SEQUIM — It’s not the way The Duke would have solved crimes in his big-screen western days.
But it did the trick for Sequim police officers, who used fingerprinting technology to find the guy they believe lifted a replica pistol housed in a display case filled with memorabilia from the late movie star’s namesake venue — John Wayne Marina.
A 38-year-old Maple Valley man who police identified as Rhett Whitchurch was booked into Clallam County jail on Friday for investigation of theft in the third degree after fingerprints taken from display-case glass matched a set of his prints stored in a computerized law enforcement database, said Sequim police Sgt. Sean Madison.
Whitchurch has a criminal history, but no known ties to the North Olympic Peninsula, Madison said.
And that’s what makes cracking the case all the more intriguing, Madison said.
“It’s really unusual. It rarely happens,” Madison said of the department’s ability to match the prints.
“Fingerprints are a wonderful thing, but first of all they have to exist, and we have to be able to find them and retrieve them.
“Then they have to be of a quality you can use them to compare them to what we call a ‘known.”‘
In this case, the “known” is someone who allegedly made his way into a John Wayne Marina building east of Sequim on Sept. 20, 2003.
The suspect removed the glass plates covering one of four cases filled with relics from Wayne’s movies, and made off with only a replica pistol.
The burglar didn’t take the holster housing the fake gun, according to the original police report.
