i stood outside of that scene for hours, and i vividly recall standing in the parking lot and watching this big, fat slob, for lack of a better term, meander down the stairs. and as he walked by all of the investigators, he sort of shouted out, hey, man, do i have to be concerned about my personal safety around here? quote, unquote,. his name was eric hayden. and he lived with his girlfriend in the apartment above dawn fehring s. the first time the detective spoke with eric hayden, he claimed he had never seen the person who lived there before. the second time they spoke with him, he claimed he had seen her but that he had never had any contact with her at all. when questioned about his whereabouts on the night of the murder, hayden claimed he was out drinking with friends until very late that night. and he had no prior arrests for sex-related crimes. we felt it was significant because this is a very unusual thing just to wake up one day in your early 30s and go out and
it was beautiful. i didn t expect this or i didn t expect it to be that clear, but details are suddenly just the hdtv analogy. they were popping off the screen that you did not see before. i mean, you could see formations, but you weren t seeing the details. and now all of a sudden, you were seeing those details. and there was a remarkable amount of detail. here we have pretty much half of a hand from the fingers all the way down to the base of the hand that s in view that is readily visible. so, we had just a tremendous amount of information as far as doing latent print examination or a comparison. the digitally enhanced palm print from dawn fehring s bed sheet was then compared to eric hayden s palm prints. pat warrick focused on the ridge patterns and breaks in the
when his story started changing, they considered the fact he admittedly drinks to the point where he doesn t know what s going on. hayden was also a smoker, which was significant since the killer left cigarette ashes behind. but the only forensic evidence in this crime was the palm print on dawn s bed sheet. and the print was so poor, there was no way to make a comparison. desperate for answers, detectives called in forensic investigator eric berg. they wanted another opinion on whether or not something could be done with those sheets because they had reached the limit of what they were able to do with chemistry. berg took a digital photograph of the print on the bed sheet and scanned it into his computer. the problem was immediately apparent. the ridge details on the print were obscured by the thread patterns on the sheet, as if a screen had been placed over the
evidence. the evidence is what it is. we will take away that that is interfering with our ability to identify, subtracting, but we re not going to put in a fingerprint ridge or a palm detail or anything that s missing. the judge left it to the jury to decide. eric berg brought his computer into the courtroom and demonstrated the process. everybody looked at it, and they were just amazed. it was readily apparent that it was a palm print. and i remember, i was standing back behind the jury, looking at them look at eric berg. and in the background was the defense counsel who took one look at me and threw his tie over his shoulder and spun around in the chair, essentially saying, i m done. and for all practical purposes, eric hayden was done. the palm print told the story of what happened to dawn fehring.
patterns. these are unique to each person. there was no doubt the print on dawn fehring s bed sheet was made by eric hayden. eric hayden was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. prosecutors were convinced they had an ironclad case. but would the judge allow this evidence to be used in court? isn t it beautiful when things just come together? build a beautiful website with squarespace.