The Cumberland Police, in the US state of Rhode Island, has deployed part of its staff for an operation that seeks to solve a mystery involving one of the most famous personalities in the world: Santa Claus.
The investigation began after Scarlett Doumato, 10, decided to collect evidence of Good Old Man’s passing last Christmas.
On the morning of December 25th, after getting her new toys, she ran to the kitchen, grabbed plastic wrappers, and carefully stored a biscuit and two miniature carrots. The suspicion is that Santa Claus left the cookie in half and that one of his reindeer nibbled the carrots.
Without evidence, however, Scarlett turned to the police. Gathering the elements, she put everything in an envelope and wrote a letter to the local authorities.
“Dear Cumberland Police Department, I took a sample of the cookie and carrots I left for Santa and the reindeer on Christmas Eve and was wondering if you could take a DNA sample and see if Santa is real,” he wrote. the girl.
It was the most obvious procedure, she explained to the American newspaper The Washington Post. “I thought this would yield the best answers because it has his DNA.”
Matthew Benson, Cumberland Police Chief, received the package when he returned from vacation in early January. He told his team about the case, which followed standard protocol. The first step was to photograph Scarlett’s evidence and document each item on a form. Afterwards, the material was sent to the forensic laboratory of the Rhode Island Department of Health.
Last week, Benson reported to the applicant. He told Scarlet about starting the investigation and signaled a breakthrough: a suspect had been seen in the neighborhood where the girl lives with her family in Cumberland. According to witness testimony, he was a “big man with a white beard and a red jacket” who used aliases such as Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick and Kris Kringle.
Even the suspect’s legal advisers have been notified for him to testify in the coming weeks, Benson wrote. “He’s out of state somewhere up north and needs some time to coordinate his travel plans to Cumberland. Apparently he leads a very large team of workers who make toys and maintains a small farm with nine animals in need. of constant care and attention.”
Last Monday (23), the forensic laboratory finally released the results of the analysis. The DNA tests on the biscuit and baby carrots were not compatible with the national sample bank. There was only partial correspondence with a case in New York involving a supposed “Miracle on 34th Street”.
“Although our laboratory has applied the most modern and technologically advanced methods to solve the case, we have not been able to definitively confirm or refute the presence of Santa Claus in his house”, wrote the experts. “We all agree that there might be something magical at play.”
The mystery therefore continues. “Scarlett was never one to take anyone’s word for it,” the girl’s mother, Alysson Doumato, told the Washington Post. “She’s going to go through her process and come to her own conclusions about pretty much everything.”
This, in fact, wasn’t even the first time she’d investigated Santa Claus. A few years ago, the girl positioned her father’s cell phone to capture images of what would be the most emblematic figure of Christmas entering her home. The footage captured one scene, but it wasn’t enough for Scarlett. “It looked ‘photoshopped’ so I was suspicious.”
She also said that, before the police investigation, she even suspected that the parents would be responsible for eating the cookies and carrots. But the DNA test results gave her a new working hypothesis: that Santa Claus is real and, yes, he came to Cumberland to leave her gifts in the dead of night.
Without conclusive data, however, the plan now is to redouble care for next Christmas. The idea is to collect DNA samples from the parents before the holidays, in order to compare them with another sample that she intends to collect in the glass of milk left for Santa Claus. A camera positioned at a different angle should be enough to finally catch the suspect in the act.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
