Shoeprint database assists murder case

A shoe print database has played a pivotal role in a West Midlands murder inquiry.

West Midlands police used SoleMate, a database developed by Foster and Freeman, to identify a partial shoeprint in blood left by a suspect at a murder scene.

“Within minutes our staff confirmed that the shoeprint had been produced by a ‘Mountain Ridge’ shoe, unique to JJB Sports, a UK nationwide shoe retailer, and that there were two models using that particular sole. We were also able to say that this footwear was first available during the summer of 2002, as well as provide complete images of the footwear and it’s sole,” the company said.

Officers located the store in which the footwear was purchased and traced the shop’s copy of the actual receipt issued to the suspect, later confirmed when an empty shoe box was found at the suspect’s home.

The case went to the Crown Court in January 2005. West Midlands Police obtained a conviction and now use SICAR and SoleMate.

The latest edition of ‘SoleMate’, which is distributed to subscribers every three months, contains details of over 11,000 sports, work and casual shoes.

Its purpose identifies shoes from shoe prints recovered from scenes of crime and may be used as a stand alone system or with SICAR, the company’s shoe print evidence management system.

Each record in SoleMate contains the shoe’s manufacturer, the manufacturer’s reference for that shoe, the date of its release on to the market, an image or offset print of

the sole, several pictorial images of the uppers, to aid recognition, and a set of pattern feature codes that facilitate search and match operations. Where different manufacturers have used the same sole unit (a common practice), SoleMate records are linked to allow the operator to consider all the footwear that might have been responsible for a crime scene print.