Kaspar Hauser

In May 1828, a bedraggled youth of about 16 and dressed in peasant clothes mysteriously appeared on the streets of Nuremberg in Germany.

Incapable of speech or understanding anything that was said to him, he had with him letters stating that he had been kept in isolated confinement from infancy, surviving only on bread and water.

The theory was that Kaspar was kept hidden away because of some great family secret - that he was probably being robbed of his fortune associated with being of noble birth. It was widely suggested that he was the legitimate heir to the Dukedom of Baden by his first wife and that he had been hidden away from birth to allow another son to succeed to the title.

In December 1833, Kaspar was stabbed to death by an unknown assassin and the circumstances of his death remain a mystery to this day.

The Forensic Science Service (FSS) was invited to examine the bloodstains on the clothes in which Kaspar was assassinated, in an attempt to link him to living descendants of the Grand Duke of Baden, Karl Friedrich and his wife Stéphanie de Beauharnais (Napoleon’s stepdaughter).

Mitochondrial DNA sequencing was employed by the FSS. This is one of several types of DNA testing, which is particularly useful in determining family relationships.

But, the comparison between DNA samples taken from the Baden family with DNA tests carried out on the bloodstained clothing established, beyond reasonable doubt, that Kaspar was not in fact the rightful heir to the Baden family fortune.