UK - First mass fingerprinting snared killer of 3yo June Devaney, 1948

[wfgodot]

4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire....and 40,000 sets of prints:

In 1948, the First Mass Fingerprinting Operation Snagged a Horrific Child Killer

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The date was May 14, 1948, so forensic science was still an emerging field. But police in Blackburn, England, did have a very powerful weapon in their arsenal: fingerprinting. The attacker had left a series of footprints on the Queen’s Park Hospital floor, but more importantly, he’d also grasped a large bottle during his intrusion, leaving behind his own unique identifiers on the glass.
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The story above, at truecrime.io9.com

 

[wfgodot]

...and Colin Pitchfork, the first criminal convicted of murder via DNA evidence.