Journal de médecine légale

In the realm of criminal investigations, every clue matters. From fingerprints to DNA samples, law enforcement agencies have a range of techniques at their disposal to solve crimes and bring justice to victims. However, one field of forensic science stands out for its unique ability to provide valuable insights into crime scenes and help determine crucial details: forensic entomology.

In the realm of crime investigation, forensic ballistics plays a crucial role in unraveling the mysteries surrounding firearms and their involvement in criminal activities. By employing scientific principles and techniques, forensic ballistics analyzes the behavior of projectiles, firearms, and related evidence to provide vital insights to law enforcement agencies and legal professionals.

Bloodstain patterns are valuable forensic evidence that can provide crucial insights into a crime scene. By examining the size, shape, distribution, and characteristics of bloodstains, forensic experts can reconstruct events, determine the type of weapon used, identify the number of blows or shots, and even establish the relative positions of individuals involved. When blood is shed, it forms unique patterns based on factors such as the velocity and angle at which it impacts a surface, the texture of the surface, and the volume of blood present. Different types of bloodstain patterns include spatter, splatter, cast-off, arterial spurts, and passive drops.

When it comes to understanding and analyzing the human body, anthropometry stands as a key discipline. Derived from the Greek words "anthropos" (meaning human) and "metron" (meaning measure), anthropometry delves into the systematic study of human body measurements, proportions, and physical characteristics. From the ancient world to modern times, this scientific practice has played a pivotal role in various fields, including anthropology, ergonomics, medicine, and even design. By meticulously measuring and examining human dimensions, anthropometry has provided valuable insights into human evolution, health, and the optimization of human-made environments.

In the presented study, the allelic frequencies and statistical parameters for 500 unrelated individuals from the 28 administrative regions of the Republic of Bulgaria were determined for 16 autosomal genetic markers (STR), included in the NGM Detect™ PCR Amplification Kit (Applied Biosystems), for the Bulgarian population. No deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium for the 16 studied loci were observed, except for a deviation for the D8S1179 and FGA loci. The most polymorphic and informative for the Bulgarian population is the SE marker, with the next most informative markers being: D1S1656, D12S391 and D18S51. For all 16 loci, the combined value Match Probability (MP) is 1.20e-21 and the power of exclusion (PE) is 99.999999022%.

The results obtained from the DNA analysis have a very high identification value. Their interpretation is particularly important when a DNA profile found at a crime scene matches that of a suspect or an injured person. Such statistical estimates are also valuable in detecting mixed DNA profiles, as well as in calculating the probability of kinship between two or more individuals. For these calculations, it is necessary to perform a statistical analysis of the occurrence frequency of the specified STR variants among a given population group of individuals. So far, no such research representative of the Bulgarian population has been published.