Doofus Of The Day #362

Today's award goes to a clueless crook from England.

The high-quality camera on Stephen Taylor's mobile phone gave him the perfect opportunity to show off three stolen watches he was trying to sell.

He draped the luxury items - together worth around £4,000 [about US $5,924] - across his hand and took a picture that he hoped would find him a buyer.

But his harnessing of technology was to prove his downfall after the photograph ended up with police when he was arrested on suspicion of handling stolen goods.

And a unique forensic examination has now produced damning proof of his guilt - in the most literal way imaginable.

The quality of the image officers found on his mobile phone was so good that specialist investigators were able to examine the hand holding the watches and say for certain it was Taylor's.

By analysing the distinctive ridges on the palm it took them less than an hour to conclusively link it to a handprint taken from the 29-year-old.

Yesterday he was facing a prison sentence after pleading guilty to handling stolen goods.

. . .

The watches themselves were not found, so police decided to analyse the photograph to establish proof of Taylor's guilt.

Magnifying the image, a fingerprint officer was able to zoom in on the 'ridges' or small lines on the hands and fingers in the picture and then compare them with Taylor's own print.

'The area of skin clearly shown in the photo showed enough ridge characteristics to make identification possible,' a technician said.

'In fact it turned out that an area of the left hand palm held on the fingerprint database for Taylor matched the ridge detail on the palm in the photo exactly.

'No two people have ever been known to have the same ridge characteristics, even identical twins.'

There's more at the link.

Perhaps I was wrong to describe him as clueless . . . as far as the police were concerned, he was delightfully clue-full!



Peter