Unlikeliest ways cold cases were cracked – cooking show, playing cards, Disney’s Frozen – World News

As any Line of Duty buff will know, sometimes the smallest details can crack a case wide open.

Last week, a mystery which baffled detectives for nearly 60 years was finally solved – after a tip was sent on Facebook.

The body of a young boy found by a fisherman in mountains east of Oregon, US, in 1963 had remained unidentified for decades.

While his body was exhumed in 2008, cops were only able to connect DNA evidence after a message out of the blue led them to explore a family tree database, finally identifying the child as Stevie Crawford.

Over the years, everyone from infamous murderers to cocaine smugglers have been brought to justice in ingenious – and unlikely – fashion.

Stinging nettles, card games, cooking shows and Disney films – these are the strange circumstances that put cold cases to bed.

Stinging nettles helped solve Soham murders

The Soham murders are one of the most notorious cases in recent British history – but police may have struggled to connect the dots if it wasn’t for stinging nettles found near the crime scene.

When the bodies of 10-year-old schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were discovered in a ditch in Suffolk on August 17, 2002, cops turned to forensic botanist Patricia Wiltshire.

Wiltshire was the only forensic ecologist and botanist in the UK to specialise in the location of human remains and the linking of offenders to the scene of crime, according to the Guardian.

Inspecting the area near the girls’ bodies, she noticed new sideshoots had grown on the nettles nearby.

The shoots, which only grow if a plant has been trampled on, allowed her to identify the path killer Ian Huntley had taken down to the ditch near Lakenheath.

It also gave police a time frame, as she was able to surmise the nettles had been walked on 13 and a half days previously – around the time the girls went missing.

Later in the investigation, Wiltshire was able establish that pollen from Huntley’s shoes matched the type found near the ditch.

“It was the fibre evidence and my evidence from the soil analysis on his car and other belongings, I suppose, that helped to put him away,” Wiltshire told The Telegraph.

Playing cards led to gunman breakthrough

Florida law enforcement hit upon an ingenious way to dig up new cold case leads in 2007 – by introducing a series of playing cards in prison.

Handed out to bored inmates, the cards were plastered with the faces of homicide victims whose killers had yet to be brought to justice.

The idea was reportedly inspired by the most-wanted deck of Saddam Hussein and other fugitives issued to US troops shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

One such card – the three of spades – featured a photo of Thomas Wayne Grammer, who was killed in 2004 when a mysterious gunman shot him dead in his home before fleeing the scene.

The picture was recognised by an inmate at Polk County Jail who tipped off police, leading to the indictment of two men over the murder.

“What better way to get them talking than to have cards with the cases on them?” said Special Agent Tommy Ray of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

“These are people who have been in there for years. That’s the best source of information. There are a couple of high-profile cases I think we’ll get solved.”

Disney’s Frozen defrosted mystery of Russian hikers

The Dyatlov Pass incident, which saw nine Russian hikers die on a trek through the Ural Mountains in 1959, is so steeped in mystery it even inspired a horror film.

Blamed on everything from a Yeti attack to vengeful indigenous tribes, it has long been speculated that the group perished in an avalanche – but there was a stack of scientific evidence against the theory.

Experts argued that the hikers’ tent was set up on an incline too shallow to allow an avalanche, while the snowfall the night before was said to be too mild to cause a collapse.

Earlier this year, however, a breakthrough came courtesy of a very unlikely inspiration – the Disney movie Frozen.

According to National Geographic, Johan Gaume, the head of a Swiss federal technical institute named the Snow Avalanche Simulation Laboratory, was struck by how well the movement of snow was depicted in Frozen.

Taking a trip to Hollywood, he asked the film’s animators for the code and modified it for his avalanche simulation models, to demonstrate the impact they would have on the human body.

“The researchers’ computer models demonstrated that a 16-foot-long block of hefty snow could, in this unique situation, handily break the ribs and skulls of people sleeping on a rigid bed,” the publication reported.

This vindicated the official cause of death announced by the Urals Federal District last July – and may have just solved one of the world’s most literal cold cases.

Mafia coke smuggler caught out by… his cooking show

Marc Feren Claude Biart is a Mafia cocaine smuggler who had successfully evaded police for the best part of a decade.

Prosecutors had ordered his arrest for trafficking in cocaine in the Netherlands on behalf of the Cacciola clan of the ’Ndrangheta, the famous Italian crime syndicate.

But since 2014, the 53-year-old had been hiding out in the small town of Boca Chica, Dominican Republic, with his wife.

In March, however, it appeared Biart had gotten a little too comfortable.

Detectives were able to trace his whereabouts after incredibly noticing his tattoos on a YouTube video.

It emerged Biart and his wife had set up a channel showing off their Italian cooking skills – while the mobster hid his face, his inkings gave him away.

The alleged member of the crime gang was arrested in the Dominican Republic and has now been extradited back to Italy.

‘Swirl face’ paedo unmasked by scientists

Christopher Neil was the subject of an international manhunt in 2012 after accused by Interpol of sexually assaulting 12 boys.

The shameless paedo was also accused of posting 200 pictures of the alleged crimes on the internet – but believed he had investigators fooled after using a program to ‘swirl’ his face out of recognition.

Handing the pictures of him over to a specialist crimes unit in Germany, however, detectives were able to effectively ‘unswirl’ the picture and launch a public appeal.

It was the first time Interpol had made a direct worldwide appeal for public information in a case.

More than 350 people responded to the appeal, five of whom identified him as Neil, who fled to Thailand before being arrest.

Dubbed ‘Swirl Face’, he was jailed in Thailand in August 2008 following a conviction for sexual offences against two boys.

In December 2015 he pleaded guilty to five new charges involving the sexual abuse of young boys in Cambodia and possession of child pornography in Canada.

However, his release two years later prompted public outrage after he was allowed to settle in Vancouver with court-ordered restrictions.