{"id":4506,"date":"2020-10-20T03:20:15","date_gmt":"2020-10-20T11:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/?p=4506"},"modified":"2020-10-20T03:20:15","modified_gmt":"2020-10-20T11:20:15","slug":"newsday-tuesday-cats-in-the-courtroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/?p=4506","title":{"rendered":"Newsday Tuesday \u2013 Cats in the Courtroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"In my Klepto Cat Mystery books Rags (the cat) often solves a crime or unravels a mystery. He\u2019s been an eye-witness, he\u2019s been part of a lineup, he has pawed a culprit, and he has discovered important evidence. But the essence of my stories aren\u2019t necessarily all fun and games and entertainment. Animals\/pets are being used more and more often to prove or disprove someone\u2019s guilt. With the inclusion of fur, claws, and even poop in the evidence room, some trials are catapulted in unexpected directions. Here are a few examples:<\/p>\n

As far back as 1994, cat fur from a cat named Snowball convicted a killer.<\/p>\n

More recently they\u2019ve used fur, blood, saliva and other bodily fluids from pets to help solve \"\"crimes. In the UK, Tinker-cat\u2019s fur helped convict his owner of murdering his neighbor. Now that\u2019s mutiny if I\u2019ve ever heard it.<\/p>\n

In Indiana, an animal \u201cpoop patty\u201d convicted a killer. In Dallas in 2002, a cockatoo who lost his life in a home invasion robbery provided the DNA evidence in his beak to identify and convict the culprits.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting to me that my fiction is more true to life than I thought as strides in DNA testing labs for pets have made it a legitimate practice now to consider one\u2019s pets at any crime scene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my Klepto Cat Mystery books Rags (the cat) often solves a crime or unravels a mystery. He\u2019s been an eye-witness, he\u2019s been part of a lineup, he has pawed a culprit, and he has discovered important evidence. But the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4508,"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506\/revisions\/4508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}