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ey ‘, + 96 eubgnel KILLER TRAPPED . BY FINGER PRINTS ON PISTOL GRIP Scientific Detective Is Re- _ sponsible for Soly- t ry e . ing Crime. a —_— . Of all the phases of scientific criminal catching, fingerprinting probably has the greatest number of thrilling captures to its credit. ‘Thousands of wanted men have deen tracked down through the mysterious loops and whorls, arches and islands, that appear in ever-varying patterns on individ- ual fingers. ; “One of the strangest cases of this kind of identification, in which a desperate killer was trapped through the unexpected discovery of hidden fingerprints, occurred re- cently in the West. A highway. bandit, in a speeding car, streaked south from Seattle, Wash., his com- panion blazing away in a running gunfight with half a dozen deputy’! sheriffs. Ten miles from town the battle ended. One deputy had been killed, and the outlaws had twisted away from their pursuers and dis-| appeared. "Pate that night, a farmer report- ed finding an abandoned automo- dile, with a dead man in it, on a Jonely mountain road. Officers identified the bandit car. Slumped in the back seat was one of the wanted men, a bullet fired at close range in his right temple and a revolver clutched in his stiffened Kanone hy S~PY-37 aerate Fr. “Taken te Laboratery. ” * ? This gun, together with the fatal “bullets recovered from the bedies of the deputy and the bandit, were ‘taken to Luke §. May, at his famous scientific crime detection . ‘laboratory on Twelfth street, Seat. We, writes Edwin W. Teale, in the March Popular Sctence monthly. - He examined both missiles. They had come from the weapon found. in the dead man's hand. The bigh- wayman had evidently killed the | deputy and later committed suicide. But May was puzzled. His under- standing of criminal psychology told him that bandits don't commit sul~ cide after a getaway, See . Carefully spreading white clay} powder over the recovered weapon, he brought out the fingerprints on it. The result was a perfect “Who's. - Who’ of the sheriff's Posse! people had handled the gun before! it was submitted to May. This Jumble destroyed whatever evi- dence there might have been on the outside of the gun when it was ; taken from the abandoned car, | A few days later, the second high- ‘wayman was brought. in. May showed him the revolver. - . Says It's Pal's Gen. - “I never touched that gun fin my ‘Ufe,” he declared, “It belonged to my pal” cee That ready reply sent him fo the gallows. The next day, as‘ May studied the weapon, he noticed that the slightest pull on the trigger let the hammer fall, Taking the fun apart, he found that the owner had filed down the trigger notch to give the wespon a lighter pull. More that that. he found, “tne the in- e of the gun, the fi erprints of the second bandit! - Realizing that the death of the of- ficer would keep the police im- placably on his trai) and that an attempt would be made to trace the fatal bullet to the gun that fired it, he had treacherously murdered his confederate and placed his own re- Volver in his hand to give the im- Pression of suicide. The sinister plot had all but succeeded. - Then, the faint imprint of the pattern left! by the ridges of the