Detective Gary Williams was investigating a rape last year when his leads dried up. From the victim’s statement, he knew there had been a witness to the crime, he even knew his name, but the person had not come forward and could not be found at their registered address.
So Williams, of South Yorkshire Police in the UK, turned to a smart search engine the force had begun trialling only 2 hours earlier. With just the name of the witness, the Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) trawled the force’s database. It turned out that the witness had been mixed up…
