Old Leather, request for LP

[Ann Horsman]

Need some help. An old leather belt was turned in to Sero still wet and saturated with blood. The belt is dry now and very hard, there is no glossy surface at all with the leather being very old and cracked. Submitting officer wants LP processing. What might I proceed with?

[areitnau]

Ann,

If you're looking to develop blood impressions, perhaps Acid Yellow 7 would help. You would probably have to decipher RD from blood stains, but it may help. Just a thought.

[sgustavson]

Hello.

I have never processed old, hard leather, but when we process regular leather here at our lab we follow these processing steps

Visual - RTX - DFO - Ninhydrin - ZnCl

But if the leather is hard and kind of shiney then I would probably do a practice with the following processing order:

Visual - Cyanoacrylate ester fuming - RTX - Dye stains (maybe ardrox then rhodamine) - then Magnetic powder or whatever powder works best - then DFO - Ninhydrin - ZnCl (and because there is blood I would do Amido Black at the end, unless there are visible ridge detail in blood then i would do Amido black as one of my first steps) and yes I do realize I listed a lot of chemical processes to use, but you never know what will make a print visible...

Hope it all works out. Good luck,

Sally

[Tazman]

. . . old leather belt . . . wet and saturated with blood . . . dry now and very hard . . . no glossy surface at all . . . leather being very old and cracked . . . Submitting officer wants LP processing.

This cop watches too many TV forensics shows. The man is a moron. At some level of ridiculous evidence submissions, an examiner should have the authority to say,
"You're a moron. Take that piece of crap out of here and quit wasting my time."

[Ann Horsman]

Tazman,

This is my feeling as well but I wanted to see if anyone had a miracle process out there.

[garywood702]

Sounds like the odds are almost nil but then I have found you never know until you try. Would suggest visual techniques first with ALS and or Laser if available then focus on chemical processes for developing prints in blood. As someone else rightly posted in the past on another topic... why not do some experiments on a non evidentiary item that is similar to your evidence? I'm certain that some of the processes we use today came about as a result of someone's curiousity and willingness to experiment. Good luck!

[Tazman]

Sounds like the odds are almost nil but then I have found you never know until you try.

Maybe if you have no backlog cases and you are sitting around with nothing to do, you could spend some time trying to fingerprint a worn out, blood soaked leather belt that had been allowed to dry and crack, then didn't get submitted until long after the offense. But I still say the submitting officer watches too many forensic TV shows and has bought into the idea that if we knew what we were doing, we could find fingerprints on everything the way Abby does on NCIS. But in an ID Unit where some of my submissions will still be sitting there waiting to be processed when the statute of limitations expires on the offenses, I don't have time for morons submitting crap.

This is my feeling as well but I wanted to see if anyone had a miracle process out there.

Hey, Ann -- The Miracle Process: Send it to Abby!!!

[Veronica Rauch]

I'm wondering just how porous the surface is, if it's been saturated with blood? Following drying, have you tried testing an area of the belt with a drop of water to gauge its absorbency? If you are trying to develop blood impressions, take a look at Josh Bergeron's technical notes for fixed blood using a methanol-based, Titanium Dioxide working solution JFI 53(2), 2003\149. They had some success with semiporous print development on leather belts. The only luck I've ever had with leather is using RTX, and even then there was no blood, and it's hit or miss. I say nothing ventured, nothing gained. Good luck with it!!!

[Ann Horsman]

Thanks Veronica, I haven't received it yet but had a look at it over in Sero. That is a good idea to test for porosity with some water.