Audio Description

Audio Description

Oh Brother Where Art Though 

Toad Scene

Delmar’s face next to a puddle.

Coming to his senses again, he slowly raises his head as his gaze wanders down his outstretched body.

 Directly opposite to him, his friend Everett also has all his fours stretched out from him.

The two are lying amongst the puddles of a stony riverbank.

Stiffly turning his head Delmar notices their third friend Pete’s clothes. Only that Pete isn’t in them anymore.

Struggling up on his feet, Delmar gapes at Pete’s empty but neatly arranged clothes.

Nervously wobbling back and forth he turns to Everett.

Everett jumps out of his sleep and rubs his head.

 Trying to keep his balance Everett rises stiffly. Following Delmar’s stare he also eyes Pete’s empty clothes. Then he turns away slowly and takes a few steps towards the brim of the riverbank.  Searchingly, he gazes down the river and at the brown forest across from them.

 Delmar is still staring wide-eyed at the wet jeans-shirt.

Everett turns back and fixates the jeans shirt. Delmar’s jaw drops as he is staring at the shirt in which something is crawling towards the collar.A horney toad jumps out of the shirt.

Everett throws back his head and raises his eyebrows. The horney toad makes three jumps across the riverbank and then hops into the water. Delmar chases after it. On all four he leaps into the shallow water.

Then with a dive he manages to grab it. Holding it tightly between his hands he brings the toad up close to his face.

Vucetich on Galton

Vucetich’s admiration for a colleague

“What are you reading darling? Could you please just lift up those heavy books for a moment so I can wipe your side table? Oh, I hate that you smoke in here Juan. One day, you and all your books will stand ablaze.” “Honey, I am not merely reading. I am connecting with Sir Franics Galton, my brother in thought, my brother in crime, one could even say.” “Brother in crime? Juan, what…?” No no, do not worry honey, I am not engaging in any criminal activities. Quite the opposite, Sir Francis Galton made outstanding achievements in the forensic field and after reading his biography, I am not surprised he came to fame. By the age of two this prodigy child was able to read and when he was five he already knew some Latin. Later in life, he went on to study medicine and became an enthusiastic traveler. Among exotic countries like Damascus, Beirut and Egypt he also travelled to my beloved motherland Croatia. 

However, the one specific trait which led him to become a scientific polymath was his penchant for measuring, comparing and identifying patterns.  He excelled in mathematics, meteorology, statistics and geography. It was only when his cousin, who was no less a figure than Charles Darwin, published his Theory of Species that Galton dedicated his life to one specific field, namely, the hereditary of human ability. To paraphrase it, he wanted to scientifically proof that intelligent parents have intelligent children. 

While this is all very fascinating, his findings in the forensic field are those which I was most impressed by. Sir Francis Galton was the first to scientifically prove the uniqueness of human fingerprints, convincing courts to accept them as evidence. On top of that he identified eight common patterns in fingerprints and drew up a system to classify them. In doing so he made fingerprinting implementable. Nowadays, when trying to match a crime scene fingerprint with one that is already in the database, one does not have to go through all the fingerprint cards anymore. When the crime scene fingerprint has a loop I can already narrow my search down to a small fraction and after taking subcategories into account I am usually quick to find a match. You remember the mysterious Rojas case? You know, the woman that strangled her two poor children? I could not have solved it without Galton’s fingerprinting classification technique. [400]

Bertillon on the West Brothers

Bertillon's curse

Before he had to go to bed, little John West zipped through the family home, checking if all his ghost traps were still activated. As he had been doing this every night for three years now, this was a quick undertaking. John was absolutely sure that their New England home in Leavenworth was haunted. Sometimes at night, he heard these inhuman wailing cries. He wasn’t scared though. On the contrary, he was really curious and put all his effort into catching the ghost.

This particular night, when the clock struck twelve, he suddenly woke up. Still confused he rubbed his eyes and suddenly realized that a milky-white figure was sitting on his window-sill. “What are you?” John stuttered. “How rude!” the ghost growled. “Sorry, who are you?” John’s voice was cracking with excitement. “I, I am the father of forensics. I am the famous Alphonse Bertillon” the ghost said as he lent back and crossed his legs. “Bertillonage, how does that sound, boy? Fantastic, does it not?

"Bertillonage is a system with which criminals can be identified by having 11 different body measurements taken and recorded. You know, people always thought I was a bit odd, unsociable and simple-minded but I created this ingenious identification system that was used in criminal institutes worldwide. With Bertillonage I put an end to repeat offenders masquerading as someone innocent and getting away with mild punishments. I thought the system infallible. You know what the odds of two people having the exact same measurements are? One to 4,191,304! Ingenious, I know. Bertillonage finally got me the praise I deserved.

"However, in 1903 your great-grandfather, Will West, put an end to my glory days. When he was caught, an officer took his measurements and identified him as the repeat offender William West. When your great-grandfather denied having been arrested before, the police officer turned the record over and saw that William West was already an inmate of the prison.

"Then those fingerprinting people were summoned and established what my Bertillonage could not – that Will and William West were in fact two different people. Afterwards, Bertillonage was disregarded as unreliable and replaced by fingerprinting. The thing is that your great-grandfather’s case was an exception because he and William were actually twin brothers! If they had just admitted that my system would not have been called a failure!" [392]