Edward Morey - Fingerprinting

Rodrigo Ledesma

4/22/15

Crim B12

Edward Morey-Fingerprinting         

        In the city of Wagga Wagga in Australia on Christmas day of 1933 a fisherman on the Murrumbidgee River found a body on a tree.  When the body was taken to the autopsy it was found the body was a male between the ages of 45 and 50.  The body had several hits to the back of the head and had to be in the water for at least 5 weeks.  They couldn’t identify him because his right hand was missing and his left hand was to damage to get fingerprint.  The police began looking for clues around the river.  One of the officers saw something went to get a better look and it was the missing hand.  The hand was just a pile of skin because maggots had eaten the flesh.  The only way to get a fingerprint from the skin was for an officer to put his hand in it and make a impression with it.  The fingerprint was a success and the victim was Percy Smith who did odd jobs in the Wagga Wagga.  The officers asked around and the locals said that they last saw him with a man named Edward Morey near the river.  And Morey had sold some of Smith’s tools.  The officers begun looking for Morey but found out he was in jail.  When asked questions about Smith he would get angry.  The police also found out that Morey had sold other things of Smith.  When the case went into trial and was headline, the prosecution witness was gunned down in his home.  His wife said that intruders killed him but police found love letters.  And the prosecution witness’s wife was the killer and killed her husband to save money because he wasn’t the person that killed Smith.  Morey was sentence to 20 years but later released because of health reasons and Lillian Anderson the prosecution witness’s wife to 20 years as well.