“Tell me what happened, don’t leave anything out.”The crime boss wanted Bradley Streiling to tell him everything about the death of two-year-old Noah Cownden, Streiling’s stepson.Streiling began, haltingly, to recount how Noah had slipped from the bathtub at his family’s Victoria, B.C., home five years earlier.Then, as a hidden microphone recorded, Streiling’s confession:Filled with rage, he gave the boy a push. “I held him basically by the upper neck, lower jaw…and just hit him down a couple times.” The boy’s “eyes glossed over, and he…kind of made a wheezing sound and never woke up again.”The crime boss was actually an undercover Mountie who had just reached the culmination of a nearly five-month-long sting. Police believed that Streiling, 29, had bashed Noah’s head against the floor, causing the little boy’s brain to bleed and swell so much that oxygen couldn’t reach it.They thought they had him.But the case against Streiling unraveled in an acquittal. The judge ruled Streiling’s confession had not been proven and she was persuaded by evidence that purported to show someone other than Streiling had dug their teeth into the boy’s shoulder, leaving a bite mark.Practitioners of bite-mark analysis, known as forensic odontologists, claim that they can both identify bite marks on human skin, and link such marks to an individual’s teeth — often in cases of murder, child abuse or sexual assault. This kind of bite-mark analysis is subjective, relying on experts’ opinions.Numerous studies and reports have found the underlying assumptions of bite-mark analysis — that human teeth are unique and that skin can accurately record their impressions — haven’t been proven scientifically.Research shows that skin’s elastic properties make it a bad medium for accurately recording teeth impressions; no two bite marks made on cadavers ...
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