While the capture of the Night Stalker was a credit to law enforcement’s use of the media, his identification as Ramirez was the result of another modern technique. The Night Stalker case was among the first major cases to use automated fingerprinting technology.

Today, television detectives run fingerprints from a crime scene through an automated database and get results in seconds—somewhat inaccurately. In reality, the database kicks back “likely” matches and a trained fingerprint examiner must compare them to find an actual match. Still, the technology we use today allows quick searches of a vast number of fingerprints, and if a criminal leaves a fingerprint behind we can see if he’s ever been booked and fingerprinted, or if we have the same print on file from another scene.

In 1985, this use of computers was brand new. Before automated systems, examiners would have to look through fingerprints on file by hand, using ten-print cards (on which a booked criminal has rolled all ten fingerprints in ink). It meant a great deal of time and effort, and was rarely useful without a suspect in mind. Some even admitted that the collection of fingerprints at the scene was frequently done for public relations purposes only—to appear to be doing something to solve the crime.

When computers were first applied to the task, the systems were extremely expensive, making it difficult to sell to agencies with low budgets. That’s why when the California Department of Justice used their brand new automated fingerprint indexing system to immediately identify Richard Ramirez as the Night Stalker, it put these systems on the map—it proved they worked, and that the cost was justified.

For a contemporary article on the use of automated fingerprint technology, go here. For more on the Night Stalker’s crimes, go here.

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If you missed your chance to come to the week-long camp, now’s the time to make up for it! Sign up now at our camp website–that’s also where you can find details on the camp itself. Hope to see you there!

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Despite the fact that the operation went seamlessly, the Bin Laden raid was not an easy one.  His compound was surrounded by 8 feet of barbed wire.  There were also additional 7 foot security walls within the compound. So what factors contributed to Bin Laden’s defeat you may ask? US officials say that inside information was an integral part of the operation’s success. The Bin Laden family was also the only family that burned trash, and the only million dollar home that was without phone or internet connections; a giveaway that the compound was ideal to hide someone of great significance.  Administration said that the raid was kept so secretive that no foreign officials were told in advance, and very few within the US government were privy to prior knowledge of the history that was about to unfold a world away.

On September 11, 2001, over 3,000 lives were lost in the worst attacks of terrorism on American soil. On May 1, 2011, the man responsible for this horrific amount of innocent bloodshed was finally brought to justice. Bin Laden’s capture sent throngs of cheering Americans in to the streets in both Times Square, and in front of the White House. Gordon Felt, president of the Families of Flight 93, issued a heartfelt statement saying, “This is important news for us, and for the world. It cannot ease our pain, or bring back our loved ones. It does bring a measure of comfort that the mastermind of the September 11th tragedy and the face of global terror can no longer spread his evil”.

Please check back soon for updates on the forensic discoveries relating to Bin Laden’s capture and killing. For more information, please click here or here.

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The system worked quite well, until 1903 when Will West was received at Leavenworth Penitentiary. Upon running Will West’s measurements, it was discovered that a “William West” was already imprisoned at Leavenworth.  He had the same anthropometric measurements as Will West.  A photographic comparison of the two men did little to distinguish them.   Finally, two years after Will West was brought to Leavenworth, fingerprints of each man were taken, compared, and found to bear no resemblance.  Thus each man was distinguished by his fingerprints.  Needless to say, Leavenworth converted from the Bertillon system to the more reliable fingerprint system, which is still in use today. This is a reminder that fingerprints are important.

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Both New York and Maryland have computerized ballistic fingerprint databases, both states have legal mandates that require all firearms manufacturers to provide, a spent cartridge and prepare ballistics images of the bullets and cartridge casings and provide the records so that the state’s law-enforcement agencies can access it, for every firearm legally sold; the law also requires that the name, address and Social Security number of the person purchasing the firearm be linked to the ballistics information.

The law, and the database, is based on the theory that that every gun marks shells and bullets in specific, stable, identifiable ways.  The reason casings are used is because firearm that produce marks on cartridge cases are less subject to long-term wear.  This theory, unfortunately, has not been scientifically proven.  In fact, the markings left by a gun on a casing are not guaranteed to be the same over the long term and can be deliberately changed with simple tools such as a file or metal brush.

Another problem with the ballistic fingerprint database, as it stands, is that only new gun purchases are beholden to the law, meaning that the millions of already purchased guns cannot be traced via the database.  Other concerns include the fact that less than 1% of legally guns sold will ever be used in a crime, guaranteeing wasted effort.  Beyond that, nearly 90% of guns used in crimes change hands at least once after their initial purchase at a licensed dealer before being used in crimes; it has been estimated that nearly 40% of guns used by criminals are either stolen from their rightful owners or purchased on the black market.

There is also fault with the potential usefulness of such a database.  California did some extensive testing to assess the accuracy of such a database and they found that when shell casings used with a particular gun came from the same manufacturer the computer failed to match the correct casing to its gun 38% of the time; when casings came from different manufacturers the failure rate was 62%.  These false matches waste the time of ballistic examiners who are left ruling out matches made by the computer database. New York has had its database up and running since 2002 and has since entered data from over 200,000 new gun purchases and has spent approximately $1,000,000 a year on its system. By 2007 the system had not led to a single solved crime.

Fingerprint and DNA databases see their success from the fact that neither identifier is subject to change, a person is stuck with the DNA and fingerprints they are born with, but this is not the same for a gun and its parts. The parts of the gun that are responsible for marking a shell casing are the breech face, extractor, ejector, and firing pin, all of which can be purposefully altered with specific tools or all of which may change with time and normal wear.  Although the idea of a ballistic database is appealing given the large amount of gun violence in the US, unfortunately the ease with which guns can be altered appears to throw a monkey wrench in the idea.

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Is bacteria the new forensic tool

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Sherlock Holmes worked as a consulting detective in London with his partner Dr. John H. Watson, who moved in with Holmes to help pay the rent.  Holmes was a freelance detective as well as a forensic scientist, the first of his time.  Holmes is unlike anybody we would find working in forensics today because of his disciplinary crossing reach.

Holmes worked as a detective and as such used his sharp mind to “reason backwards” or to see the conclusion of a criminal act and be able to reason backwards to find the motive and the culprit.  But Holmes was much more than just a detective.

Sherlock Holmes also worked in the chemistry lab of a hospital, making him a forensic chemist.  Holmes “discovered” a test to detect hemoglobin, and hence blood, he did this in Doyle’s mind 13 years before it happened in the real world.  Holmes commented on the uniqueness of typewriters three years before any real life document examiners did the same. He is considered a pioneer in the use of forensic science.

Today forensic chemists do not do detective work in the field and detectives do not spend time in the laboratory examining evidence, these are two separate arms of law enforcement.  Sherlock Holmes was a genius at both as best described by Doyle’s quote from Holmes’ mouth expressing both processes in one eloquent statement:

“The process… starts upon the supposition that when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It may be that several explanations remain, in which case one tries test after test until one or other of them has a convincing amount of support”

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The driving force of art forgery is the fact that art work created by certain artists is worth more than art work created by others.  If a work of art can be replicated perfectly by an art forger it is only worth less monetarily than the original because of who painted it not because the painting looks any differently than the original.  The same theory applies to forgers who create new art pieces in the style of a master, if the forgery is believed to be genuine it will be deemed priceless but if it is found to be a fake it is deemed worthless, regardless of what the piece of art looks like.

Forensic investigators, along with art historians and appraisers, are often responsible for determining if a piece of art is a forgery or not. Historians often use stylistic analysis to determine if a work of art is genuine or not, possessing large amount of knowledge about the styles, tool, brushstrokes,  techniques used by certain artists. There are a variety of methods used for forensic authentication of art work.   Some of the technical methods for revealing fakes include X-rays, UV lights, and IR light, which can be used to see under layers of paint to see covered up works, determine time period or the actual artist of the painting if an original signature has been covered up.  Chemical analysis and spectral comparisons can detect the components of paint to ensure that modern pigments were not used in supposedly old paintings.  Examination of the craquelure, the network of cracks that appear on old paintings, can be analyzed to ensure that the cracks were not artificially made and that they follow the grain of the wood onto which they were painted.

Art forgery sounds like a thing of the past, but art dealers claim that about 15% of art sold at auctions are fake, which means hundreds of people getting conned out of thousands of dollars.

For more information on art crimes  save the date, the Museum’s new art crimes temporary exhibit is coming on February 15th, 2010!

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Hair can yield DNA evidence, if hair is pulled out by the root, as in some violent struggles, it will contain root pulp which is a good source of nuclear DNA (nDNA), the type of DNA most often used in forensics.  The hair shaft does not contain nDNA, so the 100-150 strands of hair most people lose daily will not contain a root or nDNA, but it does have mitochondrial DNA (mDNA).  MDNA, which cannot be used for individualization, can narrow the source of the hair down to a certain family group (mDNA is passed from mother to all offspring).

Hair can also be used to run drug tests, but these tests are only presumptive and have to be confirmed by blood or urine tests.  Hair absorbs chemicals, such as marijuana smoke and arsenic, from the environment and once the chemical is in the hair there is no way of telling if it got there from consumption or from exposure from the environment.

Age cannot be determined from hair, generally the only age determination that can be made from hair is if came from an infant or from an elderly person.  The sex of the person the hair came from can also not be determined via hair examination unless there is nDNA  evidence such as the root.

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Multiple personality disorder, more accurately known as dissociative identity disorder (DID),  is a completely different disorder that is much more rare than schizophrenia, in fact many mental health professionals doubts its validity.  DID, considered an “identity disorder,” is a mental illness where in one person has two or more distinct personalities.  One of the main symptoms of DID is a loss of time or memory where in the person with DID cannot remember significant chunks of time in their lives, this is due to the dominance of a different personality during the missing time.  One of the Hillside Strangler serial killers, Kenneth Bianchi, faked having DID in order to use the insanity plea during his trial, he was discovered to be a fake and he plead guilty to 5 charges of murder.

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