Greg Michaud

Let's start with the first case, which was given the "Latent Hit of the Year" award in 2007 and deservedly so because it resolved a nearly 30-year-old cold case that occurred in Big Rapids, Michigan. Shortly before turning 90 on April 23, 1980, 89-year-old Stella Lintemuth was assassinated in her own bedroom. Because Big Rapids was a tiny town with a low rate of violent crime, the local police were unprepared to handle such a case. They reasoned that the killer was probably a transient who rode the railway because there were train tracks outside the victim's residence, but it was pretty much the only lead they had.

As a result, they acquired assistance from a state forensic team that included Jerry Disler, a latent examiner. From the base of an ancient porcelain lamp, whose chain was used to strangle the victim, he found two prints. That was the only indication of the murderer's presence inside the house. The police were aware that identifying the fingerprints meant locating the offender, but they also understood the slim likelihood that this would occur. The only thing the police could do, given that it was 1980, was manually compare the prints to the fingerprint cards they had on file. They were unsuccessful, and the murder of Stella Lintemuth was still an open investigation when Jerry Disler retired 16 years later.

That is why Greg Michaud, a different forensic scientist who first learned about the case during his training program, received it after many years. Since the database was unavailable during the initial examination, he recognized in 2006 that it was unlikely that anyone had ever submitted the prints to IAFIS. Scott Elwood Graham, who was at the time confined to a mental hospital, tested it and got a hit. In 2009, Graham was convicted after a brief six-day trial.

• Year: 2007