let's do the forensic lady some credit!

reading up in the topic about the summary of goncalo amaral his first book today, again i see even he was not shy to bring in a myth into the world, one the press also used against this investigation.

this is that topic; 
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this myth is the one of a forensic lady, that did take fingerprints of the outside of the shutters, and did that not suited up.

well i actually did the courses to become a person that can take fingerprints, one course was about taking the fingerprints directly from another person, dead or alive, and the second was all about taking fingerprints from anything in relation to any possible crime. in the same time we got lectured about palmprints, towprints, and other skin prints that could be around. less useful because they are very rarely kept in databases.

the fingerprints have quite a lot of history, the use of it became around in the last decennia of the 18 hundreds, it is thanks to sir francis galton and probably the people who worked at that time with him, that they started to be used in solving crimes. the usa had to wait some years longer, it is written that the first case that accepted fingerprints as evidence in a court of law was in 1910 or 1911. 

and actually very little is changed in the how to take fingerprints from a person or object, some nice nerdy people did some good fiddling with better ink and powders, there is a lot of variation in brushes, but in reality fingerprints are just the same things as before. the living or dead donors could by now just be scanned, but the inky way is still very much in use. fingerprinting was also successfully used in many cases, during the hundred years before dna became known as usable thingies, and from that those suits. 

there is a big problem with fingerprints taken from an object. first you have to make them visible and not everyone will assist nicely in diving his fingers in a nice fatty bag of fish and chips before leaving prints behind. 

and then the problem starts, to make them visible you have to be careful, very careful, it is just making or breaking them. you can not put extra lines in it, or contributing extra information that would change the outcome of an investigation, but you can very easily make them unusable. most are not optimal quality, most are missing parts of the complete print, or just messy because they are left moving around. 

(leaving behind false traces, including fingerprints is another thing, but is outside the scope of the courses for the how to do that, only a bit about how it could be done. not very interesting in this case, because we have the forensic lady on pictures and video, so she was not being transplanting false evidence at all.)

it does not matter when you are taking fingerprints of objects and surfaces to use a suit at all, because it make absolutely no difference for the result itself. suits, also known by the public as the dna suits are useful, when it is possible to mix in your very own bodily fluids and relics on a crime scene, except in 2007 there was no science available to tell those components you can leave behind as a human could have any influence at all on a fingerprint.

so the real world of the people that have to take fingerprints from objects, surfaces and people, dead or alive, need no suit, you only want to wear clothing that would not be in the way of your fine touch and that would not be in the way of your object of surface. such a suit is handy and needed if you have to do other work at that place, but in this case, the outside of that shutter was closed off, and the work was done the next morning because of the far better daylight conditions. as nicely stated in the files.

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'The fingerprint inspection was only carried out on the inside of the window because it was night time, the location was sealed and preserved so that light conditions would permit the inspection of the residence to be finalised.'

fingerprints are delicate, meaning easily ruined for ever, but if you wear pink pants or 10 layers of petticoats, or a jeans, or a dna suit, it makes no difference in the result of taking that evidence.

gloves is a personal matter of choice, there is no scientific need to use them, but the powders used are quite sturdy, and most do not like to walk around with reddish brown or black, or blue stained fingers for the week ahead. so most would choose to wear at least one disposable glove on the hand that keeps the powder.

it makes also no difference if you put your gloved fingers on a fingerprint, or do the same ungloved, both will have the same result a ruined fingerprint. same with leaning with your back on a fingerprint, if you have a suit on or just your naked back, both will just ruining it. 

but you do need a fine touch, touch is most times even a to big word to describe what you are doing to the prints, so that means gloves could be in the way to much, give less finer feeling what you are doing, so a glove on the hand that is working that brush could actually hinder the result in a bad way.  

for every one who thinks a suit would have given better results, please explain it! because this forensic lady, did her work per accepted standards in taking fingerprints. also the result of her work is easily to find and read in the files. just saying she needs a suit would not be enough.

it is only in the last years become knowledge, that if you are very lucky it could sometimes be possible to even take dna from a fingerprint. well this fresh knowledge is not integrated into the usual police work or forensic work. and it is more an 'if very lucky', then all fingerprints have dna in them. 

it is good practice to start working on fingerprints after there is already looked into possible other traces, like the ones that could have dna left, all because of those powders, that are very sticky and easily can contaminate other things. 

so it is not very fair to judge this lady, that has a name , irene trovao, with a little wave on the a, that i can not handle on my keyboard. she did her job up to a good standard. 

there are still unnamed fingerprints, per wiesbaden probably based on the form and measurements from a youth or female. most countries have databases, but most of what is in it, are known criminals and some have also the prints of the law enforcement officers and forensic service down. in 2007 not all databases did work in the same manner and standards, and they still do not. the prints who had not been identified have been send around the world, but you can see for yourself there is no way to know if all did try them in their own system, you can look for yourself which countries reacted with their findings.

also fingerprints could keep very well for long times, most in forgotten and obscure places. often from just visitors at a time well before, or service personal. and just like dna, fingerprints are only of use, when you can find out who left them. and even far more important, finding dna or fingerprints is one thing, you always have to investigate if they are indeed part of a crime scene, meaning most would be just noise and money eating traces. that is why you not just take all dna or fingerprints on a premises, but have to decide the places that have the largest chances to be in connection with that specific crime. 

and in this case all points of entry and exit have been already successfully compromised before any police and forensic work could be done. the first officers on the scene would have noticed that already, and that could be the reason why they did not take the standard procedures to save a possible crime scene. 

if you take a look on the pictures of the shutters on the bedroom where the children slept, you can see for yourself that no gloves have been used while getting entry or exit by that window, gloves leaves no fingerprints, but they do leave signs of use. 

amaral has no need to assist in this myth, i do know there is always the investigator who want more and more, but in forensics you have no endless budgets to work with, and you have always have to make choices, not only in what you can sample or try to find, but also in the use of materials. and it would have been just money wasting to suit up to take down some fingerprints, and as an experienced police officer he must be able to understand that. realize yourself we as public expect fully suited up forensic people and officers only because of what we are get to view on the telly or in a movie. aka the netflixication of the crime, as it would be named today. the reality is often different. 

but in this specific case, irene trovao with the little wave on the a, aka the forensic lady, did make the right decision to not use a suit or a second glove, to do the work she was hired and certified to do and well used to. it had no harmful consequences on the results at all. and she can easily prove it, because we have it on file and also on pictures and video from the press.

Neatly summed up.  Thank you.
fingerprint SoCo do not routinely wear full forensic suits even now.
They simply dust, identify and lift the latent print for examination elsewhere.

The whole study of finger and palm prints is fascinating.
It is not widely known, and rarely reported – for obvious reasons – that the RACE of a person can often be
identified or 'guessed' purely from a set of fingerprints.

and even that within that "Race" sub-races can be identified.

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Abstract—Identification in Nigeria and indeed many other developing nations is still lagging behind in terms of individuality, as the conventional ways currently in use (driver’s license, international passport, national identity card, passwords, etc) have not fully employed the use of individual specific technologies. This has caused many untold hardships for the users: some forget their passwords, others misplace their identity cards, some identical relations even swap their photo identity cards, etc. However, the innovation of biometric identification technology brought a lot of improvements to these conventional ways. This makes use of human traits such as face, fingerprint, iris, voice, etc, in identifying and verifying the identity of humans possible without the need of numerical or letter password, or identity card. In this paper, we propose the use of fingerprint technology to capture the fingerprints of a group of people in other to identify and verify their identities, gender and ethnic groups through the use of trained classifiers. The classifier detects shapes (e.g., cores and deltas) and then determines the pattern type of the images. We evaluate the performance of the technology using metrics such as sensitivity, precision, false positive rate, recognition accuracy and recognition time. The result shows that over 98% test cases accurately identified person’s ethnicity and gender with an average recognition time of 2 seconds. 

for those who do not want to read the whole article, they can determine from fingerprints whether a person is Hausa, Igbo, or Yoruba.

i know it is not terribly PC to say so, and it speaks directly against the dogma that we are all one "race", and are created the same and equal . . .
but this is science, which knows no 'correctness of thinking'.
Sorry !

PeterMac wrote:...for those who do not want to read the whole article, they can determine from fingerprints whether a person is Hausa, Igbo, or Yoruba.

i know it is not terribly PC to say so, and it speaks directly against the dogma that we are all one "race", and are created the same and equal...

but this is science, which knows no 'correctness of thinking'.

Sorry !

Some clarification is necessary here.


Science does actually tell us that all of us descended from an original pair of humans which did not descend from any other creature or creatures.

To be brief, the science of mitochondrial DNA is one branch of Genetics that leads us to this conclusion.

Moreover, despite claims that we share up to 98% of our genes with chimpanzees, and that this 'proves' descent from them or some similar ape-like creature, when you break down the similarity of genetic material by reference to individual strings of DNA, the similarity reduces to a mere 80%. 

None of this, whether 98% or 80%, proves descent in any case, as humans are equipped with over 300 unique features not found anywhere else in the animal world. The unique construction of our voice boxes, and our associated ability to speak and learn very complex languages, and of our ability for conceptual thought, is but one example. 

The key to understanding this is to examine the incredible and unique complexity of the human genome, which simply could not have arisen by chance without without the input of information from an intelligent source.

From the original pair, an almost infinite variety of humans are possible, though within certain limits e.g. you can't develop purple hair. We need to think, for example, of the DNA make-up of the original pair as akin to a gigantic pack of cards which is simply shuffled, in various ways, from one generation to the next. This process of the gradually unfolding of the original gene pool of the original pair goes by the technical name of 'entelechy'.

To take a simple example, the colour of one's skin is determined by the amount of melanin in a person's genes. Suppose that Adam and Eve were given a mid/light brown skin at the outset. It can be shown that within just two generations, their grandchildren could be white, black, yellow or light or dark brown, just depending on the amount of melanin in their parents' genes. Even different children in the same family can look very different; there are parents in India who can end up having a range of children from almost black to very pale brown.

Our individual DNA is unique but these days we can give samples to companies who will tell us how much 'western European', 'Indian,' 'Jewish', 'Scandinavian' etc. DNA we have in us. This doesn't make us of different 'races'. 

Science says we are of one, unique race, but with a wonderful variety due to 'entelechy'.

It's the same with the animals - and plants. 

Horses, donkeys, zebras, asses, Shetland ponies etc. can all be traced back to an original pair of horses.

Likewise dogs, wolves, foxes and Arctic foxes, dingoes - to the original pair of dogs.

Or cats, lions, leopards, tigers etc. - to the original pair of cats

Quite simply, all you need to start with is an immensely complex DNA structure, which could only be designed by an intelligent source, and then entelechy will create an immense variety of sub-species, all re-combinations in one form or another from the original DNA with which the original pair was endowed.

Science.       

From all of the people in the Tapas Group that stated that they had tried to raise the shutters after the ‘Abduction’, particularly from the outside, how many were identified?

Click and it still works

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to silent scope;  none on the shutters, and only two have told us they did try something with shutters, but did they tell us it have been indeed been those exact shutters?

it is one of the extremely big problems in this case, that 95% of what we know is just the result of telling it, all done by people who each had their own mix of opinion, true observations from their own senses under often different influences and the chance to discuss it with others. 

from the harder things to use we have a lot of forms, in the form of print offs from a pc, or just forms written by hand. meaning that is not a type of information that can reach the set in stone margin. there are phone pings, but that does not tell what is told or exchanged between people or even who hold the phones.

the fingerprints are pretty hard as a material, after making them they are hard to influence, but again a but, they are just the start of an investigation line, to decide if they are part of that case or not. 
same with the work of the dogs, sadly it did not resulted in clear and usable material. they did their job excellent, it was only not followed by concrete test results. 

but it would always be a hard place to work a case, no one had any roots or normal routines, even most personal was shortterm hired. meaning you will miss out on a lot of told stories that could fill in how probably something was. the cleaning was lousy.

because of the two countries there was already a clash of titans from the start, also there is still so little known about the family members of the mccanns and the victim. even the press did not go into that at all. 

i cannot remember even a second case were in 48 hours all bystanders aka possible witnesses would leave. i still think that portugal found it a marvel of an idea to keep all holidaymakers in place, and that that was the real reason why the full embassy was walking in in that early hour. 

it does not matter for forensics how you want to see the background of the origines of people, the differences in the part of dna that is used in forensics is there and that is solid in science for using it. 

to tony; mt-dna is always more of a quick selection between large groups of people, and yes there is not that much difference possible, it has its uses, but is never true evidence, because of the restricted number of different codes. that mixup and fixation of the burgau saga of jane tanner and robert murat was never needed, they found a lot of the same mt-dna, expected even, because that residence was of mrs. sally, the at least by mother sister of robert murat his mother jenny, so at least 3 people who had that same mt-dna had been legally sound present in the past in that residence, that jane tanner had the same mt-dna does not prove she was there or not, the only hard information would be that anywhere in het formothers jane tanner shared the same mother. millions of others do. 

those test have never been done to prove or disprove if jane tanner ever was there, the only reason in this case was to see if madeleine ever could have been there, and based on mt-dna you know it is just chance taking. if you do find that same mt-dna that madeleine shared with her mother kate, and both of her siblings, they would have put that place to a whole lot of other testing. it is just a nice and quick test, that could have some uses, but it never tells a hard yes or no, only a possible to work from.

it does hardly matter what you find in traces, they are always the start of a hell of a lot more work to do. in itself it will mean very little, it always had to be build up with the facts and circumstances. 

dna is also easy to leave behind, but not everyone is a easy shedder, and it is easy to transport. and it can survive a lot or nothing, it is very small also, so you always hope of a piece that has more in it, a nice pool of blood is often better, but as only the white cells do have dna, it depend on how many whites are in it to see if you get a nice sample, large enough to use str-dna techniques. everything that leaves a body can have dna in it, but what happened with it after you shed it decides a lot. and things like cleaning products, direct sunlight, much moister, or small creatures that like to eat it could do damage. the dna itself can not tell where it resulted from. only the term cellular material is correct, because our dna and of all living things has a standard place in true cells. the dna test is a very different test from the test for the origine of a sample.

the test is pretty destructive, you use fluids to break down all you do not need to get to the dna, so that exact sample can only be used once. and even the dna is used up during the read out. 

in this case the choice was made to use the lcn dna sampling technique, that was always a bit of a gamble, because it mean you use extreme little portions of dna, and there could be a lot of dna on any stick you use to take the sample. and you can not see dna so it is always a surprise what you can get. the problem with that technique is mostly in the cycles you need with pcr to get to enough for a read out. and pcr works like an old timer copier, it copies all it sees, and you can end up with what you do not hope for, a lot of junk dna and false copies in the end result. 

and this technique has probably far more a role in selection for an investigation, than as evidence usable in a court case. it is a perfect way to use in a laboratoria were you have everything under your control, than in the criminal investigations. i can understand the choice, it was longer ago, optical cleaned , a possible and last chance moment, still usable for use in this investigation. how much do you need, to find a alike , possible lcn-dna result and a cadaver dog positiv result in that same place. that reached a very high threshold to put the line died in 5a on the white boards. 

a fingerprint is different, yes i do know you can misuse fingerprints, and it has happened before, okay more in the movies, than in real life, and it would at this moment in time far more usable, certainly because we use that unique personal feature as security tool. 5a and the setting was not the most logical place to expect someone was putting up some falsies. a fingerprint means you have touched it. and it would not be walked in by others, or blown inside by the wind, so that is often harder as evidence than dna can reach. 
but is it evidence? often in itself not direct, but it is always nice that your culprit declares i was not there, ever, i did not do that, and the fingerprints do tell differently. 

the problem with fingerprints is, they are not always left behind, gloves protect against leaving a fingerprint behind but it will makes just another form of markings. you can not prove who it was, but you can see if they have left markings behind. a lof of fingerprints are made during moving, and that would often not give a usable result, partial prints are sometimes usable, but most countries have their own rules about how many points of comparison are needed. so if portugal has the same high standards as they have for the use of dna results, it could very well be they reach a lot earlier the unusable threshold. most want anything between 12 and 20 out of the around 150 points for a possible match. for partials it is most times less, but still between at least 6 and 9, but it will mean it is not that hard as evidence. 

fingerprints are very delicate, but still if the conditions are there, they could be there for years. a lot of criminals like, because of that, to play the 'hoho i worked there once as a handyman-card'. 
and it is still up to the investigation to serve the prosecutor with that link between culprit and the deed. 
and most finger prints are not in a state you can use them. 

as peter mac many years ago said, it would be helpful if you can handle missing persons cases as if it was a murder case from the start. it wil give you so much more to make use of, and i do hope it will at least be possible in case of a missing minor, at least for the under 12 years old, and as soon as so0me police officer sniffs crime. fresh traces could be easier to find and far more workable. still being a missing person means there is no criminal factor in that itself. the reality is the police only can offer to help out, help to whom that needed is one of the two tasks of the police. but help does not give budget, or opportunities.

in this case the parents say abduction, and the investigation had to use kidnap?? to be able to go beyond a bit of helping, too even be able to set in that second task of investigation, because only missing does not.  
in handling crime it is the crime that dictated what authority you have. in that helping task you have none. 
this makes these cases of missing children hard to work, in the first place because it is a child, and you feel upfront these children have no guilt in what is happened. it is not hard to keep on seeing that child as the one and only victim. and you also know that the one a child under 6 has to fear most is their very own mother. 
so it is difficult to invest in parents at the start. and when parents call out you are not working hard enough, but for themselves decide to start with telling porkies, you know you can not invest in them anymore. they just blew their chance, to show they wanted to assist in the investigation in an honest way.

and this video the dispatches episode, from about 36.00 a bit more about the shutters. 

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Searching for Madeleine ~ Dispatches C4 (full)

This thread was initiated in order to explain the procedure for harvesting forensic evidence in the form of fingerprints - the opening post is self explanatory. However ....

From all of the people in the Tapas Group that stated that they had tried to raise the shutters after the ‘Abduction’, particularly from the outside, how many were identified?

The comment made was answered here, if you can be bothered to read it rather than continuing on a pointless theme..

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Gerry McCann, Dianne Webster, both claimed that they had tried to raise the shutters from the outside.

Strange that they left no Prints on the Shutters.

Sometimes what is not found is as important as what is found.

Back on Topic.

that is a conclusion, only based on what is not really known.

if the shutter already was a bit lifted by that same or other parties unknown, you can use parts of a hand without touching the shutters itself with any finger or thumb. it is not so simple you can only use one way to try and open the shutters. and the human hands could be pretty flexible. 

so in the end, they told us they did, but there is not proven they did that, because their is no evidence of it. but lack of evidence is not always prove of it did not happen. 

there are even a lot of people that have hardly a fingerprint to leave behind, older age, certain chemicals and some illnesses and medication do not really whipe out fingerprints, but you can loose the dept of the groves you need to leave a print. kate mccann was not one of those, she left a nice set on the inside of the window in the room of the children. 

also quick movements often do only leave some smudges, most times useless. what is more curious we do not see a larger smudge from an earprint, because matt oldfield told us he did listen at the shutter if all was okay. and that is because if your intention was to listen to something inside, you usually would put your ear against the outside to do that. but that print of an ear with the usual pattern of fine lines from hairs is not there to see. not hard evidence, but curious. maybe he just did not the usual bowing down a bit and was that missed.

investigation hardly use conclusions, only possibilities, conclusions are reached in a court. we as members of the public do not have such restrictions. every investigation starts open to every action that a human is capable of, the next steps are filtering out what the most likely are, the also possibles, and not possibles, to get to the story about what did happen, there are always gaps, and it is often just chance that evidence is around. 

everything you do is always in connection to facts and circumstances and those need to be in connection with a crime, and that specific crime. the forensic work is to be seen as a separate part, the early start to look for traces is done only because you want a snapshot situation frozen down as near to the time a crime happened as is possible, and the why is simple, traces are most often delicate, easy to loose, but also easy to be mixed later on by human activity after the crime. 
also some tests takes weeks to get the results out, and you already want them a month before yesterday. 

what is also playing a role in a case that could have  a suspect that is also one person who has unrestricted and legally sound access to that place. when you stay somewhere it is normal to leave traces of being there, so it means that most traces you do find, could be the result of normal actions, that have nothing to do with any crime. fingerprints ar a marvel to use, when you do find good ones, and find the donor of that prints, and have a good match, and that person keeps telling i was never there. so for that resident is is only weak evidence, but for the stranger it good become far easier to be hard evidence. 

we as humans have hardly a sound idea in what we touch, on one of my courses our tutor had a new gadget, a spray that was invisible, but would transfer to almost all you would touch. after some time he uses a kind of forensic light to make all you had touched visible. well to be short, that resulted in quite a lot of embarrassing moments for a lot of us. and we had been told that this as a process would happen. 
so living somewhere can leave a lot of traces without your mind registering it. 
but that is also why you ask questions, when you start telling you never ever have gone into a cellar, and you do find a fingerprint on a non transportable item, there are porkies told. even if you know you need to give some room for forgetting it, so then a fingerprint is nice to have. dna would be far more complicated , certainly when it is about very small samples. 

always keep in mind, that the same action, even by the same person, could result in different traces because the actions could be done with some variety. and no traces does not tell for sure it did not happen. and if you do find traces, it is up to the investigation to make it bound to the crime. 

in this case the shutters themselves are less important for some questions, could you lift then by hand, well peter demonstrated that very well, yes that is possible, if you also look at the use of his hands and arms, it does not need much power to lift them up, but they do not stay up if lifted in that manner. there was natures assistance in this looking for the possibility of that window and shutters could have been used as point of entry or exit, and the answer is a hard no. because of the the exposition to sunlight that was marginal on that window, and nature had taken that advance to lay down a thin layer existing of lichen, not much but is was there, and that is such delicate matter and because of the height of the bottom of that window, it would be impossible to leave no disturbance in that little layer of lichen when used for entry or exit. 

so the shutters could been opened from the outside, with little force, but it would have been very unlikely possible to keep them up, to get entry or exit without leaving signs of that kind of actions. 

so we can not prove diane did lie, look at her as a person, she is first a woman, it was per het story cold, so she had longer sleeves, and most people who want something that could be dirty, and women more often than men, do automatically their sleeves over their fist. when you look in the files for the traces on the shutters you can see besides fingerprints also smaller smudges, so we have nothing to prove diane did indeed tell porkies. there is nothing out there to prove a yes or no. so if you want you only could put the for ever question mark behind that question. but there will not be another answer to prove, only diane can open up and retract what she earlier declared story. but as it stands it is just no yes of no by prove.

for gerry it is the same. not to prove he did it as he told, or did not as told. 

also what difference would it really made, the state of that intact thin layer of lichen already tell that was not used as point of exit or entry. so how important could it be?

A very long read..

THE SCIENCE OF FINGERPRINTS

United States Department of Justice
Federal Bureau of Investigation
John Edgar Hoover, Director

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