WE have seen two sides to forensic science this week. The first is the fictionalised version which keeps millions of TV viewers gripped every week.

CSI - short for Crime Scene Investigation - became the biggest show in the States by contrasting grisly murders with the clinical scientific methods deployed to trap the killers.

Unfortunately the attention to detail which characterises the show was taken too far by British TV channel Five. As we reported on Saturday, to promote the new series it sent a realistic mock-up of a police dossier to a York man, naming him as the next victim of a serial killer.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that Five's mailshot was cynically designed to grab headlines by upsetting viewers.

Our report tonight reveals the reality behind the CSI fantasy. Twenty-one years ago, Andrew Rome burst into the flat of a York woman, threatened to kill her and brutally raped her. The soldier then dressed, left and returned to his regiment in Berlin.

His life carried on as if nothing had happened. His victim's life stopped.

She was in her early twenties. Since that terrifying night she has been afraid to open her front door or go out among strangers.

It took astonishing refinements in DNA testing, allied to York police's determination to keep the case alive, to finally find and jail Rome.

With an ending more powerful than anything in fiction, real-life forensic science has proved that there is no sell-by date on justice.

Updated: 11:14 Tuesday, February 01, 2005