A recovered stolen car, switched plates, crime scene processing, and good detective work led to the solving recently of at least one of King County's thousands of stolen car cases.

The incident began in late April this year, according to King County Sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart.

A 1997 Honda Accord had been parked near Southcenter. But when the Puyallup owner came back, he found his car stolen and dutifully reported the theft to the Tukwila Police.

Fast-forward to May 14, Urquhart continued. Sheriff's Reserve Officer R. R. Smith was on the prowl, hunting for stolen cars. He noticed this Honda parked at an apartment complex in SeaTac.

"Since Hondas are one of the most frequently stolen cars, he investigated further," Urquhart noted. "What'd ya know, the front plate didn't match the back!"

But its vehicle identification number did match the VIN on the stolen car report.

This wasn't Deputy Smith's first recovery of a stolen car, Urquhart said. "In fact, as of September he has found 181 stolen cars during 2005 alone."

Smith swung into action and began checking the car for latent fingerprints, lifting prints from 14 areas in the car. Now the question was, do the fingerprints belong to the suspect, to the owner of the car, or some innocent passenger?

To link the fingerprints to a specific person, the print cards were sent to the regional Automated Fingerprint Identification Section (AFIS), run by the sheriff's office. Urquhart said the latent prints were compared via computer to fingerprints in the data base - about 538,000 people or 5,380,000 fingers.

The computer found the closest likely prints, but Latent Print Examiner Wade Petroka had to make the final analysis, and testify in court if necessary.

A positive identification was made to a person Urquhart described as "a 35 year-old career criminal from Seattle."

"At least the suspect wasn't hard to track down," Urquhart noted. "He was already in jail on other charges.

"Guess what the 'other charges' were. Auto theft! Go figure! As if we haven't heard that one before."

Detective Rodney Chinnick interviewed the suspect at the Regional Justice Center in Kent.

According to Urquhart, "When Chinnick showed him a photo of the car, the suspect's alibi was novel: 'I didn't do it. I'm innocent. I never saw that car before.'

"But the fingerprints found in the car proved otherwise."

Currently the suspect is still in jail, and this case is in the hands of the King County Prosecutor's Office. Charges against him in this case are expected to be filed against him soon.

"One case closed," Urquhart observed, "but others to follow."