Webster Groves High School students have photographed about 7,500 pairs of shoes over 25 years for a database used by law enforcement to compare shoe impressions from crime scenes with shoe designs. The collection is available to law enforcement and the FBI, according to St. Louis Public Radio.
How the collection is built
Twice a year, students go to a Walmart Supercenter in Kirkwood, Missouri, and work in three groups. They select shoes, record each pair’s sex, make, model and model number on a card, then photograph the shoes with the card in a box made from white poster board. The images document the shoes’ uppers and outsoles, STLPR reported.
From a police department’s gap to a wider database
The effort began after Jeanette Hencken, then an intern at the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, learned the department did not have outsole photographs of nonname-brand shoes. Hencken, a retired forensics teacher, helped establish the student project. Its photographs were first shared with the department and the FBI; about 15 years into the effort, a student proposed a website to make the collection available more broadly, according to STLPR. The school’s Walmart Shoe Database displays images in year-based folders.
A reported match in New York
Hencken told STLPR about a Lyons, New York, burglary in which guns were stolen and later connected to a homicide. Investigators found a shoe impression on a door forced open during the burglary. Hencken said she sent a possible match to a detective, who later reported finding the shoes on a suspect during questioning. STLPR also reported that the project has been credited with helping investigations in the United States and abroad, including in Canada and Brazil.
STLPR reported that the school is believed to be the only one with this kind of partnership involving law enforcement and Walmart. The outlet also described receiving praise for the students’ work from the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana. The project continues under forensics and chemistry teacher Mebbie Landsness, with Hencken returning twice yearly to help with shoe collection.
