Blood solves murder case

Blood pattern analysis rarely solves a case by itself, but it occasionally plays a crucial role, as in the death of a 22-year-old Bible student in Schaumburg.

The murder of Dawn Dudovic in 1988 was the bloodiest crime scene prosecutor Michael Mermel has ever seen.

The victim was found lying in the kitchen of her apartment with blood on the walls, cabinets and floor.

To the untrained eye, the blood looked indistinguishable. Most of it was spattered in lines radiating out from the point of the attack, cast off from either the attacker's knife or the victim's flailing hands.

But evidence technician James Herman noticed that some of the blood in the kitchen sink formed round drops, indicating they had not been flung, but dropped straight from a wound.

While the blood scattered about matched the victim's type AB, the blood in the sink was Type A, and likely from the perpetrator after the attack.

William Peeples was arrested in a nearby apartment, bleeding from a cut to his hand. Though he proclaimed his innocence, DNA testing later showed that the blood in sink matched Peeples, and blood on a knife in the apartment where Peeples was found matched the victim's.

Peeples was convicted and sentenced to death, but is now serving life in prison after former Gov. George Ryan granted blanket clemency to all death row inmates.

-- Robert McCoppin