Bob Hazen was a Fingerprint God when I got into the business.
Robert J. Hazen, 09/06/1930 to 12/13/2008. Bob fought in the Army in Korea, then continued to serve his country with a distinguished 40-year career in latent prints with the FBI. He was Section Chief when he retired. Bob was one of my mentors.
Bob had been in training in late 1963 under the watchful eye of legendary FBI Latent Print Section Chief Sebastian F. Latona, a notoriously hard taskmaster, when he got to observe and help with his first major case – the latent print processing and examination of evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
I first met Bob when I attended the FBI’s Administrative Advanced Latent Print Course taught at the FBI Academy in Quantico, VA, in June, 1986. Bob, along with Clarence Phillips, Ivan Futrell, and Bob Mays taught that three-week class.
I was back at the FBI Academy in July, 1987 for both the FBI Symposium on Latent Prints and following that, the FBI’s Latent Print Photography Course. I stayed for the IAI Conference, which was held in Arlington, VA, that summer. I was in Washington for five weeks running.
One of my fondest memories is Bob inviting me and two others who were attending fingerprint training at the Academy that summer for a personal tour of Washington DC. We eagerly accepted. Bob drove us around the Capitol one weekend in his fire-engine red 1968 Ford Galaxy convertible. It was a beautiful old battleship of a car, waxed and polished and looking as if it had just come off the showroom floor. We were cruising DC with the top down, each of us with an arm resting on the frame of a rolled-down window, when Bob asked if we’d like to tour the White House. Are you kidding? Hell, yes!
Bob parked in an official parking space near the White House and cut us to the front of a long line of tourists with congressional passes. Under the angry glares of all those who had been standing in line for hours, Bob badged us into the White House where he gave us a personal tour, unaccompanied by any other tour guide.
I visited Bob a number of times in his office at FBI Headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building. By the 1990s, we could talk at ease about anything ranging from fingerprints to politics to Civil War history (Bob was a serious student of the Civil War and a proud resident of Spotsylvania, Virginia). For many years, I proudly displayed a framed photograph of the FBI Academy in my office that Bob had presented me on one of those visits to his office at the FBI HQ.
I was teaching an 8-hour workshop on latent print comparisons for the Southwestern Association of Forensic Scientists (SWAFS) in Plano, Texas, in September 1991 when, on a break, I wandered through the vendors area. I never expected to see Bob Hazen there, but he had recently retired from the FBI and had accepted an offer from Omnichrome Laser to represent them at conferences. I was excited to see Bob at the Omnichrome booth and I hurried over for a visit. A minute later, we were joined by Joe Maberry, then a Latent Print Examiner for Dallas Police Department.
Bob and Joe and I were talking about advancements in latent prints when, during a lull in the conversation, Bob mentioned to Joe that he regretted never meeting Carl Day before he died. Lieutenant J. C. “Carl” Day was the crime scene and latent print supervisor at Dallas PD at the time of the Kennedy assassination.
Joe looked surprised and said, “Carl’s not dead! Let me give him a call and I’ll take you to meet him.”
Carl Day had collected Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository the day Kennedy was assassinated. He was in the midst of processing it for latent prints at the Dallas Police Department crime lab when FBI agents showed up unannounced and seized it, along with all of the other evidence in the assassination.
Of course, there was no legal authority for them to do that because, at the time, there was no Federal law that applied. Only Dallas PD had jurisdiction over the assassination. But Lyndon Johnson, on assuming the Presidency, had ordered J. Edgar Hoover to take over the investigation. Hoover immediately ordered his Dallas agents to seize all the evidence in the case. They did so and sent it to the FBI lab in Washington, DC., where Sebastian Latona, Section Chief over latent prints, took the case. Latona had only recently taken Bob Hazen, a rising star in the FBI Latent Print Section, under wing to train Bob personally. Bob assisted in completing the examination of the evidence, including Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle.
Well do I remember the afternoon Bob and Carl Day met! Joe Maberry drove Bob and me to Carl’s home in Dallas as soon as the mid-afternoon break was over at the SWAFS conference. Carl welcomed us into his home and we four sat around his dining table for hours. Joe and I sat in revered silence while these two giants of fingerprints talked about one of the most important latent prints in the history of the science from one of the most pivotal crimes in modern history. Carl told of collecting evidence at the crime scene.
After Carl had recovered Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle at the scene of the assassination, he took it to the Dallas PD lab. He removed the stock and developed a latent palmprint with black powder on the underside of the barrel. Just then, the FBI swooped in on orders of the newly sworn in LBJ and seized the rifle. They reassembled it and sent it to FBI headquarters.
Bob Hazen was apprenticing under the fingerprint Section Chief Sebastian Latona at the FBI lab. Bob was there when the evidence from Dallas arrived. Latona removed the rifle stock and they immediately saw the palm print, already developed with black powder. But they didn’t know any of its story.
At that historic visit with Carl Day in 1991, Bob Hazen told of receiving the rifle. He told of continuing the examination of the palm print on the barrel. Bob and Carl talked for hours, each asking questions they had harbored for 28 years, and answering each other’s questions.
Ahead of that visit, neither Joe nor I had realized the historic nature of the conversation to which we would be the sole audience. If we had, we most certainly would have obtained a tape recorder to preserve that amazing visit for history. As it was, we didn’t even take notes.
I’m finally getting to the moral of this narrative about Bob Hazen. A few years before Bob’s meeting with Carl Day, I had been at the 78th Annual Conference of the International Association for Identification in Pensacola. It was 1989. I was standing at the bulletin board near the registration desk thinking about running for Board of Directors when Bob walked up. After exchanging greetings, I asked Bob why, with all the influence he had for good, he had never run for office in the IAI. Bob’s eyes locked mine and he pointed a finger for emphasis as he spoke. I can still remember the sage answer in his deep baritone voice and his Virginia Southern accent as he gave me the best professional advice I ever received, but ignored for the next eight years.
Bob had spent the last half of his career at the FBI dedicated to teaching. In addition to supervising the Latent Print Section, he oversaw the very active training program in latent prints, available for free to anyone working in latent prints for local and state police agencies.
Bob oversaw the Administrative Advanced Latent Print Course (3 weeks), the Latent Print Photography course (2 weeks), and others at the FBI Academy. Airfare, room, and board were provided for free. Also, the one-week “roadshow” latent print classes taught free all over the US – whenever and wherever anybody requested a class and agreed to furnish a classroom.
What was Bob Hazen’s wise advice to me that I ignored for eight years?
As Bob locked eyes with mine and he pointed a finger for emphasis as he spoke, he said, “Pat, the real work of the IAI is in the classroom, not the boardroom.”
Ignoring Bob’s implied advice that day in 1989, I worked my way through the Board of Directors and into the chairs. I was moving into position for fourth vice president when I came to the realization that, like Bob, I am a teacher, not a politician. I withdrew my name from the ballot at the conference in Danvers, MA in 1997 and have spent my years since then teaching.
One of the biggest regrets of my career is that I didn’t follow Bob’s advice when he laid it on me in 1989. Bob was the most dedicated person I have ever known in latent prints and one of the wisest advisors I have ever had. Even though it has been fifteen years since he passed, I still think of him as living and miss our old conversations.
As for the IAI, check it out at https://www.theiai.org/
Advantages of belonging to the IAI include the following:
1. Conference attendance is the best week of annual training anywhere in the ID disciplines
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2. The Journal of Forensic Identification, which comes with membership, keeps you abreast of the latest developments in the field.
3. Identification News updates you on other things going on in the organization.
4. You can become Certified in your field.
5. You can research and present your findings at the annual conference.
6. You have the chance to serve on committees, help plan the conference programs, and give direction to your discipline.
7. You have the chance to serve on a certification board and help define the standards of your discipline.
8. You can run for Board of Directors and serve in the decision-making process of governing the organization.
9. You can run for office, climb through the chairs, and serve as President of the IAI one day.
If you have the skills to teach, teach.
If you have the charisma to lead, lead.
Or if you just want to learn and be the best at what you do, take advantage of the conferences and read the JFI and Identification News.
No matter what your level of interest in participation, the IAI has plenty to offer. If you work in crime scene investigation, latent print identification, latent print development, tenprint identification, footwear & tire track examination, bloodstain pattern analysis, biometrics information services, digital & multimedia evidence, forensic biology/DNA, facial identification, forensic art, forensic photography & electronic imaging, or just general forensics, you should belong to and participate in the International Association for Identification.