Barefoot Bandit Case Study

After seven long frustrating weeks, Homewood Police captured the so-called “Barefoot Bandit” yesterday. It took a combination of old-fashioned shoe leather and high-tech forensics to crack the case. Since May 1st a large number of troubling bank robberies in the Homewood-Flossmoor area have vexed law enforcement and rattled the nerves of bank tellers and customers alike. In each of the seven holdups, a young man wearing a ski mask and ski gloves, would walk into banks in broad daylight, claim to have a gun and demand $20,000 in unmarked bills. “He seemed nervous. I remember his hands were shaking when I gave him the money,” said Sandy McConnell, 32, a bank teller at Kerry Trust National Bank. Between May 1st and June 22nd, Jennings Palmer, 32, robbed banks

But one of our detectives who has a background in forensics realized that we might be able to dust for toe prints. We got a tip about this guy from a neighbor of his who recognized him from the bank video that the local news stations aired. We collected his toe prints and matched them with the suspect’s, and bingo!” Retired FBI Supervisory Fingerprint Specialist Peter J. Dodd noted that cases like these are unusual but not unheard of. “We had a case where we matched a suspect’s forehead print that he left on the window of a jewelry store that he was casing. And there is a new biometric technology that matches vein patterns of hands.” A police spokesperson said that although the perpetrator had an unusual method of operating and that they thought they might be dealing with an emotionally disturbed person, they took the crimes seriously. “Without anything to run through the AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) though, we were pretty stymied.” When asked if this was the most unusual case the Homewood Police had ever encountered, the chief of police responded with just a hint of a smile, “Well, all I can say is, he certainly kept us on our