Two
significant clues were found in the children's ward that would prove
helpful in catching the killer: footprints on the freshly cleaned floor
and a water bottle that had been moved. Although there were several
fingerprints on the bottle, police were able to account for all but one
set. These prints also failed to match any of those in the police's
database of known criminals.Investigators fingerprinted over 2,000 people who had access to the hospital. Still, they couldn't find a match. Detective Inspector John Capstick then went even further: He decided that every man in the town of Blackburn, a city with more than 25,000 homes, would be fingerprinted.
A procedure such as this would be impossible in the United States
where Fourth Amendment protections prevent searches without probable
cause. But the plan went into effect in Blackburn on May 23, with police
assurances that the collected prints would be destroyed afterward. Two
months later, the police had collected over 40,000 sets of prints yet
still had not turned up a match. Checking against every registry they
could find, authorities determined that there were still a few men in
town who hadn't provided their prints.
On August 11, police caught up with one of these men, Peter Griffiths. His footprints matched the ones found at the scene. When his fingerprints also came back a match, he confessed to the awful crime, blaming it on alcohol.
Griffiths was found guilty of murder and was executed on November 19, 1948.
Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history [14.05.12]
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