By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
Lynn Cozart eluded authorities for 19 years after he was convicted of sexually assaulting three children.
In a last-ditch effort, the FBI submitted his mug shot to the bureau’s new facial recognition technology, Next Generation Identification (NGI).
Before long, the mug shot matched a driver’s license photo from Oklahoma, Valley News Live reports.
The match helped the FBI track Cozard down at a Walmart in Oklahoma, where he was working under a different name.
“You take a case that had a 19 year gap, or the guy was on the run for 19 years,” said Stephen L. Morris, the assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division, which includes NGI.
“Technology did result in the identification of that guy because it happened to provide them a lead they were able to run down in Oklahoma,” he told CBS News. “When the task force in Oklahoma started running it down, they were able to verify the individual under a different name was one in the same as the individual working in Walmart.”
The system went live in September and reportedly cost $1 billion.
