TL/DR – attaching meaning to a scar on a finger as something sinister (like from wielding a knife in an attack) might not be the best road to travel down.
+1. Also +1 to Chaucer’s comments. People get scars. They aren’t uncommon.
One of my friends wound up in the emergency room gettings stitches after slicing her hand open cutting an avocado. I’ll bet her avocado-cutting scar is a lot bigger than the scar in that fingerprint. Bagel-slicing accidents are another common source of ER visits. Does anyone know if Zodiac enjoyed bagels? 
Zodiac was a screwup. He left behind five breathing victims, two survivors, bootprints, possibly fingerprints and palmprints, tiretracks, eyewitnesses, and earwitnesses. If the APB had gone out for a WMA he would have been locked up in ’69.
I find that a serial killer having a scar in the same spot on the exact finger significant, when it is found at two different crime scenes.
Especially when there is some doubt as to whether or not those two crimes were committed by two different killers.
This helps to prove that there was one killer for those two crimes.
Its not just about the scar, the print has to match as well. But we are dealing with a smudged bloody print that is hard to see the print detail at one crime.
I find that a serial killer having a scar in the same spot on the exact finger significant, when it is found at two different crime scenes.
Oh absolutely. If two different fingerprints have a scar in the same location on the same finger, that’s very significant.
What some of us are reacting to is speculation about how the person might have gotten the scar, what type of jobs a person might be employed in to get scars, etc. Scars are such common things that they don’t tell you much about a person who has one.
Zodiac was a screwup. He left behind five breathing victims, two survivors, bootprints, possibly fingerprints and palmprints, tiretracks, eyewitnesses, and earwitnesses. If the APB had gone out for a WMA he would have been locked up in ’69.
Hi,
Here is a quote from Bob Garrett on 12/8/15:
" The void in the suspect print may or may not be a scar. The only way to determine if it is a scar is to observe the effect scarring had on ridge detail formation. Absent this, calling the void a scar is an assumption. The void could be due to debris on the surface, a fold in the skin or other possible occlusion."
Plus those particular prints were not in the high probability category as having been from the killer. There was a lot of personnel around the cab that night. Just ask Vince Repetto.
Also, it is interesting to note that the "scar" occurs in the demarcation point between the dark part of that print and the lighter part of that print. So the idea that it is a scar may just be an illusion. Or, as KQ falsely said to me when I asked him about the big crossed circle on his building in Italy, "You are seeing what you want to see."
Mike
Mike Rodelli
Author, The Hunt for Zodiac; 3.9 stars on Amazon and
In The Shadow of Mt. Diablo: The Shocking True Identity of the Zodiac Killer, a second edition in print format. 4.3 Amazon stars and great Editorial reviews. Twitter:@mikerodelli
Another question is, how would one acquire a scar deep enough to show up on a fingerprint?
Could it point to a manual job or military background.
So you got me looking closely at my own fingerprints. Quite noticeable on one of my fingers are 3 sideways deep lined indents that run across my fingerprint. Hard to explain, but leads me to believe that prints like that would not necessarily indicate a scar.
