The Importance of Lip Prints

             Very few people know that just like fingerprints, even lip prints can be instrumental in identifying a person positively. Stand before a mirror and look at your lips carefully. You would find that they present several fissures and some other criss-cross lines. You may be surprised to know that these fissures and criss-cross lines are different in different people and at many times can form a very good basis of identification.

             More adventurous readers can do an interesting experiment. Put some lipstick over your lips (don't worry if you are a male; it won't hurt you!) and then take their impressions on a clean piece of white paper. The best way for this would be to fold a paper and then insert the “hinged” portion of the folded paper between your lips and press your lips on to the paper. Then take the paper out and “unfold” it.

             See the pattern on it carefully and try to discern some possible lines of identification. Do it with your family members and colleagues and see if the prints that you take are different or not. Try to spot differences between them. Also take your own lip prints on different days, and try to see if they remain the same over different days or not. After all, any kind of print which has to be used for identification must remain absolutely same during the whole life.

             It would give you the satisfaction of feeling like a detective. Send me your findings, and I would have them published in a subsequent issue. Persons may want to send the actual prints to the owner of this magazine. The person with the best findings would get a special mention.

             A little bit about the history of lip prints now. The use of lip prints were first recommended as early as in 1932 by Edmond Locard (1877-1966), one of France's greatest criminologists. LeMoyne Snyder in his book Homicide Investigation written as early as 1950 mentions the possible use of lip prints in the identification of individuals. He describes a very good case in which a woman was struck by an automobile striking her face on the left front fender of a car. The owner of the car denied that he had hit that woman. A lip print was lifted from the left front fender of the car. The print was matched with that of the woman and it was proved beyond any doubt that it was indeed the lip print of the woman who was hit. Thus it was proved that the car in question had indeed hit the woman! Really a remarkable case in which lip prints helped the crime scientists in an unusual way.

             It is thought that hereditary factors may have some influence on the lip print patterns. Japanese doctor Suzuki is supposed to have done the greatest work on lip prints. In 1970, he recalled the attention of everyone on the fact that the possible use of lip prints in personal identification had been suggested in LeMoyne Snyder's above-mentioned book. In the same year he examined 107 Japanese females aged 20-36 and simplified the classification of lip prints. Perhaps 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. Suzuki in 1970 after conducting the study on 107 Japanese women as mentioned above simplified the classification into five main types.

             Tsuchihashi studied lips in 1364 persons in 1974 and was convinced of their value in identification. Now the science of lip prints even has a name; it is called cheiloscopy.

             Refer to figure 1 and you would know some basics of Professor Suzuki's classification of lip prints. Professor Suzuki has divided lip prints into five main types and has preferred to use Roman numerals for denoting the types. Type I has an additional "sister group" so to say; it has been called Type I! (pronounced as "one-dash"). Type I as you can see represents a lip with clear cut grooves running vertically over the lips. Type I! has partial length grooves of Type I variety. They do not quite cover the entire breadth of the lips; otherwise they are almost the same as Type I prints. That is why Professor Suzuki has preferred to keep them as a sister group of Type I group itself.

             Type II represents the branched grooves, and Type III represent the intersected grooves. These look almost like crosses. Type IV represent the reticular pattern much like a wire mesh. Type V represents all other patterns. These are irregular non-classified patterns.

             The lowermost diagram shows how the lip prints are actually classified by the criminologist. Many would like to imagine that any one person would have lip prints of one particular type only, but this is not so. In fact different areas of lips may have different patterns. To simplify this pattern, the lips are divided into four quadrants. Each quadrant is then studied. The important thing to note here is that the sides shown in the diagram are always the opposite of the actual side. For instance, in the given figure, the left upper quadrant actually shows the prints in the right upper quadrant of the person's lips; the right upper quadrant shows the prints in the left upper quadrant and so on. This happens so because the person always faces the criminologist and thus sides are reversed. The criminologist makes the diagram while the person is facing him, and thus sides are reversed. While studying this print, do note that the sides appear reversed in the diagram.

             Look at the right upper quadrant of the person (the left upper quadrant of the picture). You would find three different patterns from the central part to the lips to the corner of the lips. The prints most central to the lips are of Type I. Further away the prints are of type I! and still further away they are of Type II. Thus the criminologist would enter in the left upper quadrant the following signs:- II I! I

             The same goes for other quadrants too.

             Suzuki made some other important observations too. He examined 18 pairs of uni-ovular twins and found that there were considerable similarities in these twins. Before proceeding further, it would be proper to explain briefly about uni-ovular twins. Twins in the mother's body can form in two main ways. One way is for two separate sperms to unite with two separate eggs (from the female), in which case the twins formed would be called bi-ovular twins since they are formed from two separate ova (or eggs). These twins are no more similar than ordinary siblings as ordinary siblings also develop from two different ova. They could be of different too. They are also known as fraternal twins. Another more curious way for the twins to form is for a fertilized egg to divide into two at a very early stage with separate development of the two. Since these twins were initially conceived as a single individual from a single ovum, they are called uni-ovular twins. They are always of the same and are very much similar in appearance. These are the twins that often get separated in Indian movies and cause much confusion! Since they are quite identical in every respect, they are also known as identical twins.

             The interesting aspect about uni-ovular twins is that they are in fact the same individual biologically. Their cells have the same proteins, the same genetic information and so on. Thus if one of the uni-ovular twins commits on a woman, the other could be implicated even if such refined techniques of identification as DNA profiling are used. This is because both the uni-ovular twins contain the same DNA. This problem does not occur with bi-ovular twins who in fact are no more similar than ordinary brothers and sisters.

             But one of the remarkable curiosities of nature is that even uni-ovular twins have different fingerprint patterns, and thus forensic scientists do have a way to differentiate between them. It is about the only major difference found in such pairs of twins. If any other major difference could be found in such twins that would indeed be a very great discovery in forensic science. It is in the light of these facts that Professor Suzuki was studying lip prints. But of the 18 pairs of uni-ovular twins that he studied, he found remarkable similarities. This was somewhat depressing for the forensic scientists although quite predictable.

             However MacDonell in 1972 described two identical twins who seemed to be indistinguishable by every other means, but lip prints in these twins differed. This was interesting news as identical twins had not been distinguished before by lip prints. He could differentiate between them by some other methods too. These were fingerprints (as mentioned earlier), handwriting, voice prints and nail clippings.

             Suzuki and Tsuchihashi described a remarkable case in 1970. An anonymous letter marked "confidential" was sent to the Lord General Director of Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, warning about blowing Police Headquarters, with two very luscious lip-marks imprinted in lipstick on the envelop. Two suspects were arrested and a great amount of explosives confiscated. But it was found that their lip prints did not match with those found at the envelop. It could not be determined how those lip prints were made. Had the lip prints indeed been made by the suspects, and had the doctors succeeded in making a perfect comparison, it would indeed have been very good for the new science of cheiloscopy.

             Lip prints were tried in a remarkable murder case in Essex, England. In this case lip prints were found on a door frame at a murder scene. Lip prints of the suspect were also taken. In spite of exhaustive studies by photography, rubber base impressions of the lips of the suspect, and further lip prints of the suspect, no similarities could be demonstrated in the fissures and grooves but only in the general outline and dimensions of the lips of the suspect.

             But my experience has been different. In some cases I have been able to use lip prints for positive identification. In one such case which occurred in Japan when I was on a visit there, a burglar had entered into a house and had broken open the safe. He was probably quite tense during the whole operation, so his mouth was dry. When he was just leaving, he saw a glass full of water on the dining table. Suddenly a strong desire to drink water overpowered him. He was a clever thief; he didn't touch the glass with his bare hands. He had a pair of gloves on his hands, because he knew about fingerprints. He thought that no possible harm could be done to him, if he drank water from that glass, especially when he was using "gloved" hands to lift the glass. But he left his lip prints over the glass. I was able to lift the lip prints from the glass.

             During the investigation, the police came up with five possible suspects. Normally one would have found it impossible to nab the real offender amongst them as the offender had left no traditional clue, but I had his lip prints with me. I took the lip prints of all the suspects, spent the next 24 hours comparing the scene of crime lip prints with those of the 5 suspects and was able to make a perfect match in case of one offender named Tsunachi. He was handed over to the police. Armed with this new information, the police made more intense enquiries, and soon Tsunachi admitted his guilt. The poor fellow must be cursing the moment when he was overpowered with the impulse to drink some water from that glass. But for that single mistake, his crime could have gone unpunished. This was yet another victory of forensic science.

             However it must not be thought at this stage that lip prints are as good in identification as fingerprints. They can only be used when no other traditional methods of identification are available. The critics of lip prints enumerate several weaknesses of this system. According to them, the influence of seasons and age over the lip groove patterns remains a problem in its popular use as life long constant identification feature.

             To protect the identity of the individuals, their names, as well as the various dates of occurrence, have been changed.