Bret Waelterman
Graphics/Web Editor
Forensic Science cataloged more than 4,000 shoes in its shoe collection data base to help the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. The data base helps track criminals who leave shoe prints at the crime scenes.
“We are the only place in the world that has shoe data from Payless and Walmart stores. We use our shoe data base to help law enforcement and FBI agencies all around the United States of America,” said Jeanette Hencken, Forensic Science teacher.
“We just recently helped a detective in New York arrest a teen who was linked to several murders using our data base,” said Henckens.
The Forensic Science Advance class collects and edits all the shoe information.
“It takes about two weeks to get all data collected and maintained. Two to three days to organize. We go to the stores and collect data in one day. Then it takes about a week to reorganize all the data we collected,” said senior Madeleine Biggs.
“We spend one day going to both stores collecting the data,” said Henckens.
“Madeleine currently organizes all the data then uploads it to our website,” said Henckens.
The FBI or other law enforcement agencies look at the pattern of the shoe print found at the scene. Then they will contact Henckens. If the class finds a match to something, it will forward the information to whoever asked for it.
The students are in charge of collecting and organizing the data.
FBI and law enforcement can contact Henckens through e-mail and through the school website. The website link is webstergrovesforensics.org.
