Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace - by Joan Mellen

[Tom Bowden]

Retired.

From his affidavit.

1. My name is A. Nathan Darby. I am a resident of Austin, Texas, and I am fully competent to make this affidavit.
   
2. I have been active in law enforcement for many years, starting with the Texas Department of public Safety as a State Trooper in 1938. I then served with the Austin, Texas Police Department from October 1940, and including my military service, I was with the Austin Police Department until my retirement in August 1979. During that period of service, I rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Commander. I am presently an expert in fingerprint identification, and I hold the designation of Certified Latent Fingerprint Examiner (#78-468), which is issued by the Internal Association for Identification, pursuant to the attached Exhibit DAN #1.
   
3. I first became interested in fingerprint work in 1942. My direct work in fingerprint identification began soon after, during my military service. I joined the U.S. Army in October 1943 and graduated from Officer Candidate School as a lieutenant in February 1945. I was immediately put in charge of preparing a fingerprint identification system for the Philippine Commonwealth. For my work of setting up their Central Fingerprint Bureau, I was awarded the Philippine Military Merit Medal, the Philippine Commonwealth's highest non-combat award for foreign military personnel. The United States Army also awarded me the Army Commendation Medal. This achievement was further recognized in the 1946 textbook, Lectures in Fingerprints by Fred C. Luchico, then Chief of the Identification Division with the Department of Justice, where he states that I "provided a modern, current, and complete fingerprint file for the Philippine Commonwealth." By 1946 I had risen to the rank of Captain. When my tour of Duty was completed in the Philippines, I returned to the Austin Police Department in November 1946.
   
4. On 1 January 1948 I was promoted to sergeant and assigned to the Identification Section of the Austin Police Department. On 7 July 1953 I was promoted to lieutenant. In 1956, I was made supervisor of the four employees of Identification and Criminal Records Section of the Austin Police Department. At this time I handled the classification of 176,000 cards and expanded the section to fourteen employees, training and supervising all personnel. In 1970, I worked on advanced record-keeping with the Kodak Miracode system and developed the fingerprint and photograph coding method for the system. During this time I also served on the board of directors of the Texas Division of the International Association for Identification. I hold an Advanced Certificate in Law Enforcement and an Instructor Certificate from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement. I have been a member of the Texas Division of the International Association for Identification since November, 1946.
   
5. Since 1949, I have testified in numerous cases in the State and Federal Courts about fingerprint identification. This testimony included the preparation of latent charts as exhibits. There was never a mistrial or appeal based on my testimony. Attached is Exhibit DAN#2. This exhibit shows the opinions of two District Judges, Travis County, Texas regarding my testimony experience.