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Crime-solving question

Major Major

Critical Thinker
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Has there ever been a crime that has been solved by the knowledge of some minor bit of trivia?
 
Major Major said:
Has there ever been a crime that has been solved by the knowledge of some minor bit of trivia?
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Certainly through investigation by knowledgeable people who can spot a connection. Google throws up a case where 2 dead girls were found in a certain area of forest. A suspect was found with clothes and car carrying pollen limited, locally anyway, to that area, which blew his alibi.
There are plenty of others, but I'm not sure they match what you're looking for re 'minor bit of trivia'.
 
I don't know about crimes solved, but I see a lot of crimes being detected in part due to knowledge of trivia.

A cop's knowledge of which town is where, and how the local roads connect to each other, is super helpful in determining whether a motorist's account of their itinerary indicates cognitive impairment (i.e., drunk driving).

And just the other day I watched bodycam video of a cop who pulled over a guy with a car full of roosters. A simple speeding ticket turned into an animal cruelty bust, because the cop also kept chickens, and the guy's story of being a chicken farmer didn't make sense.
 
GlennB said:
Certainly through investigation by knowledgeable people who can spot a connection. Google throws up a case where 2 dead girls were found in a certain area of forest. A suspect was found with clothes and car carrying pollen limited, locally anyway, to that area, which blew his alibi.
There are plenty of others, but I'm not sure they match what you're looking for re 'minor bit of trivia'.
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I kinda feel like, in the modern era of forensic police work, there's no such thing as "minor trivia". It's all factual details that need to be looked into.

It's not like that case was solved because the lead detective collects Pollen Facts in his spare time. It was solved because there was a whole scientific protocol for discovering what was there, and then researching whether its presence was consistent with claims.
 
theprestige said:
I kinda feel like, in the modern era of forensic police work, there's no such thing as "minor trivia". It's all factual details that need to be looked into.

It's not like that case was solved because the lead detective collects Pollen Facts in his spare time. It was solved because there was a whole scientific protocol for discovering what was there, and then researching whether its presence was consistent with claims.
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This, but I think OP is asking about some obscure data point that normally would have been overlooked, as in every 12 seconds during Sherlock, or House, or Doc, or any of 10,000 others?
 
as fasr as I know, this has not solved any crimes:Ken Griffey Jr. had a batting average of . 284 with 180 hits, 56 homers, 146 RBIs and 120 runs scored in 161 games in 1998. He won his ninth Gold Glove award and his sixth Silver Slugger award.
 
Thermal said:
This, but I think OP is asking about some obscure data point that normally would have been overlooked, as in every 12 seconds during Sherlock, or House, or Doc, or any of 10,000 others?
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I agree about what the OP is asking. I just think it's likely to be a dead-end question. Even if you go through listicles of cold cases that were solved later, it's 90% DNA evidence, 10% they told on themselves. Never anything like "but that model is a laserjet printer, not an inkjet printer"!

Unless, of course the nature of the print job is an important part of the case. But then it's not Detective Sergeant John "Printer Facts" McGee who solves the case. It's just normal detective work, ruling out printers that couldn't have done the job.
 
theprestige said:
I agree about what the OP is asking. I just think it's likely to be a dead-end question. Even if you go through listicles of cold cases that were solved later, it's 90% DNA evidence, 10% they told on themselves. Never anything like "but that model is a laserjet printer, not an inkjet printer"!

Unless, of course the nature of the print job is an important part of the case. But then it's not Detective Sergeant John "Printer Facts" McGee who solves the case. It's just normal detective work, ruling out printers that couldn't have done the job.
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To me, the answer is probably, but very rarely. How do you define trivia? The famous BTK Killer was found because he sent a floppy disk to a local TV station. Investigators found a deleted document still on it. The metadata embedded in the file contained the words "Christ Lutheran Church" and was marked as last modified by "Dennis".

So, maybe?
 
acbytesla said:
To me, the answer is probably, but very rarely. How do you define trivia? The famous BTK Killer was found because he sent a floppy disk to a local TV station. Investigators found a deleted document still on it. The metadata embedded in the file contained the words "Christ Lutheran Church" and was marked as last modified by "Dennis".

So, maybe?
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Good point about how do we define trivia.

To me, it counts if (a) it's a random factoid that anyone could know, but very few people bother to learn or manage to remember; and (b) the solution happens because someone involved in the investigation happened to know that particular factoid - not because that factoid was revealed in the normal course of the investigation.

In the case of the BTK killer, was it solved because someone said, "fun fact, deleted files can be read and have metadata" and everyone else was like, "wow, how do you remember all this trivia, let's look into it"? Or was it solved because they turned the disk over to skilled technicians who applied their professional knowledge to a question within their expertise?
 
theprestige said:
Good point about how do we define trivia.

To me, it counts if (a) it's a random factoid that anyone could know, but very few people bother to learn or manage to remember; and (b) the solution happens because someone involved in the investigation happened to know that particular factoid - not because that factoid was revealed in the normal course of the investigation.

In the case of the BTK killer, was it solved because someone said, "fun fact, deleted files can be read and have metadata" and everyone else was like, "wow, how do you remember all this trivia, let's look into it"? Or was it solved because they turned the disk over to skilled technicians who applied their professional knowledge to a question within their expertise?
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It was a detective with computer expertise . It was a deleted Microsoft Word file.
Most people aren't aware that when you create a Word file Microsoft automatically timestamps it with the logged on user data as part of the metadata. And merely " selecting delete doesn't delete files from the disk but it deletes header data. You have to wipe or format a disk to delete it permanently. Or fully copy over. But there still might be traces.
Few people would know how to look for it. But I definitely know more than a few. But I use to live next door to Microsoft employees. So not sure if this is common knowledge.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
Circa 1990 the case against Patricia Stallings began to unravel when one or two people with chemical or medical genetic knowledge saw an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Their knowledge was specialized; I am not sure whether the OP would say that this fits the bill.
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Very interesting story. And yes, I wouldn't say that qualifies. It also an example how scientific findings are sometimes abused.
 
alfaniner said:
That was my first thought. I think probably most of detective fiction relies on some trivial matter to solve it. I also read a couple of the Two-Minute Mysteries (not to mention Asimov's Black Widowers and other series) where the solution always came from some bit of trivia.
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I've found that in fictional detective stories (specifically Perry Mason) the person less likely to be the murderer is the actual murderer, or they give themselves away by saying something they shouldn't know.

The least likely person is sometimes accomplished with the use of assumptions.

For example, one Perry Mason case involves one character (the murdered person) calling down from a second story balcony to another character below, asking if his assistant can get a ride into town with him (and a Judge who's driving the car).

On the way, the assistant turns around to look back at the house and actually sees the murder committed.

The twist is that the assistant pretends to be the murdered person calling down to ask for a ride from his accomplice (the real murderer).

The assumption (by almost everyone who reads The Case of the Sulky Girl by Erle Stanley Gardner) is that the murder happens when the assistant looks back at the house, but it happened before they left, and they used the Judge as an impartial witness to their alibi.

Assumptions like this are the mainstay of a lot of detective stories.

Sherlock Holmes is a good example of a detective who knows a lot of trivia, but I don't remember him ever solving a crime using that, although, it does give him a lot of leads.

I just got done reading every Holmes novel, and the only time I remember Holmes using his knowledge of trivia to solve a case was in his first novel, A Study in Scarlet, but I could be wrong.

I usually am.
 
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GlennB said:
Certainly through investigation by knowledgeable people who can spot a connection. Google throws up a case where 2 dead girls were found in a certain area of forest. A suspect was found with clothes and car carrying pollen limited, locally anyway, to that area, which blew his alibi.
There are plenty of others, but I'm not sure they match what you're looking for re 'minor bit of trivia'.
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There are quite a few cases solved by a single hair or paint fleck.
 
catsmate said:
There are quite a few cases solved by a single hair or paint fleck.
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We had a case here that was solved by hair and saliva from a moose (yes, yes, i know; a moose once bit your sister) - a woman was found dead outdoors, and her husband was accused of murdering her by beating her to death, quite brutally. He had no alibi, iirc, but they found moose hair and saliva on her body, and her injuries could be from being kicked by it - that explanation was a much better fit, in fact. So her husband was freed by the hair of a morse.
 
There's one case, I don't recall if it's been solved or not, where a spouse is suspected of striking their partner on the head, killing them. However, there is a competing hypothesis, more consistent with the available evidence, that the victim was struck by an owl. Apparently owls swoop on humans at night sometimes, and can hit very hard.
 
In fiction it happens fairly often, not so much in outright detective stories, but in courtroom dramas that have a crime-solving aspect. The defense lawyer proves the key prosecution witness is lying or even discovers who really committed the crime based on specialized knowledge during testimony.

Two well-known movie examples: My Cousin Vinny, where the key inconsistency in the prosecution's evidence is revealed by specialized automotive knowledge, and Legally Blonde, where it's specialized knowledge about perms.

Okay, those are both comedies, but they were riffing on older tropes. I'm sure Perry Mason did the same kind of thing lots of times.
 
theprestige said:
There's one case, I don't recall if it's been solved or not, where a spouse is suspected of striking their partner on the head, killing them. However, there is a competing hypothesis, more consistent with the available evidence, that the victim was struck by an owl. Apparently owls swoop on humans at night sometimes, and can hit very hard.
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You are probably thinking of the Michael Peterson case in Durham, North Carolina, and it has not been definitively solved to everyone's satisfaction. A knowledge of owl attacks, one or two of which were fatal, might constitute trivia that is useful in understanding one hypothesis. I think we have a thread on that case here.
 
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