This does not mean the fingerprints were tampered with or that the identification was manufactured. It reflects the chaotic circumstances of the night of July 22 and the morning of July 23, 1934: a crowd gathered at the theater and then at the morgue, thousands of people viewing the body, law enforcement from multiple jurisdictions present, and the institutional paperwork getting processed under pressure.
But it does mean that the contemporaneous forensic record for the most important fingerprint identification the FBI had ever made — the postmortem identification of its most wanted fugitive — has a gap in its documentation. The chain of custody cannot be fully reconstructed from surviving records.
What can be said is this: the identification was declared positive. The surviving ridge detail matched the known Dillinger record. The formal inquest accepted the identification. And decades later, modern examiners looking at the available record found it consistent with the original conclusion.
The gap in the chain of custody documentation is a limitation of the historical record, not evidence of fraud.
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## The Coroner’s Inquest and the Legal Finding
The formal inquest into the death of John Dillinger was held on the morning of July 23, 1934, less than twelve hours after the Biograph shooting.
Coroner Frank J. Walsh presided. Deputy Jacob Schewvel was also present. The proceedings took place at a moment when the Cook County morgue was already handling the public spectacle of thousands of people wanting to view the body, while simultaneously needing to conduct a formal legal proceeding.