Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “How facial recognition caught a 40-year fugitive”.
In 1973, Ronald Dwayne Karns escaped from the North Carolina prison and stayed free for the next 40 years. He was in prison for armed robbery, but he was also unusually good at forging IDs. He collected names from children who had died decades earlier, building a new life for himself as William Henry Cox and Louis Vance. He moved from city to city Chicago to Georgia, to Washington State before finally settling in Waterloo Iowa. With no paper trail police had no way to follow him.
40 years later, something changed. The Iowa Department of Transportation instituted a facial recognition system now in the department takes a driver’s license photo. It also runs a scan of the subjects: facial geometry measuring the distance working. The eyes and the width of the gene, the final scan will run dozens of those measurements which can be compared against a database to see if there’s a match.
43 different states are in some kind of facial recognition system on driver’s license photos in seven of those states compared with federal databases to see if any of those photos matches a fugitive. Crucially, all of the photos are taken from the same distance and the same straight-on angle, which makes them easy to compare it’s a simple process, but it’s become an incredibly powerful tool for catching international fugitives. You need the same kind of straight ahead, photo for a passport and it gets stand any time you cross an international border. If you’re on the run from the police chances are, they have a mugshot of you, and now they have an easy way to use it.
Anytime, you cross an international border or submit an ID. That agency will be able to run a scan to see if there are any outstanding warrants for someone with your face. It’S made it much harder to drop off the grid, especially as that system has expanded internationally catching US fugitives as far away as Nepal for Carnes that global system wasn’t even necessary.
His photo raised a flag because he was in the Iowa driver’s license system twice once as William Henry Cox and wants his Lewy vans, and both men were collecting a monthly Social Security check. As soon as that hit came in police knew they had a case of Social Security fraud, but when they paid him a visit, they realized they had something else too. This was the same man.
Thora tees have been trying to track down for decades. Karns was arrested and on September 4th 2014 he was sent back to North Carolina to serve out the remainder of his sentence. The Social Security charges were dropped, Social Security charges for drop for drop, we’re drunk we’re drop like I did for him. Okay, we’re dropped; okay, .