A THUMB kept in a police store in Florida for 18 years has finally fingered the killers of the man to whom it once belonged.
The thumb came from a badly decomposed corpse discovered in the Florida Keys in 1976. The man could not be identified and was buried, but the police kept the thumb anyway in the hope that one day they might be able to identify the victim.
In 1989, at the request of an enterprising detective who was clearing up old cases, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement decided to clean up the thumb and try to obtain a usable print from it.
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Eventually, the detective found a match in files kept by the immigration department: Manuel Alvarez Solano, who had entered the US from Cuba.
Armed with the corpse鈥檚 identity, detectives first tracked down the victim鈥檚 son and then the man鈥檚 former associates. Last week, three men were charged with Solano鈥檚 murder. Police say he had been smuggling marijuana with the three and was shot during a quarrel.