Smell Signatures Help Police

Smell 'signatures' help French police get their man
By Kim Wilsher in Paris
(Filed: 27/07/2003)


Scientists working for French police have perfected a technique for "bottling" smells at the scene of a crime to identify suspects by the odour they have left behind.

After conducting a two-year-long programme of tests on a method of detection known as "odourology", they have concluded that smell can be as effective as using fingerprints or DNA samples to link a criminal with a crime.

The French national police force's Scientific and Technical Unit, based in Lyon, established that trained sniffer dogs could be presented with a crime's "smell signature", then successfully match it to the correct suspect in the olfactory equivalent of an identity parade.

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/07/27/wsark27.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/07/27/ixworld.html/news/2003/07/27/wsark27.xml

the Stasi (the old East German Secret Police) used to do this all the time. I recall reading an article after the Wall fell about the millions of jars containing "odors" that were found.