Bloody leech solves case

Sydney : An Australian man faces jail for armed robbery after police used blood from a leech to make a DNA match from a 2001 crime scene, a court spokeswoman said yesterday.

Peter Alec Cannon, 54, pleaded guilty to aggravated armed robbery in the Supreme Court in Launceston on the island state of Tasmania.

DNA sample

Crown prosecutor John Ransom told the court that a policeman had picked up a leech from near a safe at the scene of the crime from which forensic scientists extracted blood and a DNA sample, according to a report in local newspaper The Mercury. Seven years later, when Cannon was arrested and charged with a drugs crime, police took a DNA sample from him and it matched the sample from the robbery.