• Source: Patricia Wiltshire

Professor Patricia Wiltshire (born 1942 in Monmouthshire, South Wales) is a forensic ecologist, botanist and palynologist. She has been consulted by police forces and industry in almost 300 investigations in several countries and has been instrumental in solving several high-profile crimes, including the killings of Sarah Payne and Millie Dowler, the cold case of Christopher Laverack, the Soham murders, and the Ipswich serial murders.




Early life and education


Wiltshire was born in 1942 in the coal-mining valleys of Monmouthshire, South Wales. When she suffered severe burns in a home accident at the age of seven, followed by repeated chest infections that permanently damaged her lungs, her education was put on hold. She spent her convalescence reading encyclopaedias. After working as a medical laboratory technician, she moved on to a career in the business world and then studied botany at King's College London. She lectured there for several years in microbial and general ecology before taking up a post at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. She was later responsible for setting up a Masters' course in forensic archaeological science which ran successfully and continued after she left UCL.




High-profile cases


As a forensic scientist in the Soham murder inquiry, Wiltshire's analysis of soil and plant evidence from clothing, footwear, and a vehicle, yielded trace evidence that linked Ian Huntley to the place where the victims (Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells) were found. Observation and experimentation of plant growth at the deposition site enabled her to estimate the time that the girls had been placed in the ditch very accurately. Her evidence was important in the conviction of Ian Huntley.
In the 2007 Christopher Laverack murder case, three decades after the nine-year-old's murder, Wiltshire linked the unusual pollen and other plant matter on the victim's clothing, along with the ornamental brick used to keep him submerged after death, with that found on the property of his uncle, Melvyn Read, thus providing substantial evidence to implicate Read. The investigation, spanning three decades, was Humberside Police's longest-running unsolved murder case, and was solved in 2012.




Other activities


Wiltshire is an Independent Councillor on Mole Valley District Council, along with her husband, David Hawksworth.




Bibliography


Traces: The memoir of a forensic scientist and criminal investigator, Blink Publishing, 2019




External links


The Life Scientific: Patricia Wiltshire on how pollen can solve crimes, BBC Radio 4, 7 January 2020




References

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