The "Holy Grail of forensic investigation" breakthrough 🔍 A pioneering new test that can recover fingerprints from ammunition casing, once thought nearly impossible, has been developed by two Irish scientists. Eithne Dempsey, and her recent PhD student Colm McKeever, of the Department of Chemistry at Ireland's Maynooth University, have developed a unique electrochemical method that can visualise fingerprints on brass casings, even after they have been exposed to the high temperature conditions experienced during gunfire. For decades, investigators have struggled to recover fingerprints from weapons because any biological trace is usually destroyed by the high temperatures, friction and gas released after a gun is fired. As a result, criminals often abandon their weapons or casings at crime scenes, confident that they leave no fingerprint evidence behind. "The Holy Grail in forensic investigation has always been retrieving prints from fired ammunition casings," says Dempsey. "Traditionally, the intense heat of firing destroys any biological residue. However, our technique has been able to reveal fingerprint ridges that would otherwise remain imperceptible." The study is published in the journal Forensic Chemistry - you can read more on this story by following the link in the comments ⬇️
I remember seeing this before and then before that.
David Goodwin didn't you and John Bond do a paper on this a while back ?
Gun blue also produces results These are patently laid marks in good condition Gun blue is a b process in the fvm Here are results from laid marks fired from an ak47 in Colombia
I am always suprised when anybody discover a hot water. Fingerprints on cartridges are performing for decades.
I do not believe that this is new as decades ago, techniques for recovering fingermarks from expended cartridge casings were well understood and used operationally. I cannot see any innovative step here.
Impressive.. love to see how well it works away from a lab environment
Very interesting and innovative. What about when applied to small calibre brass, such as .556, or 22?would there be enough ridge detail for comparison?
Keep up people. This is nonsense. Been done for decades. If you didn't know, why didn't you know? Less than a minute on Google would have educated you. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/956747/ J Forensic Sci. 1976 Jul;21(3):587-94. Latent fingerprints on cartridges and expended cartridge casings