Fingerprint Identification Cases

Investigations in which fingerprint evidence identified the offender. They run from the case of Francisca Rojas in Argentina in 1892, regarded as the first conviction obtained through fingerprint evidence, to later investigations that turned on a print match found in a database. A case belongs here when identifying the offender depended on fingerprints, whatever other evidence was also gathered. The group shows how classification of ridge patterns, and later computer matching of prints, turned a mark left at a scene into a name, and it is limited to cases where the print match itself was the turning point of the investigation.