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This time of the year, not even German eForensics is only about research, development and forensic science but to a matter of the heart: every Christmas there is a so-called wish tree of the Caritas-Association. In 2015, we were happy to take part in this special project: the wish tree is a Christmas tree is decorated with stars. Each of these stars contains a Christmas wish of a needy person who is taken care of by the services and facilities of the Caritas Association. The gifts will be sent directly to the people.

Bloodstains at the scene of the crime can provide strong evidentiary links to the suspect and help to establish the facts of the crime. Because they are particularly persistent, even a thorough cleaning that eradicates all visible blood is no guarantee that the perpetrator will be free of any suspicion.

Every fan of crime movies has seen the iconic scene at least once: when someone sneaks to the kitchen to find a weapon in order to deal with a burglar breaking into the home. This is for a good reason, too, because there is no other room in a normal household that keeps more objects that have the potential to act as a good defense.

Tremendous amounts of physical money transactions occur each day in every part of the world. As far as the Euro alone is concerned, more than 17 billion banknotes and 111 billion coins are currently in circulation. Although the security features of Euro banknotes have become increasingly sophisticated, 838,000 counterfeit Euro bills were confiscated and withdrawn from circulation in 2014. In cases involving forgery and fraud, latent prints on cash can be an important piece of evidence in securing a prosecution. Although it is rare to find, such a fingerprint can be used to link stolen or counterfeit money to a suspect.

Exchanges with a renowned Arabic police sparked off the idea to analyze “invisible inks” with EVISCAN. It comes from the fact that prisoners in jail occasionally forward messages to each other. Unsuspicious at first sight, these could possibly include a second secret message. Such a message would usually be written between the visible lines by using certain liquids as inks. One possible ink is milk that cannot be seen until the document is treated with either heat or powders. The problem: making the text visible in this manner is an irreversible process, meaning that the uncovered message cannot be turned into blank lines again. The flow of information between the inmates would be necessarily interrupted, as they would know the police is involved.