Prints from the phonebooth

[morf13]

It's well known that Z called from a phonebooth in Napa after the Berryessa attack. Napa print people were able to lift a palm print from the phone that was so fresh, it had to be artificially dried. I was looking thru some old emails I got from a Napa Detective handling the case, and just wanted to share what he wrote in reply to me asking if that palm print was in a database someplace.

"Our print folks looked into the phone booth prints while I had it and most appeared to be cutting edge or partial palm but were too smudged to make identification points required for submitting to the data bases. I looked at them and no expert myself but they were not good"

[UKSpycatcher]

It says in the police report latent impressions 1 thru 35 were lifted, but did they ever swab the receiver, just in case. He may have deposited saliva onto the mouthpiece.

[morf13]

It says in the police report latent impressions 1 thru 35 were lifted, but did they ever swab the receiver, just in case. He may have deposited saliva onto the mouthpiece.

I doubt it since they didn't have DNA back then

[UKSpycatcher]

I was thinking that often samples were taken, because in many crimes, although the technology wasn't available back then, forward thinking forensic investigators would have been open to the possibility they could be in the future. Samples in many old crimes were kept with this in mind. And saliva can help with blood typing, antigens and secretors.

[Tahoe27]

I've said it before....those were some sweaty-ass palms or it was steam from the laundry. They didn't find the booth right away so how would it still be so wet from sweat?

[UKSpycatcher]

Plus you would have thought he would have had the common sense to wear gloves.

[Norse]

Z called at 19:40. Narlow was alerted shortly before 20:30 (I'm going on memory here, so correct me if I'm wrong). He then went to the hospital. I'm guessing he sent Snook over to the phone booth no sooner than, say, a little bit after 20:30. Snook arrives there, what? Say an hour after the call was made then - and that could be too liberal.

One hour later - and the print is still dripping wet. That surely is pretty damn odd, isn't it?

Could be completely unrelated - someone who went over to investigate, the phone being off the hook, left the palm print but didn't bother to hang up the phone.

[jroberson]

This was the case where the technician kicked himself for smudging the prints, right?

[Norse]

This was the case where the technician kicked himself for smudging the prints, right?

Yes - he tried to dry them (because they were too wet/fresh for lifting) and then botched the job.

[jroberson]

I was thinking that often samples were taken, because in many crimes, although the technology wasn't available back then, forward thinking forensic investigators would have been open to the possibility they could be in the future. Samples in many old crimes were kept with this in mind. And saliva can help with blood typing, antigens and secretors.

That's true, but how would you the technician separate one antigen, for example, from another, on a phone that's been used by god only knows how many people over the last twenty-four hours? This was before cell phones, of course, so public pay phones were in fair demand.

It's like today where there's a theft inside a public building. The cops don't bother capturing fingerprints unless the theft's location is restricted to a select group of individuals.