characteristic. the digital copy of the killer s print was then loaded into iafis, the fbi s database of all known criminal offenders from every state in the country. 47 million sets of fingerprints were compared, and one seemed to match. we stood hovering over his computer screen, looking at all the ridge structure and the information there, and everything coincided. my words were, oh, my god. the print belonged to gerald mason, who was now 70 years old, living in columbia, south carolina. he had been arrested for burglary in 1956, a year before the murders. officials in south carolina had only gotten around to submitting their fingerprints to the nationwide database just two months earlier. mason was married, had children
are not clear that could be smudged, there could be artifacts in there that are not clear. so the computer may count that or read that as a particular characteristic. the digital copy of the killer s print was then loaded into iafis, the fbi s database of all known criminal offenders from every state in the country. 47 million sets of fingerprints were compared, and one seemed to match. we stood hovering over his computer screen, looking at all the ridge structure and the information there, and everything coincided. my words were, oh, my god. the print belonged to gerald mason, who was now 70 years old, living in columbia, south carolina. he had been arrested for burglary in 1956, a year before the murders. officials in south carolina had
so the computer may count that or read that as a particular characteristic. the digital copy of the killer s print was then loaded into iafis, the fbi s database of all known criminal offenders from every state in the country. 47 million sets of fingerprints were compared, and one seemed to match. we stood hovering over his computer screen, looking at all the ridge structure and the information there, and everything coincided. my words were, oh, my god. the print belonged to gerald mason, who was now 70 years old, living in columbia, south carolina. he had been arrested for burglary in 1956, a year before the murders. officials in south carolina had only gotten around to submitting their fingerprints to the nationwide database just two months earlier.
killer s fingerprint was then loaded into iafis, the fbi s database of all known criminal offenders from every state in the country. 47 million sets of fingerprints were compared, and one seemed to match. we stood hovering over his computer screen, looking at all the ridge structure and the information there, and everything coincided. my words were, oh my god. the print belonged to gerald mason, who was now 70 years old, living in columbia, south carolina. he had been arrested for burglary in 1956, a year before the murders. officials in south carolina had only gotten around to submitting their fingerprints to the nationwide database just two months earlier. mason was married, had children and grandchildren. he owned a number of gas stations, and had not been arrested for any other crimes in