Forensic Error Leaves Man’s Death Unsolved For 30 Years

Police in Kentucky say a sharp-eyed analyst turned up a 30-year-old mistake that kept the identity of a pedestrian killed by a semitruck a mystery for decades.

The man died walking on Interstate 65 in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, in 1984. Police had fingerprints, but no matches turned up — all because someone had transposed the prints. The right hand was on a card labeled "left" and vice versa.

Kentucky State Police forensic specialist Keith Dollinger caught the error this year while reviewing cold-case files. He says he noticed something odd about the ridges and patterns of the prints and realized they’d been flipped. Dollinger reversed the error and ran the prints through two databases.

They matched those of Roy Andrew Langley. Langley’s family in Texas was notified this week of the identification.

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