Selma Eikelenboom-Schieveld is a educated and trained welfare worker with ten years of experience in psychotherapeutic treatment. She started her working life in a hospital before she moved to Schiphol Airport to work as an in-house company welfare worker.
Parallel with this experience she helped patients with a variety of mental problems, ranging from incest to divorce. Because of the fact that most patients undergo a treatment which goes on for years and thus paid Selma a regular visit, she was able to form a great insight on how the human psyche works under different circumstances.
In 1992 Selma graduated from medical school. As a doctor she worked eight years on different departments in different hospitals. All these experiences and studies make it possible for Selma to understand every medical specialism and to study and understand medical literature.
In 2000 Selma continued her career with a new specialism: medical forensics. She started working as coroner of the city pof Amsterdam in 1999. In 2002 at the Netherlands Forensic Institute she introduced medical forensics at the biology department. In 2003 she started Independent Forensic Services.
Richard Eikelenboom is a forensic scientist specializing in DNA trace recovery and bloodstain pattern analysis.
Richard studied Biochemistry at Rotterdam University. He did an understudy program in Canada with the Ontario Police in Bloodstain Pattern Analysis. Richard worked for over a decade at the Netherlands forensic Institute and specialized himself in touch DNA, bloodstain pattern analysis . As a forensic scientist Richard examined hundreds of crime scenes and worked closely with a wide variety of law enforcement agencies.
In 2005, he joined his wife Selma as a partner at Independent Forensic Services, a private laboratory in the Netherlands that specializes in recovery of trace evidence and Touch DNA testing. Their work in the Masters case led to the first Touch DNA exoneration in the United States.
In the Masters case, Selma and Richard were successful in the recovery of male DNA profiles of the victim, Peggy Hettrick’s clothing. The profiles matched an individual who was on the short list of suspects in the original investigation. In January of 2008, prosecutors agreed to vacate the conviction of Masters after the results of the DNA testing performed by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation confirmed the results of IFS.
