50 Years of Forensics | EP 87 | Pat Wertheim | July 6, 2023 | 2PM Eastern
Pat began a career in law enforcement in 1973. He served as a police officer, detective, sergeant, and training officer, all the while doing crime scene investigations and latent fingerprint comparisons. In 1986, he realigned his career to focus exclusively on fingerprints. He has worked for local police, state law enforcement, and the Defense Forensic Science Center, where he was the latent print instructor for new hires during the ramp up period initiating the Forensic Expeditionary Division to staff new overseas forensics laboratories. Pat has also consulted on major cases in criminal and civil investigations and has exposed frauds involving fabricated evidence, erroneous identifications, and forged fingerprints. Some of his better known cases include the Shirley McKie Case (including the David Asbury case), the Fred van der Vyver case, the Alan McNamara case, and a civil investigation into a suspected fake Jackson Pollock painting.
Originally aired on July 6, 2023
50 Years of Forensics | EP 87 | Pat Wertheim | July 6, 2023 | 2PM Eastern
Pat began a career in law enforcement in 1973. He served as a police officer, detective, sergeant, and training officer, all the while doing crime scene investigations and latent fingerprint comparisons. In 1986, he realigned his career to focus exclusively on fingerprints. He has worked for local police, state law enforcement, and the Defense Forensic Science Center, where he was the latent print instructor for new hires during the ramp up period initiating the Forensic Expeditionary Division to staff new overseas forensics laboratories. Pat has also consulted on major cases in criminal and civil investigations and has exposed frauds involving fabricated evidence, erroneous identifications, and forged fingerprints. Some of his better known cases include the Shirley McKie Case (including the David Asbury case), the Fred van der Vyver case, the Alan McNamara case, and a civil investigation into a suspected fake Jackson Pollock painting.
Originally aired on July 6, 2023
00:00:30:00 - 00:00:37:17
Speaker
Hey everyone, it's Eugene here and welcome. This is episode 87 of Forensics Talks and my guest today is Pat Wertheim.
00:00:37:23 - 00:00:38:18
Speaker
So
00:00:38:18 - 00:00:39:16
Speaker
let's talk about
00:00:39:16 - 00:00:40:10
Speaker
Pat
00:00:40:10 - 00:00:44:25
Speaker
Pat Wertheim. And he began his career in law enforcement in 1973. In fact,
00:00:44:25 - 00:00:58:06
Speaker
I was a I was still in I would have been close to getting out of diapers at around that time. So, he's been doing this for a very long time. He served as a police officer, detective sergeant, training officer, and all the while doing crime scene investigation and print
00:00:58:06 - 00:00:59:24
Speaker
fingerprint comparisons.
00:00:59:27 - 00:01:11:08
Speaker
In 1986, he realigned his career to focus exclusively on fingerprints. And that's where many people know Pat from. He's worked for local police, state law enforcement in Arizona and in Texas.
00:01:11:08 - 00:01:20:17
Speaker
And he's one of the foremost leading latent print instructors around. And he's very well known to a lot of people, have, you know, been trained by Pat in the past.
00:01:20:20 - 00:01:34:29
Speaker
And he's also worked on a number of major cases in criminal and civil investigations. And he's exposed frauds involving fabricated evidence, which we're definitely going to talk to him about erroneous identifications and even forged fingerprints.
00:01:34:29 - 00:01:44:06
Speaker
Some of his better-known cases include Shirley, Mickey Case. Actually, I saw a presentation on that way back in somewhere around 2010 when he presented at the Toronto Police Training conference.
00:01:44:06 - 00:01:45:17
Speaker
David Eskridge case.
00:01:45:17 - 00:01:48:09
Speaker
Alan McNamara case, a bunch of different ones,
00:01:48:09 - 00:02:02:19
Speaker
even another case on a civil investigation that's into a suspected fake Jackson Pollock painting. So, we want to ask him about all these interesting things that he's been working on over the years. So let me bring him in here. There he is. Hey, Pat, welcome. Thank you.
00:02:02:27 - 00:02:28:15
Speaker
It's good to be here. Excellent. Well, I appreciate your time. And I tell you, you know, we've only spoken for a few minutes, but in my, you know, online searches and stuff like that, I really just sort of just fell in love with all the posts that you have been doing on LinkedIn. Just they're very honest and open and they talk about real problems and real issues that are, you know, in forensics in general, not just not just for latent print examiners.
00:02:28:15 - 00:02:32:07
Speaker
So, yeah, I really appreciate your honest and open
00:02:32:07 - 00:02:34:22
Speaker
posts because I don't think a lot of people
00:02:34:22 - 00:02:41:28
Speaker
post that honestly about some of the topics, including one that you said, you know, where you made a mistake in the past and things like that.
00:02:41:28 - 00:02:46:01
Speaker
Oh, yes. Yeah. I'd like to ask you
00:02:46:01 - 00:02:53:01
Speaker
about your past. And, you know, I normally ask people, hey, you know, go back and, you know, talk to me about how things started or whatever.
00:02:53:01 - 00:03:13:01
Speaker
But there are a couple of things that struck me because I've been doing a little bit of research on you. So, tell me about baking, because I'm not a good baker, but apparently there's these runs in your family. And so, I'm fascinated with baking. And during the pandemic, like a lot of people, I started baking bread. So, I may have to talk to you after this about, you know, what I'm doing wrong.
00:03:13:03 - 00:08:04:05
Speaker
So, yeah, but tell me about the baking. Right. Right. Well, so, like, would you consider yourself more of a like, a science kind of person or are you more like a creative person because I noticed in your in your CV there's even you did you attempted some things at art school?
00:08:04:08 - 00:08:23:12
Speaker
Yeah. I think it's a very interesting comparison. And I sort of framed the question like, you know, were you more artistic and more scientific? But I know a lot of people that I mean, you've obviously studied forensic science for, you know, different aspects of it for decades now. But I bet you if I go through and a lot of the people that I knew who I would consider technical, they're also very artistic.
00:08:23:15 - 00:09:32:09
Speaker
They're also people who love music, they love art, or they can draw, they can do different things like that, which can be very helpful. And I think that's the right I think that makes it make you more proficient in certain areas.
00:09:32:11 - 00:09:50:26
Speaker
Very interesting. Yeah, that's interesting. When Glenn was actually a pass guess on the on the forensics talks as well. And so I've had some conversations with him and yeah, very, very bright guy and he also has his own podcast So yeah he's been doing some great work and, and some really great studies too, which I may want to lead into some of the work that you're doing later on with the
00:09:50:26 - 00:09:53:08
Speaker
of shampoo and things like that.
00:09:53:12 - 00:10:14:08
Speaker
So, I mean, you started off in that you were like patrol, you were doing patrol like just a police officer on the you doing the beat and on the road kind of thing, that that's your first sort of role, right? And training back then was so much different. When they hired me, they gave me the badge and gun in uniform and said basically go out and use good judgment.
00:10:14:10 - 00:10:36:19
Speaker
They assigned me to a senior officer for four weeks of training, riding with a senior officer. My senior officer who trained me, had 18 months of experience. And after four weeks of training, they cut me loose and I showed up. One day I was the only cop on duty in the whole town. I mean, it's such a different world to a day.
00:10:36:21 - 00:11:01:21
Speaker
When I got my first crime scene call, I remember pulling up for the call. I was still just brand new. And as I was getting out of the squad car, the sergeant pulled up and he said, what, you got time? And I said, Well, it's a burglary call. Do we take fingerprints or pictures or anything? And he said, Yeah, there's a camera in the glove box, a fingerprint kit in the trunk, handle it, and he put it in gear and drove off.
00:11:01:23 - 00:11:23:28
Speaker
So, my first burglary, seeing that, was all the training I had. And the camera was a little Instamatic, little cartridge camera, and they bought little 12 exposure rolls of black and white film. And you were expected to use no more than one roll per crime scene. So, I look at how far we've come in 50 years and it's just amazing.
00:11:24:02 - 00:11:45:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. I've heard some stories from some of the older police officers and yeah, it's it makes it makes you wonder about how things were done. But that's the way it was. Right there. We didn't. I mean, there's things you probably. Well, it's a good question. So, what kinds of things were done back when you started that maybe are no longer done today?
00:11:45:27 - 00:12:04:09
Speaker
Like what are some of the maybe the obvious things that for you're like, yeah, thank goodness for not doing that anymore. Well, for example, when I was a cop in Kerrville in the seventies, there was no backup. If I had a burglary in progress call, I was I got to go to the building. A burglar alarm was going off.
00:12:04:09 - 00:12:28:11
Speaker
I did the building search. If anybody was in there, you arrested him. If you got in a fight, you got in a fight, and there was nobody going to come help you. I look at the police training and the responses today, and I wonder if the cops today could do the job. I did. But at the same time, I look at what they have to deal with today and I couldn't do that job.
00:12:28:13 - 00:13:02:24
Speaker
It's a totally different world the last several years I've worked at the Fort Worth Police Department Academy as a role player in in the reenactment situations where the cadets will have to run into a situation and we role players will act out a scenario and they have to handle it. And I had none of that. If I got into a mental case situation incident, I had to figure that out as I went along.
00:13:02:24 - 00:13:28:11
Speaker
If I got into a bar fight or an unruly mob, it was mine. One cop one. That was it. And we had to handle it with no training. So, working in the Fort Worth Police Academy and the training that those new cadets go through for months and months, just I wish I'd had something like that when I got into the business.
00:13:28:11 - 00:14:01:05
Speaker
And the same is true in the forensic sciences. My original class was a two-week class in crime scene and fingerprinting two weeks. We had to learn Henry classification. We had to be able to search and file through the Texas DPS court file, which at the time was about 3 million cards. We learned to do comparison. And by the time I went back home after two weeks of training, I was doing the comparisons and testifying and that wouldn't fly today.
00:14:01:08 - 00:14:29:10
Speaker
And I look back and I just it's shocking. Yeah. That we were thrown into things with so little training either as a cop or as a forensic scientist back then. So how did you make your way from, you know, from a cop to getting into focusing in on latent prints? I had learned late in print comparison in in Kerrville, like I said, the assistant chief there had asked me if I wanted to be the fingerprint officer shortly after I had gone there.
00:14:29:10 - 00:14:52:13
Speaker
And I did. And when I moved to Plano, Texas, in 1980, within a couple of weeks, the whole I.D. section at Plano PD just up and walked off the job to as soon as you arrived. I don't know exactly what it was. I really am. And I don't know what tipped them off, but I wrote a memo up chain of command of the chief saying, hey, look, I know ID work.
00:14:52:13 - 00:15:25:28
Speaker
I can handle this deal, work myself. And so, he made me the ID officer temporary. Crowley And I pretty well stayed in ID work even when we got an ID and I went back on the street, I was still get called out for crime scenes. I was still doing a lot of the fingerprint comparisons and verifications. And in 1990 and 1986, the chief called me in, and he said, Pata, want you to check out a smooth car and drive down to an he named a suburb near Austin, Texas.
00:15:26:00 - 00:15:50:24
Speaker
And he said, I want you to drive down there and talk to city manager. They didn't tell me what it was about, so I grabbed a smooth car and drove down to this town near Austin. The city met the city manager. He showed me around the town, and he offered me the police chief's job. And on the way back up to Plano, I had the epiphany that I didn't want to go into police management.
00:15:50:24 - 00:16:21:21
Speaker
I didn't want to go into police administration. I love my fingerprint work. And so, the following Monday, I walked into the chief's office, put the badge and gun on his desk and resigned and told him I wanted the job, an idea that we had opened at the time. So, I went through Alien did I'd work there, and I set my goal as a bench level latent print examiner, nonsupervisory at a state lab at the time, Texas was not hiring latent print examiners outside.
00:16:21:28 - 00:16:55:22
Speaker
You had to go to work in the Criminal History Records section for at least ten years before you could expect to become a legal brand. Examiner. But Arizona DPS had an opening shortly thereafter for leaving Print Examiner. So, I moved to Arizona and worked in the Tucson Laboratory as latent print examiner there. Oh, interesting. And there was, as you were speaking, I want to ask you something about a post that you made regarding the way fingerprints were done early on.
00:16:55:22 - 00:17:16:26
Speaker
And I think I think the way you started the post had to do with like a thorough and complete and now it's like one in done or hit and quit, like you have these sayings or whatever. So, you tell me about what the changes were there. When I was in Plano, Chief James McCauley insisted on providing absolutely.
00:17:16:26 - 00:17:45:17
Speaker
The best services to all of the citizens of Plano. Plano was a very rich community. It was a white flight community. I didn't know that when I went to work there, but I learned it pretty quick. All of the business executives from Dallas said, well, I shouldn't say all. That's a broad generalization, a large number of business executives from Dallas had moved north of the county line after the 1964 and 65 Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.
00:17:45:20 - 00:18:21:13
Speaker
And Plano had grown from just a small little farming town. Primarily, onions were raised in the fields around Plano and the Plano School District was funded very, very well. But because of the property taxes and the income levels of the influx of businessmen moving into Plano, all of the city services were funded very, very well. And we had plenty of people to do every crime scene to the nth degree, total and complete.
00:18:21:19 - 00:18:45:22
Speaker
And we had no backlog. We got gangsters on as soon as it came in because we had plenty of staffing. Well, that that is no longer the case. Tax cuts after tax cuts after tax cuts now have rendered most agencies incapable of providing that kind of service. And so thorough and complete has kind of gone out the window.
00:18:45:22 - 00:19:17:08
Speaker
And some agencies now or even notifying their detectives of APHIS hits without having those hits identified and verified through the normal latent print process, because the backlog is so great, and the staffing is so minimal that they can't even begin to keep up with the work. And that was true in Arizona when I left Arizona in 2010 to go to the Army crime lab, I had the Southern lab all to myself.
00:19:17:08 - 00:19:47:08
Speaker
I covered five counties and 85 agencies in Arizona. I had a backlog of about 600 cases. I was working about five, about 50 cases per month. I was doing crime scenes, processing in the lab, doing my comparisons and testifying. It was a totally different world by that point by 2010 than what I had enjoyed back in the 1980s in Plano.
00:19:47:10 - 00:19:56:07
Speaker
Do you think that technology, because of the computerized systems that we have and the searching capabilities and things like that has helped
00:19:56:07 - 00:20:04:23
Speaker
it to the point where that's why people might be saying that, you know, we can we don't have to do as much. Or do you think it's just it has to do with backlog in tax dollars?
00:20:04:25 - 00:20:35:02
Speaker
Oh, no doubt about it. Technology. I mean, every new tool you can add to your toolbox, it doesn't matter if you're an auto mechanic or an astronaut or a forensic scientist in a crime lab. Every new tool you can add gives you greater capability. But at the same time and overreliance on technology, I think, tends to obscure the fact that some of the earlier methods are still some of the best methods.
00:20:35:02 - 00:21:07:19
Speaker
I love the movie Skyfall, and I think most people missed the whole moral of that story. But in one of the very early scenes, Eve Moneypenny is saving James Bond with a straight razor, and she comments that sometimes the old ways are the best. And in one of the very late scenes of that movie, The Caretaker at the Estate, Skyfall, pulls out a heavy old antique knife and slams it on the table with all of the machine guns and modern weapons.
00:21:07:21 - 00:21:35:12
Speaker
And he slams that knife down, says sometimes the old ways are the best. And lo and behold, it's with that knife that James Bond kills the bad guy. But the point is, we overlook the old ways. I look at some of the prints that that that are being developed today with all fancy chemical processing and super glue fuming and die staining.
00:21:35:14 - 00:22:00:15
Speaker
And I think, you know, on a fresh surface back in the old days, I could have done better than that with just plain black powder. But I don't think the new technique, or the new technicians are trained how to use the old powders correctly. The old ways are falling away to technology or as Roland means, they are funny because he's the guy that basically brought lasers into the fingerprint business.
00:22:00:15 - 00:22:33:21
Speaker
But I was working with Roland in his lab in Lubbock, Texas, one time, and he bemoaned all of the modern flash and trash that's taking over the field. And I loved hearing the father of forensic laser technology talking about flash and trace. But I think he was right. There tends to be too much a reliance on new technology without a fair and honest evaluation of the old techniques against the modern review.
00:22:33:24 - 00:22:48:13
Speaker
What were some of the more memorable cases you had where, for example, you might have looked at, you know, a piece of evidence and said, I don't think I'm going to get anything out of this. And then all of a sudden, it's like, bang, you got something like, did you have any and you must have had a few situations like that, I'm sure.
00:22:48:15 - 00:23:08:09
Speaker
Oh, I did. I've had oh, yeah, a number of them. I mean, when you've done it for 50 years, you're going to have some of those where I think most examiners could go a whole career and not get a good fingerprint off a shell casing. And yet I've made a murder case of a fired shell casing that I removed from a revolver.
00:23:08:16 - 00:23:22:17
Speaker
We had a neat case that was a grave robbery. A grave crypt had been broken into in Benson, Texas. And six months later,
00:23:22:17 - 00:23:27:13
Speaker
Satanist up in in Phenix was arrested with a skull,
00:23:27:13 - 00:23:58:14
Speaker
and he claimed he had got it from a friend. But we went back and reopened the crypt in Benson. And the Benson ID techs swabbed the chuckles, the bars along the side of the coffin, and lo and behold, found the DNA of the guy in Phenix who had had the skull which put the lie to his claim that he'd got it from somebody on the black market up there.
00:23:58:16 - 00:24:23:14
Speaker
I got an egg offer, an eggshell once in a vandalism at a high school. It just blew me away. Beautiful fingerprint on an eggshell. So, you fingerprint enough things. You're going to get some things that surprise you? Yeah, for sure. Let me ask you about what was. I'm sure you've seen a lot of dumb criminals, but did you ever have any criminals that were really exceptional?
00:24:23:14 - 00:24:36:05
Speaker
So, they. They knew what was going on and they were trying to deceive and cover things up. And it made things difficult for you. Were there any sort of cases where it's like, well, this somebody was thinking about their crime.
00:24:36:05 - 00:24:42:18
Speaker
I don't think we catch the smart ones but let me tell you about one of the stupid ones.
00:24:42:18 - 00:24:45:27
Speaker
guy we arrested once, a woman stayed home from work
00:24:45:27 - 00:24:47:01
Speaker
and
00:24:47:01 - 00:24:59:07
Speaker
she was really sick, and somebody rang the doorbell and she thought, no, I'm not going to let him answer the doorbell. She felt so miserable. She was laying in bed. She just let the doorbell ring the door-to-door salesman or something.
00:24:59:07 - 00:25:03:18
Speaker
few minutes later, she heard glass break and another part of her house.
00:25:03:18 - 00:25:26:21
Speaker
So, she reached over and picked up the phone and called the police. Our officers arrived, arrested the guy there on the scene, and he had a pretty good M.O. I mean, his M.O. was solid. He would steal a car from a high school parking lot in Dallas after lunch, figuring that the kids wouldn't miss the car until after school was out.
00:25:26:21 - 00:25:47:14
Speaker
So, he would have maybe 2 hours of use of this car before it was reported stolen. Then he would drive up to Plano and commit a burglary and drive back down to Dallas and abandon the car. And they caught him in the house where this lady had called in. So, we've got him dead to rights. Well, I go back to fingerprint.
00:25:47:17 - 00:25:59:15
Speaker
He had been wearing gloves and so there were no fingerprints at the scene. I fingerprinted the window. He had broken glass shards that he had pulled out and thrown away on the ground. Of course, he was wearing gloves. So
00:25:59:15 - 00:26:01:06
Speaker
two weeks later,
00:26:01:06 - 00:26:08:21
Speaker
one of the burglary detectives comes back to me and says, Pat, did you just go after that burglary on such, and such street and I said, yeah.
00:26:08:23 - 00:26:14:04
Speaker
He said, did you get any good fingerprints? And I said, Oh, that's a beautiful fingerprint at point of entry.
00:26:14:04 - 00:26:17:10
Speaker
And he said, would you compare them to so-and-so for me? And I said,
00:26:17:10 - 00:26:28:24
Speaker
They'd be flawless. He wears gloves. His M.O. includes gloves. And the detective says, well, just humor me. Here, have a look. So, I look I pulled out his fingerprints and they all matched.
00:26:28:26 - 00:26:42:05
Speaker
Had him did it right. Well, the next day when they brought him to jail, I was curious. So, I went back into the jailhouse. It. You remember me? I was a guy that fingerprinted about two weeks ago when they arrested you for burglary. He said, oh, yeah, I remember you
00:26:42:05 - 00:26:45:22
Speaker
said when you were arrested for burglary two weeks ago, you were wearing gloves.
00:26:45:22 - 00:26:46:13
Speaker
Right.
00:26:46:13 - 00:27:19:18
Speaker
And he said, yes, sir, yes, sir. And I said, well, when you did that burglary yesterday, you weren't wearing gloves. Why is that? And he says, oh, man, y'all kept my gloves. And I kind of thought, you’re committing felonies here. I will throw you in prison and you're not going to go shoplift a pair of gloves. Yeah, I'm sure I've had some smart criminals that I haven't caught.
00:27:19:28 - 00:27:31:22
Speaker
I look at the Marion Holmes murder. I don't know if you went back and read the post on that one, 1995 in Thatcher, Arizona,
00:27:31:22 - 00:27:32:24
Speaker
where
00:27:32:24 - 00:27:52:16
Speaker
it's as far as I'm concerned, it's unsolved. The local police threw up the names of several suspects. They believed, but I don't believe any of those was a guilty party. I believe it was a Ted Bundy type of cross-country killer that we never, never were able to identify.
00:27:52:21 - 00:27:57:27
Speaker
And I'm sure I've seen some others. I have another question regarding
00:27:57:27 - 00:28:16:10
Speaker
another post that you did. And I think it's a really good question. And that was, you know, how many points is enough? Right. And this is a really, it's a really interesting point because maybe you could have just a few points that were just really strong, very unique, very different or whatever highly characteristic
00:28:16:10 - 00:28:17:10
Speaker
or highly unique, I should say.
00:28:17:10 - 00:28:34:27
Speaker
And then, you know, maybe you could have a lot of weak points or whatever. So how do you how do you what was that post about that you had and what were you trying to communicate with that? Well, that that was a post in response to a question that I had been asked by a guy who's not a fingerprint expert.
00:28:34:29 - 00:28:56:13
Speaker
He's an expert on police corruption and such, but not a fingerprint expert. And he'd ask me, how many points does it take? So, I did a pretty lengthy reply to the fact that it's not just some threshold number of points that's a lie that is perpetuated by TV cop shows and movies. But there is no number of points.
00:28:56:13 - 00:29:34:07
Speaker
It's a combination of the quantity of points with the clarity of the points, because we work at three levels of detail. We work at that at the general overall pattern level. We also compare the points which at a point would be where a ridge comes to an abrupt ending and two adjacent ridges closing the gap, or where one ridge splits into two ridges and the adjacent ridges widen to accommodate the splitting of the ridge and basically any other you could loose islands and enclosures and other things.
00:29:34:07 - 00:30:05:27
Speaker
But those are all a combination of either ridge ending or bifurcation or splitting ridges. And then we work in a third level of detail, Level three, which are very fine details, frequently requiring high magnification to see, and those occur within a single ridge. So, it might be the sweat pores or little bumps on the edges of the ridge or incipient ridges, little, tiny hairline ridges between regular ridges.
00:30:06:00 - 00:30:21:00
Speaker
And all of those are known as level three detail. So, if you ask what's the fewest number of points on which an identification has ever been made, there was one published out of the state of
00:30:21:00 - 00:30:26:21
Speaker
Illinois, I believe, in about 2001. No.
00:30:26:21 - 00:30:28:04
Speaker
Yeah. In Illinois,
00:30:28:04 - 00:30:44:03
Speaker
that was a zero-point ID It was so crystal clear and there was so much matching detail between the latent fingerprint and the known fingerprints of the suspect.
00:30:44:06 - 00:31:07:26
Speaker
The I think it was Dave Grieve brought that fingerprint before squeak fast and presented it. That was a scientific working on friction ridge analysis, science, technology analysis, study and technology. The acronym was weak fast, and we were the body that for about 20 years set the guidelines and standards for the operation of the Fingerprint Bureau.
00:31:07:26 - 00:31:13:06
Speaker
He brought it to sweep fast, and every single person there agreed that it was a correct identification.
00:31:13:09 - 00:31:28:05
Speaker
It was a prohibited possessor, a guy who, by virtue of previous felony convictions and being on parole, was prohibited from possessing weapons. And the fingerprint was recovered on the
00:31:28:05 - 00:31:38:28
Speaker
convex surface of the glass telescopic sight on a rifle that he had hidden in his home, I believe.
00:31:38:28 - 00:31:42:15
Speaker
And so, the question he denied any knowledge of the rifle.
00:31:42:17 - 00:31:48:27
Speaker
And this fingerprint was developed on the curved convex glass of the telescopic side.
00:31:48:27 - 00:32:12:18
Speaker
And so that fingerprint comparison, even though that fingerprint did not have a single bifurcation or ridge ending, it had beautiful level three detail the sweat pores, the bumps on the ridges, incipient ridges, everything in that print matched so perfectly that all of the fingerprint examiners at that sweet fast meeting agreed.
00:32:12:20 - 00:32:54:27
Speaker
That's him. And the guy pled guilty. It never went to court and got tested. I wish it had. John Vander Cope came up with a conceptual graph that he called the Q graph back in the you know, I don't remember the year, but the Q quality and quantity where conceptually he hypothesized that you could graph the quality of your print on the y axis of a graph and the quantity of details on the x axis and sweetgrass continue to work on that.
00:32:54:29 - 00:33:46:19
Speaker
And at one point I suggested, why does this have to be conceptual? Why can't we just put numbers on it and so squeak fast doesn't work on that for several meetings and we came up with four different quality levels based on how clear the print is by description, and then ranged it out to 16 point and we plotted a curve and that sweet fast graph is still available on the internet on several website is in fact I linked it on, on that post that you're referring to, I believe and there's the Green Zone where the prints are good and the ID is pretty much beyond debate.
00:33:46:21 - 00:34:20:08
Speaker
There's a yellow zone where we consider those to be complex. Comparing zones. And by complex, we defined that as meaning that those will require a higher extra documentation, better documentation than the easy prints, and they will also require a more stringent verification process. And then there was a red zone below which you just dare not go where the quality and quantity are both so low that you just can't go there.
00:34:20:11 - 00:34:47:04
Speaker
And the truth is that if you plotted a thousand latent prints on that cuckoo graph, you'd have a thousand different points in different location because No. Two prints are the same. Right. And but isn't that the isn't that the danger zone, though? Like when you start getting down into those prints where the quality isn't that great, isn’t that the where, you know, some analysts are like, oh, yeah, you know, they just go full force into something.
00:34:47:04 - 00:35:07:06
Speaker
And then some people are like, I'm not touching that one. And there's a lot of discrepancy there. Oh, yes. And that's true. I think in any field of human endeavor you're going to have some people are more talented than others. You will have some who are more daring, and you will have some who are more conservative. And that's true in latent prints as well.
00:35:07:10 - 00:35:45:01
Speaker
Now, some departments still have in their policy and procedures, still have a minimum number of points. For example, eight points, let's say as a minimum number, we had an eight-point minimum in Fort Worth Police Department. I worked there from 2010 through last October, but that eight-point minimum was a quality control measure, not an absolute threshold, because if identification was made below eight points, then it required a higher degree of verification.
00:35:45:01 - 00:36:23:27
Speaker
There were three certified latent print examiners and normally an ID and had to be verified by one other examiners. But if it fell into that zone below eight points, then it required a unanimous agreement of all three of the late in print examiners before it could be reported as an identification. Okay. So have you had any cases where, for example, you had a very low number of points, but they were you know, it was you felt confident that, look, these are very highly unique and you could say something about, you know, identity identification.
00:36:24:00 - 00:36:52:20
Speaker
I have. And actually, there in Fort Worth, I had one that only had five points, but it had so much beautiful level three detail. I took it before the other two examiners and they looked at it and said, I can't go there. They weren't comfortable with it. So, it got reported out as inconclusive. And so not reaching a sufficient level of quality and quantity to be reported as an identification.
00:36:52:23 - 00:37:14:04
Speaker
What would you say is the most significant case that you worked on, maybe like a case that sort of you know, there was there was a paradigm change after that or something like that. And I had seen you in 2010 talking about Shirley McKee, and she was there with her father in Toronto here. I recall that seeing that.
00:37:14:04 - 00:37:32:02
Speaker
And I didn't know you at the time, but I remember it was a super interesting case. And I sat through the whole thing, and it was several I think I recall it being several hours of presentation. But was that one of the biggest ones for you or which was a milestone case for you? Oh, there were a number of them.
00:37:32:04 - 00:38:14:06
Speaker
From the standpoint of police identification. The John Patrick Eastlake case in which identified John Patrick Slack in Arizona as the murderer of Lester and K Cheryl, and I believe that was 1991. He was an escaped convict, but totally nonviolent. He engaged in forgery and fraud, theft like that, but he'd never been violent. And in brainstorming, I was getting pages and pages of names from the investigators, and each slacks name was on one of the lists, and they thrown it in there just in desperation.
00:38:14:08 - 00:38:36:28
Speaker
And I identified him five different places in the house where the Cheryl's were murdered. His fingerprints were on the door frame going into the bedroom where Mrs. Cheryl was murdered. They were both people in their late eighties. She was invalids. She was confined to a wheelchair. And he had beat her to death with a handgun, a revolver.
00:38:36:28 - 00:39:02:02
Speaker
They found his fingerprints on the revolver on the phone. He had ripped out of the wall on a in the middle of a door. But we talked earlier about being thorough and complete. I also identified his fingerprints on the jug of ice water that was on the back of the top shelf in the refrigerator, thorough and complete. And I processed everything in that house for fingerprints.
00:39:02:02 - 00:39:32:02
Speaker
I spent two days there, but to me, finding his fingerprint on that jug of ice water where he had actually taken it out of the refrigerator, taken a drink, put the cap back on it, and returned it to the refrigerator. That showed the cold-hearted nature of the crime. The McKee case that you talk about. Shirley McKee's father, Ian McKee, who you met in Canada.
00:39:32:04 - 00:40:15:19
Speaker
Ian called me on the phone in between Christmas and New Year's of 1998 and said his daughter had been accused of being in a crime scene where she had never been at the scene of a murder. And I could not understand Ian's Scottish brogue very well at the time. I became quiet, quite expert at understanding most of the Scottish brogue, but at the time I couldn't understand everything he was telling me except that his daughter had been identified on a fingerprint at the scene of a murder, and she hadn't been there.
00:40:15:19 - 00:40:35:13
Speaker
And he had had learned that I was an expert in fingerprint forgery and so he wanted me to come. He wanted me to look at the fingerprint to see if it was forged, because it must have been forged because she wasn't there. So as luck had it, I was going to be in Scotland in a few months after that.
00:40:35:13 - 00:41:01:18
Speaker
In March, I was going to be in Scotland with Dave Grieve and David Ashbourne and I said, well, sure, I'll be over in Scotland. Why don't I come over to Glasgow and I'll just look at the fingerprints for you over there. So, I went to Glasgow, and I was going to look at a forgery case. And when I got there, I spent a couple of hours really looking at that latent fingerprint.
00:41:01:18 - 00:41:24:17
Speaker
It was on the door frame in the bathroom, going into the bathroom where Marion Ross had been murdered in her home by an intruder. And I did I did a thorough examination of fingerprint, decided this fingerprint is not forged. This is a genuine print that represents a touch of friction with the skin on the surface where it was developed.
00:41:24:19 - 00:41:50:17
Speaker
And the Scottish police have done a great job of removing that door frame. So, I was looking at the original door frame. And then after reaching that conclusion, I had been left alone in the room to do the examination and I turned over. They had left a whole stack of papers there for me and as far as I was concerned, I was just there to look at the print for signs of forgery.
00:41:50:20 - 00:42:12:22
Speaker
But all of the lawyers, the prosecutor, the defense attorneys had all left the room. So, I reached over that stack of papers, and I saw a folder that was charted fingerprint enlargements. And I open that folder and I just looked at it and was like, Holy cow, back off. They've got 16 points charted on this, but it's not the same print.
00:42:12:24 - 00:42:40:25
Speaker
And you just shake your head and like, what am I doing wrong? Because four senior examiners at the Scottish Criminal Records Office, it identified and verified that print is coming from Shirley McGee. And I shook my head again, no, that can't be. And the more I looked at it, the more convinced I was that that I was right.
00:42:40:27 - 00:43:07:09
Speaker
I got extra copies of the late in print. I told the lawyer I wanted to fingerprint Shirley McKee myself, but I did not want to talk to her. I did not want any communication with her or her parents or anybody else. I wanted simply to take my own prints from her to ensure that those were actually the ink prints that were on the chart.
00:43:07:11 - 00:43:39:23
Speaker
I knew the latent print was the latent print that was on the chart because I'd seen it on the door frame myself. And so, I fingerprinted her, gosh, hundreds of times and mostly focusing on the fingerprint that they had identified to her. And I took that print on different cards, stock, different paper stock, trying to duplicate as closely as possible the direction and pressure of touch of the latent so that I was as much as possible.
00:43:39:23 - 00:44:08:04
Speaker
I was comparing like to like for direction and pressure of touch, and it was clearly no way that that was her print. So, when I went back over to Edinburgh where we were staying that night, I had prepared some with copies, with good photographic copies of the latent, good photographic copies of the ink print and extra sets of those chart enlargements, and I put them in envelopes and sealed them.
00:44:08:04 - 00:44:30:23
Speaker
And when we met for dinner with Dave Greve and David Ashmore, I asked them if they could do me a favor and look at some fingerprints. Well, they knew I'd been to Glasgow to look at a fingerprint forgery case, so that's what they thought they were going to see. And I handed them each an envelope and I said, open this later in your room and have a look at it and meet with the attorney.
00:44:30:26 - 00:45:03:03
Speaker
Was his name was Findlay. If Mr. Findlay. Anyway, but I don't want to talk to you about the case. You just look at those prints and meet with the lawyer friendly and tell him what you think. And Dave, David Ashmore realized quickly that he could not get involved in the case because the RCMP had a strict prohibition against that type of involvement in an outside case.
00:45:03:05 - 00:45:28:10
Speaker
But Dave Grieve looked at the prints and met with the attorney, and he and I never talked about the case until after the trial. And when the attorney asked Dave what did Mr. Wertheim tell you about the case? David said nothing and finally raised his eyebrows and said, well, he must have told you something. In the end, they agreed, shook his head and said, no.
00:45:28:13 - 00:45:47:13
Speaker
He gave me an envelope with his prints in them and asked me to look at them and talk to you. And the lawyer says, well, what can you tell me about the prints? And David, I can kill you. Two things. Number one, that latent fingerprint on the door frame is not forged. And number two, it was not made by Shirley McGee.
00:45:47:15 - 00:46:29:25
Speaker
So up until that point, even the lawyer disbelieves Shirley McGee, because in over 100 years of fingerprints in the United Kingdom, there had never been an erroneous identification reported up to a court like that. Well, it turns out that David Astbury was convicted of the murder of Marion Ross and Shirley then had been arrested for perjury. She was an investigator with Strathclyde police, but she had testified she'd never been inside the house and so after Astbury trial, they arrested her for perjury, had nothing to do with the murder.
00:46:29:25 - 00:47:02:23
Speaker
It had to do with the testimony. She'd given it as very strong. Astbury was convicted. So, then his attorney contacted me and asked me to look at the fingerprint that convicted him. And that was a fingerprint on a sweets tin, kind of little fancy decorative pin that you get candy in at Christmas. And it had Mary and Ross's fingerprint on it, but it was in his closet in his apartment with a couple of thousand pounds of cash in it, a pound being the unit of currency in England.
00:47:02:25 - 00:47:35:01
Speaker
And so, I said, sure, I'll look at it. And they sent it to me and oh my God, it's an erroneous identification also. So Astbury had already served seven years in prison. He was released and his conviction was quashed after that because without that print they had no case. The murder of Marion Ross has never been caught. But there were two fingerprints on one case that were erroneous identifications, and that just blew me away.
00:47:35:04 - 00:47:59:03
Speaker
That was one of the big cases that I was involved in. So, when you looked at these prints, it would have had would it have been clear to even a not as experienced examiner that there was an issue here, or were these, like more complicated? They were similar. But, you know, after, you know, some investigation, you're like, yeah, I don't think they're the same.
00:47:59:03 - 00:48:29:15
Speaker
But, you know, or was it fairly clear to you or should have been clear to most people that there was a difference there? There was a five-point target group that on first glance could have appeared the same in the latent print and the ink print. But once you went beyond those five points, there was absolutely nothing except discrepancies.
00:48:29:17 - 00:49:01:06
Speaker
But you see, Shirley, Mickey was a police investigator, and she actually was working on that case. And I think what happened is after they were doing after they had begun doing their eliminations, that is people with legitimate access to the scene, her prints were included, but she was the one that had discovered the sweets ten and David Astbury, his closet and her prints were included for elimination purposes against the fingerprints on that.
00:49:01:08 - 00:49:28:00
Speaker
That little can the cash, was it? Well, it turns out, of course, that that was not Mary and Ross was Cash. David Astbury had been saving up his cash to buy a car and his whole family knew about it. And that sweet stand was one he had received for Christmas years earlier. But nonetheless, Shirley McGee's prints were compared to the fingerprints on the sweets stamp.
00:49:28:02 - 00:49:51:21
Speaker
But the Scottish Criminal Records office, who were doing the comparison was different from the Strathclyde Police and the Scottish Criminal Records Office did not know that that was the only thing they were supposed to compare her prints to. So, they compared her fingerprints to everything. And I think they saw that little five-point target group in the late in print and saw a close correspondence with five points on her fingerprints.
00:49:51:21 - 00:50:12:22
Speaker
Oh, well, she's a detective. She's supposed to be there in a way. Yeah, that's her print. I learned later that some of the examiners at the Scottish Criminal Records Office that were showing that print had refused to verify it, and the original officer who'd made the identification had to shop around so he could get the required three verifications.
00:50:12:25 - 00:50:36:28
Speaker
And then it turns out that one of those other three had had forged the signatures of the other two on the paperwork. So, it was just a whole bizarre, I guess the current phrase would be a perfect storm of things gone wrong. Wow. There's a question here I have from Jason Keller. And it's an interesting question. And that was the Shirley.
00:50:36:28 - 00:51:00:12
Speaker
Mickey was this is early 2000s we're talking rate or mid twenties is it around that time. Yeah. Okay And then so how did the NHS report of 2009, did it have a very large impact on fingerprint identification or. No, I think it did. Now if you really look at the Nash report, Nash never said the fingerprints were not reliable.
00:51:00:14 - 00:51:23:22
Speaker
Now, there was a lot of the critics, the fingerprints quoted in the Nash report, and when the Nash report gets thrown at a fingerprint expert in court, the defense will usually quote one of those critics and say that this was in the Nash report. And that's not that's the critics being quoted in the Nash report. It's not the conclusion of the Nash report itself.
00:51:23:27 - 00:52:02:18
Speaker
But here's where the Nash report was valuable. The Nash report said that more testing and validation studies are needed because even though fingerprints have a history of over a hundred years, there have never been the stringent validation studies done. As with other scientists or other sciences. And so, I think the NASH report was extremely valuable because it pried loose grant funding for the kind of studies that the critics were saying we needed to do.
00:52:02:21 - 00:52:43:08
Speaker
Okay. Okay. You also have worked on cases where evidence has been fabricated. So, can you talk to me about some of those ones? I mean, they're not as common, but they are super interesting, though. Oh, I think they're far more common than most people realize. Really? Oh, yeah. I wrote an article well, some years ago for the Defense attorneys’ publication, The Champion, in which I said, forget about erroneous identification and focus on late in print fabric patient.
00:52:43:10 - 00:53:17:08
Speaker
Look at whether the fingerprints are legitimately from the surface where the police officers say they came from, for example, San Diego, that was the single most prolific fabricator of evidence that I found in my research. Herm Wiggins was a San Diego cop back in the seventies. He was proven to have fabricated over 40 cases. Jim Roberts, who did the investigation on that, claimed that Wiggins had fabricated over 70 cases.
00:53:17:11 - 00:53:39:13
Speaker
And what Wiggins would do is he would see a homeless person or a drunk somewhere and say and pull over a squad car. He was a patrol officer and say, hey, I need to talk to you. Come here, but I've got to pat you down for weapons first. Put your hands on the hood of my car and the guy would put his hands on the fender of the hood of Wiggins, a squad car, and Wiggins would pat him down.
00:53:39:15 - 00:53:58:20
Speaker
Wiggins would give his name and date of birth and all the information. And then he'd let the guy go and he'd drive off a few blocks. Then Wiggins would get out of his squad car and fingerprint the hood of his car where the guy touched, and he would take those lift cards with him to his next crime scene.
00:53:58:23 - 00:54:16:14
Speaker
And then in some of them, he even got a victim of, for example, a burglary to sign the card so that they could testify in court. They had seen him lift it. And he would do that by lifting cards. And then as soon as they turned their back, he'd pull one of those fake cards out of his pocket and slip it in there.
00:54:16:16 - 00:54:52:27
Speaker
And so that was a seven some odd cases by one guy, over 40 of them, that he pled guilty to the New York State Police. Was it troop? No, the trooper escapes me now in the eighties and early nineties, you were fabricating evidence on a wholesale basis. The I think six officers were finally convicted in that case. I believe it was 11 of them that were suspected and where some of the senior officers were coaching the newer detectives on how to fabricate evidence.
00:54:52:27 - 00:55:26:26
Speaker
So, for example, they might go by the suspect's apartment on garbage day, pickups, garbage, take it to lab process with her fingerprints, develop a few good fingerprints, and then substitute to those in the crime scene prints that they got. The one that blew that case apart was the Shirley King case. And her name was clean sheet. They fabricated fingerprint evidence on her to prove her took to tie her into a murder that she had not participated.
00:55:26:26 - 00:55:48:28
Speaker
Her son had committed murder, and she had used the stolen credit cards that her son gave her. But she had not participated in the murder. But nonetheless, she was convicted as being part of the murder scene itself. And interestingly, that case exploded when one of the New York state troopers, David Harding, had applied for a job with the CIA.
00:55:48:28 - 00:56:11:06
Speaker
And they had asked him, if we hire you and send you undercover into another country, we may ask you to break the laws of that country for our greater good. Could you go into another country and break the laws knowing that you'd get in trouble if you got caught, but that we needed you to do that for the greater good of society?
00:56:11:06 - 00:56:26:21
Speaker
And he saw you can do that. They said, well, how do we know you can do that? How do we know you can be the good soldier? And he said, Because I do that all the time. And they said, Tell us about that. And it turns out that that was not exactly the kind of person they were looking at.
00:56:26:23 - 00:56:53:09
Speaker
And so, they reported that to the New York state attorney general. And he opened an investigation that just exploded the whole thing. But it had been going on for years. It's just crazy. And when I was doing fabrication research back in the early nineties, the number of cases of fabricated fingerprint evidence just blew me away. When I did my first presentation at the IEEE, the conference that you'll be going through later this summer.
00:56:53:12 - 00:57:21:27
Speaker
When I did my first presentation at that conference, I had about 130 people in the room when I was talking about fabricated fingerprints and on the spur of the moment, I had no poor planning to do this. I asked how many of you in this room have actually seen fabricated fingerprint evidence? I don't mean you've heard rumors of it, but I mean, you've actually held a fabricated fingerprint lift or photograph yourself that was submitted to your laboratory for identification.
00:57:21:29 - 00:57:52:23
Speaker
And about a fourth of the hands in the room went up. Wow, that's crazy. Oh, it's just insane. I don't know if the problem is still that bad. I mean, that was back in the early nineties, and we've come 30 years since then, but it's going on. It's still going on accreditation and, removal of the fingerprint people from the sworn position to the civilian position, I think has changed a lot of that.
00:57:52:25 - 00:58:12:23
Speaker
But I'm I would I'm sure it's still going on out there. How I mean, you've testified on hundreds of cases, and we spoke before and, like you mentioned, you said at the very beginning of your career when you started testifying, you didn't record what you were. I mean, you didn't you know, you maybe went, I don't know, once a week or I don't even know how often or how frequent was.
00:58:12:23 - 00:58:39:20
Speaker
But you didn't record it. Even so, there could be, Lord knows, how many cases you actually testified on. How have you changed as an expert on the stand over the years, like from when you started to today? Just becoming comfortable like any bulbs out there? Oh, don't worry about it. Like any new witness, the first few times I testified, I was scared.
00:58:39:20 - 00:59:21:00
Speaker
Absolutely. To death. I mean, it's public speaking. And most researchers will tell you that fear of public speaking is stronger than fear of death for most people. And so, the first time you get on the witness stand, you're scared absolutely. To death. But it's a skill like any other skill that you develop through practice. And I've changed to the point now that I'm disappointed if a defense attorney doesn't come after me, I want a very aggressive, very adversarial defense attorney to come after me because I know how to testify.
00:59:21:00 - 00:59:43:28
Speaker
I, I know that the longer he keeps me on the stand, the better I can explain what I do to the jury. So, I've changed in that way. Yeah. And I'm wondering if, you know, because you were working with the police, obviously you're doing a lot more prosecution cases, but you do defense cases now as well, right?
00:59:43:28 - 01:00:12:25
Speaker
So, you do a mix. And so, I've worked as a consultant for prosecution and as a consultant for defense in I yeah, you're right. I do both. Yeah. And you had you had you had written a post about some tactics that defense attorneys will, you know, will do or whatever. And there was one there's one in particular that you mentioned that he would, you know, he would try to he tries to rattle the witness before they got up on the stand.
01:00:12:25 - 01:00:40:21
Speaker
And in some cases, it worked. Oh, yeah. That was Bob Hersh, brilliant defense attorney down in Southern Arizona, well, out of Phenix, I guess. In fact, he was the chief public defender in Maricopa County for a long time. But one of Bob's tactics that we'd heard about in the crime lab was he would if you were he would ask for a recess, a short recess just before the strongest witness was about to go on.
01:00:40:24 - 01:01:06:17
Speaker
And then he'd walk out of the room and say something to throw that witness off the game. My partner at the time, a young woman who worked in our crime lab, was going to testify, fingerprint evidence down in Bisbee, and I believe a narcotics case. And the fingerprints on the narcotics would have been the coffin nail, the seal the fate of his client.
01:01:06:17 - 01:01:26:11
Speaker
So just before she was ready to take the stand, she was going to be the next witness. He called for a recess, short recess. And as he walked out of the courtroom, he just glanced at her and he said just very nonchalantly, you shouldn't wear stripes. It makes you look fat. Then he walked on off. Well, she was overweight and.
01:01:26:13 - 01:01:53:28
Speaker
She went off the deep end. The court clerk had to take her back into a witness room. She'd gone. It took her over an hour to calm back down. They had to take other witnesses out of order. And knowing that when I had a case, it involved three different labs that had been taken down and I'd gotten fingerprints out of all three of them.
01:01:54:01 - 01:02:20:19
Speaker
The first two had blown up during processing, not drugs per say, steroid labs, illegal steroids. The first two had blown up during processing. They were in in rental storage units, and I'd gotten beautiful fingerprints out of both of them. The third one that the narcotics investigators took down while he was cooking, and I identified fingerprints on all three.
01:02:20:26 - 01:02:42:10
Speaker
And he had also hired Bob Hersch. And Bob was going to defend him. So, I'm figuring, okay, I'm sitting in the hall getting ready to testify. What's going to happen is the bailiff is going to come out and announce a short recess just before I go on the stand. So, I'll be the next witness and she's going to say something to try to throw me off the game.
01:02:42:10 - 01:03:04:00
Speaker
So, I've got to be dramatic here. So, when the bailiff came out and open the door and said he was preceded, the bailiff was preceded by the witness immediately before me, and the bailiff said, we'll be taking about a five-minute resource recess. I jumped up and ran into the courtroom, made a beeline for Mr. Hirsch with my hand out and grabbed his hand.
01:03:04:00 - 01:03:23:26
Speaker
He saw that he saw me come in with my right hand extended. So, you automatically reach out to shake hands. And he did. And I said, Mr. Hirsch, I've been looking forward to testifying to you. This is such a such an honor, and I can't tell you how eager am to testify for you. And he knitted his branch a Wertheim word that was your brother.
01:03:23:26 - 01:03:46:01
Speaker
That was arrested last week for baby rape in Chicago. And I laughed and I said, Hirsch, it won't work. And I turned my back on him and walked away. And when the prosecutor led me through the direct questions and the prosecutor sit down, Judge looked at Mr. Hirsch and said, do you have any questions of this witness? And I leaned forward and found a smile.
01:03:46:03 - 01:03:49:28
Speaker
And Hirsch stood up, said no questions.
01:03:50:01 - 01:04:30:15
Speaker
But his techniques are they're not unethical in the legal community. The best book written about him was Death of a Jewish American and Princess, and that recounts the story of a husband who stabbed his wife, I think 47 times. They were Jewish. And the defense that Hirsch put on had a whole lot to do with jury selection and Hirsch's techniques for selecting a jury for his behavior in court in order to win the jury.
01:04:30:18 - 01:04:57:06
Speaker
And ultimately, the husband was acquitted of the murder of his wife. The title of the book, again, is Death of a Jewish American Princess. And if you want to read a shocking narrative, it was written by another lawyer, a shocking emotive of how jury selection and jury manipulation can affect the outcome of the case. I'd highly recommend that book.
01:04:57:09 - 01:05:20:05
Speaker
No. Interesting. Well, I think the fact that you have so much experience with testimony is really important that that could be another area, maybe some lessons learned that you could definitely give to some people. You know, for me, I found that when I had started and I'm not sure if you're the same way you want to help write like you want to you want to be hopeful to, you know, the side in your case, the prosecution or whatever.
01:05:20:07 - 01:05:40:25
Speaker
But I just find after a while you're the best. Your duty is really just to give the evidence and try to make it easily easy to understand for the jury. And if it helps the prosecution, great. If it doesn't, great as well. At least they know. You know, and I think that's the important part. I believe you're right, Eugene.
01:05:40:27 - 01:06:11:24
Speaker
Looking back, when I started testifying in the seventies, I think I had the same attitude as you. I want to help. I want I want to help decide to call me to testify. But and I don't know where that paradigm shift occurred during my career, but I can't remember when it occurred either. But I know now I want to give the most accurate information I can to the court, to the judge.
01:06:11:24 - 01:06:40:21
Speaker
If there's a jury, I want to get the most accurate understanding of the evidence I can to the jury, because I don't have the weight of the case on my shoulders. They do. And I don't know all of the other evidence. They do. And nonetheless, I'm aware that not all earnings are equally competent. Not all jurors are unbiased.
01:06:40:24 - 01:07:07:27
Speaker
But if I can just give them the best possible evidence from which to draw their conclusion and the fingerprint evidence may be insignificant in some of the cases I've testified, I wonder why the heck am I even here? The fingerprints don't matter. You know, one murder case. I was called in. I was there to identify fingerprints. I didn't even know they had come.
01:07:08:02 - 01:07:33:27
Speaker
I knew they came from a vehicle. They came from the suspect's vehicle. Well, of course, his fingerprints are going to be on his own vehicle. Why am I here? You know, so I don't know the whole case. I don't know all the facts around the case. I just want to make sure that the jury understands what my evidence is to the best of my ability to explain it.
01:07:33:29 - 01:08:07:18
Speaker
I need to ask you about the Jackson Pollock painting. What? Tell me about that one. That sounds that sounds interesting. When I was doing my research into forgery and fabrication in the early nineties, there were, oh, several times more articles on fingerprint forgery than there were on fabrication, but they were all hypothetical articles, whereas the articles on fingerprint fabrication were all real cases.
01:08:07:20 - 01:08:34:27
Speaker
And in doing my research, I experimented with all of the different methods of fabrication and all of the different methods of forgery to try to learn as best I could how to detect them and in forgery. In all of the hypothetical articles, there were three methods of forgery that were discussed, and there were different clues for each of the methods of forgery.
01:08:34:29 - 01:09:01:25
Speaker
And one of the methods was a mold test method where you would take a mold of a person's fingerprint in a soft subject, a soft substance, like I used beeswax, warm it up and press a finger in it. And then I used Microscale, which is a latex rubber type of material that you can mix it and then spread it into the surface and let it harden and then peel it out.
01:09:01:25 - 01:09:28:24
Speaker
And you've got a rubbery fingerprint. And I had made numerous micro-scale casts of my fingerprints and experimented on different surfaces with those fingerprints. And I learned a number of clues that will show up that I could not get rid of, no matter how carefully I tried. And these were clues that would not show up in real fingerprints, but only in forged fingerprints.
01:09:28:26 - 01:09:58:05
Speaker
And so, I had just blown that off as purely hypothetical. Well, then in about 2007, I believe, I was asked to look at a painting owned by a man named Ken Parker up in Long Island. And it was a tribute painting. A tribute meaning that it was a copy of the style of Jackson Pollock, and it had some water damage on it from sitting in a storage room.
01:09:58:05 - 01:10:28:01
Speaker
And he had sent it to an art restorer in Montreal by the name of Peter Paul Buro to get it restored. Well, Bureau sent back, announced it was a Jackson Pollock, an original worth a probably a brown $100 million. And he had authenticated it through fingerprints on the painting itself. And Ken Parker didn't believe that because he knew the history of the painting.
01:10:28:03 - 01:10:56:06
Speaker
And he contacted a woman who specialized in art authentication, and she hired Tom Handley, who was a police chief in Vermont. And Tom mentioned my name, so she hired me also. And Tom and I worked on that case. We went to Jackson Pollock studio up in the Hamptons, and in searching his studio, I found a paint can. It was a blue devil paint.
01:10:56:06 - 01:11:42:24
Speaker
Can that Jackson Pollock and Jackson Pollock, for those who don't know, used house oil-based house paints. And he would stretch a huge canvas drop cloth on the floor and then spatter paint and pour paint, splash paint and just it looked like a used drop cloth that some painter used, but extremely expensive. Anyway, in one of these cases, the blue devil paint can had paint running down the side of the can that had started to harden and it had a fingerprint right near the top of the key and impressed in the paint three dimensional Will Pollock was killed in, I believe, 1956 in a car crash and.
01:11:42:27 - 01:12:13:01
Speaker
Tom and I were up there in his studio, which is now the Pollock Krasner Museum. And so, we were there in 2007, I believe, 56. So that's, what, 50 years after his death? Mm hmm. Now, I'd seen pictures of Pollock. He was right-handed, and he would hold a paint can in his left hand and stick a big paintbrush in it, then just spatter the paint with that paint brush all over all over the canvas.
01:12:13:03 - 01:12:40:12
Speaker
And so, I had that finger impressed in the paint. So, Tom had brought some microfilm, so we took a microfilm cast of that and made some prints from that microfilm cast. And we asked the curator of the museum had Peter Paul Bureau ever visited there? She said, yes, we had. And we asked was he left alone in the studio?
01:12:40:12 - 01:13:01:27
Speaker
And she said, no, no, he was not. Wait a minute. She says, let me correct it because I got a phone call and I had to leave him here for about 15 minutes and then I came back. But other than that, he was never alone. And so, he had been alone in the studio for about 15 minutes. And so, he had the opportunity to have cast that.
01:13:01:29 - 01:13:52:00
Speaker
As for his motive, he was going to authenticate this painting, and he had an elaborate art business scheme drawn up with another associate of his, and they were going to borrow money from the sale of this painting. When Parker sold it, they were going to borrow money to expand their own art authentication business, as I understood the business model anyway, when I looked at those prints on that painting in Ken Parker's home up on Long Island, every single clue to a forgery that I had learned during my research 25 years earlier was there.
01:13:52:07 - 01:14:30:14
Speaker
Wow, that's amazing. And there's some great articles on it. David Graham, grandson of The New Yorker, did an amazing article for The New Yorker. And if you Google Wertheim and Bureau Oporto and Graham Gray and you will get some hits on that case. One is The New Yorker article, which is 16,000 words long, unbelievably long for a magazine article, but so detailed.
01:14:30:17 - 01:14:55:25
Speaker
And then David Grann also did video piece for YouTube where he's recorded talking about the case and showing a part of it there. So, if you Google bureau, Wertheim and Graham together, that will take you straight to some of those articles on that case. I have a little bit of experience with my crystal and fingerprints for a different study, actually.
01:14:55:25 - 01:15:16:24
Speaker
So, in my head, I'm thinking about some of the things that can happen. Like you have these little, tiny voids, you have little bubbles. Sometimes you have these inclusions are these the kinds of things you're talking about. Exactly. The little, tiny bubbles. If you're not paying close attention, you might be mistaken for sweat pores. But when you look at them closely, you realize, whoa, wait a minute, this is not a normal sweat pour.
01:15:16:24 - 01:15:43:12
Speaker
It's too big to be a sweat pore. Also, the normal shape of a fingerprint on a flat surface is going to be elliptical or circular in some way. But when you try to forge a print, you can't get a little rubber stamp to make it exactly the same shape it would be with a fingerprint on a flat surface.
01:15:43:15 - 01:16:11:08
Speaker
I also commented even in my article back in the early nineties that no two fingerprints will ever be exact overlays of each other. That just doesn't happen because the finger will touch it. A different angle, a different direction, a different pressure. And when you find two fingerprints that are exactly overlays of each other, that's extremely suspicious. Well, on the back of that painting, we had four fingerprints that were exactly overlays of each other.
01:16:11:11 - 01:16:36:20
Speaker
They had the scalloped uneven shape that I would expect from a rubber stamp, but not from a genuine touch. They had the little bubbles that you referred to in the ridges. There was no doubt in my mind that they were forged. Wow, that's amazing. I'm totally taking advantage of your time here, but I'll move on here. So, the question is, you are working on some research right now with some people.
01:16:36:20 - 01:16:56:23
Speaker
And I mean, you know, you're retired, quote unquote. One of those retired buds keeping really busy. So, what's next for Pat? Like what do you what are you working on and what where do you see yourself going in the near future? Well, I'm still teaching, but it fatigues me. I'm 75 years old and I'm fighting cancer.
01:16:56:25 - 01:17:35:23
Speaker
So, teaching fatigues me with the medications on in my last full class will be in Clearwater, Florida, if anybody's interested. It's on tri tech training dot com. A link to that class. I'm doing research and I'm doing two more conferences. I'm doing the NSA Users Group conference in August in Chicago, and I'll be doing the joint Conference of the North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia Divisions of the IEEE in Cherokee, North Carolina in October.
01:17:35:25 - 01:18:08:05
Speaker
And after that, I think I'm just going to retire and go fishing. I still do a few defense cases. I've got several active defense cases on my on my desk here right now. And the research project I'm currently working on is with David Stoney and Christoph Ocampo. And it has to do with fingerprints on fired cartridge cases that are not suitable for identification under the old paradigm.
01:18:08:13 - 01:18:45:00
Speaker
Aha. There you go. Let's see. No, that's not its role. So further down of foundational fingerprint analysis, let's see. It's early August, but here it is. There it is. Yeah. Foundational friction range comparison. Clearwater, Florida. And there are still some spaces left in that class if anybody wants to come. The class is about 50% lecture and 50% actual comparison of fingerprints using the techniques that I teach in the lecture.
01:18:45:02 - 01:19:23:11
Speaker
So, and it's weighted the final grade is weighted about 60% towards the practical exercises, in other words, skills in about 40% towards the lecture or knowledge. There are still spaces available in that class, and that may well be the last time I actually teach a full 40-hour week. Okay, No. Yes. And in the case, I'm working on right now with David Stoney on fired cartridge cases is we're taking fingerprints that have been developed on fire cartridge cases.
01:19:23:13 - 01:20:00:12
Speaker
So far, I've looked at all my several hundred and we will probably look at over a thousand before I'm through and I do the subject matter expert analysis and selection of points for comparison. And those that have three or more points of comparison will be analyzed using Christophe Campos. Christophe is the director of the Forensics in Lausanne, Switzerland, at the University of Lausanne.
01:20:00:14 - 01:20:48:13
Speaker
They'll be analyzed using his software pianos for nine Capital P, Little I capital, a little and little old. Capital S for piano. Sure. And that's stands for Rome. I forget the acronym. I can't remember all the acronyms. Nonetheless, it's a software program that calculates a likelihood. Now, the question that David Stony wants to ask on this project is, is there any information that we could derive from a lesser number of points than is required for a four-way identification?
01:20:48:15 - 01:21:23:22
Speaker
Is there any information that we could give the jury as far as more likely made by him than some other person in the general population? Now, I'm not a big fan of qualified IDs or likelihood ratios, but nonetheless, I can see that that is important research, even if I don't think it is something we should be doing. I can see that if I can help with a research project that proves we should be doing it, or likewise proves we shouldn't be doing it.
01:21:23:22 - 01:22:11:23
Speaker
Either way, I'm eager to help with that research. So, I'm working through all of these latent prints and plotting the points in P.A. for that I would use as a latent print examiner. And then David Stony and Christoph Shampoo and others that work with Christoph. Marco, I forget Marco's last name. I'm sorry, Marco. They will be doing the statistical analysis based on the points that I have plotted to determine if they can come up with some way of providing any kind of likelihood that might be of benefit to the court or the trier of fact on fired shell casings.
01:22:11:25 - 01:22:28:27
Speaker
Okay. Well, I and I know I mean, that's Christoph has been doing this sort of thing with likelihood ratios and statistics and all this sort of thing for a very long time. I know Glenn Langenberg has been talking about it as well. So there seems to be a big move into this area, not just in fingerprints, but in many areas.
01:22:28:29 - 01:23:05:22
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Glenn and I interestingly did a mock trial sort of thing in California in May at the California Division conference, where we had a couple of hours on the program. And he was a fingerprint witness. And one of the other fingerprint experts there took going through the prosecution, presenting a qualified conclusion of its probable his fingerprint. But there's not strong enough support for a full ID And then I played the part of the defense attorney trying to tear apart his qualified conclusion.
01:23:05:22 - 01:23:26:00
Speaker
And Glenn's very, very good. And that's the direction we're going. Yeah, I think so. Let me I'm going to put your this is your LinkedIn profile, and I'd like people to feel free to, you know, just reach out to Pat and connect. He's got like I can already see you got six K followers here. You're like, very well connected.
01:23:26:00 - 01:23:45:26
Speaker
And look, Pat, I just want to say thank you. Just great information. I'm sorry we went a little bit over, but, you know, just really interesting cases, a lot of great, great feedback, a lot of lessons learned. And I'm sure we could easily do more. And I hope they invite you back in the future, so you don't have to apologize to me, Jane.
01:23:45:26 - 01:24:08:20
Speaker
I just hope we have I've got all afternoon right. I hope that the attendees or the viewers were able to stay with us. And I would encourage anybody out there who would like to connect with me or follow me on LinkedIn. Pat Wertheim and I post every Monday morning some interesting case. I work some of my trivial. The one this week was just funny.
01:24:08:26 - 01:24:35:27
Speaker
It was just a little comedy, but some of it is serious philosophy, some of its historical perspective, some of it and some of the case studies are tragic cases. I've about cases, some of them like Marianne Holmes case or some of the others that are major cases. So, Monday mornings I post connect with me or follow me on LinkedIn and I'd love to see you there too.
01:24:36:00 - 01:24:41:16
Speaker
Excellent. Pat, hang back for a bit. I'm going to just say closing remarks here and then I'll hook up with you in a minute.
01:24:41:16 - 01:24:42:21
Speaker
Good. Thank you.
01:24:42:21 - 01:24:45:27
Speaker
Anyway, I want to wish you all a very happy Thursday
01:24:45:27 - 01:24:49:11
Speaker
at some point. We'll be back and see you next time. Bye.