Currently I took the time to relax a little and read some books. These
books are all in Dutch, except for one I recently bought at the German
lockpick championships. It is a German book by Manfred Göth named
‘Werkzeugspur’ ISBN 3-00-004285-7 (rough translation: ‘tool traces’).

Manfred is the only non government independent forensic specialist in
Germany and he is well respected for that. I had the pleasure of
meeting him once and he is really a knowledgeable person. This also
shows in his book. In it are many close up images of locks and pins.
Traces almost not visible with the naked eye all of a sudden become
crystal clear if he uses special electron microscopes to zoom in on
the subjects. The book is filled with images like the one below.

(electron microscope image of a pin with unusual marks on it)

Manfred made it clear that almost any non-destructive opening can be
identified by people with the right forensic knowledge and tools. He
is also capable of identifying if a lock was bumped open or not and
does this on a regular basis for insurance companies and their clients.

It could be coincidence or not, but over the last few weeks three
independent people asked me to look at their legal case against their
insurance company. One car theft where the insurance company claims
the car is so well protected it is impossible to steal. Just googling
for the brand and model I found at least 3 ways to steal that car…sigh.
One case was a burglary where probably a bump key was used and the
insurance company does not want to pay and one bizarre case where an
electronic locking system was bypassed one way or the other.

More info on Mr. Göth’s company and book on http://www.goeth.de/

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 at 00:58 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.