Posted on 12/14/2009 5:09:13 PM PST by Fractal Trader
A 36-year-old Boston man wanted on 13 warrants -- one of them for drug trafficking -- tried to keep police from finding him by mutilating his fingers to conceal his prints.
Francis Viliar told State Police over the weekend that he paid someone $400 to cut his fingers vertically, from the fingertip to the knuckle joint, so his prints would be unreadable, said David Procopio, spokesman for the State Police.
Viliar was arrested Friday night after State Police pulled him over for speeding in Brockton. When he gave them a driver's license that appeared to be fake, he was arrested for giving police a false name and using fraudulent documents. He was also arrested for carrying a dangerous weapon after the troopers found a large folding knife hidden in the car.
Viliar was held on $25,000 bail on the drug charges and $500 on the forgery and weapon charges after he pleaded not guilty in both cases today at Brockton District Court. His next court appearance is scheduled for Jan. 2. His attorney, Lawrence Perlmutter, declined comment.
At the Brockton police station after his arrest, officers saw that the pads of Viliar's fingers were covered in scar tissue. They took fingerprints anyway and sent them to the FBI. Federal officials were able to put together some of the ridges taken from the prints and figure out Viliar's true identity, Procopio said.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
If I recall correctly, the Kevin Spacey character in Se7en tried this, with some success.
Silly criminals mutilating their fingers when a little bottle of liquid bandage would cover their prints painlessly.
The idea seems to be to try to be unidentifiable when caught rather than to avoid leaving fingerprints at a crime scene. Liquid bandage comes off easily with acetone.
Yeah you’re right. Bet the perp in this case had tattoos or scars that could identify him anyway.
The funny thing is most people make their fingerprints even easier to print after they attempt to mutilate them. All that nice scar tissue.
I read somewhere that they had problems with Hawaiian pineapple pickers. The juice would eat into their fingerprints. But if they had them in jail, they would let them stay until their fingerprints grew back, which doesn’t solve the problem that they may not have been able to leave prints in the first place.
Liquid bandage comes off easily with acetone.
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Yes, acetone. Or mineral oil.
Depending on formulation. The older acetone based collodion formulas (that stung like mad on a wound) were impervious to hydrocarbon oils. The newer cyanoacrylates (a variation on Super Glue) will yield to hydrocarbon oils or acetone. They are also almost impossible to get today and I have no earthly idea why. I wrote the Band-Aid company and asked where the product went, and got no answer. I suspect a patent issue because the product was darn good, it did not sting and it could stop oozing blood instantly.
Interesting analysis. Thanks!
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