The Brief
- The PCSO is using vaporized gold to reveal fingerprints on evidence the naked eye can’t see.
- Only nine percent of sheriff’s offices in Florida have the piece of equipment needed to do this, called a Vacuum Metal Deposition Chamber.
LARGO, Fla. – The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office is using vaporized gold to help investigators solve crimes.
Very small pieces of metal are put into a machine called a Vacuum Metal Deposition Chamber or VMD for short. Gold is the most popular. It helps investigators find fingerprints they can’t see with the naked eye.
“We place metal, different kinds of metals, it could be gold, silver, copper, into boats, heat them up thermally until they turn into a gas, if you will, and they adhere to the background of the evidence that we either magnet or suspend with different wires and fishing wire, that kind of thing. So, all of those metals travel upward, and then we finish out with zinc because it helps with contrast for the background,” PCSO Forensic Science Specialist Heather Temple said.…