Long-lost leech bites back

A leech caught red-handed (if leaches have hands) at the site of a robbery has bitten its former host once again.  According to today’s more unusual news items, 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 on Monday.

 

Peter Alec Cannon, 54, pleaded guilty to aggravated armed robbery in the Supreme Court in Launceston on the island state of Tasmania on Monday.  I guess he now knows you have to be more careful of the company you keep when going on a robbery.  I mean – if you can’t trust your leeches – who can you trust?

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.  The paper is not too specific about why there was a leech hanging around at the site of the robbery… presumably police originally feared the robbery had been perpetrated by the creature from the black lagoon.

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.  Which just goes to show that taking drugs is even more dangerous than you might think it is.

The court heard that Cannon and another man had robbed and assaulted a 71-year-old woman at her bushland home, stealing $500 from her.

The court spokeswoman said Cannon was remanded in custody for sentencing on Friday this week. Whether he has been reunited with his leech has not been revealed.  Maybe the police did a deal with the leech and it is now sinking its teeth into someone else under a new identity.  I’d like to think it is – and that there is no bad bllod between it and his former friend!