Everything started with a fire in an apartment in Stockholm, a fire that rather soon could be extinguished, but two dead human beings were found in the apartment. As in many cases of fire, the two dead, a middle aged male and female, had died of the flue gas in the burning apartment and their bodies were only slightly damaged and the identity of the two were no problem. Some friends or relatives could make it through a usual confrontation identification.

The subsequent police investigation showed the following:

A couple of months before this fire, a habitual drunkard with his fiancée took possession of the cellar of this apartment house and lived there.

After a couple of weeks, the fiancée left the drunkard and moved into the one of the flats, where a middle-aged single male lived since long. It was these two who died in the fire and of course the police now suspected that the drunkard had something to do with the fire and they could find some indications that the fire was committed arson. During the autopsies it could also be found that the two victims had became stabbed to death before the fire started. But the drunkard denied all involvement, and there was no proof against him.

That's why, the police one day called me and wanted me to assist. They had only some circumstantial evidences, one of the strongest a bloody shoe.

The shoe was an old well used one fitting exactly on the drunkards foot, but it had been found in the trash can of the house and the suspected drunkard denied all connection to it. As I said blood was found in it, and after a serology exam it proved to contain blood of the same blood group as both the victims and the drunkard.

The question from the police to me was:

Can it in some way be radiological proved that this shoe with a great probability must belong to a special foot (the drunkard's).

I had to admit, that this was a very difficult question, that might be impossible to answer, but promised them to give it a try. My idea was to take radiographs showing the inner shape of the shoe and later on to take radiographs of the foot, including the soft tissue (using same magnification) and then to fit together these two radiographs (superimpose) on to each other.

We started with the shoes. I took radiographs from several directions see figures. I used lead shot attached to the inner surface of the shoes. But when we should follow up the suspected murderer denied cooperating. According to Swedish laws, you can refuse to cooperate if there are no strong proofs against you.

So our intentions could never be completed and in the subsequent legal proceedings the accused could never be condemned. But, at least, as described above, the next time he tried to repeat his crime with three new victims, he was caught in the act and could be condemned.