LA Forensics: The Actor's Secret
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Either way, the crime was a brutal act of extreme rage, Basset said. From here, the investigation would take off in three separate directions: Basset needed to identify the victim and learn about his past to gather a suspect list; criminalists from LAPD’s Scientific Investigations Division would use forensic science to nail down the killer, and the coroner would do an autopsy to see if the body yielded any clues.
SID sent a photographer and fingerprint specialist to the scene. Even though it was obvious that the crime happened in the bedroom, both specialists went around the entire apartment, taking photographs and dusting for prints. It was a meticulous process that took hours.
Prints were lifted from kitchen cabinet doors, three glasses in the kitchen, four beer mugs in the living room, the coffee table, telephone, the bathroom door, front door, and a VCR tape. The knife and glove were taken into evidence, as was a pair of jeans belonging to a very thin man; too small to fit the victim.
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Back in 1990, fingerprint analysis was not as advanced as today and fingerprint databases were just coming on line. Several of the prints at the scene came back to Finch but a few others were unaccounted for: three of the beer mugs and a kitchen cabinet door. SID investigators would have to wait until detectives identified a suspect.
In the DNA lab, investigators tested the dark spot on the bottom of the latex glove. It was blood that matched the victim. They also retrieved a semen sample from the jeans and some black hairs that turned out to belong to a cat. Finch had a cat that was found alive, locked in the bathroom with enough food and water to last awhile. It seemed that the killer knew the victim well enough to form a bond with that cat and he didn’t want it to starve.
