I received this email yesterday from a deputy within our department who works in the ICAC Task Force in Omaha, NE. It originated from a special agent out of Boston, MA on the 17th of December, 2018. Please read:
Good Afternoon All,
We are looking for some help with a hands-on offender that our team is in contact with on a darkweb forum dedicated to the sexual abuse of children under 5 years old. The UC has been in contact via DM for about 4 weeks and the offender has access to a 3 year old girl weekly. This “individual” is sexually abusing the girl and providing images to the UC and to the darkweb forum. Last week one of the images he provided contained a good picture of his fingerprint (attached).
We ran the print through NGI AFIS, US VISITS’s CABIS system and Interpol with no hits. We believe this individual to be located here in the US and are very concerned for the little girls safety each week that passes.
All that said, we are aware that not all state systems are linked into the system we can access, so we are asking for a rep from each state to run the prints in any system you can put your hands on. Understanding it’s a week of holiday preparation and what not but no greater gift from all of us to that girl would be to locate the suspect.
If you can/will assist we would GREATLY appreciate it.
Here is the link to the image (I couldn't post it here because of the file size). It's been enhanced (not by me) and appears to be a right hand however the presence of a ring on the ring finger (which looks like a wedding band) might make it appear as if it's a left hand mirror-imaged. I searched it both ways just to be sure.
I hope that you can find a way to search this print through your local database. I know many will need additional requests and you can reach out to the email address next to the agent's name for that but I hope someone is met with success and we can help find this guy.
"...he wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors." - R. Kipling, 1893
I was contacted by someone involved with this case and they confirmed that the finger is, in fact, a left index so please search it accordingly if you are able!!!
"...he wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors." - R. Kipling, 1893
I'm not sure what tolerance the algorithms have in terms of rotation out of the normal plane, and considering this print was part of an angled view I did some corrective Photoshoppery on it. After I flipped it horizontally, per Josh's instruction, I proceeded with the following:
Step 1: Use the Vanishing Point filter to correct for the rotated plane of the fingerprint and returned a 3D layer from it.
step1.jpg
Step 2: Use the 3D workspace to rotate the print to what would be more consistent with a rolled print (only starting position shown)
step2.jpg
Result:
Result.jpg
Step 3: Wrap the image around a cylinder consistent with the size of my finger and rotate the cylinder so the core was more centrally located
Step3.jpg
Final result: 500ppi, grayscale. Feel free to download and use it.
FP-Final.jpg
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Boyd - you should not have flipped it horizontally. As Josh indicated, it is a left index finger - so the image provided was already horizontally flipped. The one you've attached is a lateral reversal and so should not be searched in that orientation.
Second - if your AFIS has a cylindrical unwrap tool (or curve correction - or some other name), that can be used too. I'm not sure why you wrapped it back around a cylinder - rolled and slap impressions are flat!
Thanks for pointing that out. The file didn't indicate any downloads, so I yanked it and replaced it with the one below.
The reason behind the wrap was to correct for the distortion that the 3D rotation imposed while registering it in that plane and bring it more in line with what I believe the tolerance to be, especially with a flat print. However, I take your point. I unwrapped the image from the cylinder to give a more natural flat print.
Updated zip has two files correct with respect to horizontal flip and now in two flavors. One unwrapped from the cylinder (FP-Flat) and one with just rotational correction (FP-Rotated)
FP-Files.zip
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Thanks for doing this! I know that some AFIS's have the unwrap tool but I also think that most have enough tolerance built in to still search 'as-is'. I will download and search your file as you can't search this print too many times.
"...he wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors." - R. Kipling, 1893
Good news!!!! I received notification from our investigator that this case has been solved. If you left the latent in the unsolved file you can delete it now. Suspect was arrested in Florida yesterday.