An Evaluation of Coca-Cola™ on the Detection of Fresh and Aged Blood Stains Using Luminol™ and Presumptive Blood Tests

In 1985, Derek and Nancy Haysom were brutally murder in their home in Boonesboro, Virginia. Jens Soering and Elizabeth Haysom, two University of Virginia students, were arrested and accused of murdering Elizabeth’s parents. Soering and Haysom allegedly rented a vehicle the weekend of the murders for a trip to Washington, D.C. to establish an alibi. Haysom claimed that Soering took the rental car and headed for her parent’s house in central Virginia. When Soering returned to Washington, D.C. Haysom stated that Soering was covered in blood and wrapped in a bloody sheet. During the trials, Haysom testified that Soering told her to clean-up the bloodied rental car using Coca-Cola™. When the rental car was returned to the rental agency and later examined using Luminol™, there were no blood stains or remnants found in the vehicle. Thus, this research is the first to focus on the effect of Coca-Cola™ on the removal of fresh and aged blood stains from carpet by varying the times of exposure to Coca-Cola™. Removal and/or degradation of the blood stains was then determined by exposure to Luminol™, a product designed to fluorescence in the presences of blood, and by chemical testing (i.e., phenolphthalein and leucomalachite green testing). In all instances, fresh and aged blood stains were detected in the carpets when analyzed using Luminolä. In a few instances, the presumptive chemical testing did not always detect blood when the samples were exposed to blood and Coca-Colaä for varying time interval. However, the results of this study revealed that samples treated with Coco-Cola™, which contains no antioxidants, produced moderate to strong positive chemiluminescence. This study could potentially aid forensic scientists analyzing evidentiary samples thought to have been subjected or exposed to a household cleaning product.