Basques were blamed at first (Image: Paul White/AP/Press Association Images)
USING crime-scene DNA to paint a picture of a suspect, rather than to find an exact match, could become more common police practice. So say researchers who predicted the ethnicity of a suspect in the 2004 Madrid train bombings in Spain from a DNA sample found on a toothbrush.
To settle controversy over whether Basque separatists were involved, a judge later ordered investigators to determine whether DNA recovered in the flat of the suspected bombers came from north Africans or Europeans. From single-letter variations in the DNA, Christopher Phillips at…
