[MUSIC] 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 the Third, 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 VII. 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 15, 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. [BLANK_AUDIO]
