KISSING FREEDOM GOOD-BYE

Newport News, Virginia—Criminals are routinely nabbed because they leave
fingerprints or stray DNA behind at the scene. A peeping Tom suspect in Virginia left lip
prints.

Police arrested Robert N. Smith, 41, on Tuesday for allegedly peeping into apartments
after the state forensic crime laboratory was able to match his lip print with one taken
off a window at one of the apartments.

"We get fingerprints all the time, but that’s not the case, obviously, with
lip prints," Paul Ferrara, director of the state Division of Forensic Science, said
Friday.

The print was discovered on an apartment window Aug. 18, and a detective lifted the
print Sept. 11. Smith was arrested and charged with indecent exposure at the same
apartment complex about two weeks later. Police got a search warrant for Smith’s lips
and found they had their man. The indecent exposure charge was dropped at Smith’s
trial Tuesday when the chief witness failed to appear, but he was arrested on five
misdemeanor peeping charges as he was leaving court. He remains free on bond awaiting
trial. He faces up to a year in jail.

WhiteBoard News for Monday, December 15, 1997

Joseph Harper

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EVIDENCE THAT SMELLS

The Dutch have come up with a new way of catching criminals, that’s even better
than fingerprints, it’s called smell prints. Apparently, each of us not only has one
unmistakable fingerprint and DNA, but we also have a unique scent that is identifiable. In
solving a crime, the police can retrieve an article used by the perpetrator (such as a
gun), and extract a smell print from the object in as little as 20 minutes. The smell can
then be stored for as long as 4 years. Once a suspect is apprehended, he is asked to wash,
and then handle a cloth for a few minutes. The cloth is then placed in a line up and a
specially trained dog is given the original smell print to examine. The dog is then asked
to identify all the smells in the line up. If the dog finds a match, he barks at the
container identifying which one. To make the evidence admissible in court, the process is
repeated but this time without the suspects smell. This new crime fighting tool has solved
hundreds of cases in Holland, and they are now starting to archive known criminals’
smells to compare against outstanding crimes.

W.I.S.E.CRAKS <>