A ceremony honouring Vučetić was held at the city cemetery, as reported by the local newspaper El Día de La Plata.
"Often, modest and unknown individuals leave a profound mark on the history of their nations, and even humanity, as is the case with the Argentinian police official of Croatian origin, Juan Vucetich," diplomat Maximiliano Gregorio-Cernadas wrote in the Saturday edition of La Nación. Gregorio-Cernadas, who served as Argentina's ambassador to Croatia from 2017 to 2020, highlighted Vučetić as a symbol of "what two nations can achieve together".
During his term, Gregorio-Cernadas awarded the "Juan Vucetich Award", presented annually by the Argentinian Embassy to individuals promoting bilateral relations, to politician Davor Ivo Stier (2017), former President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović (2018), and former Zagreb University Rector Damir Boras (2019).
Born in 1858 on the Croatian island of Hvar, Vučetić emigrated to Argentina at the age of 23, and was registered there as Vucetich. He began working for the Buenos Aires provincial police.
In 1892, a crime occurred in Argentina that would make history as the first successful case of fingerprint identification in a murder investigation.
Two children, aged 6 and 4, were brutally killed in the town of Necochea near Buenos Aires. Initially, suspicion fell on Ramón Velásquez, a friend of the children's parents, Ponciano Caraballo and Francisca Rojas.
Despite persistent denials during questioning, Velásquez remained the prime suspect. However, investigators discovered a bloody fingerprint at the crime scene and consulted Vucetich, who had been developing a fingerprint identification system for police use.
Vucetich compared the bloody print with the fingerprints of Rojas and Velásquez. To the shock of the police, the print matched that of Rojas, who had denied touching the bodies. Confronted with the evidence, Rojas confessed to the crime.
This marked the first successful use of fingerprint identification in solving a murder case.
Following this breakthrough, Vucetich refined his system, which he called the "comparative fingerprint method". The Buenos Aires province officially adopted it in 1903, and its use quickly spread across Spanish-speaking countries.
Inspired by the work of Francis Galton, Vucetich developed a unique method of fingerprint identification, laying the foundation for modern forensic techniques. Today, fingerprinting is essential in areas such as document authentication, criminology, and border and airport security. For security professionals of his era, fingerprints held the significance DNA evidence does today.
Vucetich passed away on 25 January 1925 and was buried in his wife's family tomb in Argentina.
The Forensic Science Centre in Zagreb was named after him. On the island of Hvar, in a town of the same name, a museum dedicated to Vucetich was established in the house where he used to live.