Sometimes one book will lead you to another one. I was reading one on forensic science a few weeks ago, and it referenced this book. (Sorry, this is one of my obsessions. I'm convinced that I am qualified to either catch or be a serial killer by now!) Anyway, this is an older non-fiction book about a serial murderer in England caught by DNA testing. It was the first case where it was used and successful.
In the mid-1990s two girls from small towns in the English countryside were raped and killed, about a year apart. Despite a huge police task force, massive publicity and thousands of tips, the killer wasn't caught for 3 years. During the investigation a suspect was arrested, seemed to confess and was held in jail. His father didn't believe that he'd killed the girls. (The guy was guilty of being creepy but was not a murderer.) While he was in police custody his father remembered reading about a British scientist who had developed "genetic fingerprinting" using DNA. They had a blood type for the killer and samples enough to do his DNA profile.
What they did next still amazes me. I'm pretty sure you couldn't do it now, at least in America. The police sent out letters to every man who fell into a certain age at the time of the murders who lived in the small rural area and asked them to come in voluntarily to have their blood tested for a DNA match. While they knew that the killer probably wouldn't come in on his own, they thought they might get lucky. They were also watching for those who refused to come in, or who protested.
In the end, they found the killer. The ins and outs of how it happened were very interesting.
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