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The final lecture in this course has no
particular subject.
It's a collection of case studies.
Some of these illustrate some of the
points that we've made in earlier
lectures,
and a few them introduce some new topics
of interest.
The first case we're going to talk about
is not really a criminal case, it's a
historical case, and it's the case of King
Richard III who lived from 1452 to 1485,
and for the last two years of his life,
was King of England.
Now, Richard is historically significant
because he is
the last King of England to die in
battle, and he was killed in the Battle of
Bosworth on the 22nd of August 1485.
And that was a battle between his forces
and those
of his rival, Henry Tudor, who became King
Henry the Seventh.
If you want a date to divide the medieval
period from the modern period,
then the date of the Battle of Bosworth is
as good as any other.
Well, Richard was killed in the battle,
and after
the battle, he was buried in a nearby
church.
He was buried in Greyfriars Monastery
Church in the nearby city of Leicester.
Now, Henry Tudor became King
and the Tudors formed the next ruling
house of the Kingdom of England.
William Shakespeare worked most of his
life for the Tudors.
William Shakespeare wrote a play about
Richard III,
and much of the popular image of Richard III
comes from this play by
Shakespeare.
But we have to remember that part of
Shakespeare's career was during the time
of the Tudors.
So he knew which side his bread was
buttered, and so his portrait of Richard III
is probably extraordinarily biased, not
only in terms
of Richard's character, but also in his
physical attributes.
So one of the things Shakespeare tells us
is that Richard III was a hunchback.
Now what happened to Richard's grave?
Well, it was lost.
They managed to lose a King of England.
The reason it was lost is that in the
dissolution of
the monasteries under Henry VIII, the
church was demolished,
it was demolished in the 1530s.
A few years ago, archaeologists at the
University of Leicester were able to
identify the site of Greyfriars Church,
and they did this by taking
old maps of the city of Leicester,
comparing them to the current
maps, and they were able to show that the
site of this church
was now a council car park.
So in a collaboration with the city, they
excavated the car park,
and when they dug under the car park, they
found the remains of the church.
And amongst the remains of the church,
they found a skeleton.
The question is, is the skeleton the
skeleton of King Richard III?
They built up their case very carefully.
Let's first of all look at some
circumstantial evidence.
The skeleton was buried in the part of the
church which is known as the choir.
This is not the most respectable part of
the
church, but it's still a good part of the
church.
And remember that Richard III, while he
was considered by the Tudors to be
an usurper, he'd still been King of
England and he would still have powerful
supporters.
So, he was buried somewhere respectable,
but he'd been buried carelessly. The grave
wasn't actually quite big
enough for him, and there was no shroud or
no coffin,
so it looks like a quick burial, but not
an insulting burial.
Now we can look at some scientific
evidence.
We can do carbon-14 dating of the
skeleton, and
that placed the age of the skeleton in the
right era.
It dated it to somewhere between 1456 and
1530.
So the date of the Battle of Bosworth is
about in the middle of that.
Well, now we can do some
work looking at the skeleton itself.
Now when you have a skeleton of an adult
male, it's
not easy to get an accurate estimate of
the age, but
it was estimated from inspection of the
skeleton that this person
had died somewhere between his late 20s
and his late 30s,
and you can calculate for yourself that
Richard would have been in his 30s.
Now, remember that Shakespeare portrayed
Richard III
as a hunchback, and when they examined the
skeleton found
under the car-park, they noticed a
distinct curvature
of the spine; a condition that we will
call scoliosis.
Whether that made him a hunchback is a
subjective judgement, but it would
definitely have made his shoulders
unsymmetrical, and
maybe Shakespeare was taking that physical
attribute
and exaggerating it for his own political
purposes.
So, so far, everything matches Richard
III and what we know about him.
But Richard died in battle, so let's look
at the injuries to the skeleton,
and it had a number of injuries consistent
with being hacked by a sword.
There were ten wounds, including eight to
the skull,
and those wounds to the skull would have
been the cause of death.
So clearly, this is consistent with
someone who died in a medieval battle.
Another piece of forensic technology we
can use is
facial reconstruction, and this was done
on the skull.
Unfortunately, this has no forensic use
whatsoever, because back in the 15th
century,
they didn't have photography so we have no
idea what Richard really looked like.
We can only suggest that he may have
looked like this.
This leaves us with DNA evidence.
Now this is a body from more than 500
years ago.
So, we're not going to use nuclear DNA,
we're going
to use mitochondrial DNA that is more
robust and survives longer.
And it was possible for the investigators
to extract mitochondrial DNA from the
remains.
But DNA from the skeleton, on its own, is
useless.
To use DNA to identify someone, you have
to compare it to an authentic sample.
So, nowadays, you would extract DNA from
the body, you would go to the suspect's
house, and get the DNA maybe from their
toothbrush or something like that, do a
comparison.
Obviously not possible in the case of
Richard III.
But recall,
mitochondrial DNA is not unique to the
individual.
It is passed down the maternal line.
So what they want to do was to find a
descendant of this family so they could
compare mitochondrial DNA.
Not easy after so many centuries.
First of all, you need an un-interrupted
female line.
So, you can't use any descendent of Richard
III himself because he was a man.
So they have to go back to Richard
III's mother, Cecily Neville.
Cecily had a lot of children,
one of whom was Anne of York.
Anne of York married and she had a
daughter.
The daughter had a daughter, the daughter
had a
daughter, and so on down almost to the
present day.
So there's an un-interrupted female line
until the present generation, where the
descendant
is a man called Michael Ibsen.
Remarkably, that line of descent was also
documented so it could be
proved that Michael Ibsen was a
descendant of Richard III's mother.
The investigators were also able to find a
second descendant down a female line,
but the second descendant asked to remain
anonymous so we don't know who it is.
The two descendants
gave DNA samples, and sure enough, their
mitochondrial DNA
matched the mitochondrial DNA extracted
from the skeleton.
So, with this evidence, the evidence from
the skeleton, the evidence
from the grave and the evidence of the
DNA,
we can be very confident
that this is indeed the skeleton of the
lost King Richard III.
This case of Richard III is a very nice
application
of the techniques of forensic science to a
historical, archaeological
issue.
And if you look through the media reports
from
the time, you'll find it's a very nice
example
of how to manage the media to get the
maximum amount of publicity for your city
as well.
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