Grace Malcolm
The Implications of Advancing Technology for Unsolved Crimes
Ozark High School
May 2015 The 20th century played host to many crimes that remain unsolved. However, perhaps the greatest unsolved mystery of the era belongs to a man whose true identity remains unknown though his crimes were committed more than thirty years ago. A man called the Zodiac. Striking terror into residents of Northern California, the Zodiac Killer conundrum was hardly an instance of lack of evidence. Prints were found, a witness description of the criminal was obtained and the killer claimed to have talked to two police officers at the scene …show more content…
Upon arrest, criminals’ exemplar fingerprints were collected. Each of their ten fingers were first rolled in ink, then onto the corresponding square of the fingerprinting card. Fingers were rolled from one edge of the nail to the other, allowing a whole and clear print to be produced. In addition, plain prints of each thumb and slap prints of the four fingers were taken. In order for these fingerprints to be matched to those collected at a crime scene, the fingerprints were compared under a magnifying glass by an expert who would match distinctive characteristics of one print to another. Some of these comparisons would take up to several months to process a single submission.
It was in the mid-1960’s that developments in fingerprint technology began to make huge leaps. Since this time, a compound called ninhydrin has been used most heavily in the field of chemical fingerprint detection. Despite this development, between 1960 and 1980, many different techniques were experimented with, including metal deposition and fuming; though none of these techniques ever truly caught on due to their limited