In criminal convictions today, it is common and necessary for evidence to be collected in order to hopefully find and incarcerate the people who committed the crimes. Serology is an important factor that allows this to happen. Serology is the study and identification of bodily fluids such as blood salvia and semen in order to carry out criminal investigations and legal proceedings. Blood, saliva and semen can be easily found in cases of sexual assault and homicide. In the case of Dennis Maher, serology is something that should have been taken into account in leading to a conviction. Instead, none of the evidence collected was tested to exclude him, and he was imprisoned based on eyewitness identifications. Crimes committed in 1983 resulted in the indictment and conviction of Dennis Maher, a United States soldier, for rape, assault with intent to rape, battery, and aggravated rape in 1984, based on the testimony of an eyewitness (NEIP, 2011). Three rapes were reported in 1983 in the state of Massachusetts. The first rape was reported on August 17, 1983, against a woman named Marilyn Goss. She was raped by an intruder while spending the night at the Casa Manor Motel in Ayer, Massachusetts (Stearns, 2006). On November 16, 1983, a woman was attacked while walking home in the town of Lowell, Massachusetts. A man she did not know approached her, attempted to converse with her, then forced her into a nearby yard, where the man sexually assaulted her (Know the Cases: Dennis Maher). On November 17, 1983, approximately twenty-four hours after the other attack in Lowell, Massachusetts, another woman was violently pushed to the ground by a man who pulled out a knife. The woman was lucky to escape the man after a struggle... middle of paper ...... sperm cap pink and core red, and a picroindigocarmine dye, which turns the sperm middle blue and the green sperm tail. The stained samples would then be placed under a microscope and hopefully sperm would be present so that DNA testing could be carried out. As previously reported, in the Maher case, sperm were found in the underwear of the rape victim in Lowell, and sperm were also found in the rape kit on the vaginal swab slide that was developed at the time of the crime. In both cases, sperm were found, collected, and DNA testing was performed on the sample to determine whether Dennis Maher committed the crime. /2011/dennis-maher/http://pacer.mad.uscourts.gov/dc/cgi-bin/recentops.pl?filename=stearns/pdf/maher56f.pdf