unbelievable martinez discovered the paint chips did come from huffman s truck. they fit perfectly. a physical fit is the only sure thing in forensic science. there are no statistics that can duplicate that. that is the only thing in forensic that is a sure thing and better than dna. here is a paint chip that plugs in perfectly. that is hitting a home run in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded. investigators wondered, if huffman s vehicle hit garcia, why was there no damage to the headlight and turn signal. they found the answer to that question in his storage shed back in texas. i went to robert huffman s
removed for later analysis. investigators noticed what was perhaps their first clue. and i looked at him and he looked at me and i said, did you see that? something shiny. and we kept moving it around at different angles until we could see something. the spheres were no larger than the head of a pin. under a fiberoptic microscope, the spheres looked like metal. they also found several red and blue fibers and a yellow paint chip. could these few microscopic items help investigators find a killer? in new york state, we re changing the way we do business, with startup ny. we ve created tax free zones throughout the state.
could find. they also confiscated a pair of smithart s overalls. all of the evidence was shipped to chicago, illinois, to a research microscopist, skip palenik. palenik began looking at the small yellow paint chip found on mandy s clothing. using x-ray spectroscopy, he noticed something unique. glossy layers with no other layers behind it, in a variety of colors. that s quite unusual. and children s bicycles, of course, are painted with the single layers of the glossy paint. in the samples collected from smithart s workshop, he found a paint chip identical in composition to the paint chip on mandy s clothing. next were the red and blue fibers. again, he found they too were unusual. it turns out these fibers had
there wasn t really much else to take. bill schneck took paint samples from the boot and the car and placed them on slides with an immersion liquid. this eliminated any air trapped between the sample and the slide. using a polarizing light microscope magnified up to 1,000 times, schneck saw the paint was a lead chromate paint. and i contacted the national institute of science and technology and received a paint chip known standard on a 74 camaro. using a scanning electron microscope, schneck now did a three-way comparison. he examined paint from the boot, from the car, and from the file sample of a 1974 camaro. all were identical. and with this evidence, dale bradley was arrested and charged with bryan ruff s murder.
unbelievably, martinez discovered that the paint chips did come from huffman s truck. they fit perfectly. a physical fit is the only for sure thing in forensic science. its probabilities are astronomical. there were no statistics that can calculate or duplicate the odds of tearing any two pieces identical. it is the only thing that s in forensics that is the for sure thing and, in fact, better than dna. here s this paint chip that plugs in perfectly. that s hitting the home run in the bottom of the ninth, based loaded. but investigators still wondered, if huffman s vehicle hit rafael garcia, why wasn t there any damage to the head light and turn signal? they found the answer to that question in his storage shed back in texas. we went to robert huffman s