Ears make identification possible, says lab detective

By SCOTT MacLEOD

When Simon Melbourne held up an Australian bank with his right ear jutting from a balaclava, he had no idea that his anthelix was narrow and prominent, his upper crus anthelicis wide and directed vertically and his intertragic notch narrow and triangular.

Yet that was his downfall.

For after a fruitless probe lasting more than a year, Adelaide police took a security camera picture from the bank to Professor Maciej Henneberg, an expert in anatomy and biological anthropology.

The Adelaide University scientist found clues in the anthelix (the folded "Y-shaped" part of the ear and one of its ridges, the upper crus anthelicis) and the intertragic notch above the earlobe.

He took less than 30 minutes to match the image to a suspect - Melbourne - who confessed all when confronted with his aural indiscretion. It was the first time in Australia that a criminal had been identified by his ear, and means the 20-year-old is likely to be jailed for the May 1999 robbery.

The breakthrough also showed there was still room for good old-fashioned checks on body shape in these high-tech days of DNA sampling, molecular biology and fingerprinting.

But the practice of ear identification seems to have languished since its heyday in 1960s paternity suits - New Zealand police and forensic experts can remember no recent instance of it being used in this country.

Professor Henneberg told the Herald he used a systematic method of "scoring" the shape of ears, in much the same way that police process fingerprints.

"This bit of knowledge fell into oblivion 20 years ago," he said. "Not many professors of anatomy are good, and police use other clues like DNA."

Many other anatomical quirks can also be used to identify suspects. Nose and lip shapes are helpful and the size of a handprint is a good clue to a person's height.

And Professor Henneberg said posture could be used to identify a suspect, although general body shape was little help.

But one major impediment to using those techniques was the murky and grainy quality of cheap security cameras businesses used.

"Bank cameras give peace of mind to the staff, but are notoriously poor quality. If we get better cameras then we can look at things like the base of the nose.

"In this latest case, the picture of the ear was beautiful."

Ear, eye and nose features used to be examined in paternity cases, when experts would look for common hereditary features.

Some scientists - and the Nazis - measured craniums in the belief that certain head shapes could be linked with intelligence and psychological disorders, but environmental factors are now known to play a big part in skull shape.

New Zealand's national crime manager, Detective Superintendent Bill Bishop, said he was aware of ear identification and was interested in learning more about Professor Henneberg's work.

"It is something that has been used overseas, and it's obviously an option for us. With someone as close as South Australia, we probably wouldn't hesitate to ask him if a situation came up where we thought he could help."

Ears are just one weapon in the crimefighting armoury.

New South Wales police used hypnosis this year to make progress in the case of a man who pulled a young girl off a suburban Sydney street seven years ago.

The girl has not been seen again and there have been no arrests, but police now have an updated description of the man they are seeking.

In New Zealand, forensic detectives have used seemingly everyday equipment to crack crimes. It was well known that typewriters have individual quirks that make each unique and therefore traceable, but police also can study a photocopier to see if documents were copied on it.

Each photocopier has a unique set of marks - smudges, nicks, scratches and even typing corrector fluid - which gives a machine a "fingerprint."

Recently police in Britain and the US have experimented with heat-sensitive imaging which can give a clear profile of an offender up to 30 minutes after he or she has left the scene.

The equipment - currently too expensive for mass use - can provide an impression of a face using the different amounts of heat generated by parts of the head.

The technology is based on the concept that body heat is not uniformly spread and minute variations occur around the face.

Easier, though, than reconstructing facial heat is just to study a living ear.