Preliminary findings

It is great pleasure that we announce to you today some of the preliminary findings in the case of Jacob Gehris's hand. We have had it examined by a number of seasoned professionals, and we believe it is an appropriate time to reveal what they found:

1. It is indeed the hand of Jacob Gehris. The fingerprints are as near a complete match as we have ever seen, and DNA collected before his death was used to match the DNA of the hand. We also had the mitochondrial DNA of his close relative's descendants tested. With all three tests the probability of the hand not belonging to Jacob Gehris is approximately one in 3.2 trillion.
2. Trace evidence under his fingernails prove that he was in Conflate, Arizona before his death. We found a type of dirt that, in true CSI form, is only found in a few places in the world. We also found traces of chemicals that, in 1875, were only used in the nail factories in several American cities. The only place that both of these could be found at the time was in Conflate, Arizona.
3. The hand was indeed severed post-mortem, which appears to substantiate the rumors about his death and dismemberment.
4. There were no signs of a struggle. To be clear, however, the lack of evidence does not prove that there was no struggle, just that we have no way to prove that he struggled with his nephew prior to his death.
5. Our tox screen revealed higher-than-normal levels of formaldehyde, suggesting he may have been drugged before his death. Either that, or he was embalmed prior to his dismemberment.
6. We looked for latent fingerprints on the hand, but couldn't find any usable prints.
7. We had a chirologist study the hand, and she found several interesting things:

• His life line was long, suggesting that his death was premature
• His heart line suggested that while he was discouraged by the failure of brads to make any money that he was not depressed
• His head line showed that he had been working on a significant invention before his death.

Most of the conclusions we have reached so far do not shed much light on Jacob's death, but we are intrigued by what the palm reader found. We have some documents (as yet unreleased) that show that the Company believed that Mr. Gehris was on his way to inventing something that would disrupt the Company's plans for world domination. We had dismissed this as unlikely given the other evidence, but now that our palm reader suggested the same thing we'll take it more seriously and have begun a full review of all of our documents from that era and the documents acquired from the collapse of the Company and the Quisling incident. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to solving this mystery!