Richard W. Rogers

The Newark Star Ledger reported more details from the early testimony in the double homicide trial of Richard Rogers in Toms River, New Jersey, noting that defense attorney Ruhnke was ready to fight. Two fingerprint comparison analysts testified that the fingerprints on the bags used to wrap victim Thomas Mulcahy's personal belongings and the arms of another victim, Anthony Marrero, had matched former surgical nurse Richard Rogers. Joining Detective Sergeant Jeffrey Scozzafava of the NJ State Police was Detective Eugene Thatcher of Ocean County's Criminalistics Investigation Unit. Thatcher had matched two of the fingerprints and two palm prints from the bags on Marrero's parts. (Although the remains of Mulcahy, found variously in rest areas off Route 72 and the Garden State Parkway, were also wrapped in bags, there were no usable prints.) Ruhnke first attempted to bring in mistakes that examiners, including the FBI, have made in fingerprint analysis. He also tried to discredit the unusual method used, forcing an explanation in court.

To reiterate, the New Jersey State Police had sent 40 to 50 plastic trash bags from the victims' remains to the Toronto Police Service in 2000 for a special procedure called vacuum metal deposition (VMD). The prints were developed, but not matched to Rogers until Maine went online with AFIS in 2001, making Rogers's print available from a prior homicide (found to be self defense).

VMD fingerprint image

With VMD, an exhibit is placed inside a chamber, according to a Web site for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and four to five milligrams of gold and several grams of zinc are loaded into evaporation containers placed beneath the exhibit. Pumps are activated that reduce pressure and a low voltage current evaporates the gold, leaving a minute deposit over the exhibit. "It is suspected that the gold actually absorbs into any fingerprint residue present" the site indicates. In a separate dish, the zinc is then subjected to a similar method and deposited onto the exhibit, condensing and adhering onto the gold (but not penetrating) to produce an image of the fingerprint's valleys that lie between the ridges. This makes the print visible for photography. Although this method has only recently been applied to latent fingerprint analysis, it has been in use since 1976 for other purposes. It is best used on plastic and glass but has also worked on cloth and currency. However, one issue that a defense attorney could raise is that significant experience is required to get the best results.

While the VMD method is not widely used, due to its prohibitive expense, that does not indicate that the scientific community questions it. Judge Citta limited Ruhnke's questioning on this topic, so Ruhnke retorted that the jury is "entitled to learn that it is not a perfect system." Allen Pollard, a retired detective from the Toronto Police Service, testified that it had taken six months to process the bags, and fingerprints had been found on four of them.