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AS a teenager, Angela Shaw’s favourite television programme was Silent Witness.

So it’s hardly surprising that she wanted to become a doctor or a scene of crimes officer.

But Angela’s CSI love affair turned into a fascination with firearms and now she is one of the UK’s top forensic gun experts.

She is called in by police forces across Europe to help in high-profile murder cases and reviews, such as the killing of TV star Jill Dando, the shooting of Glasgow gangster Kevin Carroll and terrorist murders in Northern Ireland.

Angela, from Kilwinning, Ayrshire, also helped to write the government rulebook on how forensic science should work.

The gunshot residue expert has just been called in to help look at the case against businessman Shrien Dewani, accused of plotting the murder of his wife on their honeymoon in South Africa.

Angela, who studied at Strathclyde University, said: “I have always been interested in forensic and medical science. Originally, I wanted to be a doctor but then I decided to study forensics as this interested me more.

“I liked science at school – it was my favourite subject. I also loved watching forensics dramas on TV such as Silent Witness, which is set in a lab.

(Image: Getty Images)

“It’s realistic although they are both pathologists and investigators in the drama. They are multi-disciplined.

“After finishing university, I moved to Kent to work for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals as an analytical chemist.

“The Forensic Science Service then advertised for trainee forensic scientists in 2000. I applied and was successful.

“I was invited to the laboratory in Lambeth to visit the gunshot residue team to see if I would like to train to report with them.”

When she moved to London, Angela met Robin Keeley, one of the pioneers in scientifically linking suspected gunmen to firearms.

In the 1970s, Robin and a colleague developed the science of gunshot residue (GSR) which involves finding and identifying the chemical particles left on skin, hair and clothing of those involved with firearms.

Angela said: “They explained their jobs and the amazing scanning electron microscopes they used to find the microscopic particles on suspects’ clothing and hand samples. I found it fascinating and said I’d like to join the team.”

She is now a director at Forensic Firearms Consultancy in London, where she carries out work for solicitors, advocates, law enforcement agencies and private bodies.

ANNI DEWANI

(Image: Nicholas Razzell)

BBC Panorama hired Angela and her firm to look at the forensic evidence against death case groom Shrien Dewani.

The businessman, from Bristol, is awaiting extradition to South Africa after being accused of hiring hitmen to murder his wife Anni.

The 28-year-old was killed by a single gunshot to the neck on her honeymoon in Cape Town three years ago.

As well as discrepancies in the police evidence, the programme claimed mistakes were made by South African police in their interpretation of the forensic case.

Angela said: “We were commissioned by Panorama to review the firearms and GSR evidence they had obtained.

“We reviewed witness statements, photos, video evidence, expert statements, oral testimony and produced a report. Panorama interviewed us for the programme.”

Anni was killed after the taxi the couple were travelling in was stopped by gunmen in Gugulethu township, near Cape Town, on November 13, 2010.

Zola Tongo, a taxi driver hired by the pair at Cape Town airport, was convicted for his part in Anni’s murder. He implicated Dewani, 33, claiming he had paid him to hire two men to carry out a fake hold-up and murder.

Mziwamadoda Qwabe, 27, was jailed for 25 years after pleading guilty to the killing and Xolile Mngeni, 23, was

sentenced to life in jail for the murder last year.

Dewani’s defence team insist that Anni was the victim of a carjacking and may have been accidentally shot by one of the men as he tried to rape her.

JILL DANDO

ANGELA was asked to review all the gunshot residue evidence in the trial where Barry George was convicted of murdering BBC TV host Jill Dando.

Jill, 37, was shot dead on her doorstep in London in 1999.

Angela said: “I was asked, together with a colleague, in 2006 by the Criminal Case Review Commission to review all of the oral and written GSR evidence presented in the original trial.

“They wanted to know how the case would be reported today.”

George spent eight years in jail after being wrongly convicted of the murder in 2001.

He was acquitted at a retrial in 2008 after doubt was cast on the reliability of the gunshot residue evidence.

The prosecution claimed a single speck of firearms residue found in George’s coat pocket lining linked him to the shooting. But his defence team said the particle – less than a half of a thousandth of an inch in size – was

unreliable as evidence.

Angela added: “We concluded that, given the coat from Barry George’s home was not recovered until a year after the shooting, the likelihood that the particle would remain in a pocket of the coat a year after the shooting would be very small.

“But the likelihood that the particle originated from another source was also very small – in other words, the GSR evidence was inconclusive.

“You can find a singleparticle of gunshot residue on public transport. There was simply not enough evidence.”

RHYS JONES

(Image: PA/Merseyside Police)

IT was the murder that shocked the nation – 11-year-old Rhys Jones was shot dead on his way back from football practice in 2007.

As the principal lead on all scientific matters for the Forensic Science Service, Angela was asked to review the case a year later.

She said: “Three shots were fired on August 22, 2007, in the car park of a public house in Croxteth, Liverpool.

“Sean Mercer was one of the suspects. One shot fatally struck Rhys in the neck (he was shot from 48-50m away) and a car in the car park had bullet holes through two of the passenger windows.

“The gun, a Smith & Wesson revolver, was recovered from the loft of an address in Liverpool. Similar GSR was found around the bullet hole in the football shirt from Rhys as that in the gun.

“The GSR around the bullet hole proved this was the entry hole. A different type of GSR was found on fragments of glass from the broken windows of the car.

“I carried out shooting experiments to establish why this might have been.

“This concluded that the gun found in the loft at the address could still have been the gun used to shoot Rhys.”

In 2008, Mercer, 18, was jailed for at least 22 years for murdering Rhys.

KEVIN 'GERBIL' CARROLL

(Image: Alan Simpson)

POLICE launched a massive investigation when gangster Kevin Carroll was shot dead in his car outside an Asda in Robroyston, Glasgow, in January 2010.

It was one of Scotland’s most shocking cases – and Angela was brought in.

Ross Monaghan, 30, denied shooting Carroll, 29, and was cleared at the High Court in Glasgow last year.

He was acquitted after it emerged there was no evidence which placed him at the store at the time of the shooting.

A single particle of firearms discharge residue had been found on a jacket seized in a raid on Monaghan’s Penilee home in July 2010.

But that evidence was discredited when one of the firearms officers involved admitted he and his colleagues had been at a gun training exercise earlier and were still wearing the same uniforms – which would have been

covered in firearms discharge residue.

Angela said: “I concluded that the jacket upon which the GSR particle was found from Ross Monaghan’s address could have been deposited more recently than the shooting or it could have originated from the armed police who searched his address. I said there was, therefore, a significant chance the particle was not from the shooting and to conclude otherwise would be unsafe.”

The only evidence produced against Monaghan during the trial was the finding of a minute quantity – a 10th of a billionth of a gram – of his DNA on the handle of one of the guns used to kill Carroll.

But the DNA of a lab technician, who had never touched the gun and worked three floors above where it was stored, was also found in the sample analysed by scientists, along with that of three unidentified men.