Better fingerprint analysis led to quick arrest in Red Apple case, police say
By Janine Anderson
Journal Times (Racine, WI)
March 2, 2007
RACINE - As officers were going over the bathroom where a Red Apple Elementary School first-grader was sexually assaulted earlier this month, an investigator and evidence technician checked for fingerprints.
They dusted for prints high up on the stall, and turned the print cards over to Criminalist James Yoghourtjian. Some of the prints were smeared, and all were somewhat obscured by magnetic dust that clung to the textured surface of the stall.
One was clear enough to use.
Yoghourtjian put it through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System and said a prayer:
"Lord, if this is the guy that did this to that little boy, let it come back."
Five minutes later he got a result. The print matched one that came up on the first page of results. Armed with that evidence, police were able to get search warrants and bring Joshua Dyess in for questioning. The 20-year-old man is charged with first-degree sexual assault of a child.
Years ago, Yoghourtjian said, the technician would have handed him the card, he would have looked at it, and then filed it away. It would have stayed there until detectives developed a suspect. Then Yoghourtjian would have gone back to the file, pulled the print, and compared it with the suspect's prints.
As computer technology advanced, police began sending print cards to the State Crime Lab for them to run it through AFIS, comparing the print collected at the crime scene with those on file from throughout the state. Sometimes, the Crime Lab had significant backlogs. Yoghourtjian said that in years past, the backlog meant monthslong delays in getting results back.
Crime Lab officials were not available for comment in regard to the Red Apple case.
In 2002, the family of Herman and Carol Petersen, a Racine couple murdered in their home during a robbery, successfully lobbied the state to keep $63,200 in the budget to pay for an AFIS terminal in Racine. Their case was solved after police found a fingerprint on a beer can in the Petersens' home, but it took 10 weeks before the suspect was identified.
"We questioned: Why did this take so long?" said Terri Waschbisch, one of the Petersens' children. "Why was that not the highest priority? Crime labs are so busy. Even though murder is high-priority, it just wasn't the highest priority. We were frustrated, and felt like we needed to do something for the next person that came along."
The State Crime Lab receives so much evidence that it has to prioritize cases. Felonies take priority over misdemeanors. Serious felonies, like murder and sexual assault, take priority over felony theft and burglary. With DNA results at least, the Crime Lab prioritizes evidence testing based on trial dates. Cases with set trial dates are looked at before cases where no suspect has been identified yet.
Quick results like investigators received in the Red Apple case are not guaranteed, even with the computer system. Yoghourtjian said the crime lab technician ran the print from the Petersen case 15 times, receiving 99 results each time. The murderer, Eric Webb, came up on the 15th time the print was run through the system.
"It's not just boom!, there it is," he said. "This is not a criticism of the Crime Lab. Just because you run it once doesn't mean it will match up."
Having a local terminal allows investigators to run fingerprints whenever it thinks it could help identify a suspect. It can set its own priorities for running prints through AFIS, whether they were recovered in a theft from vehicle case, a burglary or a sexual assault.
Once Racine received its AFIS terminal, Yoghourtjian said, the Crime Lab sent all of Racine's fingerprints back. They started running them through the system. In June 2005, fingerprint evidence led them to a suspect in a spate of car break-ins. When they ran prints collected at a similar crime from September 2004, the same suspect came up.
"If the Crime Lab had been able to match that in September 2004, I would have saved 10 months of car break-ins," he said.
Now, they run prints whenever they can.
"When I get the prints, I run them," he said. "It's my job."