Reliability of Hair and Fiber Data in a Crime Scene

Hair discovered at a crime scene can be rather useful in identifying the nationality and race of a perpetrator. While a single hair under a microscope can’t single out one individual, the DNA it contains can. It is in this way that hairs become more helpful in an investigation than fibers. A fiber can tell an investigator what fabric a suspect’s clothes were or where a victim may have been kept at some point. This is good for eliminating suspects but doesn’t do much in the way of identifying a suspect or linking the suspect to the victim. Both hair and fiber are reliable sources for different reasons and can be a good source of evidence or collected time- wasters.