had been briefed to watch out for any offender wearing Nike runners with the unusual round-patterned sole.

Nike Shoes

In November 1986, St. Kilda police spotted George Kaufman entering a motel. He was wearing Nike runners like the ones they had been told to look for – except they had a red sole. They radioed Fontana and his colleagues, who immediately descended on the motel, seized the Nike runners, and sent them to the shoe-mark experts at the State Forensic Science Laboratory. These investigators already had moulds of the footprints left at recent robberies, as well as the photo frame with a footprint left by the intruder in the Armadale flat on August 8.

The job went into the queue, and Fontana spent Christmas looking forward to the prospect of aresult. By January he had one: Kaufman’s shoe, the forensic report said, could be positively identified as the shoe that had left the mark on the picture frame. A small surveillance operation was then mounted on Kaufman. He needed to be caught in the act – and burglary would do for a start.

Kaufman’s Arrest

On the night of January 31, 1987, Fontana and three colleagues followed Kaufman to an address in Caulfield. They watched from their van as he walked into an apartment block, returned to his car, opened the boot, removed a jimmy and walked back on to the property. Suddenly an alarm went off, and a panicked Kaufman took off down the road.

Fontana was chilled by the man’s reaction when the police caught up with him. In