Blood Sucking Leeches Lead Police To Criminal

October 20, 2009 10:04 a.m. EST

Tasmania, Australia (AHN) - A criminal who nearly got away with his crime was apprehended because DNA testing of blood in a leech found at the crime scene proved he had been there.

Police used DNA extracted from a blood-gorged leech found at the scene of a crime involving the beating and robbery of an elderly woman eight years ago. The leech was found gorged with blood on the floor next to the chair where the 71-year-old victim had been tied.

Because neither the victim nor any of the officers had been bitten, police surmised the blood in the leech must belong to one of the two men who attacked the woman and robbed her of $504. So they tested the blood in the leech for DNA, added the results to their database and then waited for a match.

That match finally came last year when Peter Alec Cannon, 54, was picked up for a drug offense.

Cannon has plead guilty to the 2001 robbery and is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday.

Authorities are calling the conviction on the evidence found in the leech that linked Cannon's DNA to the crime a one in a hundred million chance.

Police say the leech must have attached itself to Cannon as he made his way through the brush on his way to the woman's home, where he eventually brushed it off onto the floor next to the chair where he had tied the victim. There it was spotted by a sharp-eyed investigator, and the rest is weird history.