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Printing Decomps
Livescan and digital ngerprint systems streamline identifying the deceased

From the June 2006 Issue

By Ronnie Garrett Ofcials in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, had a problem. A man's water-logged body had been located in a West Palm Beach canal. Because it had been underwater for several days, the body had "degloved," meaning its epidermis had sloughed off. Without this outer layer of skin, ngerprinting John Doe was next to impossible. "One arm had been bitten off by an alligator, so we only had one hand to work with," recalls chief investigator Harold Ruslander of the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Ofce. "The body was decomposed beyond recognition, so there was no way of making a photo ID, and we didn't have any leads to even start looking for dental records." But ofcials knew the ngerprints remained intact - they could see them. "We observed ridge detail, but when we tried to ink and roll them, all we got was a big black smudge," he recalls. Ruslander and Dawn Watkins, a crime scene investigator with the Palm Beach Gardens Sheriff's Ofce, were not about to let a few obstacles stand in their way. The duo summoned CrossMatch Technologies of Palm Beach Gardens to assist

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in making the ID. This manufacturer of livescan ngerprint systems supplied two experts and a 10-ngerprint digital livescan system with a ngerprint ridge-enhancing silicone pad covering the platen to help ngerprint the one-armed corpse. "The body wasn't going to withstand very many roll attempts before it broke down - the pressure would cause the ridge detail to collapse," recalls Robert Christensen, vice president of CrossMatch's Federal Business Development unit, who helped Palm Beach Gardens' ofcials make a positive ID. "With ink, this [identication] wouldn't have been possible," emphasizes the veteran ngerprint examiner with more than 23 years experience. "Numerous rolls would have deteriorated the nger so badly that we would have never gotten any prints." With this case, Palm Beach Gardens' ofcials joined the ranks of a growing number of professionals using digital prints to identify the deceased. The limitations of ink In many cases, human remains are available for examination soon after death. In these situations, ngerprint identication is relatively simple, even when using the standard procedure of black printer's ink and postmortem identication cards. When a body is burned, bloated or badly decomposed, however, this process becomes more complicated, and a lot of times "the ink and card stock method just doesn't work," says Ruslander. Inking corpses is different than rolling the ngerprints of a living person, he explains. With the living, an ink plate is used when the examiner rolls the individual's ngers onto the card. However, examiners employ the spoon method to obtain a corpse's prints. In this technique, the examiner uses a small at plate, approximately 1 inches by 1 inches in size, with a handle on it. First he spreads ink on it with a small roller, then rolls the spoon around the nger to apply the ink. A second spoon with a piece of paper is then rolled around the nger to get the print on paper. This method works ne - if the ngers are still exible. "The problem is the ngers are not always straight when you nd them, and they are not always in the best shape," says Christensen. "You would be re-inking, over-inking and under-inking, and running into every possible problem you can imagine when rolling." If a corpse's hands are very crippled due to rigor mortis or disease, such as arthritis, things become even more elaborate. Here, examiners must forcibly break the rigor to straighten the ngers for inking. If ngerprinting still proves impossible, examiners then perform what is referred to as a "cut down," otherwise known as "gloving." In this technique, the examiner uses a scalpel to cut around the ngernail to the rst crease then removes the skin from the nger. This skin is left to air dry or may be set with a hardening solution. The examiner then places this skin over his own gloved nger and rolls the ngerprint. "Gloving is very awkward, messy and difcult to do, if you don't know what you're doing," says Christensen. Further complicating matters, the colder temperatures (typically 50 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit) of the morgue make ngerprint ink very viscous, impeding its ow. "We usually microwave it for 30 seconds or so to loosen it up enough to get it on the plate," Ruslander says. Why not digital capture? "If we can livescan corpses, we streamline the process, do away with the cost of the ink, get rid of the ngerprint cards, and eliminate the microwave and the cold temperature issue altogether." Ruslander's team had never attempted to livescan a dead body's ngerprints before. In the past, Ruslander says livescan's large platen hindered the process, especially when the corpse "wasn't being real cooperative." "They might be in rigor already or going into it, depending on the stage," he explains. "So sometimes it's difcult to roll their hand."

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The smaller size of today's livescan systems, such as CrossMatch's Guardian, which is a 6-inch cube that weighs just 4 pounds, simplies this process. Likewise, many manufacturers make handheld ngerprinting systems that capture the image of a single ngerprint, such as NEC Solutions' eld identication unit or Identix's IBIS system. "A single digit reader might offer some utility," admits Ruslander, who notes at times it is necessary to disarticulate the hand or remove the ngers to livescan prints. "Removing the hand allows us to better regulate the pressure when we roll it onto a livescan platen," he explains. Christensen agrees at capture, single-digit systems provide a major benet in that it isn't necessary to separate or break the ngers to retrieve a print. However, because the platen is smaller (approximately 1 inch by 1 inch), it can affect the number of matches received from a query. "The resulting print is approximately 65 percent the surface area of a rolled ngerprint," he explains. Even with such limitations, the Snohomish County (Washington) Medical Examiner's (SCME) Ofce has used NEC's 800-ppi high-resolution eld scanner with much success. The tool, approximately the size of a hockey puck, allows capture of single-nger, forensic-quality images which are stored locally on a NEC Versa LitePad tablet PC equipped with NEC Image Capture Software. The ofce uses this system to collect a right thumb and index print from all decedents in the morgue and store the images with the electronic case le. "Our ability to make identications and the speed at which they are completed has been greatly enhanced with this system," says Dr. Norman Thiersch, SCME medical examiner. "[Digital] ngerprint technology is often a very expedient, low-cost way to positively identify the deceased." At a homicide scene or at the location where an unidentied body is found, ofcials can gather prints before a doctor repositions the body, says SCME master investigator Dennis Trettel. He adds that the main idea behind the SCME's purchase of the two NEC systems was to use the systems in the eld at a mass disaster or homicide scene. "We scan in the ngerprint at the scene, and if ID is in question, we e-mail the images to our identication unit from the eld," he says. "If there's not an immediate time issue, we don't submit the prints until we get back to the ofce to save our air card time." Since employing this system in May 2005, the SCME has collected 421 sets of digital prints. Of that number, 43 positive identications were made from collected images that were compared with the 1.2 million-record Washington State Patrol AFIS database via the Snohomish County Sheriff's Department's remote site. Snohomish County identication specialists Mellanie Semler and Marcia Frantzen query this database, but if there's no match on le, then Trettel contacts the FBI directly and e-mails the prints to them with a written request. He'll even contact military databases if necessary. "We had the body of a vet who was decomp'd pretty good and we made a positive ID off our digital image with ngerprints taken in 1964 when he was in Vietnam," he recalls. Benets of digital printing When inking a print, examiners are never completely sure whether the print will be usable until they nish the process. Livescan, however, makes it possible to see what you're doing right away, says Christensen. "When you roll the nger onto the platen, you can see it in real time on a screen as you are doing it," he says. "If you press too hard or not hard enough, don't roll wide enough or the nger needs some type of adjunct assistance (if it is too dry or too wet), you receive instantaneous feedback." In the case of a ngerprint capture system, such as NEC's, when a body is located, ofcials capture the prints with the handheld device and load it on to the tablet PC. Ofcers enter demographic information such as where the body was found, time and date, and case number of the incident. Once back at the ofce, ofcials load the images on the department server and a latent examiner selects the images and submits them to various databases. Fingerprints can be wirelessly transmitted to a variety of databases including NCIC, INS, AFIS, FBI and other local databases. "You can do a pretty large broadcast to regional, national and international databases," Christensen notes. "You try to go to local law enforcement databases rst, hoping to nd a record somewhere, and then move to the state

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and federal ones." The rapid feedback this process provides also is a plus, says Trettel. Snohomish County's system has reduced the time frame from collection of ngerprint images to positive ID from days to hours by providing SCME with a scientic means of positive identication. According to Trettel, the time from image collection to receiving a positive identication averages 4 to 6 hours, but there are occasions where identication takes just 60 to 90 minutes. "With the old way, we would roll the ngerprints, then physically take the card from our ofce to the ID Unit where they would scan it in and run a comparison search," he says. "That process would take 24 to 36 hours, even longer if it was the weekend." "This is quick identication at a low cost," agrees Kelly Gallager, NEC director of marketing and business solutions. "DNA and dental records require departments to bring in professionals to make the identication, which can be very costly and time consuming. And, with DNA or dental records, you need a subject in mind in order to make one-to-one comparisons. With the ngerprint, you don't have to know who the individual is because you can do one-to-many searches against several databases." While results of a ngerprint search will be known fairly quickly, true success hinges on the prints within the queried database. Unless a subject worked in a profession, such as teaching, that collects prints during the hiring process, or was arrested for a crime, his prints may not be in the database. But even without a match, the query may help pare down the list of possibilities to allow for a DNA, medical or dental records search. "In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, for instance, the ngerprint was just one identication method used," says Christensen, who worked in the New Orleans DMORT after the storm. "You photograph, you do X-rays, and you do dental plates. You capture multiple biometrics." Building blocks to success The key to capturing quality digital ngerprints is the condition of the ngerprint ridges. Care should be taken to ensure the ngers are clean and dry before capture. "You want the hands to be washed and dried," Ruslander emphasizes. "When a body is decomposing, you have an added slipperiness to the skin, but alcohol pads will clean that off so you can get a nice roll without slipping." Christensen recommends washing the digits with soap and water and drying thoroughly. If the hands are extremely dry, he suggests using triple Lanolin Aloe Vera lotion, which doesn't saturate or over-penetrate the skin. "The last thing you want to do is introduce oil, because when you put it on a nger and roll it against glass, it will want to slide," he explains. "This is called a smear, and smeared prints are the largest cause of rejected ngerprints." With bloated ngers, ofcials should dry them as best they can and use alcohol wipes to dry them further. Burn victims complicate the livescan process because in these cases the ngerprint is typically burned away. To obtain a print, examiners must remove the outer layer of skin and try to roll the inner layer. The rst two sections of the nger must be straight to obtain a decent print, Christensen adds. "If someone's ngers are tightly clenched, you may need to break the nger to get it straight, which honestly is a lot easier than when ngerprinting a living person with arthritis," he maintains. In most cases, rigor must be broken, which Christensen describes as basically forcing the nger in the opposite direction until it cracks. (See "Breaking rigor" on Page 25 for instructions on how to do this.) In some cases, Ruslander says it may be feasible to remove the hand. "This allows you to have total control of the hand while rolling a print," he says. Or, as Christensen points out, it may be preferable to remove each nger from the hand one by one. "Then you don't have to worry about trying to rotate the ulna and radius bones," he explains. "You have to go from ngernail to ngernail. To get that kind of rotation, you need full movement." But many times and for many reasons, ofcials may be unwilling to deface the body. As Ruslander notes, keeping the body intact is the way to go whenever possible. "You don't want to go cutting up bodies because citizens often feel it's a

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little above and beyond." In these situations, it may still be possible to roll the print, though the process may be inherently more difcult. Finally, this is messy work and you're dealing with a dead body, so it's critical to keep the livescan or ngerprint capture system clean. Just as living individuals deposit oils emitted from their pores on the platen, dead bodies, which lack natural oils, leave deteriorated skin behind. "When we used the system, we had to make sure we cleaned it very well," Ruslander recalls, "because it had decomposing remains on it." CrossMatch ofcials tried using alcohol pads to scrub the system but found it left streaks behind. They soon discovered packing tape to be a ready solution, says Christensen. The examiner simply applies the tape over the platen, then quickly tears it off. "This pulls the contaminants right off," he says, noting CrossMatch also maintains cleanliness by putting the system in what he describes as "a giant Ziploc bag" then cutting a slot in the bag where the ngerprint platen is located. While no one can predict the future, in the case of digitally printing the deceased, one thing is certain - there will be more of it. For those agencies using livescan and ngerprint capture systems in this way, the benets far outweigh the costs. "It saves time, money and manpower," says Trettel. "We can make IDs on our own, with our own system and our own ID unit." As for Palm Beach Gardens, the next time ofcials have an "unidentied body problem," they now know how to solve it. "We get quite a few decomps down this way," Ruslander says. But with digital ngerprinting, John Doe's identity may no longer be in question.

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