Want to know the key to fingerprinting and identifying human remains buried 51 years ago? Perseverance, Ivory dish soap and old-school techniques.
Luckily, criminalist and fingerprinting expert Timothy Jackson at the New Hampshire State Police Forensic Lab had all of that when he identified the body of Winston “Skip” Morris by manually plotting the victim’s minutiae to generate a more defined fingerprint that finally lead to a hit.
The first round: 2012
Morris’ body was discovered by a work crew in a water-filled pit off the interstate in Salem on Aug. 7, 1969. The 30-year-old had been shot at least six times in the head. Fingerprints were taken at the time, but there were no databases for comparison. There were also no witnesses, and the case went cold pretty quickly.
In December 2012, the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit exhumed Morris’ body for further examination, which included sending the fingers to Jackson at the lab.
“I didn’t think a body that had been in the ground since 1969 would be giving us much, but one finger did have ridge detail,” Jackson told Forensic. “However, there was no epidermal layer of skin on his finger after being buried [for 43 years], so what I am looking at is the ridge detail that exists in the dermal layer.”
Even with ridge detail in the dermis, Jackson had to rehydrate the finger in order to lift a print. That’s where the Ivory soap came into play.
“It was a process I learned back when I was training with the Army crime lab in 1989,” Jackson explained. “I soaked the finger in the detergent and water for about 16 hours. It changed immensely from how we received the finger to rehydration.”
Jackson was able to take a powdered lift from the finger, but AFIS nor the tri-state database (Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont) recorded a hit. Jackson thought maybe the unidentified body didn’t have a criminal record and therefore his fingerprints were not on file. Despite acknowledging this as a possibility, Jackson wasn’t done.
In 60 days, Jackson will retire from the New Hampshire Police Forensic Laboratory he has called home for the past 21 years. Before arriving up north, Jackson was a fingerprint examiner with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory for 10 years, as well as a criminal examiner/crime scene investigator with the Army for 8 years before that.
“I’ve been involved with law enforcement my entire life,” Jackson said. “As I get older, I find it a little harder to keep up with the technologies, especially since its computerized. I’m the oldest here in the fingerprint section and I’m not a computer person. That’s the joke here.”
It does seem fitting that Jackson, the eldest in the lab who describes himself as old-school, was the one to finally identify Morris, nearly 10 years after he first rehydrated the victim’s finger.
The second round: 2019
The New Hampshire Police celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2019. There were all kinds of related activities and celebrations. When they asked Jackson to participate, he knew what he wanted to do.
“Between 2012 and 2019, the systems had been upgraded,” Jackson said. “We had purchased an updated AFIS and the FBI database even had an upgrade. So, I ran the same impression I did in 2012. I still didn’t get a hit.”
That struck Jackson as odd. The lab had been having fantastic success with the system on regular cases, so why was it not returning a hit now? Eventually, Jackson realized it could be related to lifting the print from the dermal layer as opposed to the epidermis.
Fingerprints grow from the inside out. The innermost dermal layer has two very find ridges that ultimately grow to one ride on the outermost epidermis. Thus, Jackson hypothesized the computer algorithm may not be seeing the minutiae in the proper orientation. So, he manually plotted the minutiae through the fingerprinting software. When that was complete, Jackson ran the new-and-improved fingerprint through the FBI database. It returned Morris as the number 1 candidate.
“There was excitement because I knew it was a 50-year-old case and we had not been able to assist the cold case unit before with positive results,” Jackson said. “It was big sigh of relief.”
There is not much known about Morris, who was 30 years old at the time of his death. Authorities have determined he was from Barre, Vermont, and had been released from prison three months before his death. They are now focusing on identifying his killer.
The third round: 2020 and beyond
Jackson has helped solve 50-year-old cold cases before, but, given the timing, this one feels a little bit different. Over the years, Jackson has seen technologies come and go. He recalled the formation of AFIS, and how today’s algorithms make the system so much better than it was when New Hampshire started using it in the 1980s. One thing Jackson is grateful for is better camera equipment through the years. Not having to develop film once digital cameras came on the scene was a big perk for the fingerprinting, footwear and tire track expert.
“I love this job,” Jackson said. “Every day is different. You don’t know what you are going to get. That challenge in itself is what has kept me going over the years.”
In just two months, that challenge will culminate in a happy ending. One that sees Jackson sitting on the back deck with his wife (who is set to retire the same day) drinking coffee, going fishing, visiting his grandchildren and just… relaxing.
Photo: Winston "Skip" Morris and his wife, Marilyn French, in October 1962.Credit: The New Hampshire Office of the Attorney General.