Truth will out: Forensic Scientist Angela Gallop would like to take on Madeleine McCann's cold case

Her cases include those of Princess Diana, Stephen Lawrence, Damilola Taylor and Roberto Calvi. By Audrey Ward


The Sunday Times, February 17 2019, 12:01am

Angela Gallop, Britain’s most prominent forensic scientist, was called out to her very first crime scene on a cold February night in 1978. A young prostitute had been brutally murdered. When Gallop arrived at the timberyard in Huddersfield, she was anxious not to miss anything that might help West Yorkshire police catch the killer. She was also worried about falling flat on her face.

“I didn’t have any scene gear in those days. My boss said he had some extra stuff I could wear — size 11 wellington boots and a coat that came down to my calves. The boots were far too big. I was trying to look professional, but I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to contribute in the way that I felt I ought to, and I was worried I might fall over when I saw the dead body.”

The victim was 18-year-old Helen Rytka, and the police suspected she was the eighth victim of the serial killer dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper — later identified as Peter Sutcliffe. Gallop searched for clues: tyre marks, footprints, a used condom, a discarded cigarette butt, anything that might hint at what had happened in the woodyard, or at the identity of the killer. Afterwards she went to the mortuary, where the victim had been taken. She remembers the brightly lit room, the smell of disinfectant and the moment she saw Rytka’s lifeless, battered body.


“She looked incredibly peaceful, even though she had these horrific injuries. I thought what a lovely girl she was and how terrible it was she’d been murdered. I felt determination come over me, which I felt every time I went to a crime scene. ‘I am going to do my best, I must do whatever I can to give some relief to the family and to make sure the person who did this doesn’t do it again.’ ”

That determination never left her. Over a career spanning 45 years, Gallop, now 69, has helped to put some of the country’s most horrific killers behind bars. Now a specialist in cold-case investigations, she has led forensic teams to find crucial evidence in some of Britain’s most challenging murder cases, including those of the teenager Stephen Lawrence, the 10-year-old schoolboy Damilola Taylor and the 23-year-old mother Rachel Nickell, who was sexually assaulted and butchered in front of her young son on Wimbledon Common in 1992.

Gallop has now written a book, When the Dogs Don’t Bark, which offers a chilling glimpse into her life’s work. She details crimes sparked by anger, jealousy or greed. She also recalls some of the more disturbing scenes she has encountered — from the 70-year-old woman left by her killer with her hands tied behind her back, stab wounds to her chest and a kitchen knife embedded in each eye, to the three children murdered in their beds, alongside their mother. “Nobody likes to see that because you think, ‘This is a real tragedy, this is a life cut short,’ ” she says.

There are the bizarre cases, too. One tale she tells is of a man admitted to hospital with a punctured colon and peritonitis. The doctors, perplexed by the presence of a jelly-like substance in his abdomen, questioned him until he eventually admitted to having had sex with a boar. You might wonder why Gallop and her colleagues were called to assist on that one, but as bestiality is a crime, a sample of the jelly, later confirmed to be boar sperm, had to be tested as evidence ahead of a potential court case.“The way people behave and the things they think they can get away with,” Gallop says with a shrug.

One of the most high-profile murder cases she has worked on is that of Stephen Lawrence, the black 18-year-old who was killed in a racist attack in southeast London in 1993. There was a national outcry when the five white men arrested for his murder were released without charge . Having contributed evidence to the subsequent Macpherson inquiry, which found the Met police to be institutionally racist, Gallop was approached again in 2006 about the case and, thanks to advances in DNA and her team’s tenacity, vital evidence was discovered.

A flake of Lawrence’s blood was found as a result of a “debris search” in the evidence bag that contained the jacket of Gary Dobson and then a small amount of blood on the jacket itself. A short hair matching Lawrence’s was found on David Norris’s clothing and fibres from the victim’s clothing were found on the clothing of both Norris and Dobson. Her team’s work played a critical role in the conviction of the pair. “Textile fibres are so important because everybody wears clothes,” Gallop says. “You have an argument with someone and you end up transferring clothing fibres.” However, she worries that budget cuts will affect the success of these kinds of investigations in the future. “We used to have 40-50 textile examiners in the country and now we’ve got four or five,” she says. “We are losing skills.”


What was it that set Gallop, who was awarded a CBE for her services to forensic science in 2015, on such a morbid path? In person, she is incredibly warm, and with her youthful face, glittery nail polish and brightly coloured earrings, it’s hard to imagine her stalking about a crime scene, “all dressed up to the nines in a bunny suit” [the white suit worn to prevent cross-contamination].

Yet, throughout the book, she displays a cool detachment. The grisly sights she’s seen are recounted in a matter-of-fact manner. “You definitely need to be able to detach yourself from it, but I don’t do it positively — I don’t have to work at that,” she says. “I am a passionate person and I’ve got quite a full set of emotions, but I get absolutely overwhelmed with a need to do something about it, for justice.”

Gallop had a “tomboyish upbringing” in Oxford, spent running around with her brothers and half-brothers and playing with her chemistry set. On Sunday mornings she would go with her father to the newsagent, where the gory headlines in the newspapers would catch her eye. “I couldn’t help noticing the extraordinarily interesting stories on the front covers. I couldn’t believe people were doing these unbelievable things to each other”.

The child of divorced parents, she enjoyed school, but was “absolutely terrible” there. She passed just enough O-levels to scrape into the sixth form, where she encountered the botany teacher who kindled her love of science. “She was the one who turned on a switch somewhere. If I hadn’t met her, God knows what I would have done.” She studied botany and biochemistry at university and it was a friend who told her about the job as a senior biologist with the Home Office Forensic Science Service (FSS), which saw her swap the study of plants and animals for crime scenes. “I’d probably been whingeing about studying sea slugs, and how it was all very repetitive. I thought the job sounded jolly interesting.”

When she joined the organisation, she encountered a degree of misogyny from her boss. “He used phrases like ‘A woman’s place is behind the kitchen sink’, and I remember thinking, ‘Blimey’.” He didn’t believe she would cope emotionally, but she loved the work. “I was supported by my colleagues, who were mostly male. There were plenty of other women in the lab, but they tended to be mostly assistants or secretarial staff,” she says.

In the mid-1980s, mindful that defence lawyers didn’t have access to the same levels of expertise as prosecutors, she left the FSS to run her own consultancy firm, Forensic Access, with the aim of offering defence teams her skills. Her first case saw her study a pair of knickers for a man who suspected his wife was cheating, but things quickly picked up from there and she was soon working on murders, sexual and violent assaults, thefts, suspected arson and cold cases. “The great thing about cold cases is you find a way in, and once you’ve found that, you get a glimmer of light out of the corner of your eye,” she says.

One case she worked on for the defence centred on the murder of the toddler James Bulger, who had been out shopping with his mother in Merseyside when he was abducted and then killed. Gallop was asked by lawyers representing Robert Thompson, one of the defendants, to inspect the evidence against their client and advise on its strengths and weaknesses.


One of her most notable successes came in 1992, when she helped to prove that the Italian banker and prominent Catholic Roberto Calvi, who was found hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982, had been murdered rather than taken his own life.

She and her team assessed the two routes he could have taken if he had committed suicide. Their reconstructions saw one of the team traverse the scaffolding while wearing a spare pair of the dead man’s shoes. They deduced there was nothing to link the paint found on the dead man’s shoes with the paint that was transferred from the scaffolding poles to the spare shoes during the reconstruction. The damage to Calvi’s shoes was also inconsistent with what you might expect if he had walked along the foreshore to the scaffolding.

After considering two alternative routes by which his body could have been transported if he had been murdered, her team concluded that Calvi, dubbed “God’s Banker” owing to his close ties with the Vatican, had been transported by boat or lowered from the bridge above the site where he was found.

Four years later, Gallop set up Forensic Alliance, an agency supporting police forces and the courts, and in 2003 she was drafted in to work on the notorious case of Damilola Taylor. The 10-year-old had been stabbed to death in Peckham, south London, in November 2000. In 2002, in a trial of four youths, the case again two collapsed, and the other two were found not guilty. In 2003 the police announced a review of the evidence in the case, using forensic techniques that were unavailable during the earlier inquiry, and enlisted the services of Gallop and her team.


They discovered the vital DNA evidence — Damilola’s blood on the heel of a trainer — which had been missed by the initial investigators. This DNA evidence led to the conviction of the brothers Danny and Ricky Preddie for manslaughter in 2006. “There are all these cases, and if they’re not investigated properly, a miscarriage of justice can lie undisturbed — and that’s what I worry about,” she says.

She also worked on another high-profile murder, that of Rachel Nickell. Her cold-case work not only led to the conviction in 2008 of the serial rapist Robert Napper for the stabbing of Nickell on Wimbledon Common, but also finally exonerated Colin Stagg, who had previously been arrested for the crime, charged and acquitted — although the police still suspected him. “Where you’re able to say, ‘There’s very good evidence connecting this particular person to the crime,’ and they get convicted, you can then properly exonerate people who weren’t involved. Those cases are very satisfying from that point of view,” she says.

Looking back over her career, Gallop says the single most significant development for the industry has been DNA profiling. “When I joined the FSS in 1974, the chemistry departments were massive and it was all about footwear marks, paint, glass, arsenic, fire accelerants. Biology was a Cinderella area. We had blood-pattern analysis and blood grouping, which was incredibly undiscriminating compared with DNA.” DNA profiling, which came about in the mid-1980s, transformed the strength of the link between individuals and, for example, traces of saliva or flakes of skin left on clothing. “Now you go into a laboratory and it’s all about DNA, about blood, about bodily fluids,” she says.


Gallop is the chief executive of Axiom International, which she founded when she turned 60. The firm advises law enforcement agencies around the world on forensics, policing, security and justice. “I thought I don’t want to stop quite yet, soon maybe, but not quite yet.” One reason she decided to write the book was to criticise the lack of funding and recognition for forensic scientists. “We’ve reached a pinnacle of understanding. There are too few people who can do the work. It’s easy enough to say, ‘Now we’ve got CCTV, we don’t need anything else,’ but forensic science is invaluable. CCTV isn’t always around and for older cases it certainly wasn’t. You usually need something physical to connect a murderer and sometimes you find the thing you want.”

Although she is less involved in frontline forensic work these days, there are plenty of cold cases she’d like to take on, including that of Madeleine McCann, the three-year-old British girl who disappeared from an apartment in the Algarve in 2007. “It would be extraordinarily difficult because it’s in a different country and you don’t know what’s happened to the exhibits,” she says — but adds a caveat: “I’ve been involved in cases where it looks hopeless, so I’m not too daunted by anything these days. Every contact leaves a trace, it’s just finding it.”

Decades on from her first crime scene at the timberyard in Huddersfield, she is still completely absorbed by the challenges of the work. “I never stop thinking about it. I’ll often think about cases all evening. Even now, it’s my favourite part of the job.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/magazine/the-sunday-times-magazine/forensic-scientist-angela-gallop-talks-about-her-work-on-britains-most-high-profile-cases-hw0slbsw8


And also in the Mirror: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/madeleine-mccann-forensic-scientist-whos-14015616

'Gallop has now written a book, When the Dogs Don’t Bark, '




This case should have a head start then. 

Although she is less involved in frontline forensic work these days, there are plenty of cold cases she’d like to take on, including that of Madeleine McCann, the three-year-old British girl who disappeared from an apartment in the Algarve in 2007. “It would be extraordinarily difficult because it’s in a different country and you don’t know what’s happened to the exhibits,” she says — but adds a caveat: “I’ve been involved in cases where it looks hopeless, so I’m not too daunted by anything these days. Every contact leaves a trace, it’s just finding it.”

No chance! Musing over a cold case, or in this instance an active case, is one thing - reality is another! All done and dusted to use the vernacular.

Wouldn't it be nice.

@Verdi

'musing' wouldn't be my choice of word.

Piggybacking, self promotion, goods to peddle in the marketplace seem to strike forth in a publishing campaign.

Ask Jim Gamble how his agency based venture is doing.

Ask Colin Sutton how his business is doing.

How did Mrs Angela Gallop do on the Death of Princess Diana Spencer, didn't Lord Stevens adjudicate it was an "Accident" where the Driver was under the influence of Alcohol, that caused the Three Deaths and injuries to another survivor? 

Did Mrs Gallop ever test the " Dentist Tooth Mould" on the Yorkshire Ripper case,who had a close relationship with a Cigar reptile who lived close by in Leeds to the Murders?
You know he had access to BroadMoor Hospital Courtesy of Edwina,when Brady and Sutcliffe were incarcerated,special parties,"Hows about that then, Boys & Girls!

"...and finds them totally innocent!"   [Badoom tish]

I'm not holding my breath. But, over the years. I've read on here one or two posters opinions that, forensics is the only hope in proving what happened. IMO this is it. An forensic expert has stepped forward. She's here to either solve it be a hero and made a Dame. Or she's going to be used to finally shut it all down, retire and b*gger off somewhere.

MRNOODLES wrote:I'm not holding my breath. But, over the years. I've read on here one or two posters opinions that, forensics is the only hope in proving what happened. IMO this is it. An forensic expert has stepped forward. She's here to either solve it be a hero and made a Dame. Or she's going to be used to finally shut it all down, retire and b*gger off somewhere.

....or she is simply selling a book and promoting a new business venture.

In the Mirror:

Woman who helped solve Stephen Lawrence death vows to take Madeleine McCann case

Britain's most prominent forensic scientist credited with solving some of this country's most challenging crimes wants to take on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Angela Gallop CBE  found the vital evidence that solved the deaths of Stephen Lawrence,  Damilola Taylor and ‘God’s banker’ Roberto Calvi and now she wants to help find Maddy who vanished aged three from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007 while her parents were dining in a nearby tapas restaurant with pals.

"It would be extraordinarily difficult because it's in a different country and you don't know what's happened to the exhibits," she told the Sunday Times magazine.

"I've been involved in cases where it looks hopeless, so I'm not too daunted by anything these days. Every contact leaves a trace, it's just finding it."

In an interview with the Daily Express' Jane Warren, Professor Gallop also spoke about her incredible career.

In television dramas tend to give the impression that forensic scientists spend a lot of time crouching in ditches imagining things.
Forensic biologist Professor Gallop says the scrupulous examination of crime scenes is just a tiny part of their work.

The expert who proved to Operation Paget that Princess Diana was not pregnant when she died in Paris in 1997 after testing a sample of her stomach contents says: “In that case, we knew what we had to do and did it, but cold cases are generally much less straightforward.


The best bits have already been taken if you are doing DNA profiling for example, and you have to be really careful to not make the assumption that investigating officers fully understood the crime scene.”

More here: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/madeleine-mccann-forensic-scientist-whos-14015616

It's in the Daily Star now https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/760481/madeleine-mccann-disappearance-investigation-stephen-lawrence

It's gone from "would like to take on"...and "Vows to take on"...to "Will be investigated" since yesterday.

THE disappearance of Madeleine McCann will be investigated by the forensic scientist credited with cracking the Stephen Lawrence and Damilola Taylor cases.



Woman who helped solve Stephen Lawrence death vows to take Madeleine McCann case
Mirror.co.uk
Angela Gallop CBE found the vital evidence that solved the deaths of Stephen Lawrence, Damilola Taylor and 'God's banker' Roberto Calvi and now ...
Madeleine McCann disappearance taken on by forensic scientist who cracked Stephen Lawrence ... - The Sun
Madeleine McCann hope as case taken on by scientist who cracked Stephen Lawrence murder - Daily Star
British forensic scientist who 'helped solve murders of Stephen Lawrence and Damilola Taylor ... - Daily Mail
Full Coverage

I agree with Aquila that it's well timed, good publicity for her book, but if she is really the forensic scientist that pulled the Stephen Lawrence evidence out when the previous scientists had failed, then she is probably our best hope of actually getting to the bottom of the available forensic evidence, or what's left of it.

Quite where the 'will be investigated' has come from remains to be seen, (probably just shit journos unfortunately) as she would obviously need to be formally asked by the PJ to re-examine the forensics on their behalf, and would no doubt then meet resistance from whoever has taken over the FSS records and their evidence lockers, as to be allowed to reveal anything more definite would open a huge can of worms.

In the Stephen Lawrence case, DCI Driscoll was 'allowed' to go so far to obtain a (publicly demanded) conviction, but still got pulled when he wanted to continue and take it further and we are still, after a ridiculous length of time, waiting for the IOPC report on the corruption involved within the original investigation.

What would she be looking at in the McCann case? There wasn't a body and are there any forensic samples left to examine? If not I think she'll need a miracle.

Casey5 wrote:What would she be looking at in the McCann case? There wasn't a body and are there any forensic samples left to examine? If not I think she'll need a miracle.

Hi Casey5,yes your correct,the Birmingham based FSS contaminated the DNA/LCI obtained from Portugal Crime scene(S), wherebye the FSS stated that Portugal PJ had Twenty One days to reply to their dated letter, that after this period the samples would be "destroyed on Health & Safety grounds"?

A first in UK Policing where the Police allow DNA/LCI to be removed,destroyed as potential evidence on a still missing child now Twelve years later, examination of DNA by Angela Gallop, CBE,wheres the samples,err we destroyed them!

All the various famous cases that she 'solved' the victims were all dead, I wonder what she thinks the current status of Madeleine is?

Fake news - there's a surprise.

Jill Havern wrote:Fake news - there's a surprise.

She actually joked about that in the call, said it was good press but doing no favours for dispelling fake news...

Well done for taking the bull by the horns and speaking to her about it and thank you for telling us the article is fake.

Shame though.

How willing people with a professional reputation to preserve are prepared to bare their soul to cold callers.



This case attracts more fake news than ever there was - not only generated by the media itself but by any old opportunist that gets caught in the wake.