Dusting for fingerprints?

[Steve Thomas]

To this day, this is something I will never understand.

Hello, Mr. Policeman?

I have some shells here. I saw a man shoot that policeman, and he shook these shells out of his gun.

He had these shells in his hand and he threw them over in the bushes over there.

Oh, well, there's a fingerprint guy over here and he's dusting the policeman's car for fingerprints and he has a fingerprint kit in his hands.

I'll just give these shells to him. We;ll run these prints and see if we can't find out who this shooter is.

*the sound of crickets*

Steve Thomas

[Pat Speer]

31 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

To this day, this is something I will never understand.

Hello, Mr. Policeman?

I have some shells here. I saw a man shoot that policeman, and he shook these shells out of his gun.

He had these shells in his hand and he threw them over in the bushes over there.

Oh, well, there's a fingerprint guy over here and he's dusting the policeman's car for fingerprints and he has a fingerprint kit in his hands.

I'll just give these shells to him. We;ll run these prints and see if we can't find out who this shooter is.

*the sound of crickets*

Steve Thomas

I read quite a bit on fingerprints and fingerprinting a few years back and was surprised by much of what I learned. One surprising fact was that fingerprints are rarely found on shells--to such an extent even that crime scene investigators will frequently not even bother to dust them. As I recall, there were a couple of reasons for this. One is that the shells are small and curved and rarely pick up a sufficiently-legible print even under the best circumstances. Two is that the act of firing the bullet burns off some of  the residue on the outside of the shell. As a consequence, then, the likelihood of finding a suspect's prints on a shell was less than 1 in 100. 

Now, I'm just going off memory here, but I remember being surprised by all this, and realizing that Capt. Fritz's holding onto one of the shells found in the sniper's nests was not the egregious breach of protocol I once assumed it to be. I mean, he was the lead investigator. Not only would he not want to send all "his" evidence to the FBI lab, but he would doubt the FBI would find anything of value on a spent shell. So he held onto one of the shells. Perhaps, just perhaps, he did so, moreover, because he wanted to make sure the shells sent back by the FBI had the same markings as the shell he'd held onto. If they didn't, of course, he would know the fix was in. 

P.S. A second point should be made as well. Prior to 1968, solo fingerprints were used to confirm the guilt of suspects only. IOW, there was no consulting the FBI fingerprint file for a solo print. SO... finding a print that wasn't Oswald's would lead them nowhere. It would suggest his innocence without telling them who did it. (We saw this happen with the sniper's nest prints, some of which were made to disappear from the record after (presumably) failing to match up with Oswald.) 

Edited April 22, 2023 by Pat Speer

[Gerry Down]

2 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

I read quite a bit on fingerprints and fingerprinting a few years back and was surprised by much of what I learned. One surprising fact was that fingerprints are rarely found on shells--to such an extent even that crime scene investigators will frequently not even bother to dust them. As I recall, there were a couple of reasons for this. One is that the shells are small and curved and rarely pick up a sufficiently-legible print even under the best circumstances. Two is that the act of firing the bullet burns off some of  the residue on the outside of the shell. As a consequence, then, the likelihood of finding a suspect's prints on a shell was less than 1 in 100. 

Now, I'm just going off memory here, but I remember being surprised by all this, and realizing that Capt. Fritz's holding onto one of the shells found in the sniper's nests was not the egregious breach of protocol I once assumed it to be. I mean, he was the lead investigator. Not only would he not want to send all "his" evidence to the FBI lab, but he would doubt the FBI would find anything of value on a spent shell. So he held onto one of the shells. Perhaps, just perhaps, he did so, moreover, because he wanted to make sure the shells sent back by the FBI had the same markings as the shell he'd held onto. If they didn't, of course, he would know the fix was in. 

Also if anything happened that the fbi lost the shells he gave them, Fritz would still have the one shell to use in court as a sample.

This was arguably good thinking by fritz.

[Steve Thomas]

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

I read quite a bit on fingerprints and fingerprinting a few years back and was surprised by much of what I learned. One surprising fact was that fingerprints are rarely found on shells--to such an extent even that crime scene investigators will frequently not even bother to dust them. As I recall, there were a couple of reasons for this. One is that the shells are small and curved and rarely pick up a sufficiently-legible print even under the best circumstances. Two is that the act of firing the bullet burns off some of  the residue on the outside of the shell. As a consequence, then, the likelihood of finding a suspect's prints on a shell was less than 1 in 100. 

 

Pat,

In this case, the suspect handled the shells after they had been fired.

Steve Thomas

[Pat Speer]

3 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Pat,

In this case, the suspect handled the shells after they had been fired.

Steve Thomas

Yes, in the Tippit case. But my point was that police departments rarely dusted shells for prints. It would be interesting, of course, if there was evidence they did dust the shells found at the Tippit crime scene, and then pretended they didn't, as this could suggest they found a print that wasn't Oswald's.

 

[Steve Thomas]

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

Yes, in the Tippit case. But my point was that police departments rarely dusted shells for prints. It would be interesting, of course, if there was evidence they did dust the shells found at the Tippit crime scene, and then pretended they didn't, as this could suggest they found a print that wasn't Oswald's.

 

Pat,

There very well may be evidence of dusting, it's just I've never seen it.

Heck, I could live with a Report that said, "We dusted the shells for fingerprints and didn't find anything useful",  but I can't find any evidence that the DPD ever tested them at all.

And the WC seemed to go out its way not to ask Barnes about it.

I find that very, very weird.

Steve Thomas

[Michael Crane]

On cold cases your fingerprints have to be on file.

"Hey,we found some fingerprints,let's run them through AFIT to see if we have a match"

[Pat Speer]

13 hours ago, Michael Crane said:

On cold cases your fingerprints have to be on file.

"Hey,we found some fingerprints,let's run them through AFIT to see if we have a match"

The FBI had a huge file in 1963 but it could only be accessed manually and the prints were sorted out by numbers of loops or whorls whatever. So the file contained only full sets of prints from people who'd provided full sets. In effect, then, they could not take a sole print found on a bullet casing or rifle or cardboard box and match it to an unknown suspect. What they could and did do was compare sole prints to the full sets taken from known suspects and say "Aha! This is Oswald's right palm print!" etc. The WC helped expose this, btw. Late in the commission's existence, they confronted the FBI on the fact there were numerous non-ID'ed prints on the sniper's nest boxes. The FBI compared the prints to those of TSBD workers on file and said "no match." A few months later the WC asked "Well, what about those not on file?" The FBI then began collecting prints from every worker known to work on the sixth floor, and every DPD or FBI agent known to handle the boxes. This, then, brought the number of non-ID'ed prints down to 1. When one looks at the full record, one finds moreover that the DPD developed a thumb print on Box D (the seat box) that was never acknowledged by the FBI. Did the FBI think it was too smudged? Who knows? This print disappeared from the paper trail shortly after it was discussed in numerous DPD records. 

FWIW, the first time the FBI matched a sole print to a non-suspect--basically searched the files till they found a non-suspect with a print that matched--was James Earl Ray. They had a rifle with a sole print but had no idea whose print it was. After going through the fingerprint files of anyone they thought might kill King, and finding no matches, they supposedly decided on a whim to go through the most wanted list--and voila!--found a match. I don't know if I buy this, to be honest. It seems mighty strange to me that they half-mindedly checked the sole print against the prints of Ray--who was wanted for crimes totally unrelated to killing a prominent figure in the African-American community--and found a match. It would be like checking a print found at the LaBianca scene against known pimps--and matching it to Manson. 

 

Edited April 23, 2023 by Pat Speer

[Greg Doudna]

On 4/22/2023 at 4:57 PM, Steve Thomas said:

Pat,

There very well may be evidence of dusting, it's just I've never seen it.

Heck, I could live with a Report that said, "We dusted the shells for fingerprints and didn't find anything useful",  but I can't find any evidence that the DPD ever tested them at all.

And the WC seemed to go out its way not to ask Barnes about it.

I find that very, very weird.

Steve Thomas

Dallas Police Lieut. J. C. Day reported that the shell hulls found at the sixth floor of the TSBD were checked for prints on the spot, right there on the sixth floor after finding them.

"Photographs were taken of the three hulls as found. They were checked for prints, marked for identification and released to Detective R. M. Sims 629 of the Homicide Bureau. The hulls were 6.5 caliber and no legible prints were found." (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=232978#relPageId=221)

In the case of the Tippit crime scene, if there is no record that there was checking for prints on the shell hulls found there, and no disclosure that no prints were found, would that suggest that the hulls may have been checked for prints and something was found?

Because if not, why not report it just as with the case of the hulls on the 6th floor TSBD?

Three possibilities:

(1) Report of "we checked ... nothing" would be what would be expected if there was nothing. (as per the TSBD hulls).

(2) Report of "we checked ... something but too smeared to be usable" would be what would be expected if something was found but unusable. (as per the claim with the patrol car fingerprints lifted from two locations on the car where the gunman was witnessed, a claim which turned out to be not entirely true when an experienced examiner took a few minutes three decades later to recheck and disclosed the previously unreported information that Oswald was easily excluded as the single individual who left the prints at the two locations.) 

(3) <nothing said> could be what would be done if there had been checking for prints and something was amiss.

Here is a question (Pat S. do you know the answer to this?): if dusting was how the checking was done, and if the crime scene hulls had been checked (dusted), would the FBI lab be able to detect that had occurred when the FBI lab was sent four hulls identified by DPD as the four picked up from the crime scene, for examination? 

Because there is a question whether the hulls the FBI lab was sent were the same ones picked up from the crime scene.  

[David Josephs]

On 4/22/2023 at 1:08 PM, Steve Thomas said:

To this day, this is something I will never understand.

Hello, Mr. Policeman?

I have some shells here. I saw a man shoot that policeman, and he shook these shells out of his gun.

He had these shells in his hand and he threw them over in the bushes over there.

Oh, well, there's a fingerprint guy over here and he's dusting the policeman's car for fingerprints and he has a fingerprint kit in his hands.

I'll just give these shells to him. We;ll run these prints and see if we can't find out who this shooter is.

*the sound of crickets*

Steve Thomas

Kinda like how they dusted the brass clip in which one places the bullets...  how can you even hold that clip and load it without leaving some sort of prints?

But under the barrel under the wood... a palm print...  no problem.  Geez