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Photographic documents both in digital and in printed format plays a fundamental role in crime scene analysis. Photos are crucial to reconstruct what happened and also to freeze the fact scenario with all the different present objects and evidences. Consequently, it is immediate to comprehend the paramount importance of the assessment of the authenticity of such images, to avoid that a possible malicious counterfeiting leads to a wrong evaluation of the circumstance. In this paper, a case study in which some printed photos, brought as documental evidences of a familiar murder, had been fraudulently modified to bias the final judgement is presented. In particular, the usage of CADET image forensic tool, to verify printed photos integrity, is introduced and discussed. Language: en

Counterfeiting digital images through a copy-move forgery is one of the most common ways of manipulating the semantic content of a picture, whereby a portion of the image is copy-pasted elsewhere into the same image. It could happen, however, instead of a digital image only its analog version may be available. Scanned or recaptured (by a digital camera) printed documents are widely used in a number of different scenarios, for example a photo published on a newspaper or a magazine. In this paper, the problem of detecting and localizing copy-move forgeries from a printed picture is focused. The copy-move manipulation is detected by verifying the presence of duplicated patches in the scanned image by using a SIFT-based method, tailored for printed image case. Printing and scanning/recapturing scenario is quite challenging because it involves different kinds of distortions. The goal is to experimentally investigate the requirement set under which reliable copy-move forgery detection is possible. We carry out a series of experiments, to pursue all the different issues involved in this application scenario by considering diverse kinds of print and re-acquisition circumstances. Experimental results point out that forgery detection is still successful though with reduced performances, as expected.

Insects are known to be useful in estimating time since death, but this is only possible if samples are collected and preserved correctly according to best practices. This report describes a case where an 18-year old female was found dead and during the first medico-legal investigation which determined it was a homicide, entomological samples were collected but not considered. The case was then closed with no suspect. However, 9 years after the first investigation the courts decided that the case needed to be re-examined. In doing so the new review team decided that although the remaining entomological evidence was poorly preserved some extra information may be gained from its analyses. On inspection of the remaining samples of larvae no normal morphological analyses could be conducted. Molecular analyses were combined with an unorthodox morphological analysis to provide an estimate of the post-mortem interval based on insect evidence, indicating the value of multidisciplinary approaches to both cold and contemporary cases.

Results from a collaborative exercise with proficiency testing conducted by 20 Italian laboratories on the 15 loci included in the Identifiler ® kit were analyzed by allele sharing methods and by standard population genetics tests. The validated database, including about 1500 subjects, was merged with that of a previous exercise conducted on nine loci, and the resulting allele frequencies, subdivided by Italian region, were published on-line.