PRINTS FROM GLOVED HANDS

Evening Star, Issue 19660, 13 September 1927, Page 5

PRINTS FROM GLOVED HANDS

Gloves do not always protect criminals from the hngcr-print experts. Owing to carelessness, or to the necessary exposure of parts of the baud or arms outside the protection of _ the glove, prints left by gloved criminals have ultimately led to tlicir detection. In the ‘Finger Print Magazine’ (Chicago). Dr Hans Sehnciekort, chief of tho police identification service in Berlin, tells of three such eases. Writes Dr vSehnoickert:—

“Tho riskiness of Uic ‘job’ at the place of the crime, incidental to leaving compromising traces in Uic form of latent fingerprints, is naturally well known to many criminals, so that they try to protect themselves from this danger. The protection lying nearest to band is the carrying of gloves on the place of the deed. The members of the staff of the Berlin identification service, in their professional activity, often find indications of this nso of gloves for protection. But in three eases it was, nevertheless, possible to convict the glove-protcctcd burglar through identification of the papillary lines.

“In the first case the burglar bad. after a completed ‘ job ’ on the safe, pulled off the inconvenient glove and treated himself liberally from ;v bottle of wine standing close at hand. But in doing so be left his finger-prints on the nock of the bottle, wiiicli helped to trace him. On being arrested bo gnvo vent to In's anger over becoming a victim of dactyloscopic science, in spite of the precaution taken to carry gloves on tbo burglary 1 job.’

“In the second ease an impression of a glovc-covcrcd hand mas found ir tli© placo of the deed, and in tJ.e lower round opening (below the wrist) the bare part of tiic hand surface had left an impression of the skin of the hand, even if it self-evidently was over so small. The papillary lines -.erebv made visible were sufficient to convict the criminal upon whom suspicion had fallen. On the basis of the identity statement rendered, and against bis denial, the burglar was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, and ti ok this punishment at once without resorting to other legal remedies.”-