MOVE over, Sherlock Holmes. Software engineers have programmed a computer to investigate suspicious deaths. It can help detectives distinguish between deaths caused by murder, suicide, accident or natural causes.
The software has been designed to help detectives solve complex cases by prompting them to explore lines of enquiry other than those that appear obvious. “It takes an overview of all the available evidence and then speculates on what might have happened,” says one of the developers, Jeroen Keppens at the Joseph Bell Centre for Forensic Statistics and Legal Reasoning in Edinburgh, UK.
The idea is to help investigators undertake the…
