From molars to murders (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

From molars to murders

8:55am Tuesday 14th March 2006 in

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A FORMER Loughton family dentist has become one of Britain's foremost names at matching weapons to injuries in murder cases.

A new book by his wife takes a look behind the scenes.

Persephone Lewin has worked with her husband David over the last 20 years and Bite to Byte: The Story of Injury Analysis explores the development of forensic dentistry through several of the fascinating cases on which his evidence has been pivotal from MP Alan Clark's dog biting a BBC cameraman and the case of a murdered young woman unsolved for 13 years, to Victoria Climbie, the little girl killed by her aunt and aunt's boyfriend, and an incident where Mr Lewin was able to identify a slater's hammer as a weapon from a choise of 850 possible instruments.

Mrs Lewin, who, with her husband, lived in Traps Hill for 25 years before moving to the east coast in the Nineties, said: "Though it's rather a grim subject their are lighter moments to every case. Fact can be stranger than fiction."

Their children still live in West Essex.

The book describes the couple's work together in the mortuary and on analysis and their roles in the courtroom, where Mr Lewin gives expert evidence from the witness stand while his wife uses computer technology to project images of the injuries onto a large screen, superimposing the outline of the weapon which caused it for the the jury to see.

Each case has a scientific and human interest, as Mrs Lewin explores the face of justice and the importance of her husband's innovations.

She is planning a novel based on expertise gleaned through their work later in the year.