Crime Scene Investigator Network Newsletter

In years past, depending on the degree of friction ridge damage, identifying an extremely burned, decomposed, or mummified body could take several days or even weeks to accomplish, if at all. The condition of the victim’s fingers would not allow for the standard fingerprinting techniques (e.g., ink, photography, or tape-lift methods) to be successfully employed. Usually in these cases, the victim’s fingers or hands would need to be removed from the body and taken to the lab. At the lab, the fingers or palms would be rehydrated by a variety of chemical soaking techniques to return the skin tissue to a pliable, soft condition. After conditioning of the fingers, the ridges would then be recorded using ink, photography, or a fingerprint powder lifting technique. This process was time-consuming, delicate, created a chemical and biological hazard, and mutilated the body.

On occasion, prior to the removal of the fingers or hands, recording of the fingerprint ridges would first be tried by using a black fingerprint powder tape-lifting technique. This was accomplished by placing a layer of black latent fingerprint powder on the victim’s hands or fingers with a fingerprint brush, lifting the impressions with standard latent fingerprint lifting tape, then placing the lift tape containing the fingerprint impression onto a clear sheet of plastic acetate. The clear plastic acetate sheets helped to retain the orientation of the fingerprint impression when the fingerprint was viewed through the plastic acetate side. This would only work on the f lat areas of the fingers or palms. Creased, wrinkled, or shriveled areas of the finger or palm would be difficult to record. As an improvement to the tape-lifting technique, large (8" x 8") white, slightly elastic, adhesive lifters (Kinderprint Handiprint Hand Print System) were used and provided excellent results for several years. However, in cases when the fingers and palms had shriveled and hardened, obtaining a complete major case set of fingerprints was difficult with any of the powder lifting techniques.

Mikrosil has been used for tool mark impressions and molded (plastic) fingerprint impressions for years and it has been used for lifting powdered prints from rough-textured surfaces. Mikrosil has even been used to recover latent prints from dead bodies. According to the developer (Kjell Carlsson), one of Mikrosil’s original purposes was for postmortem applications. He also suggested that oblique lighting would yield greater contrast than using the cast or the cast and powder techniques. In 1983, the use of Mikrosil casting material to cast the fingers of the deceased was described, but it has not been commonly implemented.

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