Unprocessed latent transferred from doorbell to glass bottle

[josher89]

I'll make this as short as I can - just happened today and as there was no crime report made, I can share some of the details.

I got a call from a sergeant in Investigations a few days ago asking if it would be worth trying to process the back of Scotch tape that had apparently been used to lift a print from a doorbell.

Quick background, the "victim" reported finding a glass break tool on her front porch one morning and knew that it wasn't hers. She reviewed the Ring doorbell camera footage and it picked up a guy dropping said tool on the porch after ringing the doorbell. He appeared to be highly intoxicated. Her dad, a former police officer, told her to use tape and 'lift' any print that might be on the doorbell and turn it over to the authorities. She did, and in order to preserve the print, she stuck the tape to a glass bottle (it could've been worse, I know.) She made a report and the sergeant retrieved the bottle from the victim.

As he was looking at the bottle, he called to ask if it was worth processing...since there wasn't a crime involved, he was just interested to see if he could find out who the person was and find out why he was ringing doorbells late at night. My first thought was "Nope, not worth it. Especially if no crime occurred." But, never say never, right? So I told him to submit it, I'll do what I can, and it'll be his responsibility to link the print to the tape to the bottle since we didn't collect it.

I removed the tape and decided to just process the bottle first with black powder, just to see. I'll be danged if a print didn't emerge right where the tape was...it stopped on the border so I knew it was from the tape. I photographed it, ran it through AFIS, and got a hit.

So, the latent print residue was transferred from the doorbell to the glass bottle using Scotch tape and remained on the glass after the tape was removed. I never thought it was going to happen.

Take home lesson - never say never.

[Ernie Hamm]

Wait for it. Jump in there, Pat.

[Michele]

This seems to be a great example of why experts should not rely on what they would expect to see.

[Texas Pat]

Wait for it. Jump in there, Pat.

Thanks, Ernie. You gave me my morning laugh. I was going to email Josh on the side, but you've prodded me to go ahead and jump in.

I referred to this method of transferring latents in my article "Detection of Forged and Fabricated Latent Prints" in the JFI, Nov/Dec 1994, V. 44 #6, pp 652-681. See specifically pp. 659-661.

For a film clip of it being done, check out Jason Bourne being framed for a bombing in "The Bourne Supremacy":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pab8X45Wno0

Cheers,
Pat