Much was made of the fact that the bloody thumbprint in Paul Stine's cabe did not match with ALA.

The thumbprint always seemed to me to be something that was done on purpose, rather than by accident.

I was thinking a month or two ago about the thumbprint, and I remembered that on the original "Batman" series, there was an episode where someone attempted to take Bruce Wayne's fingerprints to find out if they matched Batman's prints. They did not, because Bruce/Batman had painted some latex on the ends of his fingers and had pressed the wet latex into a mold of a different print.

All you'd need is some liquid latex, and a ball of Silly Putty to take a print of someone else. With the Silly Putty, you could take several prints lay one on top of another to obscure the print without totally destroying it. And in those days, as long as you were non military and not a criminal, fingerprints of ordinary people were rare. Seems like something like that would have appealed to ZK... a great way to throw off the cops. And, since a plastic thumb wouldn't leave an ordinary print, you have to print it with something like.... blood.

It's at least as plausible as anything else.