This invisible criminal was caught for 15 years (4 photos)

Journalists nicknamed her the Ghost of Heilbronn. Traces of DNA an unknown woman was found first at the scene of robberies, then at places of murder. The police for a long time could not figure out who this mysterious woman.





In 2007, a 22-year-old woman was killed in Germany - police officer. The partner of the victim was seriously wounded and when he woke up after the coma, then beckoned nothing. An unknown person stole from the police handcuffs and weapons. Investigators found trace DNA at the scene crimes and found that it belongs to a serial killer. She is passed through dozens of other criminal cases initiated on the territory Austria, France and Germany.



The Phantom of Heilbronn committed her first crime in 1993 - in another city in Germany, a 62-year-old woman was killed. Indeed, DNA was isolated only in 2001, but the results matched the DNA of the killer policemen. Investigators found that the "ghost woman" was involved in a number of very serious crimes.



Traces of her DNA were found in the following places: in the kitchen in home of an elderly man in 2001 about Freiburg, in 2008, in a car the corpse of a nurse from Weinsberg was found in a car that was used to transport the corpses of several people killed in 2008 in Happenheim.

Also, the DNA of the "woman without a face" was found at crime scenes in Austria and France: in the French commune of Arbois, where robbery, in the Austrian Halleukirchen, in an optics store where theft has been committed.

And many other robberies, thefts, thefts of motorcycles and cars.



DNA has become a huge breakthrough in forensics, but in the absence of criminals in police bases, it is still difficult to find her. Famous only half of the Phantom of Heilbronn. It took years for investigators to track down the mysterious woman. And everything turned out to be much more prosaic and at the same time more extraordinary.

She turned out to be not a killer at all, but a woman who worked in an Austrian factory that produced cotton swabs.

It was these cotton swabs that were used to collect DNA samples from crime scenes. Tampons have been sterilized but not eliminated trace DNA.

According to criminalists, this situation is an excellent illustration of the error in conducting molecular genetic expertise, when DNA from a crime scene is contaminated by strangers. After of this case, many experts began to doubt DNA as a "golden standard of evidence in court.