Colin Campbell Ross – Australia’s first major forensic hair case. Have we learned the lessons from the past?

Abstract

Colin Campbell Ross was hanged in 1922 for the murder of 12 year old Alma Tirtschke and pardoned by the Governor of Victoria in 2007. This paper tells the story of how forensic hair examination played a central and pivotal role in both the conviction and the subsequent pardon. The paper also considers whether or not the mistakes made in the original forensic examination could be made today given the limited approach used in the hair examination protocols followed by many contemporary forensic organisations. The paper argues that there is still a place for a criminalistics approach to the examination of hairs that requires a higher level of microscopic examination than in routine practice today.

Keywords:

• forensic science
• hair examination
• DNA
• Ross case
• miscarriages of justice

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to a number of colleagues for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Thanks also to Kevin Morgan and his wife Linda Tarraran for their encouragement to finally write up this paper, and for permission to reproduce Figure 2 from Kevin’s book on the Ross case. Finally, I wish to pay special thanks to Elizabeth Brooks for the images shown in Figure 4.