Dr Dilys Berman, a pollen expert from the University of Cape Town’s Lung Institute, spends a lot of time on the roof. She’s collecting pollen for a huge research project.
But, says Berman, the study of pollen is not just for air sampling, soil analysis and allergy studies. It’s also a vital part of crime-busting because in the world of forensic science, it is as accurate as it comes. However, the world has a dire shortage of forensic palynologists (pollen fundis).
There are many cases where pollen has solved a crime.
For example, in 1979 a teenage girl’s body was found in a cornfield in New York state in the US. She’d been shot in the forehead and back.
For decades, police made no headway and the case went cold. About 27 years later, three tiny grains of pollen came to the rescue. Forensic palynologists studied them in minute detail and narrowed down their origin to just three locations in the US.
From there, an investigation that had previously produced many files of information that went nowhere picked up momentum and investigators were able to pin the crime on two men who had abducted the girl in California.
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