime scene nearly perfectly.
But Patricia was still baffled about where the alien pollen had come from. The answer came when she returned to the site and was blasted by dust from passing lorries. and realised it contained topsoil from abroad, used to stabilise nearby waste coal tips. She recalls: “Eureka – that was the source of the pollen! The lumbering lorries were carrying it up the hillside roads to dump on unstable tips and, as they drove along, they were disgorging dust and muck in dust storms over the pasture.
“No wonder it was all so mixed. I could now get my final report written for the police, and I felt a satisfaction that the conundrum was soluble after all.”
The men later confessed to taking Mr Horrell to the remote hillside, strangling him then burning his body after he had informed on them for a burglary, and both were jailed for life. The men had taken spare clothes to change into to avoid forensic tests, but never imagined it would be pollen that would snare them.
- The Natural History of Crime by Patricia Wiltshire is published by Blink Publishing in paperback priced at £10.99.