New prints studied in Brown's murders

First published: August 25, 1998

The Illinois State Police crime lab in Chicago is comparing the fingerprints of a Colorado man with more than 100 prints recovered from the mass murder scene at the Brown's Chicken & Pasta restaurant in Palatine. Palatine police have looked with interest at the Colorado man, a former suburban resident, after he changed his story about where he was the night of the slayings at Brown's Chicken & Pasta, officials said. He had told police he had not been at the restaurant, but recently said he had been a customer there late the night of the killings, officials said. Seven people were slain at the Brown's Chicken & Pasta restaurant in January 1993. It could not be determined Monday when the lab received the prints, although it will take as many as 1,000 hours to compare the prints of the Colorado man to those found at the crime scene. There have been no matches so far, according to a source familiar with the investigation. The prints from the Brown's scene are ones that police have not been able to identify. Prints at the crime scene do not necessarily point to a killer, officials said. Some prints simply could be those of a delivery person or customer who police have not found. State police Lt. Col. Laurence Mulcrone, who heads the crime lab, declined to comment Monday about evidence in the Palatine case. In general, though, Mulcrone said the process is a labor-intensive one, requiring roughly an hour of labor for every print comparison. The lab has been called upon before by Palatine police to compare prints. Last year, police focused on Paul Dennis Reid, who was charged with killing five people at two suburban Nashville fast-food restaurants. But the lead in the case wound up going nowhere despite what authorities said at the time were promising similarities between the Palatine and Nashville area slayings.