Lip Prints in Forensic Science

cheiloscopy. The study of lip prints.   A person's lip prints are unique.  The use of lip prints in criminal cases is limited because the credibility of lip prints has not been firmly established in our courts. 

History The use of lip prints recommended as early as in 1932 by French criminolologist, Edmond Locard (1877-1966).

In LeMoyne Snyder’s book Homicide Investigation (1950), he describes a case in which a woman was struck in the face by an automobile on the left front fender of a car. The owner of the car denied hitting her. A lip print was lifted from the left front fender of the car matching that of the woman. Thus linking the car in questionto the accident.

the first person to systematically classify lip prints was Santos in 1967. He stated that the wrinkles and grooves on the lips could be divided into simple and compound types and sub-divided them into eight groups.

Lip print lands Peeping Tom in jail The Associated Press NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) – This peeper's pucker landed him in jail. Robert Neal Smith, 41, was sentenced to five months in jail Friday after pleading guilty to peeping into his neighbor's windows. He was charged with five counts of being a Peeping Tom after his lip prints matched ones left on a window in August. Police had lifted the impression in September and obtained a search warrant for Smith's lip marks. The state crime lab claimed the two were a match. Smith told the General District Court judge he was drinking heavily when he peeped into his neighbors' homes. At one point he was chased by a woman's husband and another woman caught him tampering with her window screen.

5 basic types of lip prints used by forensic scientists: cheiloscopy.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

The Case:  A student at Dannelly School for Girls has been writing graffiti in lipstick on the girl's bathroom mirror.  She has been signing her work with her lip print.  The custodian is having to clean the mirror several times each day to remove the graffiti and is getting tired of this prank.  For the first hour of school he makes a list of the girls seen leaving the girls restroom. 

The principal has each of the ten girls seen leaving the restroom make their lip print on an index card to compare to the lip print on the bathroom mirror. Your task is to compare the lip prints of the suspects to the lip print found in the bathroom and identify the culprit.

Incidentally, after the culprit was found, many other girls in the school began to “copycat” the guilty girl. They would go into the bathroom, slather their lips with lipstick and kiss the mirror. The custodian complained to the principal. He was tired of cleaning up after the girls on a daily basis. How did he stop the girls from doing this activity?

The principal had as many girls as he could fit inside the bathroom line up in front of the stalls. The custodian took a stool brush and began cleaning the stools. Next, he moved to the lip print covered mirrors and began cleaning them with the same brush. “If I ever have to clean these prints off of the mirrors again….” he began….

After that day, not a single lip print was ever again left on the mirror. J