Forensic Identification of Explosives by Mass Spectrometry and Allied Techniques

A review of the reported methods for the recovery of fingerprints from the skin of crime victims along with the efficacy of those methods is presented. The fundamental problems of retrieval of latent fingerprints from the skin are discussed together with the methods reported in the literature, which include electronography, iron powder-Dakty foil, iodine-silver plate transfer, Kromekote® lift, and laser detection, along with several less frequently used techniques. The limited successes achieved with these reported methods during actual casework are discussed; they are limited because they are often found to refer only to idealized research conditions. At present, the use of high-powered light sources such as lasers seems to be the only technique that may be useful for revealing fingerprints on skin when investigating a case.