Fingerprints: Four Unusual Historical Cases

By J. Gunnar Grey

A True Crime Shortie of 6,000 words... about the length of a long magazine article

Yeah, they’ve mostly been superceded by DNA lately. But back in the day, there was nothing like a good clear fingerprint to get a law enforcement officer’s blood moving. Here are four true crime fingerprint cases pulled from history.

1. The first crimes solved through fingerprints... includes Francesca Rojas (1892), Harry Jackson (1902), and the Mask Murders (1905). Yeah, three in one.
2. The Question Mark Burglar... an unbelievable case from 1920.
3. When the victim’s fingerprints count the most... the Urschel kidnapping case from 1933.
4. Beyond bizarre... the strange case of cop-killer George Ross (1951).

Old Cases: where forensics meet history

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dingbat Publishing
• Release date: Jun 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781940520124

Book preview

Fingerprints

Four Unusual Historical Cases

A True Crime Shortie

Old Cases: Book 2

J. Gunnar Grey

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 J. Gunnar Grey



Dingbat Publishing

Published in the United States of America 2014 by Dingbat Publishing, Humble, Texas

Fingerprints: Four Unusual Historical Cases, A True Crime Shortie

Old Cases: Book 2

Copyright © 2014 J. Gunnar Grey

ISBN 978-1-940520-12-4

Cover Art by Dingbat Publishing

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Introduction

In 1858, Sir William Herschel was an administrator (chief magistrate) with the British Civil Service in the Hooghly district in Jungippor, India. While there, he made one of the most important discoveries in forensics history.

Sir William was born in Slough as the third child and oldest son of a renowned scientist, Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet, and his wife, Lady Margaret Brodie Stewart, an artist of exquisite talent.

Sir John, Herschel senior, was one of those wide-ranging brainiacs who dominated the scientific expansion of the nineteenth century; at that time they were known as natural philosophers. His explorations and research ranged from astronomy to botany, color blindness to mathematics, chemistry to experimental photography. In 1816, at the age of 24, Herschel