When Marie Latelle was strangled to death in 1912 in the French city of Lyon, suspicion fell on her boyfriend Emile Gourbin.
But he had an alibi – friends said he had been playing cards at the time of the murder.
However, when Edmond Locard, widely regarded as the father of forensic science, analysed scrapings from underneath Gourbin’s fingernails, he found bismuth, magnesium stearate, zinc oxide and iron oxide – substances used in cosmetics.
Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the early 20th century’s most famous expert pathologist
The local chemist who supplied Latelle’s custom-made make-up confirmed that the components matched,
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