How did detectives solve the case of the bloody fingerprints? - Theodore E. Yeshion

On October 17th, 1902, Paris detectives arrived at a grisly scene.

Joseph Reibel had been murdered at his workplace.

With no eyewitnesses, the officers had little to work from, until they discovered a shard of broken glass with several bloody fingerprints.

An investigator manually searched the police station's fingerprint records and eventually found a match.

Henri Scheffer, who had been arrested for theft the year before, was detained and later confessed to the murder.

This marked the first time in Europe that investigators solved a crime using fingerprints alone.

Over a century later, fingerprints remain one of the most common types of evidence in criminal courts.

But just how reliable are they? Humans, like other climbing species, are born with patterns of raised ridges and recessed furrows not only on their fingers but also along their hands and feet.