A forensic scientist has spoken about the worst cases she has ever seen in a revealing interview – which includes details of how she identified one of the 7/7 London bombers.
Jo Millington, a blood spatter specialist who has worked for police forces across Britain for the past 25 years, shared details of some of the stomach-churning crime scenes she has worked on.
The Reading expert also revealed the common mistakes killers make when killing, and explained why you can never completely clean up a crime scene.
Speak with LAD Bible TVJo, who founded Spattered Ltd in 2020, revealed she managed to identify one of the 7/7 London bombers by testing a packet of peanuts for DNA.
The July 7, 2005 bombings – also known as 7/7 – were a series of four coordinated suicide bombings carried out by Islamist terrorists, hitting commuters traveling on London’s public transport during the morning rush hour, killing 56 people.
According to Jo: ‘The London bombings happened, for that incident it was all hands on deck, bWhat I was involved in was the investigation of the car that the bombers had driven to Luton airport.
“And it was subjected to a controlled explosion to make sure it was safe. That car was then transported to the London Laboratory where I examined it in a very safe environment.
“What we were trying to determine was who was driving him. So of course you wipe down the steering wheel, the gear shift, the handbrake, and the things people touch while driving.
‘But when I sat on the driver’s side and looked in the door pocket, there was a small peanut package.
“You know, when you buy a bag of peanuts, there’s a little slit in it so you can tear the package. Well, that was torn and it was empty. And when I looked at the crack, it looked a little gnawed, [there was a] teeth spur, something like that.
“And I thought to myself, ‘You know what, if I were driving this car and I bought myself a pack of peanuts, how would I open it? I might be able to rip it open with my teeth.’
“We’re examining this packet of peanuts, and we swept the crack around, and it generated a DNA profile that identified one of the bombers because he had literally just eaten a packet of peanuts.”
Jo Millington (pictured) is a blood spatter specialist who has worked for police forces across Britain for the past 25 years
Elsewhere, the blood spatter specialist pointed out some common mistakes made in murders.
She said: ‘They sometimes go to quite extreme lengths to get rid of the evidence. But at least every contact leaves a trace, right?
“So it’s frankly impossible to eradicate every piece of evidence from a crime scene.
‘The mistake they make, apart from not really fully understanding the possibilities of forensic science, is that they forget that they leave traces of themselves on every surface they touch, on every path they take.
Jo continued: ‘You know, we’ve known about fingerprints for centuries, and yet it’s probably one of the most important ways people are identified. So you think to yourself, ‘How did you forget to leave fingerprints?’.”
She recalled how a murderer used his victim’s blood to write “something terrible” on the wall with his fingers and put an exclamation point at the end with his fingerprint in it.
Jo recalled some of the worst cases she has ever seen and described an ‘absolutely gruesome’ murder that involved analyzing a lot of blood evidence.
The expert also revealed common mistakes killers make when killing – and explained that you can never completely clean up a crime scene
She said: ‘I once witnessed a scene that was actually absolutely horrifying. The man had truly catastrophic head injuries and the weapon looked like a machete.
‘The reason why the scene had come to the attention of the police was because… there was a company with rooms underneath this flat, and blood was dripping through the ceiling into their office.
“So you can get an idea of the amount of blood that’s available, and it was pretty horrible.”
But surprisingly, Jo admitted it wasn’t the most shocking crime scene she has visited.
Looking back, she said: “So I went to the scene, it was in East London, and the suspect ended up being a very troubled person. He was actually very seriously mentally ill, but he had a day’s release from his institution.
“And he befriended this guy and went back to his apartment, and he ended up killing him. He chopped up his body, then he took his brain and cooked it in a frying pan.”
Jo recalled some of the worst cases she had ever been on and said she was called to an ‘absolutely gruesome’ murder with a lot of blood evidence to analyze.
Elsewhere, she recalled another gruesome crime scene, where a dismembered body was found in a freezer – but Jo was confused when she found no visible blood at the scene.
She said: ‘When I walked in I remember thinking ‘where’s the blood? Why am I here?’ Because literally nothing was visible to the naked eye.
‘And so we applied a chemical to enhance the blood staining, and what it did was pick up trace amounts of blood, which indicated a cleanup.
‘So there had been blood, she had been dismembered in that room, but enough had been cleaned up that it was no longer really clear.
“But it wasn’t until we enhanced it with chemicals that we could see the traces that were left behind.”