[reledi]

It's a plausible theory, but they almost definitely would have had prints from him already.

The fingers and palm were analysed in the photo. There's a better photo here: https://www.merseyside.police.uk/news/merseyside/news/2021/m...

Without any image processing, we can already see palm prints and the ridges and lines in the palm and fingers. These are unique biometric identifiers. In fact, palms have more identifying characteristics than fingerprints.

They are almost certainly telling the truth in this story.