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The Killer Was Left-Handed: Difference between revisions
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Even [[Sherlock Holmes]] resorted to this at times.
This trope is discredited in real life, though it was once a common tool in detection. Several scholars believe that the search for [[Jack the Ripper]] was stymied by the ultimately unfounded belief that [[The Killer Was Left
"Non-secretor" status may be the next generation of this trope. About 10% of people do not have antigens in bodily fluids other than blood, so sweat, saliva, semen, etc., cannot be used for blood type comparison purposes. This particular variation is currently rare on TV, though it is more common in novels.
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** Inverted in an episode of the ''New Adventures of [[Sherlock Holmes]]'' radio show. In the episode, Holmes and Watson meet a radiologist who [[Chekhov's Gun|casually describes]] his head assistant as ''adroit'' and his other two assistants as ''gauche'', then chuckles that this is literally true as well as metaphorically. When the radiologist is (naturally) murdered by one of his assistants, Holmes deduces, in his brilliance, that it must have been delivered with someone using their right hand. Thus, only the "adroit" (right-handed) assistant could've killed the radiologist.
*** Messed with in ''[[Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' while Data and Geordi are doing one of their Holmes and Watson routines. An error in the holodeck messes with Data's deduction - a character is right handed when he's meant to be left.
* [[Agatha Christie (Creator)|Agatha Christie]] twice ("The Market Basing Mystery" and "Murder In The Mews") used a variant in which {{spoiler|the ''victim'' is left handed, and committed suicide with a shot to the temple. A friend then [[Suicide, Not Murder|framed the person they blamed for the suicide for murder]] by moving the gun to the right hand, thereby making the shot look impossible.}}
** And in ''Murder on the Orient Express'', Poirot notices that {{spoiler|the victim's stab wounds indicate that he was stabbed by both a left-handed and a right-handed person.}}
** Played with in ''Towards Zero''. The doctor notes that from the position of the body and the angle of the blow the strike would be very tricky to do right handed - [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshading]] the trope at the time. {{spoiler|Subverted when it turns out the blow ''was'' struck with the right hand - but it was a backhand blow from a star tennis player.}}
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** In the ''CSI'' episode, the killer's semen DNA did not match the swab in his mouth, but it did point to a sibling. All his brothers and cousins were tested and came back negative.
*** sounds like they did their homework for a change. a 'chimera' has 2 sets of dna in different cells of his body, with both sets related in the same way brothers/sisters are related. it's basically the opposite of identical twins: instead of 1 zygote splitting in 2, 2 fuse into 1. as long as both are of the same gender this tends not to cause any problems for the child, otherwise the child might be inter-sex. the condition might be far more common then previously thought (most people never have their dna analyzed, so they'd be completely unaware they have the condition). there is f.i. the real-life case of a woman who gave birth to several children that (according to dna) weren't hers. the government moved in to investigate and officials were present when she gave birth to yet another child that wasn't hers. nobody understood what had happened (the mother herself least of all) until they stumbled upon a doctor who knew about chimeras.
* ''[[CSI]]'' also both subverted and plays this one straight. In one episode, Doc Robbins says that the whole [[The Killer Was Left
* In an episode of ''[[Angel]]'', while attempting to prove she didn't kill someone, Harmony uses the possibly-true fact that vampires tend to always bite on one or the other sides of their victim's neck.
** Makes sense. When kissing, people have a preferred side they tilt their head to, vampires are usually human-based, so it might carry over. However, the first person to tilt his/her head sort of forces the other party to counter-tilt, so in case of a deliberate exposing of the neck...
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[[Category:Crime and Punishment Tropes]]
[[Category:The Killer Was Left Handed]]
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