Smoking Gun

Episode 3: The Ladder

The kidnap of a baby in 1930's America prompted one of the most thorough and complex police investigations of its time. But it would take more than a year before the evidence contained in a wooden ladder would help to reveal the person responsible.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In every murder investigation, there's one key item that could bring a killer to justice.
But finding it....and knowing what evidence it contains....well that's the challenge. Because the smoking gun could be anything. A bouquet of flowers...a Chinese meal...a mosquito.
In this series we tell the remarkable true stories of how everyday items such as these have been the key to unlocking a criminal case. And we unpack the science - revealing the cutting edge techniques and the disciplines mastered over decades, which allow specialist forensic scientists to find this evidence.
Hosted by actor Romola Garai, and the UK's most prominent forensic scientist Tracy Alexander.