Particle Data Platform

Fan Favorite - "The Knot"

4/17/202639 min

Today's story is a fan favorite that was previously published as Episode 388.

On a September afternoon in 2000, an FBI forensics analyst stood in her lab in Quantico, Virginia, staring into a microscope in confusion. She was looking at two strands of hair that were evidence in a murder investigation. And something wasn’t right. She checked the label on the evidence bag the sample came from, then looked back into the microscope. She definitely wasn’t imagining it. The label was wrong, which meant that the detective who had packaged the hairs and sent them over for analysis – had not understood what he was looking at. And this wasn’t a small mistake. Because if the analyst was right about what the hairs really were – then the whole investigation she was working on was about to change.

 

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Transcript preview

First 90 seconds
  1. John Allen· Host0:00

    Today's episode is a fan favorite. The audio in the story has been remastered for today's episode. On a September afternoon in 2000, an FBI forensics analyst stood in her lab in Quantico, Virginia, staring into a microscope in confusion. She was looking at two strands of hair that were evidence in a murder investigation, and something just wasn't right. She checked the label on the evidence bag the sample came from and then looked back into the microscope, and she knew she was not imagining this. The label had to be wrong, which meant that the detective who had packaged the hairs and sent them over here for analysis had not understood what he was even looking at. And this was not a small mistake, because if the analyst was right about what these hairs really were, then this entire murder investigation was about to change. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, make the follow button jealous by posting pictures of yourself with other cooler buttons, like the subscribe button. Okay, let's get into today's story.

  2. Unknown speaker1:10

    [upbeat music]

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