Landmark cases

Landmark cases

There was a case in 1936, in which the wife of an NBC executive was beaten to death.  She was strangled with her pajama top, bound with twine, and left on the bathroom floor. A chemist was brought in to examine the crime scene. He found one hair, half an inch long, that he later identified as horse hair. The twine was able to be matched to a specific manufacturer and distributor, and proved to be delivered to a moving company that had delivered a horse-haired couch earlier that day. This allowed police to put pressure on the delivery person under suspicion, who later confessed.

In 1982, there was a victim of rape and strangulation found dead, who was abducted six days earlier. There were orange fibers found in her hair that were suspiciously like fibers found in a 12-year-old murder victim from eight months earlier in the same county. The fibers were determined to be carpet fibers of a unique color. Later a 28-year-old woman was abducted and held captive in a man’s house. She was tortured and the man seemed to have his mind set on killing her. She escaped one day and reported him to the police. It was found that he had a similar van to the one that the abduction victim was picked up in. In the van there was a unique colored orange carpet. There were only 74 yards of that carpet sent to that part of Ohio. So the murderer was convicted.