30-Year-Old Murder Solved
| filed under: Partnerships, Law Enforcement, Criminal Justice Information ServicesTwo employees of the Omaha Police Department received the 2012 Latent Hit of the Year Award from the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division for their efforts to identify the man responsible for a brutal murder more than 30 years ago.
30-Year-Old Murder Solved
A cold case is just that—an investigation of a crime, usually a violent one, where all leads have been exhausted and the trail has gone cold. But in recent years, the use of various technologies has begun heating up many of these cold cases, uncovering new leads for investigators and providing justice for victims.
One immediate technology example that comes to mind is automated fingerprint searching—more precisely, searches of latent prints of violent unknown perpetrators left at crime scenes. The FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), which houses known records for approximately 73 million criminal subjects, is used daily by local, state, tribal, and international law enforcement for current cases, but increasingly for help in solving cold cases as well. And once a year, the Bureau’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division recognizes an outstanding major case solved with help from IAFIS.
The 2012 Latent Hit of the Year Award was presented last month to two employees of the Omaha Police Department—Detective Douglas Herout and Senior Crime Laboratory Technician Laura Casey—for their efforts to identify the man responsible for a brutal murder more than 30 years ago.
