Fingers Convict Him

True Crime Historian

Richard O Jones

True Crime, Performing Arts, Documentary, Arts, Society & Culture

4.5 • 720 Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On September 19, 1910, a prowler broke into the home of Clarence Hiller in the Chicago neighborhood Morgan Park. When he awoke Hiller’s 13-year-old daughter, pandemonium erupted and before it was over, Hiller lay dead at the bottom of the stairs. In breaking into the house, Thomas Jennings left his left palm print in a freshly-painted porch rail. Those prints would be the first ever admitted into evidence. The case changed police standard practices across the nation and around the world.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The weather. Tomorrow, expect a biting cold front. Hmm, how naughty. I wonder what I'll be
0:06.8	wearing or taking off. The night will be wild and untamed. Expect heavy, lashing rain
0:13.0	that'll soak you to the skin. By Monday, temperatures will rise slowly but surely reaching
0:18.7	their peak in the afternoon.
0:23.0	Not in the mood for miserable weather?
0:25.8	Fly cheaply to Turkey with Sun Express.
0:28.7	Sun Express, non-stop sunshine.
0:32.0	Fingers convict him.
0:36.1	A True Crime Short Story by Richard O. Jones.
0:43.2	A Patreon exclusive for supporters of the podcast, True Crime Historian.
1:00.0	Clarice Hiller, 15, awoke a little after 2 a.m. to find a man standing in her bedroom doorway.
1:08.5	His face illuminated by a burning match. She thought it was her father, but was puzzled that he was wearing a coat instead of his night clothes.
1:11.8	As she raised up in bed, the match blew out, leaving the house in total darkness.
1:19.4	Clarice heard footsteps move toward the bedroom in the front of the house,
1:23.4	where her parents and her two youngest siblings slept, then paused before going back toward
1:29.7	her younger sister Florence's room, going past her own door again.
1:35.1	Is that you, Papa? she heard Florence's sleepy voice. There was a brief moment of stillness.
1:45.0	Then 13-year-old Florence screamed, and the quiet house rumbled with a flurry of noises.
1:54.0	Clarice heard her father's footsteps pounding on the floor, exclaiming something about the hall light being out. She saw the spark of
2:03.9	a match lit by her father, but it lasted only an instant as the intruder attacked. Clarice could see
2:12.4	nothing in the darkness, but heard the sound of bodies scuffling in the hallway in front of Florence's room.
2:19.3	She heard the thumps, thuds, and grunts of two scrambling bodies moved past her doorway and down the staircase, and then down the stairs.
	...

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