Scene of the Crime (15 page)

Fluorescence examination:
Some of the natural constituents and some types of environmental contamination found in latent prints will fluoresce under ultraviolet illumination. Treatments are available that cause fingerprints to fluoresce more strongly. Also, some types of fingerprints can be enhanced by using ultraviolet illumination that is absorbed by the fingerprint that excites the fluorescence of the background. (Ninhydrin-developed fingerprints are an example of this.)

Iodine:
This technique is very simple to use. Iodine vapor is absorbed by latent fingerprint deposits (along with some reaction to unsaturated fats contained in the fingerprint) forming a brown image. The developed print should then be fixed to avoid any possible fading.

Ninhydrin:
Ninhydrin is a general-purpose fingerprint reagent for paper and other porous surfaces. It reacts with amino acids in fingerprints. An intermediate colored image varying from orange to purple (depending on donor and conditions) is produced. With full development, the compound Ruhemann's Purple is produced. Full development can take several days, but the reaction can be accelerated by heating and humidification.

Silver nitrate:
Silver nitrate can be used on raw wood surfaces. (Ninhydrin is preferred for use on paper.) Silver nitrate reacts with the chlorides contained in latent fingerprints producing silver chloride, which when exposed to light turns a dark gray.

Small particle reagent:
This process is quick and simple. Small particle reagent is a suspension of fine molybdenum disulfide particles. Small particle reagent adheres to the fatty constituents of latent fingerprints to form a gray deposit. The developed print can be lifted to simplify photography.

Cyanoacrylate (Super Glue):
Cyanoacrylate vapor develops fingerprints on a wide range of surfaces. The cyanoacrylate vapor produces a white deposit as a result of polymerization with the latent fingerprint. Water acts as a catalyst for this polymerization.
Smooth, nonporous:
This includes such surfaces as glass, paint, varnish and hard plastic moldings. (Metals are not included.) Powders can be used effectively on most of these surfaces. Fluorescence examination, small particle reagent and cyanoacrylate can also be used on these surfaces.

Rough, nonporous:
Rough or grained plastic moldings are examples of this surface type. These surfaces are generally unsuitable for effective use of powders; therefore, more success can generally be expected with small particle reagent and cyanoacrylate fuming.

Paper and cardboard:
Paper and cardboard (including plaster board) that has not been waxed or plastic coated should be treated with ninhydrin. Powders may be used on smooth surfaces prior to treatment with ninhydrin, but powders are generally insensitive to older fingerprints.

Plastic packaging material:
This includes such surfaces as polyethylene, polypropylene, cellulose acetate and laminated paper. Small particle reagent, cyanoacrylate and powders may be used, small particle reagent being very effective in many cases.

Soft vinyl (PVC), rubber and leather:
Simulated leather and cling film are examples of these surface types. Small particle reagent, cyanoacrylate and powders may be used on these surfaces.

Metal (untreated):
This applies to bare metal surfaces, not surfaces that have been painted or lacquered. Small particle reagent, applicable powder types and cyanoacrylate can be used on this type of surface.

Raw wood (untreated):
Bare wooden surfaces that have not been painted or treated should be treated with ninhydrin. Smooth wood may be treated with powders, while silver nitrate may be used on light woods.

Wax and waxed surfaces:
Articles made of wax (such as candles) and paper, cardboard and wood that have been coated with wax can be treated by nonmetallic powders and cyanoacrylate.

That was written in 1934. But even I can remember a time when it was essential to get a set of fingerprints from Georgia to Washington, D.C., in a matter of hours. We—the police officers and the FBI—ran all over town until the FBI managed to locate somebody who had a fax machine. I had to make separate 8 x 10 photo enlargements of each of the ten fingerprints, which took about two hours. It took about ten minutes per enlargement to fax them—almost another two hours. That was less than twenty years ago. Now, almost every police department has a fax machine, and the card itself could be faxed in less than twenty seconds.

But what are fingerprints? Where did the idea come from?

A Brief History of Fingerprinting

The first mention of fingerprints in Western fiction came, about the same time, on both sides of the Atlantic: in stories by Mark Twain
(Life on the Mississippi)
and Arthur Conan Doyle ("The Adventure of the Norwood Builder"). The first recorded use of fingerprints that has been found so far—and we don't know whether it was for identification or for magic—came in a Babylonian text of about four thousand years ago, when several army deserters were recaptured and compelled to leave the marks of their fingers and thumbs. Although it would be more logical to assume that this was for some sort of magical purpose, the presence in archaeological excavations of well-designed magnifying lenses makes it at least possible that prints were being used for identification.

We're on surer ground by the time we get to China, about two thousand years ago: People were using their thumb marks as seals, and captured river pirates a thousand years ago were compelled both in fact and in fiction to provide ink prints of their thumbs. This thousand-year continuity provides strong evidence that the prints were being used for identification. Japan also has a strong history of the use of thumbprints as personal signatures and seals.

Fingerprints were first used in a criminal case in Rome in the time of the Caesars, although the size and shape of the prints were in question rather than the ridge detail. A senator was found murdered. His young second wife, hysterical, pointed to the bloody handprints on the wall near the murder, insisting that her blind stepson had committed the murder and then had to fumble his way from the body. The Praetorian Guard arrested the youth, who maintained his innocence. In court, his defense attorney was able to prove that the handprints were much too small to fit the young man, and that in fact the wife had committed the murder and deliberately made the prints in order to direct suspicion toward her husband's son from his first marriage.

The first known Western movement toward the use of fingerprints for identification occurred in Germany, in 1788, when J.C.A. Mayer stated that the skin ridges in two or more individuals are never identical. In 1856, also in Germany, Herman Welcker made a print of his right palm and stored it away. In 1897, he repeated the print and studied the two carefully, determining that there were no changes. Prior to that, in 1823, Professor Johannes E. Purkinje classified fingerprints, but he seems not to have realized that the prints were unchangeable and never identical from individual to individual.

Things came together at the end of the nineteenth century with the work of William Herschel in India, Henry Faulds in Japan, and

Francis Galton in England in 1892. Although Herschel and Faulds both noticed the individuality of fingerprints and used them for identification purposes, it was Galton who proposed a practical system of classification and filing. Sir Edward Richard Henry in 1899 and 1900 modified and improved upon Galton's system, enabling it to handle much larger files than Galton ever envisioned. Henry's system is still in use today in all of the English-speaking world and many other countries.

At virtually the same time, in 1891 in Argentina, Juan Vucetich was producing a system of fingerprint classification that is in use in most Spanish-speaking countries. Vucetich made the first known use of real fingerprints in a criminal investigation of the case of a woman who murdered her illegitimate children and tried to place the blame on her estranged boyfriend, who was not the father of the children. People who have used both the Vucetich system and the Henry system maintain that for anyone starting from scratch, the Vucetich system is far easier to learn. However, the Henry system is too deeply ingrained in most of the rest of the world to be easily changed now.

Interpol, of course, is able to work with both the Vucetich and the Henry systems; however, it is not an actual police agency but rather an international clearinghouse of police information. It has no jurisdiction or arrest powers of its own.

And how did fingerprinting reach the United States? In 1902, Dr. H.P. de Forest was able to require its use in the New York State Civil Service Commission, to cut down on fraud in the taking of tests. In 1904, during a world's fair in St. Louis, Missouri, a Scotland Yard inspector taught fingerprinting to several police officers in the United States. The entire U.S. armed forces had taken up fingerprinting by 1908.

The Will West Case

The value of the fingerprint system was conclusively proven in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in 1903. A prisoner was brought in by the name of Will West. Admission personnel, photographing and measuring him, insisted he had been there before, but he insisted he had not, and his conviction listed him as a first offender. His Bertillon measurements (see sidebar) and photographs seemed identical to those already on record for William West. But on further

checking, personnel found that this could not be William West — because William West was still in prison!

When the two men were placed side by side, they looked like identical twins. But despite theories expressed even today that they were related—fraternal or possibly even identical twins — no amount of investigation has ever been able to discover even a distant relationship, and their fingerprints were not at all alike. (This is possibly significant in terms of the theory that they were related. Identical twins, even nonidentical siblings, often have
similar
fingerprints and may even have the same fingerprint classification. But identical fingerprint classifications do not mean that the prints are identical.)

What Are Bertillon Measurements?

French file clerk Alphonse Bertillon invented, in 1879, the first really successful means of criminal identification. Prior to that time, the only means of recognizing a criminal who was trying to get by with an assumed name was by the good memory of police officers. The few descriptions that were made were so vague as to be useless: "tattoo on arm" meant nothing unless a description of what the tattoo looked like and where the tattoo was located on which arm was also provided.

Bertillon's system, called Bertillonage, included a set of fourteen different measurements of different parts of the body, coupled with a
portrait parle,
a very precise system of careful description. Bertillon, however, did an atrocious job of presenting his idea, and when officials finally agreed to let him try it, he was told that if he did not succeed in catching one criminal in the act of changing his name within three months, the entire system would be scrapped.

The chances of having someone arrested, released and then re-arrested under a different name within three months seemed slim; however, Bertillon set to work-and succeeded. Bertillonage at once was the rage worldwide. However, it had several major problems: (1) its success depended on making careful and time-consuming measurements of every person arrested, and at that time very few police were either willing or able to take that time; (2) the
portrait parle
system, although a great improvement over previous systems of description, was too difficult for most people

to master; and (3) it was impossible to use Bertillonage on a person who was not already in hand.

Bertillon was extremely bitter as he watched his system go down in defeat before the science of fingerprints. As long as he lived, he fought to keep it alive, at least in France; but immediately on his death, Bertillonage was abandoned even there.

The Roscoe Pitts Case

People have attempted to beat the fingerprint system. In 1941, Robert J. "Roscoe" Pitts was released from Alcatraz, determined to beat the fingerprint system next time. He robbed a warehouse and service station in North Carolina in May, and then headed to New Jersey, where plastic surgeon Leopold Brandenburg agreed to replace the skin of his fingertips with skin grafts from his sides. When the lengthy and painful surgery, which involved having Pitts's hands temporarily grafted to his sides, was finally over, Pitts's fingertips were completely smooth. But in October, when he was arrested in El Paso, Texas, police had no trouble at all identifying him by the prints of his fingers below the tips. Furthermore, a Treasury agent who saw Pitts twenty years later told me that even then Pitts was unable to use his fingertips normally because of their extreme sensitivity to pressure and heat.