BY JANICE MORSE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON - Thirteen years after an 83-year-old woman bled to death in her Maple Avenue home, a fingerprint found at the murder scene is pointing directly at a suspect.
In the first Ohio murder case brought with a new statewide computerized fingerprint comparison system, Kevin W. Walls has been indicted in the stabbing death of Ann Zwiefelhoefer, a widow.
"Every so often, when I'd drive along Maple Avenue, I'd think of Mrs. Zwiefelhoefer," Butler County Coroner Dr. Richard P. Burkhardt said Monday. "The colder the trail gets, the less chance they're going to get somebody . . . I was surprised to get a subpoena in a case that's over 13 years old."
Dr. Burkhardt testified Friday to a grand jury about Mrs. Zwiefelhoefer's death. Investigators had scoured more than 200 suspects' fingerprint cards - that's more than 2,000 fingerprints - without a match.
But the case came together last month, when a new computer did what no human could do: It zapped through 12 million stored fingerprints, including those of Mr. Walls, 29.
The search showed the prints of Mr. Walls, in prison for another crime, matched mysterious prints investigators lifted from Mrs. Zwiefelhoefer's nearly empty cash jar in 1985.
"It was incredible," said Ted Almay, superintendent of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (BCI), who was in his London office when he learned of the match shortly after it happened. Investigators double-checked the computer work and confirmed the match, Mr. Almay said.
Mrs. Zwiefelhoefer's niece, who found her body March 8, 1985, said, "I've been praying daily since it happened. My prayers were finally answered - it just took 13 years to do it."
Mr. Walls, who was 15 years old when Mrs. Zwiefelhoefer was slain, had his fingerprints taken in 1994, when he was arrested for a robbery. But the technology for comparing stored prints with previously unidentified prints didn't exist statewide until two months ago, Mr. Almay said, "So his prints sat around for four years."
Mr. Walls was convicted of that robbery charge. In 1995, he began serving a 3-to-15-year sentence and is now at Dayton Correctional Institution.
Butler County Prosecutor John F. Holcomb said Mr. Walls probably will be brought to the county courthouse in a few weeks for arraignment on charges of aggravated murder and aggravated burglary.
"One of the things that I'm excited about is that this case sends a message to the criminal element that may have committed other crimes: You can't sleep peacefully. We're not going to give up on any of these crimes," said Hamilton Police Chief Neil Ferdelman. "This is certainly an older crime that I'm sure a lot of folks had written off a long time ago."
The coroner's records don't reveal how long Mrs. Zwiefelhoefer had been widowed before she was stabbed nine times and died on the floral-patterned carpet of her living room with a rosary nearby. There were signs someone broke through the front door, and that the 5-foot-3, 129-pound woman fought her attacker.
"Each hand contained deep defense wounds," Dr. Burkhardt said Monday..
The crime happened so long ago that many people who knew and cared about the victim have died or moved from town. And several detectives who worked on the case, including James Nugent, have retired.
In preparation for his retirement this fall, Mr. Nugent gave Mrs. Zwiefelhoefer's case file to Detective Sherry Marcum. Although an 18-year veteran, she's new to detective work. She was promoted to detective in March and was just assigned Sept. 15 to investigate crimes against adults.
"Nugent plopped the file on her desk and said, 'Start reading. See if you can find something,"' said Detective Marcum's husband, Officer John Marcum.
Within a month, Detective Marcum showed up at the BCI office with fingerprints of four possible suspects. She asked experts to compare those prints with the unidentified prints found at Mrs. Zwiefelhoefer's. None matched.
But the BCI is trying to enter unidentified prints from unsolved homicides and other serious crimes in its data base. A technician decided to enter the prints from the Zwiefelhoefer case into the computer.
That led to the match with Mr. Walls' prints, Mr. Almay said.
"It speaks well of how technology can be a tool and works in the real world to solve crimes," Chief Ferdelman said, applauding the work of his detectives, the BCI and county prosecutors. "We think this is just a sign of things to come."
