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Bella Conway

tool mark
Turner v State
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/in-supreme-court/1581279.html
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja1l5meGGZU
Desmond Turner was charged with murder, felony murder, criminal confinement, robbery, and burglary. Verbal testimony, Tool Mark Identification, and Ballistics Reports were the most prominent evidence displayed to the jury. Tool marks on and unfired gun cartridge related to Desmond Turner matched the discharged cartridges at the crime scene.

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Type of Evidence: shoe print
Andrew Check was found guilty on two counts of sexual assault. There were shoe prints left behind in one of the victims houses that specialists identified as a Fred Perry shoe. Police searched Check's house and found a pair of Fred Perry shoes, not the ones used to commit the crime. Even though the shoes were not the same worn to commit the crime, the officers were suspicious.

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Sex attacker Andrew Check left trainer pattern at scene

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A man is jailed after leaving his trainer pattern in the home of a woman he sexually assaulted at knifepoint.

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Type of Evidence: Tire Tracks

BROWN v. STATE:

August 06, 2007, Brown is tried and found guilty on two counts of aggravated assault. Both victims testified at trial and tracks discovered at the scene of the crime placed Brown's vehicle, an older model green Chevrolet Blazer, at the home where the assaults took place.

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ga-court-of-appeals/1299435.html

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Type of evidence: Bloody Footprint
Jeffery Luis Jones was convicted of 2 counts of murder, first degree burglary, armed robbery, and criminal conspiracy. The only evidence that was found at the crime scene was a bloody foot print that was consistent with a pair of steel toed boots Jones owned.

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/sc-supreme-court/1219064.html

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tool mark
Turner v State
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/in-supreme-court/1581279.html
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja1l5meGGZU

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Type of evidence: Bite Mark
Keith Allen Harward served over 33 years of a life sentence (1982-2016) of a rape and murder case that he did not commit. After the Virginia Supreme Court granted a writ of actual innocence, Keith Allen Harward was released from the Virginia prison on April 8, 2016. The assailant broke into a home of a couple, killing a man and raping his wife. During the course of Harward's  prosecution six forensic dentists falsely claimed that Harward's teeth matched a bite mark on one of the victims. New DNA evidence definitively proved that Harward's bite mark did not match and pointed to Jerry Crotty as the real criminal.
https://richmond.com/news/dna-proves-man-innocent-of-1982-rape-and-murder-in-famous-bite-mark-case-lawyers/article_05ab68ce-064c-58bb-b57a-211e2bb51ecd.html

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Type of evidence: tire treads.
Bobby Stacy case
Bobby Stacy stole a car to drive to his cousin's house. When the police found out the car was stolen, there was a car chase and a police officer ended up shooting Stacy. When they analyzed the tire tracks, they found that both cars left skid marks and Stacy's car went off the road and crashed into a ditch. They still can't tell who left their vehicle during the shooting and why. They know who the shooter was but can't tell exactly what happened or if the officer had any reason to shoot Stacy.

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Claudia Moss never saw the entry wound left by the bullet from a Southwest City police officer's gun that took the life of her 26-year-old son.

Bobby L. Stacy already had been declared brain dead and was lingering on life support by the time his mother arrived at St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Okla., on March 28. The wound near his right ear was covered by a bandage wrapped around his head.

"I knew when I got there he was never coming home," Moss said in a recent interview.

Her son died the next day.

The shooting of Bobby Stacy has been the subject of a Missouri State Highway Patrol investigation for more than two months, an unusually lengthy probe of an officer-involved shooting. If the length of the investigation is an indicator of the extent of suspicions that the shooting may have been less than justified, the state patrol will not say.

Neither the patrol nor Southwest City police will confirm the name of the officer involved, although his identity appears to be common knowledge among residents of McDonald County where the shooting took place. The officer remains on paid administrative leave pending a conclusion of the investigation, according to the town's police chief.
What happened?
Moss, of Gentry, Ark., told the Globe that while she was at the hospital in Tulsa, she asked the patrol's lead investigator, Sgt. James Musche, what happened. She said Musche told her that he did not yet know - all he knew for certain was that it had not gone down the way the officer claimed. However, the state patrol would neither confirm nor deny whether Musche made the statement.

For Moss and Bobby's father, Larry Stacy, who operates a horse ranch near Ardmore, Okla., their wait to learn what investigators may be able to piece together from the scene of the shooting has become increasingly difficult to bear.

"I just can't get this out of my mind," Stacy said recently. "I try to go about my work, but I can't stop thinking about it." He said he can't help but think there's something going on that the family hasn't been told.

"Nobody seems to know why it's taken this long to wrap up," he said.
Cat and mouse
This much appears certain: Bobby Stacy was in a stolen Chevrolet Suburban shortly before 2 a.m. on March 28 when an officer chased him down Frye Road out of Southwest City. The SUV ran off the road about a half-mile east of town and wound up high-centered on a foot-high abutment of a box-culvert bridge with a bullet in the driver's head.

Bobby had been drinking at a party outside Gravette, Ark., his mother said. She believes he most likely left the party intending to go to his cousin's home on the Missouri side of the state line.

It surprises his parents that their son stole a car to get there. Generally, he'd walk wherever he wanted to go, they said. He was the kind of guy who would walk rather than ask someone else for a ride, they said.

Stacy had worked at a drive-through wildlife farm in Arkansas for about five years after graduating from high school in Gravette, loved animals and was good at breaking horses, according to his parents. He'd had some prior brushes with the law, but stealing a vehicle was a more serious offense than any he'd committed previously, they said.

It seems unlikely though that the officer could even have known the vehicle was stolen. The owner of the Suburban, Jimmy Thacker, told the Globe his family never noticed it missing from their home on Route MM northeast of Southwest City until the next morning. They reported it stolen about six hours after the fatal chase.

Stacy's father retained an attorney and hired a private investigator from Tulsa in the weeks following his son's death.

The private eye, Eric Cullen, of Cullen & Associates, learned that a clerk at a convenience store on Main Street in Southwest City saw an officer stop a Suburban near the store the night in question. When the officer got out and approached the vehicle, the driver took off with the patrol car in pursuit.

Stacy's parents believe it was possible their son started a game of cat and mouse that ended badly. But they have trouble seeing why it should have concluded with the officer pulling his gun and shooting their son.
Tire tracks
Cullen visited the scene of the shooting and took pictures of the roadway and what evidence he believes he saw of the final moments of the chase and shooting.

He said the tire tracks of the Suburban and the patrol car were still visible and indicated both drivers ran off the roadway. Frye Road takes a 90-degree turn to the south a half-mile east of town, and Cullen believes the back end of the Suburban yawed off the left side of the road as it was coming out of the turn.

He said the tire track evidence shows Stacy regained the roadway without stopping but then ran off the left side a second time and crashed in a shallow ditch just after crossing the box-culvert bridge near a driveway to Danny and Lois Frye's residence. Tracks showed the officer skidded off the other side of the road just beyond the bridge and struck a barbed-wire fence, probably in attempting to stop, Cullen said.

Cullen believes he saw evidence that Stacy backed out of the ditch and ended up high-centered on the bridge abutment on the right side of the road.

If the private investigator's analysis of the tire tracks is correct, then the questions appear to be: Did the officer exit his patrol car believing the chase was over after the Suburban crashed in the ditch? Did Stacy attempt to back into him, drawing the officer's fire? Or did the officer exit his car and start shooting at Stacy without justification?

The state patrol has declined to release any details of the officer's account, and no eyewitnesses to the shooting have surfaced.
No ID
The Globe's efforts to reach the Fryes have been unsuccessful, although Cullen said they told him they were awakened by the crash outside their home but did not see the shooting.

Danny Frye believes he heard a loud noise and a couple of gunshots, the private investigator said. Lois Frye got up, looked out a window and saw the patrol car up against the barbed-wire fence in the ditch on the far side of the road and the SUV wrecked on the bridge, Cullen said.

Not realizing anyone had been shot, she went outside and asked the officer if he needed any help getting the vehicle off the bridge abutment, Cullen said, and was told something to the effect: "No, I'm good."

Other officers and emergency medical personnel began arriving a short time later, and she saw the driver of the Suburban placed on a gurney and hauled away in an ambulance, according to Cullen.

Stacy's parents do not believe their son was armed in any manner.

"He wouldn't even carry a pocket knife," his father said. "He was kind of anti-guns. Just from knowing what I know about my son, I would say there's no way he was armed."

Moss believes her son also is unlikely to ever have tried to run an officer down with a vehicle.

"He's never been a violent person," she said. "Sometimes when he was drunk, he wouldn't stop and think. But he's never been a violent person."

They also do not believe their son knew the officer involved or had any prior contact with him. They were told at the hospital that their son had no identification on him at the time of the shooting and that officers had to have him fingerprinted at the hospital to learn who he was.
Multiple shots?
The number of shots fired by the officer and from what distance and angle are obvious subjects of the probe.

Two days after the shooting, Thacker was informed by his insurance company that the state patrol had agreed to let him retrieve family belongings left in the vehicle. He went to M&M Wrecker Service in Carthage, where the 1996 Suburban was being held as evidence, and saw the damage the vehicle sustained in the crash and shooting.

The windows of the rear doors on both sides were completely broken out along with the passenger-side window of the rear cargo area, he said. The front windshield and rear window of the SUV were intact, as were the windows on both doors for the front seats. There was a bullet hole in the driver's side rear door, but Thacker could not tell if it was an exit or entry hole.

He said he also saw an apparent bullet hole in the back of the head rest of the front passenger seat and another hole in his son's book bag left in the middle of the floor of the back seat. The carpet beneath the book bag appeared to have been disturbed, either by the bullet that passed through the bag or someone trying to locate evidence.

There was a significant amount of blood noted by Thacker on the driver's seat and inside panel of the driver's door. He could not tell if the three windows were shot out or broken out by crash impact. He could only speculate if any of the three apparent bullet holes he spotted were caused by the same bullet, he said.

Thacker was at work the night the SUV was stolen. His oldest son came home late from a church function in Tulsa and noticed the dome light on in the Suburban. He turned it off and went inside to sleep. Apparently, Stacy took the vehicle a short time later. The family was in the habit of leaving keys in their cars since their residence is in the country and somewhat remotely located.

Thacker told the Globe that before he was allowed to retrieve their belongings from the Suburban, the state patrol contacted him and wanted to know about a second set of keys they'd found in the car and a backpack with paperwork in it bearing the name of someone with whom he was not acquainted.

He said he told them his family did not know how either of them got in the SUV. He later learned that someone else who lives down the road from him may have had their vehicle tampered with the same night.
Head wound
Larry Stacy, who is divorced from Bobby's mother and remarried, was down in Texas when he first got word that his son had been shot. He hurried to Tulsa but could not get there until about 5:30 a.m. the next day.

He and his ex-wife both recall a doctor telling them that Bobby had been shot in the back of the head with a hollow-point bullet from a large-caliber gun. The bullet had made "mush" of the right side of his brain, the doctor told them.

For almost two months, they were left to wonder how he could have been shot in the back of the head if he was posing any actual threat to the officer's life. It was not until they received their son's medical records from both the hospital in Grove, Okla., where an ambulance first took Bobby, and the hospital in Tulsa, that they learned he actually had been shot in the right side of the head.

The lingering possibility that multiple shots may have been fired from an angle coming from a side of the vehicle troubles them all the more.

"Was this guy shooting at him as they were driving down the road?" Moss asked. "I know I wouldn't stop either if someone was shooting at me. How can a traffic violation turn into something like this?"

The Globe offered the officer believed to have been involved, through his police chief, an opportunity to provide his account of the shooting but received no response. Police officers are generally bound by departmental policy not to comment before the conclusion of investigations into officer-involved shootings.

Sgt. Mike Watson, a spokesman for the state patrol, said this week that the patrol's lead investigator, Musche, is bound by such policy and cannot comment at this time.

"We certainly want to be sensitive to the family in terms of them wanting answers," Watson said.

He said there is a considerable amount of evidence to examine in the case, investigators wish to be thorough in their consideration of that evidence and no timetable for completion of the probe can be provided at this time.

"But we're not going to be partial to anybody," Watson said. "We're looking for the facts in the case and to present those facts as we find them."

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The shooting of Bobby Stacy: Case is a forensic puzzle of tire tracks, bullet paths

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Claudia Moss never saw the entry wound left by the bullet from a Southwest City police officer's gun that took the life of her 26-year-old son. Bobby L. Stacy already had been declared brain dead and was lingering on life support by the time his mother arrived at St.

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"frenzied killing"
type of evidence: Footprint/shoe impression
The police had received a pair of shoes that corresponded to the shoebox in Wu's home. The test impressions of the Prada shoes had similarities to the ones left at the crime scene. They later found that they were Wu's shoes.

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A Supreme Court jury has today found a man guilty of murdering his brother-in-law in a case where the key piece of evidence was a pair of size 7 Prada men's shoes.

Yeng Jun Wu, 45, was found guilty of murdering Berwick plasterer Shao Qing "Victor" Chen in what was described in court as a "frenzied killing".

Wu was remanded to appear for a pre-sentence hearing next Wednesday.

Prosecutor Patrick Bourke had told the jury a shoe print had been left behind at the murder scene.

Mr Chen's body was found by his father at his Endeavour Hills property on February 11 last year. A long sharp weapon had inflicted at least 40 cuts to his head, and his brain had been removed.

When Wu was later arrested, police found a shoebox for a pair of size 7 Prada shoes at his home just outside the garage.

"Inquiries were made with Prada Australia about the style of shoe that correlates with the shoebox that had been located," Mr Bourke said.

"A sample pair of such shoes that corresponded to the shoebox were provided to the police."

Mr Bourke said a witness, Nu Chen, told police he and Wu had the same pair of Prada shoes.

Test impressions made of the Prada shoes had similarities to the shoe print left at the crime scene.

"There will also be some evidence that the shoe size of the accused man fits within the parameters of the shoe impression at the crime scene," Mr Bourke said.

The prosecutor said DNA from blood drops and a broken Boss zipper also pointed to Wu being the killer.

Police noticed Wu wore Boss clothing and had a wound on his hand when they interviewed him.

Mr Bourke said Wu had owed Mr Chen, a father of two, more than $250,000 in loans when he killed him.

Wu had been declared bankrupt in June 2008 after his plastering business failed.

He had borrowed substantial sums of money from a number of family members and associates to maintain his lifestyle before buying a restaurant, initially called Spicy Temptation and later renamed Straits of Malacca, in Little Bourke Street in 2009.

Wu also bought another restaurant in 2011 in Glen Waverley, called Tasty Seafood.

At the time of his arrest, Wu was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Defence barrister Damian Sheales however said his client had no motive to kill "Victor" Chen, who had drinking and gambling problems, because he kept lending him money he never repaid.

"Why on earth would you want to kill the person who you borrow money from? Every time you ask them for money they say yes and they give you more and you never pay them back," Mr Sheales said.

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A Supreme Court jury has today found a man guilty of murdering his brother-in-law in a case where the key piece of evidence was a pair of size 7 Prada men's shoes. Yeng Jun Wu, 45, was found guilty of murdering Berwick plasterer Shao Qing "Victor" Chen in what was described in court as a "frenzied killing".

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Shoe Print
Mark Chapman stole power tool from a house that was undergoing renovations. He left a boot print behind and the police were able to match it to his shoe, and found the tools at his home.

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Kendal burglar jailed after leaving boot print at scene

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Mark Chapman stole power tools worth £10,000 from a house undergoing renovation.

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Type of Evidence: Shoe Print
Randal Gene Mars died after being hit in the head and and strangled to death with a shoe print on his forehead. Mars was already bleeding from his head when the police arrived at the scene. There was a trail of blood starting where Mars was found to a vacant office building. Inside the building were David Farkas and Nicholas Hamm, which they claimed that Mars left the office building on his own after being punched in the face or head by Hamm for disrespecting his family.

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Approximate area of beating

Two convicted felons were arrested in a vacant office building Saturday in connection with the death of a 48-year-old man who allegedly was attacked two days earlier in the same building.

The Clark County Coroner's Office said today that Randal Gene Mars, 48, died from strangulation with blunt head trauma as a contributing factor. A coroner's spokeswoman said the death has been ruled a homicide.

According to an arrest report, police responded at about 8:15 p.m. Thursday to the area of Decatur Boulevard and Flamingo Road after receiving a report of a man bleeding from the face. The man was identified as Mars and was found to have severe facial and head injuries. He was unable to communicate with responding medical personnel, the arrest report says.

He died at University Medical Center on Saturday.

Investigators found severe bruising on Mars' face and head as well as what appeared to be a shoeprint on Mars' forehead.

After learning of Mars' death Saturday afternoon, police responded to the area where Mars initially was found and located a trail of blood that led to a vacant office building. The building's lock appeared to have been tampered with and when police entered the building, they found David Farkas, 53, and Nicholas Hamm, 30, inside.

The men were arrested for trespassing.

An officer noticed blood stains on Hamm's jacket and an injury to his hand, the report indicates. Hamm reportedly told the officer he was a transient. A record search told the officer Hamm had been convicted in 2003 of burglary and forgery.

The officer then spoke with Farkas and saw blood on his shoes and injuries to both of his hands. Upon closer inspection, the officer saw the pattern of Farkas' shoes appeared to match the shoeprint that was on Mars' forehead, the report says.

Police learned Farkas had convictions for assault and assault with a deadly weapon in his record and a registered address near Decatur and Sahara, but he told police he had been staying in the area of Decatur and Flamingo.

Further investigation netted the discovery of a large amount of blood spatter on the floor and walls of the office building, the report indicates.

The two men were taken to police headquarters, where they were read their Miranda rights and interviewed.

Hamm reportedly told investigators he had broken into the office building with a screwdriver and was only staying there to keep warm. According to the report, he first denied involvement in any altercation with Mars but later told police he had punched Mars several times in the face or head because Mars had disrespected his family. Hamm denied kicking Mars and said Mars left the building on his own, the report said.

Police said that after being confronted with blood evidence from the scene, Farkas said Hamm had a fight with Mars because Mars disrespected Hamm's family. Farkas reportedly told police he and Hamm dragged Mars outside and left him.

Hamm and Farkas were booked on charges of murder, trespassing and for being ex-felons failing to change their addresses.

Both men are scheduled to appear before a judge Wednesday morning.

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Forehead shoeprint leads to felons' arrest in homicide case

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Two convicted felons were arrested in a vacant office building Saturday in connection with the death of a 48-year-old man who allegedly was attacked two days earlier in the same building. The Clark County Coroner's Office said today that Randal Gene Mars, 48, died from strangulation.

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Type of Evidence: Bite Mark
John Kunco was wrongly convicted of raping and torturing a women who lived in an apartment he had worked in as a maintenance worker. There were bite marks found on the victim, that the prosecutor's claimed belonged to Kunco. A dental expert said there was a match, and that Kunco bit the victim, meaning he was responsible. However after being convicted the Innocence Project was able to get a DNA sample that proved it was not Kunco.

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In 1991, John Kunco was convicted in Pennsylvania of raping and torturing a 55-year-old woman who lived at the apartment building where he'd previously been a maintenance worker. Kunco was sentenced to 45 to 90 years in prison. At a hearing on Monday, Kunco's Innocence Project legal team presented new evidence, including new testimony from the key witnesses for the prosecutors, indicating that Kunco deserves to have his conviction vacated.

On the night of December 17, 1990, Kunco had a solid alibi: he was at home in bed with his girlfriend and their infant child. But investigators and prosecutors argued at trial that Kunco was a dangerous criminal who broke into the victim's home that night and sexually assaulted and tortured the victim for hours.

The prosecutor's case relied heavily on a single piece of alleged physical evidence that they said linked Kunco to the violent crime scene: a supposed bite mark that was assessed five months after the crime occurred. According to the two forensic dentists, the use of an ultraviolet light was able to help them examine marks purportedly left on the victim by the perpetrator months prior. At trial, the dentists testified that "within reasonable dental certainty, the bite mark on the back left shoulder area of [the victim] was made by the teeth of John Kunco."

Related: In a Landmark Decision, Texas Forensic Science Commission Issues Moratorium on the Use of Bite Mark Evidence

The victim never saw the perpetrator during the course of the attack. In addition to being blindfolded, she also suffered from partial physical blindness. Consequently, during the investigation, the victim was asked to make a voice identification of the perpetrator, a highly unreliable method to secure an identification. In Kunco's case, the level of unreliability was expounded when the police officer who secured the positive identification did so by imitating Kunco-known for having a lisp-even though he'd never spoken to or met Kunco.

Based on that combined evidence, Kunco was found guilty. But in recent years, newer, more reliable evidence has surfaced, pointing toward Kunco's innocence.

In 2009, the Innocence Project was successful in obtaining DNA testing of probative crime scene evidence. Those results excluded Kunco as the source of the DNA.

". . . [W]e no longer offer the bite mark linkage opinions that we offered in 1991, that Mr. Kunco was the biter."

In April 2016, the two dentists who testified that Kunco's teeth matched five-month-old marks on the victim's back submitted a joint affidavit in which they said that "while our testimony in Mr. Kunco's trial was consistent with the scientific understanding at the time, we no longer offer the bite mark linkage opinions that we offered in 1991, that Mr. Kunco was the biter." The affidavit was prompted by revised guidelines adopted by the American Board of Forensic Odontologists (ABFO) in April.

The ABFO's new guidelines don't allow for individualized conclusions, meaning that its board-certified members can no longer say that a particular individual made a particular bite mark with his or her teeth; now, the most an expert can say is that the suspect could not have been excluded from making the mark.

On Monday, one of those experts, Dr. Thomas David, stated at Kunco's hearing: "[s]taying within the guidelines, my opinion would have to be different." David's testimony was not the only one to raise doubt around the integrity of the forensic method that was key in securing Kunco's conviction. Two other forensic dentists, including the sitting president of the ABFO, Adam Freeman, also testified as witnesses on behalf of Kunco that recent research confirms assertions made by the National Academy of Sciences in 2009, that bite mark analysis is not a legitimate forensic tool and should not be used in criminal investigation.

"Knowing now what we did not know then, that bite mark simply could not be attributed to Mr. Kunco," said Innocence Project Staff Attorney Karen Thompson.

Based on this new evidence, the Innocence Project has petitioned the court to vacate Mr. Kunco's conviction and also for additional DNA testing of other key crime scene evidence.

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Bite Mark Evidence Used to Convict Pennsylvania Man of Rape Is Called into Question - Innocence Project

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In 1991, John Kunco was convicted in Pennsylvania of raping and torturing a 55-year-old woman who lived at the apartment building where he'd previously been a maintenance worker. Kunco was sentenced to 45 to 90 years in prison.

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Type of evidence: footprint
A bloody footprint found at a crime scene helped find the killers of the Clutter family, who were both already criminals looking to kill Herb Clutter and his family. One photograph of Perry Edward Smith's bloody footprint, which was not visible to the naked eye, helped expose him and Richard Eugene Hickock of the crime.

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Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith were in prison when they heard from another prisoner that Herb Clutter was very wealthy and he had money stashed in a safe in his house. This prisoner, who told Hickock and Smith this, had previously worked for the Clutter family. After being re leased from prison, Hickock and Smith immediately drew up plans to get their hands on the stashed cash.

They went to the Clutter home outside of Holcomb, Kansas when four of the six family members happened to be home. Once entering the home, they realized that there was not a safe which contained money, they awoke Herb Clutter. Mr. Clutter gave them the little cash he had and said the re was no more. They aroused the remainder of the family and again searched the house, confirmed Clutter's story for themselves. They ransacked the entire house getting no more than roughly fifty dollars, a pair of binoculars and a transistor radio. Once the two had all they could find and assuming that Herb Clutter wasn't volunteering the information of where the cash was stored, executed in cold blood all four family members.

When officers arrived, Herb Clutter, 48, lay sprawled on a mattress in the basement, stabbed, his throat slashed and a shotgun charge fired to his head. He wore pajamas. His hands were bound and his mouth was taped shut. On a couch in an adjoining room was 15-year-old Kenyon Neal Clutter, bound, gagged and shot in the head. In separate upstairs bedrooms were the bodies of Mrs. Bonnie Mae Clutter, 45, and Nancy Mae Clutter, 16. Mrs. Clutter was bound and gagged, Nancy only bound. Each had been shot in the head.

Garden City Police Department Chief Mitchell Geisler was one of the first officers to arrive to the horrific scene. Accompanying him was Assistant Chief Ritch Rohleder. Rohleder was an expert photographer and used his skills to photograph the crime scene. Although technology wasn't nearly to the level it is today, it was through Rohleder's photographs that the discovery of a bloody footprint remained from Smith. This footprint was not visible to the naked eye. A photograph was also taken of a tire track left in haste by the murders.

Alvin Dewey, of the Kansas Bureau of Investigations (KBI), lead the investigation with help from four other KBI investigators working under him. He also solicited the support of other governmental agencies to develop evidence and leads.

Immediately following the murders, Hickock and Smith fled to the Kansas City area where Hickock wrote a series of hot checks. After overstaying their welcome, they decided to flee to Mexico where they lived for a short period of time. There, they pawned the binoculars and eventually hitchhiked their way through California enroute to Omaha, Nebraska. After a short stay in Omaha, they made their way to Iowa where they stole a car and returned to the Kansas City area. From Kansas City, they eventually travelled to Florida and Nevada. It was in Nevada where Dewey and the KBI eventually caught up with them on December 31, 1959.

The time Hickock and Smith spent canvassing the country, Dewey and the KBI were able to piece together evidence which was corroborated by a fellow prisoner (Floyd Wells) who ratted out the murders for some ransom money being offered at the time. As karma goes, the prisoner that ratted out Hickock and Smith was later killed himself in a prison break in Mississippi.

When Hickock and Smith were captured in Nevada they were still driving the stolen car they had acquired in Iowa. They also had in their possession the boot which made the bloody print. Once word got out that they had been captured, Dewey and three other KBI investigators flew to Nevada to solicit a confession from the two men. After the confession, they were flown from Nevada to Garden City where they stood trial in Finney County District Court for the murders. On March 29, 1960, a jury of all men returned a verdict of guilty and recommended the death penalty. For the next five years they lived on death row at the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas (just north of Kansas City). They were executed by hanging on the gallows of the grounds of the prison with very little fan fare on April 14, 1965. Hickock died at 12:41 a.m. and Smith at 1:19 a.m. The State paid for the burials but Smith's would cost $250 less than Hickock's. Smith, an honorably discharged Korean War veteran, was entitled to a $250 veterans burial allowance. They were buried in Mt. Muncie cemetery.

The last words of Smith were, "I think it is a hell of a thing that a life has to be taken in this manner. I say this especially because there's a great deal I could have offered society. I certainly think capital punishment is legally and morally wrong. Any apology for what I have done would be meaningless at this time. I don't have any animosities toward anyone involved in this matter. I think that is all."

The last words of Hickock were, "No, I guess I don't." But then he motioned for KBI Agent Roy Church, who played a major role in the arrest of the two men, to come to where he (Hickock) was standing. "You're sending me to a better place than this," and added that he did not bear any grudge against Church for his role in the case. He then shook hands and said, "Goodbye."

As Hickock waited for the trap to spring beneath him, the prison chaplain, Rev. Edgar Meissner, read a portion of the 23rd Psalm. As Smith waited, the Rev. James Post, former prison chaplain prayed quietly, "The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. Blessed is the name of the Lord. May the Lord have mercy on your soul." Later the Rev. Mr. Post said Smith had not wanted anything read over him. "I cheated him a little bit, " the former chaplain added.

Hickock and Smith ate their final meal in separate rooms, each with a chaplain sitting by. They had ordered spiced shrimp, french fries, garlic bread, ice cream and strawberries with whipped cream.
Clutter family funeral

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Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith were in prison when they heard from another prisoner that Herb Clutter was very wealthy and he had money stashed in a safe in his house. This prisoner, who told Hickock and Smith this, had previously worked for the Clutter family.

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type of evidence ear print
mark kempster was jailed on three counts of burglary and one attempted burglary he was convicted by a ear print left on a glass window of the house. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1015599/Burglar-convicted-ear-print-crime-scene-challenges-accuracy-evidence.html

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Type of evidence: bite mark

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Type of evidence: bite mark
When a woman was stabbed to death in the men's restroom of a bar, customer Ray Krone was convicted of her murder and sentenced to death after the styrofoam impression of his teeth he was asked to create appeared to match the bites on the victim's body. He was convicted twice. He was eventually exonerated after DNA evidence proved his innocence and incriminated registered sex offender Kenneth Phillips.

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On the morning of December 29, 1991, the body of the thirty-six year old victim was found, nude, in the men's restroom of the Phoenix, Arizona bar where she worked. She had been fatally stabbed, and the perpetrator left behind little physical evidence. Blood at the crime scene matched the victim's type, and saliva on her body came from someone with the most common blood type. There was no semen and no DNA tests were performed.

Investigators relied on bite marks on the victim's breast and neck. Upon hearing that the victim had told a friend that a regular customer named Ray Krone was to help her close up the bar the previous night, police asked Krone to make a Styrofoam impression of his teeth for comparison. On December 31, 1991, Krone was arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault.

At his 1992 trial, Krone maintained his innocence, claiming to be asleep in his bed at the time of the crime. Experts for the prosecution, however, testified that the bite-marks found on the victim's body matched the impression that Krone had made on the Styrofoam and a jury convicted him on the counts of murder and kidnapping. He was sentenced to death and a consecutive twenty-one year term of imprisonment, respectively. Krone was found not guilty of the sexual assault.

Krone won a new trial on appeal in 1996, but was convicted again, mainly on the state's supposed expert bite-mark testimony. This time, however, the judge sentenced him to life in prison, citing doubts about whether or not Krone was the true killer.

It was not until 2002, after Krone had served more than ten years in prison, that DNA testing would prove his innocence. DNA testing conducted on the saliva and blood found on the victim excluded Krone as the source and instead matched a man named Kenneth Phillips. Phillips was incarcerated on an unrelated sex crime and, although he had lived a short distance from the bar where the victim worked, he had never been considered a suspect in her murder.

On April 8, 2002, Krone was released from prison and on April 24th, the District Attorney's office filed to formally dismiss all charges against him. Murder and sexual assault charges have since been brought against Phillips.

Ray Krone spent more than a decade in prison, some of it on death row, before DNA testing cleared his name. He is the 100th former death row inmate freed because of innocence since the reinstatement of capital punishment in the United States in 1976. He was the twelfth death row inmate whose innocence has been proven through postconviction DNA testing. Prior to his arrest, Krone had no previous criminal record, had been honorably discharged from the military, and had worked in the postal service for seven years.

State: Arizona

Charge: Murder, Kidnapping, Sexual Assault

Conviction: First Degree Murder, Kidnapping

Sentence: Death (+21 years)

Incident Date: 12/21/91

Conviction Date: 08/08/92

Exoneration Date: 04/24/02

Served: 10 Years

Type of Forensic Science Problem: Bitemark Analysis

Race of Defendant: Caucasian

Race of Victim: Caucasian

Status: Exonerated by DNA

Contributing Causes of Conviction: Government Misconduct, Unvalidated or Improper Forensic Science

Type of Crime: Homicide Related, Sex Crimes

Accused Plead Guilty: No

Death Penalty Case: yes

The Alternative Perpetrator Identified: Yes

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Today Ray Krone Celebrates 17 Years of Freedom

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Investigators relied on bite marks on the victim's breast and neck. Upon hearing that the victim had told a friend that a regular customer named Ray Krone was to help her close up the bar the previous night, police asked Krone to make a Styrofoam impression of his teeth for comparison.

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Typer of evidence: tire tread
In 1986, Carrie Love was asphyxiated to death by her boss Jesse Pratt after he raped and stabbed her in his semi-truck. In an attempt to conceal her identity, Pratt ran over Love's head with his semi-truck before dumping her body at a highway rest stop. The truck left tire track's on Love's chest and arms, which were found to be a match of the mark's made by a plaster cast of Pratt's truck.

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A national television crew spent three days this week documenting the murder of a woman in Klamath County 17 years ago, and the forensic evidence that led to the conviction of her killer.

Carrie Love was killed in northern Klamath County in 1986 by Jesse Pratt, who was a trucker and her boss. The tires on Pratt's truck played a key role in his conviction.

A three-person crew working for the "Forensic Files" show on the Court TV cable channel retraced the last moments of Love's life and talked to several Klamath County officials who worked to get Pratt charged and convicted for her death, including the lead detective in the case and the district attorney who prosecuted him.

"It was probably one of the most brutal cases I ever dealt with," said Kenneth Cooper, who was the Oregon State Police's lead investigator in the case.

Cooper said he worked on more than a hundred murder cases during his career of more than 25 years in Klamath Falls.

Key to solving the Pratt case was forensic, or scientific, evidence, including microscopic bits of fiber from Pratt's shirt found under Love's fingernails and the tire tracks from Pratt's big rig, said Stephanie Kovac, the free-lance producer in charge of shooting the episode.

"The forensic evidence was pretty monumental in this case," she said.

Pratt and Love, both from Seattle, were traveling south on Highway 97 in Pratt's 1976 Kenworth semi-truck and trailer. He raped Love, who was his 20-year-old secretary, then stabbed her with a knife and asphyxiated her with a mask made of paper towels and duct tape.

In an attempt to conceal her identity, Pratt ran over Love's head with his semi-truck before covering her with gravel at a highway rest stop that was under construction near Chemult.

The truck left tire tracks in the form of red marks on Love's chest and arm.

Tire tread expert Pete McDonald analyzed the tires on Pratt's truck. In the lab, McDonald made a plaster cast of the tires and then dipped them in a red dye, Kovac said. After rolling the casts over his own arm, he compared the marks to the ones on Love - they were a match.

McDonald repeated the demonstration in the courtroom at Pratt's trial.

Kovac said she thought it was ironic that the thing Pratt loved more than anything, his truck, ended up being key in his being sent to prison.

Pratt was convicted of the killing in 1988, but the ruling was overturned by the Oregon Supreme Court. He was again convicted of the crime in 1991 and given the death sentence.

He has been appealing the ruling since, becoming the longest-term resident currently on Oregon's death row. Pratt is now 69 years old.

Before Love's murder Pratt served four years of a 10-year sentence for assault in the Walla Walla, Wash., state penitentiary and had a history of violent relationships with women, Kovac said.

Pratt asked for clemency from then-Gov. John Kitzhaber last December, saying he would stop appealing his sentence if it was reduced to life in prison. Kitzhaber denied the request.

Kovac said the show is trying to venture away from doing episodes about DNA evidence and is looking for other kinds of cases where forensic evidence lead to a conviction, such as the tire tracks that were crucial in the Love case.

"It's just more unusual and different," said Kovac, who works out of Dallas.

She has done 11 episodes for the show that has been on the air for eight years.

While in Klamath Falls, the crew filmed interviews with Cooper and Klamath County District Attorney Ed Caleb, who prosecuted Pratt. The trio went up to the murder scene on Highway 97 and to the spot where a passing motorist found a sleeping bag with blood stains, the find that sparked the investigation.

In all, the crew shot 25 tapes, or about 12 hours of footage in and near Klamath Falls, Kovac said.

After the shoot in Klamath Falls, the crew is headed to Vancouver, Wash., to interview retired criminologist Mick Howard; then to Spokane, Wash., to talk with Connie Love, Carrie Love's mother; and then out to Cleveland, Ohio, to tape an interview with McDonald.

Kovac said the toughest part of filming is talking to people who were close to the victim.

"We are asking them to relive something that was horrific and we have to go through it step by step," she said.

Filming should be done Dec. 9.

Kovac said she is not sure when the episode will run, but she guessed sometime early next year during the next season of "Forensic Files."

Cooper said it is not the first time he has received a call about the case, or that a national television crew has come to talk to him.

Author Jack Gieck, who wrote a true-crime book about the case called "Fatal Journey," contacted Cooper several times while writing, and the Discovery Channel did a piece on the forensic evidence in the case, he said.

Reporter Dylan Darling covers natural resources. He can be reached at 885-4471, (800) 275-0982, or by e-mail at ddarling@heraldandnews.com.

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A national television crew spent three days this week documenting the murder of a woman in Klamath County 17 years ago, and the forensic evidence that led to the conviction of her killer. Carrie Love was killed in northern Klamath County in 1986 by Jesse Pratt, who was a trucker and her boss.

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Type of evidence: shoe print
Edwin Check was found guilty of breaking into a woman´s house and sexually assaulting her.

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Type of evidence: Tire marks; used to convict killer Gregory Kokal after the tire marks to his car were found by the body of a man shot and killed also with blunt forced trauma to his head left on a beach. Forensic experts then analyzed the tire marks and once they determined it was Kokals car, all the other evidence matched up and he was arrested.

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How Tire Tracks Led To The Conviction Of A Murderer | The New Detectives

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Type of evidence: Shoe print was used to convict Daniel Rochat of beating and killing an elderly woman and setting her on fire, Authorities found shoes at Rochats apartment very close to where the murder took place and those shoes had marks on them which matched the interior floor of the house and were an exact size for the shoe print found at the scene of the crime.

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type of evidence: ear print
David Kunze was found guilty of murder by analysis of a latent earprint found on the bedroom door of his victim, James McCann. Originally, the victim provided a set description of Kunze. He claimed that he was of Puerto Rican decent, had black hair, and was around the age of 30. The earprint found and traced back to Kunze disproved this description, proving Kunze to be of much older age, wear glasses, and have red/blonde hair. They were able to match the latent print to Kunze's ear by taking ear impressions at different pressures against glass. Although this evidence had not been used prior, in combination with other evidence found it proved Kunze guilty.

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Other Washington Cases with Perjury or False Accusation

In the early morning hours of December 16, 1994, an intruder entered the bedroom of 44-year-old James McCann and bludgeoned him to death with a blunt object in Vancouver, Washington. McCann's 13-year-old son, Tyler, who was asleep in another bedroom, also was struck in the head, but he survived.

Tyler told police that he had been too afraid to look at the attacker, but he believed the man had a dark complexion and was possibly Puerto Rican. He said the man had dark or black hair, was 25 to 30 years old, and had a medium build and a deep voice. The man wore gloves, had a flashlight in his mouth, and was not wearing glasses, the boy said.

Drawers and cabinets were opened in the home, but none of the contents were removed or disturbed. However, a television, video recorder, stereo speakers, a portable CD player, McCann's wallet and his truck were missing.

Police discovered what they believed was a partial latent ear print on the hallway-side surface of McCann's bedroom door.

Almost immediately, police focused on 44-year-old David Kunze as a suspect, even though Kunze was much older, wore glasses and had reddish-blond hair, because four days prior to the attack Kunze's ex-wife told him that she was going to marry McCann.

Kunze was interviewed on several occasions. He admitted he was upset by the news that his ex-wife (they had divorced seven months earlier) was going to marry McCann, but denied he committed the crime. With Kunze's consent, police searched his truck, house, boat, storage locker and a safety deposit box, but found nothing connecting him to the crime, with the possible exception of a receipt for a flashlight.

Police took photographs of Kunze's face and the sides of his head. In March 1995, Michael Grubb, a criminologist with the Washington State Police Crime Laboratory compared the latent print found on the door with photographs of Kunze's ears and concluded the print left on the door "could have" been made by Kunze's ear.

In September 1995, Grubb and George Millar, the fingerprint technician who had discovered the print on the bedroom door, met with Kunze and took exemplars of his ear prints. They put lotion on his ears and asked him to press his ear against a glass surface and then dusted with fingerprint power and used palm print tape to transfer the impression onto a plastic overlay. Kunze gave several exemplars, applying different pressure each time-light, medium and hard.

Millar and Grubb later admitted they took multiple exemplars because they were consciously trying to produce one that matched the print on the door.

Millar declined to make a comparison because he believed such a comparison was beyond the expertise of the crime lab's latent print examination unit. Grubb, however, did a comparison and concluded that Kunze was a "likely source" for the ear print.

Kunze was arrested in May 1996 and indicted in June on charges of aggravated murder, assault, robbery, and kidnapping. After the defense challenged the admissibility of ear print evidence as scientifically invalid, the trial judge convened a hearing in December 1996 on the admissibility of ear print comparison evidence.

In addition to Grubb, who conceded he had never performed an ear print identification before, the prosecution called Cor Van der Lugt, a Dutch police officer who was a crime scene technician and who testified that he had examined ear prints in more than 600 cases abroad and that he was able to distinguish between ears to make identifications. He said it was "obvious that you choose the one print (from exemplars) that fits the found print the most." Van der Lugt said he believed Kunze's ear left the print on the door.

The defense called a dozen witnesses, including two former FBI fingerprint examiners, who testified that ear print identification had no scientific basis and had not been validated by any study. The judge, however, ruled the evidence could be admitted at trial because the method of comparison was based on principles and methods that were accepted in the scientific community.

Kunze went on trial in Clark County Circuit Court in June 1997. Grubb and Van der Lugt both testified. Grubb said that to a "reasonable degree of scientific certainty" that "Mr. Kunze's left ear and cheek (were) the likely source of this impression at the scene."

Van der Lugt said he was "100 percent confident" the print on the door matched Kunze's ear.

The prosecution also called Steve Lawrence, who was serving a 10-year prison term for child molestation. Lawrence testified that he shared a cell with Kunze while Kunze was awaiting trial and that Kunze admitted the murder of McCann during a conversation. The defense was barred by the trial judge from cross-examining Lawrence about another murder case in 1990 where Lawrence had claimed someone else confessed a murder to him while awaiting trial.

On July 15, 1997, Kunze was convicted of aggravated murder, robbery and burglary and acquitted of assault and kidnapping. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Kunze hired a new attorney, John Henry Browne, who handled the appeal and challenged the ear print evidence. In November 1999, the Washington Court of Appeals reversed the convictions and ordered a new trial. The court held that ear print evidence was not scientifically accepted as a forensic discipline. The court disagreed with Grubb's claim that ear print comparison was accepted in the scientific community. "We reject his premise that latent ear prints automatically have the same degree of acceptance and reliability as fingerprints, toolmarks, ballistics, handwriting and other diverse forms of impression evidence," the court said.

While preparing for the retrial of the case, Browne interviewed Lawrence under oath and discovered that Lawrence had received several hundred dollars in witness fees for his testimony, but the prosecution had failed to disclose the payments to the defense as required.

In May 2001, Kunze went on trial for a second time. Grubb was allowed to testify as to his comparison of Kunze's ear to the latent print, but was not allowed to give an opinion on whether there was a match. Lawrence again testified that Kunze had confessed to him.

Browne called Dennis Hunter, one of the prosecutors at Kunze's first trial to question him about the witness fees paid to Lawrence and to expose that the payments had not been disclosed prior to the first trial. During a spirited exchange, Hunter, in violation of a judicial order, said that Browne represented Kunze on appeal-thus revealing to the jury that Kunze had previously been convicted. The trial judge immediately declared a mistrial because of the improper comment and ordered another trial to begin almost immediately.

On May 9, 2001, the prosecution dismissed the case rather than begin selecting a jury for another trial and Kunze was released.

Report an error or add more information about this case.

Posting Date: 4/26/2014

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Other Washington Cases with Perjury or False Accusation In the early morning hours of December 16, 1994, an intruder entered the bedroom of 44-year-old James McCann and bludgeoned him to death with a blunt object in Vancouver, Washington. McCann's 13-year-old son, Tyler, who was asleep in another bedroom, also was struck in the head, but he survived.

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Type of Evidence: Bite Mark
The infamous serial rapist and killer Ted Bundy was caught and convicted with the help of bite marks he left behind on one of his victims. Bundy had an extremely unique bite as his two front teeth were both chipped and rotated which made it easy for him to be matched with the impression from the victim. This bite mark evidence paired with a witness testimony from friends of the victim led to Bundy being convicted and eventually sentenced to death.

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AdVance Dental PC | Dentist Birmingham AL

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Dentists helped convict Ted Bundy - AdVance Dental PC | Dentist Birmingham AL

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Birmingham, AL dentist Dr. Marc Vance tells the story of how dental forensic evidence helped convict the now notorious serial killer Ted Bundy.

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Type of evidence: Tire track
Colonel Russell Williams, of Canada was found using tire track evidence. The police found a tire track that lead them to his home. This was found at the victims house, and when Williams rolled through a roadblock, the police noticed his tires and matched the two. This revealed him to be a delusional man who had murdered two people.

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A tire track in the snow brought detectives to the country home of Colonel Russell Williams, the commander of 8 Wing/CFB Trenton, one of the biggest military bases in Canada.

That was the beginning.

Perched on the edge of ice-encrusted Lake Stoco, a short drive outside this placid town north of Belleville, the sprawling bungalow Col. Williams, 46, owns with his wife, Mary Elizabeth Harriman, would look like any other rural property were it not for the yellow police tape and the forensics truck.

In sleepy Tweed, a community that includes many retired people, farmers and people who commute to Belleville, the mounting alarm that followed a pair of disturbing assaults last September and peaked with the disappearance of Jessica Lloyd in late January is slowly subsiding.

There was quiet panic in the community when rumours began to circulate about the nature of the two sex assaults in September of a woman in her 40s and another about 20 years younger.

Both victims lived alone, and both attacks occurred in the dead of night.

An intruder bound both women with duct tape and blindfolded them with pillow cases. Naked, they were tied to chairs and photographed.

The attacker took elaborate precautions. In each case, a source said, he laid bed sheets on the floor, or possibly blankets, and positioned the women and the chairs on the sheets.

When he was done, he took the sheets away with him, clearing the crime scenes of possible evidence, such as DNA traces.

The blindfolds - neither woman glimpsed their attacker's face - were crucial.

"It's best you don't recognize me," he told one. And he even evinced a hint of courtesy, at one point going to a bathroom cabinet to fetch her some aspirin.

The fears of area residents were heightened by the asphyxiation death in November of 38-year-old Corporal Marie-France Comeau, found slain in her home in Brighton, about 20 kilometres west of the Trenton air base. Like the two sexual-assault victims, Cpl. Comeau had been bound with duct tape.

Then, on Jan. 29, Jessica Lloyd, a 27-year-old Belleville woman, vanished without explanation, leaving both her cellphone and wallet in her home.

Amid police warnings that a predator might be on the loose, a massive investigation was launched.

The break in the case came last Thursday, as police canvassed the residents of Highway 37, which connects Tweed and Belleville.

Back at Ms. Lloyd's home, the impression of a distinctive tire track had already been lifted from the snow. Col. Russell was driving toward Tweed when he was stopped by police at a rolling road block. An officer noticed the tires on his car and began asking questions.

"Something about him wasn't right, he was more evasive than he needed to be," a source familiar with the investigation said.

So the colonel was asked to come in for questioning.

Col. Williams then allegedly took police to Ms. Lloyd's body, hidden in woods along Cary Road, near Tweed.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story mistakenly referred to Col. Williams as Col. Russell.

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The tire track that broke the case wide open

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A tire track in the snow brought detectives to the country home of Colonel Russell Williams, the commander of 8 Wing/CFB Trenton, one of the biggest military bases in Canada. That was the beginning. Perched on the edge of ice-encrusted Lake Stoco, a short drive outside this placid town north of Belleville, the sprawling bungalow Col.

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Type of evidence: shoe print
Aaron Hernandez, an ex-NFL football player was found guilty for murdering two people. Hernandez dumped one of the bodies a mile away from his house, and was last seen with the victim. His footprint was found near the crime scene and when his house was searched, shoes matched the sole found.

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Story highlights

Shoes prosecutors say Hernandez wore on night of Lloyd's death are missing

Hernandez is on trial for murder of Lloyd and has pleaded not guilty

Linking shoes to impressions at crime scene would help prosecution with its case

A murder weapon isn't the only thing missing as prosecutors try to convince jurors that former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez orchestrated the execution of Odin Lloyd.

The shoes prosecutors say Hernandez was wearing at the industrial park where Lloyd was killed also have seemingly vanished into thin air.

"The shoes and footprints caused by the shoes (are) a big deal," says CNN legal analyst Paul Callan, a former homicide prosecutor.

A big deal because connecting an athletic shoe impression found near Lloyd's body to Hernandez could help prove he directly participated in Lloyd's death.

Lloyd, 27, was shot once in the back and six times in the front in June 2013 - the final two bullets fired as he lay face up, according to the medical examiner. Hernandez has pleaded not guilty.

Aaron Hernandez's downward spiral

The sneakers prosecutors believe Hernandez wore the night of Lloyd's death were within the grasp of investigators who visited the ex-football star's home, but it appears no one knew it at the time.

Investigators photographed a pair of Nike Air Jordan XI Retro Low brand sneakers during one of their first searches of Hernandez's home, according to court papers, but did not take them in as evidence.

When Lloyd's body was discovered, crime scene investigators singled out one of two footwear impressions early on because one didn't match the "lugged sole" shoes of police, nor the shoes of first responders or civilian witnesses who found Lloyd's body, according to court documents.

When police began executing search warrants for weapons and clothing at Hernandez's home on June 18 and June 22, 2013, they also were looking for shoes that could match that print in the dirt, according to court files and testimony.

So far, jurors have not been told that somehow three other sets of sneakers neatly lined up side by side along a bedroom wall in the basement were overlooked, and "appeared to be in good condition," according to an affidavit. The basement is where Hernandez's man cave is located and is complete with bar, a screening room, a pool table with a New England Patriot's logo, and a trophy room.

That affidavit dated November 14, 2014, says that after studying images and home security video and having "consulted with Nike," investigators believe those three pairs of shoes are "believed to be produced by Nike and Creative Recreation." They are the white and black Air Jordan XI Retros, the red Creative Recreation Cesario low tops; and the brown Nike Air Jordan winterized spike sneakers allegedly worn by Hernandez, Wallace and Ortiz, respectively.

Wallace and Ortiz are also charged with the murder of Lloyd. They have pleaded not guilty and are going to be tried separately.

Wallace and Ortiz are seen on home security video entering the house and going into the basement after getting out of a car minutes after Lloyd was fatally shot in a nearby industrial park. Prosecutors say the cable connecting the basement security camera, labeled "man cave," was unplugged after the three men went downstairs.

Authorities say the "outsole pattern," of the Air Jordan XI Retro Low's allegedly worn by Hernandez is "similar to and consistent with the unidentified shoe impression... in close proximity to the body of Odin Lloyd," according to the affidavit. It also states the XI Retro Lows became available for public sale only three weeks before Lloyd's murder.

Yet, it wasn't until almost a year and a half later, when investigators were making final trial preparations last November, that they "noted" the three pairs of shoes in photographs and realized they could still be at Hernandez's home, a search warrant affidavit states.

In court papers, investigators said the sneakers appear to match shoe prints found at the scene where Lloyd was fatally shot.

In order to look again, police asked a court to approve another search warrant. The application also points out home surveillance video showing Wallace and Ortiz leaving the home after the shooting - wearing sandals.

Trying to make the case for another search, investigators also quote a jailhouse phone call dated December 25, 2013, between Hernandez and his fiancee Shayanna Jenkins.

Hernandez told Jenkins, "You still got my, my clothes at the house and s-?"

Jenkins responded,"I really don't understand. I mean, where do you think your clothes are?...Your clothes are exactly where they're supposed to be.....I mean, you've only been gone for what, six months?"

"Yeah," Hernandez said.

"You act like you're gonna be gone for like, 20 years," Jenkins replied.

But when police searched the home again on November 24, they didn't find the shoes.

Details about the missing Nike sneakers have not yet come up at trial. How might it play with the jury?

"Jurors will wonder why didn't investigators seize the shoes at the same time they seized many other pieces of evidence from Hernandez's home," says University of New Hampshire law professor Michael McCann, who's closely monitoring the trial.

"If jurors determine investigators and prosecutors simply made a mistake in not seizing the shoes, it could damage the jurors' confidence in the case. It's possible prosecutors could try to mollify this concern by noting that rules of evidence and pretrial discovery limit the types of evidence they can be taken from a person's home."

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The case against Aaron Hernandez: Where are the shoes?

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Shoes prosecutors say Hernandez wore on night of Lloyd's death are missing Hernandez is on trial for murder of Lloyd and has pleaded not guilty Linking shoes to impressions at crime scene would help prosecution with its case A murder weapon isn't the only thing missing as prosecutors try to convince jurors that former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez orchestrated the execution of Odin Lloyd.

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Type of evidence: tire tread
On July 5, 1987, four family members were shot to death and the fifth was found months later. Tire tread evidence was used during McDonald's testimony that a gap left by a stone in a tire cut positively identified a tire on the charged man’s car as having made a track found at the murder scene. ″No other tire in the world could have made that impression,″ he told the court.

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WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) _ Studying tread marks as carefully as other forensic experts scrutinize fingerprints, Peter McDonald uses his experience as a former Firestone tire designer to uncover crime-solving clues.

″I think it requires a trained eye,″ said McDonald, 58, who has taught tire print identification at police academies in about 15 states and a few Canadian provinces. He spoke at an FBI Academy symposium in 1984.

McDonald testified this week at a preliminary court hearing in the Kunz family slayings, a case that investigators labored on for more than a year before charging a man with being a party to the murders.

Four family members were found shot to death July 5, 1987. A fifth member was missing until her remains were found nearly nine months later.

McDonald testified that a gap left by a stone in a tire cut positively identified a tire on the charged man's car as having made a track found at the murder scene.

″No other tire in the world could have made that impression,″ he told the court.

McDonald, who designed tires for 28 years at Firestone Tire and Rubber Co., began identifying tire prints about 10 years ago when he was contacted by police in California. He later started a Hudson, Ohio, consulting firm.

″Being a manager of tire design, I was involved in checking other people's work,″ he said Thursday. ″That training, plus the fact that I'm an artist and studied architecture, I feel gives me a leg up on people who come to this from a strictly scientific background.″

At the FBI laboratory in Washington, supervisory Special Agent William J. Bodziak said he has articles dating back to the 1930s that refer to tire identification.

But identifying tire prints is less common than fingerprints or shoe prints and ″there's no real course″ to teach it, Bodziak said. The six FBI examiners who do tire identification work at the lab have learned their trade mainly from other examiners and experience, he said.

The Michigan State Police Crime Laboratory has operated a computer program to help identify tire tracks for at least eight years in East Lansing, but analysts there receive ″mostly on-the-job training and training by Mr. McDonald,″ said Frank Schehr, assistant director.

″Peter McDonald ... is quite an expert in that area,″ he said.

McDonald said he has testified in four homicide cases, one rape case and a civil case involving a young girl who was hit by a vehicle.

On Wednesday, he was in Marathon County Circuit Court in a preliminary hearing for Chris Jacobs III, a 22-year-old north-central Wisconsin man charged with five counts of being a party to the first-degree murders of the Kunz family members.

McDonald spent most of the day on the stand explaining his methods.

He said he begins with scale photographs of the tracks found at the crime scene and inked impressions of any suspect tires.

He identifies tread patterns by studying the length of pitches or zigzag patterns around the tire. The manufacturer varies these lengths to help reduce the amount of noise the tires make, he said.

He then compares 13 items in the prints, including the shapes of the tire tread elements, the number of raised ribs and size of pitch lengths, to determine the brand and design of tire.

McDonald said he looks for variations in the tire tracks and inked impressions to see if they share characteristics of the same tire manufacturing mold.

If the tracks and impressions share the same brand and mold characteristics, McDonald uses the manufacturer's tire plans to study the general accidental characteristics, or signs of wear.

But to make a positive identification, McDonald said he needs to find something like a gap caused by a stone or indications of a torn piece of rubber.

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Expert Turns Tire Tread Marks Into Murder-Case Clues

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WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) _ Studying tread marks as carefully as other forensic experts scrutinize fingerprints, Peter McDonald uses his experience as a former Firestone tire designer to uncover crime-solving clues. ''I think it requires a trained eye,'' said McDonald, 58, who has taught tire print identification at police academies in about 15 states and a few Canadian provinces.

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Type of evidence : foot print
Jamar Ronod Wise
Distinct marks on the countertop footprint were identical to marks on Wise’s left shoe. Unique marks were caused when the shoe came into contact with rocks, glass or other debris while walking. They alter the tread and can be seen in some footprints.

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WATERLOO - A footprint left on the front counter at Neighborhood Mart when a masked robber jumped at the store clerk belonged to a size 11 1/2 Adidas high-top shoe, according to crime lab expert.

And authorities said that shoe was seized when police arrested Jamar Ronod Wise two months after the holdup.

Wise, 26, of Waterloo, is charged in the Jan. 31, 2018, Neighborhood Mart robbery and similar crimes at three other businesses.

On Thursday, Criminalist Steven Tvrdik with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation said distinct marks on the countertop footprint were identical to marks on Wise's left shoe.

Tvrdik said the unique marks were caused when the shoe came into contact with rocks, glass or other debris while walking. They alter the tread and can be seen in some footprints.

"They are very fine details. ... There is a small gouge out of the side of this tread element. And if you look to the tread element directly to the right of it, you can see another small gouge," Tvrdik said, showing enlarged images that compared the sole and the print left on the counter.

He said the Adidas shoe print was similar in size and shape to prints left in the snow during the robbery at B&B East on Feb. 10, 2018, but the snowy footprints didn't have enough detail for an exact match.

The Adidas shoe is one of the key pieces of evidence in the state's case against Wise. Another is the black hooded sweatshirt with a Nike swoosh logo on the chest that the robber wore during the crimes. Prosecutors said it is similar to a Nike sweatshirt found after Wise was detained.

None of the clerks could identify the robber, and the defense noted that the black Nike hoodie is a common piece of clothing.

Also on Thursday, jurors head from a clerk at PrimeMart on Broadway Street, the final victim to take the stand.

The woman said she was on the phone with her husband around 7:30 a.m. on Feb. 27, 2018, when she heard the bell announce a customer entering.

"Nobody responded when I said, 'Good morning,'" she said. She looked up to see a man in all black.

She screamed, and the robber grabbed her phone and threw it across the store.

The intruder then grabbed her by the hair and slammed her head into a cooler and led her to the cash register, telling her, "Open it or I'm going to kill you."

She said he began feeling her groin over her leggings and then demanded more money. After that he tried to pull down her pants and bend her over.

That's when the robber apparently became startled at something. He grabbed a handful of Newport cigarettes and ran off.

The clerk said she recognized Wise as a regular customer at PrimeMart, but she couldn't say that he was the robber.

Photos: Jamar Wise trial

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Shoe print is key evidence in robbery trial

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WATERLOO - A footprint left on the front counter at Neighborhood Mart when a masked robber jumped at the store clerk belonged to a size 11 1/2 Adidas high-top shoe, according to crime lab expert. And authorities said that shoe was seized when police arrested Jamar Ronod Wise two months after the holdup.

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Type of evidence: bite mark
Bite mark evidence was used to convict William Richards and was later turned over but Richards is still in prison for the murder of his wife.

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Bite mark evidence has been introduced in trials all over the country, and sometimes has been the smoking gun leading to a conviction. Bite mark evidence, an aspect of forensic odontology, is the process by which odontologists (dentists) attempt to match marks found at crime scenes with the dental impressions of suspects. If a victim is bitten by a perpetrator during a crime and police have a suspect, odontologists can attempt to "match" the bite mark to the suspect's teeth.

Although bite mark evidence has been used across the country in many criminal prosecutions, there is no real scientific support or research into the accuracy or reliability of bite mark evidence. Although bite mark evidence is often introduced as being close to DNA in terms of accuracy, there has been no scientific validation for the notion that a person's dentition is unique to him or her in the same way that fingerprints or DNA are unique to each individual. Bite marks are often found at the scene of violent crimes - murders, assaults, and sexual assaults - and are extremely difficult to accurately investigate. Part of this is because victims of violent crimes can suffer multiple injuries, and what looks like a bite can actually be an unrelated injury. This is because, unlike a dental impression at a doctor's office, bite marks are found on materials like skin, clothing, and soft tissue. Human skin is elastic; it swells, heals, and it can deform or warp a bite so that it does not align properly. Furthermore, "experts" often use pictures to compare a person's dentition to the bite mark on the victim, increasing the unreliability of bite mark evidence.

Another problem with bite mark evidence is its similarity to other "sciences" such as fingerprint analysis and firearm analysis: they are subjective to the person evaluating the evidence. Different experts have found widely different results when looking at the same bite mark evidence. Such subjectivity has no place being touted as science in the courtroom, as it is extremely persuasive to a jury, especially where someone has been wrongfully accused.

One of the most notable exonerations involving bite mark evidence is the Ray Krone case. In 1992, Krone was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death. There was no physical evidence linking Krone to the crime except for a unique bite mark found on the victim's body. At trial, a bite mark expert testified that Krone's teeth matched the bite mark on the victim. Upon further investigation, several experts told Krone's attorneys that the trial testimony was unreliable and the analysis was done incorrectly. Eventually, DNA evidence proved Krone's innocence and he was released from prison in 2002.

Bite mark evidence led to the conviction of California Innocence Project client William ("Bill") Richards. At his trial in 1997, a forensic odontologist analyzed Bill's teeth and a bite mark found on his wife's body. The expert testified that only one to two percent of the population could have left the bite mark, and he could not exclude Bill as having given the bite mark. This led to Bill's conviction. Years later, in 2007,he same expert recanted his original testimony. Using current science as support, the expert explained that Bill could not have left the bite mark. Bill was exonerated, but the District Attorney appealed, and the California Court of Appeal reversed Richards' exoneration. The state's Supreme Court then upheld the reversal on the grounds that, at the time, experts could not recant their original testimony. Two years later, in 2015, the California Innocence Project pushed for a new law allowing experts to recant their testimony. After the law was passed, in 2016, the California Supreme Court found that the bad bite mark science presented at Bill's original trial was central to his conviction, and they reversed it.

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Bite Mark Evidence | California Innocence Project

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Bite mark evidence has been introduced in trials all over the country, and sometimes has been the smoking gun leading to a conviction. Bite mark evidence, an aspect of forensic odontology, is the process by which odontologists (dentists) attempt to match marks found at crime scenes with the dental impressions of suspects.