The murder of Carroll Bonnet
Omaha, Douglas County, Nebraska · 1978
Overview
Carroll Bonnet, a 61-year-old hospital worker who lived alone in Omaha, Nebraska, was found stabbed to death in his apartment in October 1978. His killer cut the phone cord, took his wallet and his car, and left behind a taunting note. Latent fingerprints and palm prints were lifted from the scene, but in 1978 there was no way to match them to anyone, and the case went cold for three decades. When the Omaha Police cold-case unit re-examined those same prints in 2008 and ran them through the FBI's national fingerprint database, the system returned a name that had never surfaced in the original investigation: Jerry Watson, a career burglar then in an Illinois prison. The fingerprint hit, not DNA, was the break that finally put a name to the killer; physical evidence later confirmed it. Watson was convicted of first-degree murder in 2011 and sentenced to life in prison.
How it was solved
The 1978 investigation produced good physical evidence but no suspect. Detectives recovered latent fingerprints and palm prints from the bathroom door, the medicine cabinet, beer cans, a coffee table and the telephone, and Bonnet's stolen car was found days later in Cicero, Illinois, where more prints were lifted. But fingerprint matching in 1978 depended on having a named suspect to compare against, and the prints from a stranger matched no one. The case stalled. The decisive step came in 2008 and 2009, after the Omaha Police Department's cold-case unit pulled the file and Detective Doug Herout and crime-lab technicians re-submitted the decades-old latent prints to the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) — a searchable national database that did not exist in 1978. Within about five hours the system returned a list of candidates, and several days of side-by-side comparison produced a positive identification: Jerry Watson, who had grown up in Cicero only blocks from where Bonnet's car was abandoned and who was by then incarcerated in Illinois on burglary and drug charges. Watson had never been a suspect in 1978 and had no known connection to the victim; it was the re-examined fingerprint evidence, run against a database that had finally caught up to it, that named him. Investigators then obtained confirming physical evidence, and Watson was charged in November 2010. A jury convicted him of first-degree murder in August 2011, and he was sentenced to life. The Nebraska Supreme Court upheld the conviction in 2013 and again on a second appeal in 2017.
Sources
- State v. Watson
“Using technology unavailable in 1978, previously unmatched fingerprints were matched to Watson; the jury found Watson guilty of first-degree murder and use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony, and the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed the conviction.”
- IAFIS Identifies Suspect from 1978 Murder Case
“In less than 5 hours, the IAFIS responded with a list of possible candidates; several days were devoted to examining the latent print evidence, which led to the positive identification of the first suspect, Jerry Watson, who was sentenced to life in prison 33 years to the day after Bonnet's body was discovered.”
- Cold Case Resolutions #3: More than One Clue
“Latent fingerprints and palm prints were collected; Bonnet's stolen vehicle was found days later in Cicero, Illinois; the note read, I am leaving this crime with only one clue. Find it yourself Pig!!! Die Pig; Watson grew up in Cicero only blocks from where the car was discovered and was serving time in Illinois for burglary.”
- 31-year-old Nebraska murder case solved
“Jerry Watson, age 51, was identified through fingerprint evidence; at the time of the announcement in August 2010 he was incarcerated at a state prison in Joliet, Illinois, on burglary and drug charges, and Detective Doug Herout said Watson would be arrested upon his release on parole.”
- True Crime Stories: An Arrogant Clue Missed at the Scene
“Carroll Bonnet, a Clarkson Hospital employee, was found stabbed in his Omaha apartment in October 1978; the killer left a taunting note and stole his car, and unidentified fingerprints from the scene were matched to Jerry Watson through IAFIS in the reopened cold case.”
- Nebraska Supreme Court upholds Watson murder conviction
“For a second time, the Nebraska Supreme Court upheld the murder conviction of a transient arrested more than three decades after the slaying; the court ruled there was sufficient evidence to convict Watson, who is serving a life term for the 1978 first-degree murder of Carroll Bonnet.”
- 30-Year-Old Murder Solved
“The 1978 Omaha murder of Carroll Bonnet was solved decades later when latent fingerprints collected at the original scene were searched against the FBI's IAFIS database, identifying Jerry Watson as the suspect.”
- 2012 Latent Hit of the Year
“The Bonnet cold-case identification was recognized in the FBI's Latent Hit of the Year program, honoring crime laboratory technician Laura Casey and Detective Douglas Herout for solving the 1978 Omaha homicide through an IAFIS latent fingerprint search.”