Revealed :: The History of Hair and Fiber

The earliest use of hair analysis in forensics was when forensic scientist Francios Goron realized that the victim of a murder dyed his hair before the crime took place. This little piece of evidence was used to track down the criminal and eventually charge him for murder.

In the video we watched in class, there was a man who died from thallium poisoning. At first, the court ruled the death accidental, as there was thallium at the lab he was currently working at. But through analysis of his hair, investigators found out that the man had been given large amounts of thallium at different intervals through the entire time he was sick. This led to the discovery that the man's wife had been putting thallium in his thermos before he went to work. She was tried and charged for murder of her own husband.

Today, hair and fiber analysis in actual crime cases can get very complicated. We used regular microscope, but I'm sure the FBI uses some complex identification method that nobody else knows about.