Article (1920): How His Fingerprint Sent Him to the Electric Chair

[Steve Everist]

The Library of Congress site is a great resource for some old newspaper articles. I did a search for the word fingerprint and it returned over 4500 results. This one was in the first group.

See anything interesting on the page or in the article?

[Alan C]

The two prints appear to be the exact same impression.

[Pat A. Wertheim]

I was fortunate enough to discuss this article with George Bonebrake in the early 1990s. George had retired as Section Chief of Latent Prints from the FBI. George had discovered the article while preparing a presentation on fingerprint fabrication for the IAI in, I believe, 1975. George's presentation was published as an article in Identification News in 1976.

George recounted to me an earlier conversation he had with Bob Olsen, Sr., about the article. Bob was retired USACIL Branch Chief over Latent Prints and also worked for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Bob, of course, is best known today as the author of Scott's Fingerprint Mechanics, the Bible of fingerprints in the 1980s and 1990s. George and Bob had discussed this article at great length. They concluded that while the article reads as if it were a true recounting of a real case, in all probability it was a fictitious account. They believed the article was published as an educational tool to explain fingerprint comparison and identification to people who did not understand the science that was new and novel in 1920.

Every year or two, this article gets rediscovered by an examiner who concludes it must be an early case of fingerprint fabrication. While the truth may well be forever lost, it is most likely not a case of fabrication at all. I believe, with George and Bob, that it was an early attempt to educate people about fingerprint identification.