Fingerprints have been used to identify people since at least 220 BC -in China. They weren’t used for solving crimes, but for signing documents (and they still do that). The Western world was slow to pick up the importance of fingerprints, but by the late 19th century, the idea of keeping track of criminals by their fingerprints led to printing arrestees for their records, and the concept of finding a perpetrator by fingerprint evidence was beginning to take off.
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On June 29, 1892, two children in Necochea, Argentina, were murdered. Their mother, Francesca Rojas, was injured and identified the murderer as her neighbor Ramón Velázquez. Velázquez was arrested, grilled, and reportedly even tortured, but refused to confess to the crime. What’s more, he had an alibi.
Then investigators found a fingerprint in blood on a doorway at the crime scene. They had the fingerprint removed by cutting the piece of wood from the doorway. Read how the first murder case was solved by fingerprint evidence, and how that case changed forensics around the world at Amusing Planet.
(Image credit: National Library of Medicine)
Source: neatorama