Bluestar, the miracle product that solves many criminal investigations
Bluestar, which was developed in a CNRS laboratory, has become an essential tool in complex investigations and a formidable weapon in the hands of the technical and scientific police.
Le Parisien : 01.04.2019 (France)
Summoned last Thursday before the investigating judge, Jean-Marc Reiser, the main suspect in the disappearance of Sophie Le Tan in September in Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin), fell from above. After nine hours of questioning, the magistrate presented him with a new piece of evidence: a saw discovered in his cellar by the police.
On the handle, the blood of Sophie Le Tan. A “damning element”, according to Gérard Welzer, the lawyer of Sophie Le Tan’s family. A discovery made possible by Bluestar. A product that “now equips the police in a hundred countries around the world,” said Jean-Marc Lefebvre-Despeaux, head of Bluestar Forensic, based in Monaco.
Created in 2003 by Loïc Blum, a researcher at the CNRS, the Bluestar quickly became a must-have for technical and forensic police services, replacing the Luminol. “The reaction of the Bluestar is much more intense and longer,” says Jean-Marc Lefebvre-Despeaux.
“When I was based in Seine-Saint-Denis, my team, which covered a quarter of the department, used it about ten times a year,” explains Christophe, head technician at PTS, who now trains the teams that go to crime scenes. “We use it in camouflaged blood crimes, when we think there may have been traces that have been cleaned up. “
Bluestar’s strength is that it illuminates blood despite the perpetrators’ efforts to clean it up. In the Reiser case, the Bluestar revealed a large amount of blood in the suspect’s bathroom. It is very difficult to achieve perfect cleaning,” says Jean-Marc Lefebvre-Despeaux. We will almost always find it: between a skirting board and the floor, in the tile joints…”. And sometimes years later.
While working in Seine-Saint-Denis, Christophe remembers, for example, finding traces of blood under a carpet that were ten years old. “Even on surfaces that a suspect thinks are impervious, on an object that he has cleaned perfectly, we can find it,” says the forensic technician.
This is the case with the saw found at Jean-Marc Reiser’s home, which had obviously been cleaned by the suspect. The same goes for the screwdriver discovered a few years ago by Christophe and his team in the context of a murder case. “We were looking for an object like an ice pick, which had been stuck in a man’s head. We came across a toolbox with a screwdriver. We sprayed it with Bluestar and it turned blue,” recalls Christophe. And yet, the suspect had cleaned everything up, you couldn’t see anything with the naked eye. “
But science has brought the murderer down. Will Jean-Marc Reiser suffer the same fate? Confronted with this new “damning” piece of evidence, he was “confused”, according to a source close to the case.
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