This is a version of the article I wrote for Crime Scenes Searching for Santa published 07 December 2023.
Where is Santa Claus?
Henley Santa Credit Rob Bowker
Santa Claus has lived for centuries at the Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi, Finland. Located inside the Arctic Circle, it’s a wonderful place that holds special magical secrets.
But we know that come Christmastime there are many lookalike Santa Clauses, all helping the real Santa in shops and garden centres across the country. However, we’re always told that it is the real Santa who is visiting homes and leaving presents. How can we be sure? Because if it isn’t, then have all these lookalike Santas committed a crime by breaking and entering?
I enlisted the help of fingerprint expert and crime scene examiner, Diane Ivory, to investigate and discover if any crimes were committed and, if so, by whom?
Looking Skywards
We started well. Knowing the night that someone or some persons would be entering homes, we watched the NORAD Santa Tracker to follow him. We noticed that he even practices the day before! We set up GPS tracking devices, but he was too quick and we couldn’t be everywhere at the same time to catch him.
Police teams liaised with their counterparts around the world via Interpol to establish if indeed the real Santa goes everywhere.
Credit Rick Notley – RIMANO
On attending the first house, Diane recommended looking at the roof for clues. With Elf and Safety to consider, she didn’t fancy going up there herself and sent up a drone to take photos of the boot prints which could be checked against worldwide police databases.
Diane advised that for a proper comparison, a scale (ruler in essence) would be used for marking sizes, but images of boots from different roofs would give some idea if they were the same. But it was a race against time to capture the bootmarks before reindeer hoofs and melting snow had erased the important evidence.
Down the Chimney
The next step was to look inside a few homes.
We thought we might struggle to get down some chimneys but obviously households leave a magic key for Santa. Keys can be fiddly with big gloves, so perhaps he had taken one off to push the door after using a key? Diane thought that there may be some visible fingermarks which may be clear enough to see. She shone a torch at an oblique angle to make them more visible, put a ruler next to them and took photographs. Where there was none visible, she shone a light to see if it would show up any sweaty marks and used a special powder to develop the mark and lift it off with tape.
However, the only fingerprints belonged to the home owners. Santa appeared to have kept his gloves on at all of the homes we examined.
It was a cold and snowy night and we hoped that maybe Santa breathed or even sneezed on the key. So, Diane took a swab (using a posh cotton bud!) for testing. It was possible that fake Santas could be found by comparing the DNA with that of criminals registered on the National Database.
Material Evidence
Credit Rick Notley – RIMANO
Once in the home we looked all around to see if Santa had left any coat fibres. We looked up chimneys (and there were a lot in one, he may have got a little stuck!), around fireplaces, on floors and children’s bedrooms. Diane carefully collected the fibres and bagged them up securely for testing. This could help in finding out where the clothes were made and if they matched those found in other homes across the country and the world.
Although, of course, the elves may well have made the clothes, so if the same fibres were found in different homes that may indicate that it was the same real Santa or lead us to various fake Santas.
We looked for soot from Santa’s boots. This was problematic because Santa would have left soot in the same home but some possibly may have stayed on him and be dropped in another home. Diane located some soot that Santa had brought in from one chimney and bagged it up so it could be matched with some taken from other homes.
Santa’s Snacks
Then we turned to what households had left for Santa. Inhabitants had provided drinks and food. So Diane took swabs from the glasses and mugs for DNA testing. Checking for fingerprints in case Santa had removed his gloves she also took any left biscuits, mince pies and crumbs and carefully bagged them up.. The saliva could be tested and the bite marks may also help, although we would need to know who his dentist was, as there are no centralised dental records! But the DNA and bite marks could be cross referenced across the world to determine where Santa had been.
Credit Rick Notley – RIMANO
Diane also found a couple of beard strands on a few plates and judiciously, using tweezers, retrieved and bagged them up for DNA testing at the laboratory.
Then we turned our attention to where presents had been left in bedrooms. Diane took fingerprints from paper that had wrapped presents and found family members’ prints. This could have meant Santa didn’t leave them. But, of course, Santa had gloves on. What about elves that had helped? Well, they are magical and don’t have fingerprints….
We saw some elves on shelves and they were taken in for questioning. The specialist Cracker Police Unit’s PC Holly Bush asked where Santa was. They told her that they often heard the word “Amazon” and said to try searching in the Amazon.
Homing In
The forensic evidence had shown so far that it was highly likely that it really is one Santa entering homes. But we still needed to find him to eliminate him from police enquiries. He wasn’t at his residence in Rovaniemi and so police officers descended upon the Amazon, without success. Clearly the elves had sent them on a wild reindeer chase.
Santa’s elves are known for their mischievousness, but this time they had pranked the wrong people. They were arrested and charged with wasting police time.
Belf from Haughton Park Reindeer.Belf from Haughton Park Reindeer.
Children cheered as they looked forward to no more elves watching them. But wasting police time is known as a “summary only offence”, tried in the Magistrates Court, where the maximum sentence is 6 months.
The elves were found guilty and received the maximum custodial sentence. Santa Claus was proven to be real and cleared of any wrongdoing.
A spokesperson for the Cracker Police Unit said “The elves talked a lot of baubles and we are delighted they received the maximum prison term and that they’ll be released in time to keep an eye on children next Christmas.”
The elves were naughty in prison and so no allowance was made for any good behaviour and so the elves served the full six months.
Henley Santa Credit Rob Bowker
Santa said “I sincerely apologise for my elves’ behaviour and I would like to reassure you that I never, ever frequent the Amazon.”
Find out more about Diane Ivory
See Forensic Minds for Diane’s fully immersive CSI-themed activities for corporate team building events and educational workshops. These give participants a unique insight into the fascinating world of fingerprints and forensics as they take on the role of CSI specialists themselves.
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