Crime Time

Scientists: Napoleon wasn't a murder victim

Score another one for modern forensic science in an answering a crime legend that dates back to 1821.

Reuters is reporting that Italian scientists have concluded Napoleon was not poisoned with arsenic by his British jailers in an act of murder to prevent his returning to power. His 1821 postmortem had determined that he died of stomach cancer in exile on the island of Saint Helena.

But there were lingering rumors of a demise at the hands of his jailers.

So how did they figure it out, you might ask?

The scientists used a nuclear reactor to irradiate samples of hair from throughout the life of the diminutive French ruler and determined that he had been exposed to arsenic at a very young age.

You can read this fascinating crime/science/history story here.

-- Lance Murray

Mexican city will dig up 4,000 unidentified bodies

It's a city known for it drug-related killings and the well-chronicled murders of women whose bodies were found buried in the desert that surrounds the border community.

Now, officials in Juarez, Mexico, are planning to exhume up to 4,000 bodies from graves in that city to establish a database of unidentified people. The bodies include those of narco-violence victims and of hundreds of women who were victims of unsolved murders.

Read the El Paso Times story here.

-- Lance Murray