Sockprint

Some of the uprights in the banister were broken, and so much of Wheeler’s blood had been spilt that the soles of his bare feet were covered in blood, while the route his opponent had taken downstairs after the fight was over was marked by his bloody sockprints.

Dr. Lovejoy’s testimony indicated that although he does not employ Dr. Robbins’ precise methods for identifying footprints, he has on at least one prior occasion testified about footprint identification, employing a footprint exemplar to identify the defendant on the basis of a sockprint left at the scene of the crime.

Almost all the prints on the kitchen, dining room and living room floors had been wiped away in what must have been an extensive attempt to cover the killer’s (or killers’) tracks, but three very smeared impressions in the blood remained: two were sockprints corresponding to “a size 6½ to 7½ woman’s shoe or a size 5 to 6 man’s shoe,” and the last one was a sneakerprint of a size that fit a “woman or small boy.”