Phillip E. O'shaughnessy 6

WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN? Phillip E. O'SHAUGHNESSY 6 "WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN" A Look at Identity by READERS' SERVICES ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 900 Webster Street P.O. Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801 WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN? - A LOOKVATNIDENXITY On June 19, 1985, a partially-clad body was found in a field on the Southwest side of Fort Wayne. The victim's face and hands were so decomposed that a visual identification was not possible, nor was it felt that fingerprints could be obtained. When the news of the discovery was released to the media, a mother called the Fort Wayne Police Department and stated that she thought it might be her daughter who was missing since May 20, 1985; almost a month prior. Because of the decomposition, dental records were obtained in an attempt to make a comparison. Unfortunately, the dental records were of primary teeth and the victim's mouth had only permanent teeth. There were no recent dental records. A person's age can be obtained during the maturing years by comparing radiographs of the wrist bones with those of a known age. Radiographs were made and an age of fifteen years was estimated. This corresponded well with the missing girl who was almost fourteen. The radiologist stated that if radiographs of the missing girl's arm existed, the bones could be compared, and an identification might be made. Ironically, the missing girl had sprained her wrist just a couple of weeks prior to her disappearance and radiographs were made. They were obtained and compared by a group of radiologists who were certain the deceased and the missing girl were one and the same. The mother was notified and the media released the news that the girl had been identified. Less than an hour later, a couple called-the police and said that they had just seen the missing girl at a Dairy Queen. They were quite positive. Obviously, there was immediate confusion. Back to the morgue. The skin on the fingerprints was almost gone except for one finger that had been partially buried in the dirt. The skin was carefully lifted from the*finger, chemically softened, and an inked impression made. The missing girl had participated in a school fingerprint program designed to help locate missing children. These were compared with the deceased's single fingerprint and an exact match was obtained. No one knows who the couple saw, but they did not see the deceased--she had'been dead for several weeks. So much for visual identification. Identification of any individual is based on one- fact and one requirement. It is a fact that every individual is unique. Unique in his body chemistry, his physical characteristics, man-made alterations, i.e., dental restorations, scars, tattoos, etc. The requirement is that some type of record exists verifying that uniqueness. If a physical characteristic, for example a fingerprint, of an unidentified individual is compared to a fingerprint of a known individual and a match is noted, an identification is made. If it were only that simple. Physical characteristics change, height, weight, teeth are removed, finger tips are destroyed by fire, trauma, or decomposition. Records of uniqueness do not exist, were lost, or may have been altered. Although cases of identifying deceased individuals by matching with antemortem characteristics have been reported in early history, the corner stones of modern identification were laid in 1879 by Alphonse Bertillon, a twenty-six year old clerk in the Paris Police Department. But before we meet Alphonse, we must back up and look at the most i. modern police department in the world in 1879. In 1799, a petty criminal named Eugene Francois Vidocq escaped from jail for the third time. For ten years he lived as an old clothes dealer in Paris. But throughout these years, he lived in fear that his former fellow convicts would betray him; which is exactly what a few had threatened. Finally, in disgust and frustration, he went to the police - - headquarters and offered to provide the police with all of the knowledge and expertise of the criminal world he had acquired over the years. All he asked for in return was to be freed of the threat of imprisonment. At first glance, it seems ridiculous that a police department would hire a notorious criminal to work as chief of the criminal police. How ever, even today it is common for detectives to have one or more of the criminal element on an unofficial payroll to provide "tips or leads for criminal investigation. In 1810, the streets of Paris were a lucrative territory for hordes of underworld characters, as the effects of the Napoleonic Wars loosened the bonds of society. The small Paris Police Department was being over whelmed and was eager to obtain help from any source. Vidocq chose his own assistants based on the theory that only criminals can fight crime. He employed twenty former convicts whom he paid from a secret fund. In a single year, he and his men arrested 812 murderers, thieves, burglars, and cleaned out dens of criminals into which no inspector would ever have dared to enter. Within a short time, the Vidocq organization, which he dubbed "Surete'" (Security) developed into the germ of the modern French criminal police. At regular intervals the inspectors visited the prison yards and had old and new convicts march in circles around them. They were following the example of Vidocq, imprinting the faces of criminals in their memories. In addition, Vidocq established enormous archives maintained by an army of clerks. A file had been established for every known criminal; his name and his aliases, his crime and sentence, and appearance carefully described. The archives grew until they contained five million items. Added to this enormous collection were photographs which were first used in a Brussels jail. Soon there were over eighty thousand photographs. Obviously, a crisis was rapidly approaching. It is time we met Alphonse Bertillon. Bertillon, who was destined to meet this crisis and inaugurate a new era in ciminology, was indeed, a strange person. Bertillon began his duties March 15, 1879, A more unlikely candidate to found a new science would be hard to find. A young man with a thin, pale dismal face, slow movements and an expressionless voice that tended to become garbled when excited. He was so unsociable that most people found him repellant. He had a suspicious nature and a strong tendency to sarcasm. He was noted for his short temper and most "people went out of their way to avoid him. He was a poor student and had been expelled from several of the best schools in France. In fact,the only reason he was hired was because he was a member of one of the most prominent families in Paris. His father, Louis Adolphe Bertillon, was a prominent physician, statistician, and Vice-President of the Anthropological Society of Paris. His grandfather was a well-known Naturalist and mathematician. In the spring of 1879, Bertillon was assigned the task of completing file cards with the description of prisoners. It soon became clear to Bertillon that the cards with remarks such as "Stature: tall or average, Face: ordinary, no special marks" were essentially useless. Anyone of thousands could fit the same description, Not only were the remarks so general as to be meaningless, there was no adequate cataloging system, and one had to look through literally hundreds and hundreds of file cards in a search for a suspect. The archives, which had been only a prop for a man with a memory like Vidocq, had inevitably become a major instrument for identifying criminals. This was the situation that Alphonse Bertillon found when he began in March of 1879. Even though Bertillon was perceived as somewhat slow-witted and obnoxious, he was far from an ordinary clerk. He was raised in a home where science was a ruling passion. For years, his father and grandfather had been taking measurements on hundreds of skeletons in an attempt to prove that no two persons had identical measurements. The painstaking methods of his father and other anthropologists had left a deep impression on his mind. The germ of an idea grew out of the hours of dreariness and senseless ness of his work. Why, he asked himself, was time, money, and energy being wasted on such a crude and outdated system? Finally, he asked permission to measure certain~physical characteris tics of prisoners. Although his supervisors didn't take him seriously, they acquiesced. Bertillon's taking measurements became the department's joke. For weeks he took measurements; the circumference and length of their heads, length of arms and fingers, and of feet and toes. He became convinced that although individual measurements may be identical, never three or four. In August of 1879, he wrote a report setting forth his method of identifying criminals without any possibility of mistake. He sent his report to the Prefect of Parish, Louis Andrieux. He received no reply. In October, after collecting additional data, he sent a second report to Andrieux. In his report, he stated that the probability of any two persons having the same height was one in four. If only one more measurement were added, the chances decreased to 16. If eleven measure ments were taken, the chances decreased to 4,191,304 to 1. He further stated the measurement of bones remained the same size throughout adult life. He also developed a catalogue system for the cards by which it would take only a few minutes to determine if a newly-arrested criminal corresponded to a person already on file.

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