Trash Bag Prints Catch San Diego Serial Killer | The New Detectives | S2 E9
The New Detectives
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One trash bag print. Decades-old latents. See how fingerprint breakthroughs crack three impossible murders in San Diego, Hollywood, and Vermont.
In 1985-86, a serial killer preyed on women in San Diego, leaving victims in dumpsters. On May 9, 1986, Joanne Sweets was found wrapped in two garbage bags sealed with masking tape and covered with a blanket. Detective Dan Hatfield and fingerprint expert Diane Donnelly joined a multi-agency task force. A print lifted from a dumpster gave them hope, but manual searches failed and earlier attempts with a chemical called genshin violet on the masking tape raised nothing. Years later, a new computerized fingerprint match pointed to Brian Maurice Jones. The breakthrough came when Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police used Vacuum Metal Deposition to reveal six-year-old latent prints on the plastic bags. Those prints matched Jones, leading to his 1996 conviction and death sentence.
In Hollywood in 1963, 43-year-old Thora Rose was murdered in her apartment. Investigators lifted approximately 27 prints through the kitchen and into the bedroom, eliminated friends and workers, and then hand-checked tens of thousands of cards statewide with no hit. Three decades later, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or APHIS, finally produced a lead. Examiners compared APHIS candidates by eye and identified Vernon Robinson. He was tried and convicted, decades after the crime.
In Vermont in 1992, party host Glenn Michelson was found with a ski pole driven into his skull. Robert Plant emerged as the suspect, but detectives needed irrefutable proof. Forensic examiner John Creighton enhanced a faint, bloody thumbprint on a doorframe with Amido Black and photographed a distorted bloody palm on the curved ski pole grip using a polylight. Both prints matched Plant, securing a 50-years-to-life sentence.
From powders, iodine fuming and ninhydrin on porous surfaces to superglue fuming and Vacuum Metal Deposition on plastics, The New Detectives shows how science turns hopeless leads into courtroom evidence.
#TheNewDetectives #ForensicScience #Fingerprint #ColdCase #SanDiego #APHIS #VacuumMetalDeposition #TrueCrime
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Trash Bag Prints Catch San Diego Serial Killer | The New Detectives | S2 E9
The New Detectives
26,783 views
One trash bag print. Decades-old latents. See how fingerprint breakthroughs crack three impossible murders in San Diego, Hollywood, and Vermont.
In 1985-86, a serial killer preyed on women in San Diego, leaving victims in dumpsters. On May 9, 1986, Joanne Sweets was found wrapped in two garbage bags sealed with masking tape and covered with a blanket. Detective Dan Hatfield and fingerprint expert Diane Donnelly joined a multi-agency task force. A print lifted from a dumpster gave them hope, but manual searches failed and earlier attempts with a chemical called genshin violet on the masking tape raised nothing. Years later, a new computerized fingerprint match pointed to Brian Maurice Jones. The breakthrough came when Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police used Vacuum Metal Deposition to reveal six-year-old latent prints on the plastic bags. Those prints matched Jones, leading to his 1996 conviction and death sentence.
In Hollywood in 1963, 43-year-old Thora Rose was murdered in her apartment. Investigators lifted approximately 27 prints through the kitchen and into the bedroom, eliminated friends and workers, and then hand-checked tens of thousands of cards statewide with no hit. Three decades later, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or APHIS, finally produced a lead. Examiners compared APHIS candidates by eye and identified Vernon Robinson. He was tried and convicted, decades after the crime.
In Vermont in 1992, party host Glenn Michelson was found with a ski pole driven into his skull. Robert Plant emerged as the suspect, but detectives needed irrefutable proof. Forensic examiner John Creighton enhanced a faint, bloody thumbprint on a doorframe with Amido Black and photographed a distorted bloody palm on the curved ski pole grip using a polylight. Both prints matched Plant, securing a 50-years-to-life sentence.
From powders, iodine fuming and ninhydrin on porous surfaces to superglue fuming and Vacuum Metal Deposition on plastics, The New Detectives shows how science turns hopeless leads into courtroom evidence.
#TheNewDetectives #ForensicScience #Fingerprint #ColdCase #SanDiego #APHIS #VacuumMetalDeposition #TrueCrime