New fingerprint algorithm helps solve old cases
DES MOINES, Iowa — Just after Thanksgiving Day in 1983, James Downey dropped off his older brother, John, at a Houston bus station, then quickly turned away so neither the police nor a motorcycle gang affiliated with his brother could later demand details about where the bus was headed.
For 34 years, he didn’t hear a word about him. Then this spring Downey received a heart-breaking call, one that more than 200 families across the country have gotten in the past few months since the FBI began using new fingerprint technology to resolve identity cases dating back to the 1970s.
Authorities reported that the remains of a man found beaten to death decades ago along a brushy path in Des Moines, 800 miles away, had been identified as his brother.
“We always figured something had happened to him,” James Downey said from his home in Houston. “We all assumed he’d got killed somewhere or died in an accident.”
Since launching the new effort in February, the FBI and local medical examiner offices have identified 204 bodies found between 1975 and the late 1990s. The cases stretch across the country, with most of them in Arizona, California, New York, Florida and Texas.
“We didn’t know the actual potential success. We were hoping to identify a few cases, maybe five or 10,” said Bryan Johnson, a manager in the FBI’s Latent Fingerprint Support Unit who proposed the effort. “We’re really proud that we found another way of doing this.”
Under the new program, Johnson and eight others in the FBI unit ran fingerprints from about 1,500 bodies through a new computer algorithm that could make matches from lowquality prints or even a single finger or thumb. Previously, the standard algorithm typically needed quality prints from all 10 fingers to make a match.
The unit is now urging local authorities to search through other old case files and send in smudged or partial prints that couldn’t previously be matched.
The FBI’s newfound ability was key to the Des Moines case because by the time Downey’s body was found in February 1984, it had been buried under snow and dirt for months and was severely decomposed. Authorities sought the public’s help in identifying the body, including publishing drawings of distinctive tattoos in the local newspaper, but no one came forward.
It was one of several cases that medical examiner investigators called “shelf dwellers,” referring to cremated remains that would sit for decades on storage shelves.