Griffiths, who has a psychology degree, had spent the last six years on a part-time PhD course at Bradford University, comparing 19th-century and modern murder techniques.
The Punch-and-Judy show, a wonderfully noisy display of 18th-century murder techniques, was produced by S. Foster Damon, who died in 1971 at the age of 78, and who in his day was the world's foremost authority on the works of William Blake.
Dubbed "Delitto Perfetto," Italian for "perfect murder," the new technique leaves behind no clue that foreign DNA was introduced to engineer the desired genetic changes.
The technique of murder must be presented in a way that will not inspire imitation.
The Arellano Félix gang set up shop in Tijuana and won its reputation as the most ruthless criminal syndicate in Mexico, taking control of the frontier bordering southern California by the time-honored techniques of murder, terror and torture.
Thanks in large part to improved detection techniques, however, murder by poison has become quite rare: the Georgia woman who was convicted last week, for the second time, of killing a husband by lacing his meals with antifreeze is very much the exception.
Videla in Argentina received our help as he fought the Dirty War, in which tens of thousands more were brutally murdered by Nazi techniques, often by escaped Nazis themselves in the government.
Told from the present day point-of-view of the unpunished and politically dominant perpetrators as they saunter around a beautiful country, reenacting their techniques for mass murder, it is a bracing account that has been seized as a human rights tool in Indonesia and beyond.
Murder can be an effective problem-solving technique; terrorism can be an effective political tool; theft is an immensely effective means of acquiring wealth.
Earlier this year the son of one of the 14 men subjected to the Five Techniques was convicted of the murder of two soldiers.
