– 1905
Is
it hard for you to remember that there was a time when there was no
such thing as DNA evidence? Well, I think it's hard to remember that
fingerprint evidence had to be invented, too!
On
this date in 1905, the first murder case was solved through
fingerprinting. The police had been taking fingerprints for a few
years, and a court had admitted fingerprint evidence in a petty-theft
case a few years ago. In the current case, police believed that two
shopkeepers were killed in a robbery, and they dusted the cash drawer
for fingerprints. There was one print that did not match either of
the shopkeeper victims. Could it belong to the killer?
The
detectives consulted the tiny file of fingerprints that Scotland Yard
had gathered in the past few years. None of those prints matched. It
was looking like fingerprint evidence wasn't going to be helpful in
the case.
The
police did what they'd always done—what they still do—which is to
interview people near the scene of the crime, hoping somebody had
seen something. They discovered a local milkman who had seen two
young men near the murder site. Based on the milkman's description,
the police narrowed down the search to the Stratton brothers, and
they finally tracked them down.
Unfortunately,
the milkman couldn't be positive the Stratton brothers were the men
he'd seen.
Fortunately,
the police had another way to get an ID—they fingerprinted the two
brothers. And, lo and behold, Alfred Stratton's right thumb was a
perfect match for the print on the victims' cash box!
Find
out more about fingerprints....
...at
Cyberbee
...and
at View Zone.
And
try the fingerprint art ideas at DLTK!
Also
on this date:
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