On file at the Department of Justice in Washington are the fingerprints, photographs, aliases and nicknames of 7,052,061 U. S. malefactors. Surest of these four keys to the identity of criminals are fingerprints which differ even in identical twins, but even fingerprints are not foolproof. The late John Dillinger had a plastic surgeon mutilate his fingertips with acid but failed to obliterate their prints because the job was poorly done (TIME, Dec. 16, 1935). The finger prints of another recent murderer, John Hamilton, proved useless to police who found his body a year...
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