When fired, Tasers eject tiny paper circles printed with an ID number. The confetti could be key to the CEO Fahim Saleh murder case, and helped cops recover a $5 million Stradivarius.

• When fired, Tasers eject a small cloud of confetti — tiny paper circles printed with an ID number.
• A Milwaukee violinist says the ID tags helped cops recover his Stradivarius, stolen at Taser-point in 2014.

In the moment before his $5 million Stradivarius was stolen in the parking lot of a Milwaukee concert hall, violinist Frank Almond didn't notice the spray of confetti that burst from the thief's Taser — the so-called "Anti-felon ID tags" that eject along with the weapon's 50,000 volts.

He was too busy collapsing onto the snow-covered pavement, and then — realizing the irreplaceable, 300-year-old instrument had been ripped from his hands — "running around the parking lot in circles, screaming."

"I thought, that's it. The violin is gone," Almond remembered of the 2014 theft. "My life is over. It was horrifying. It's a cliche, but it's like someone had taken away one of your kids," the dad of two told Insider.

On Sunday, Insider told the story of how one, overlooked "AFID" tag, missed by the alleged killer's vacuum, may be the single most important piece of evidence in the 2020 Tasing, stabbing, and dismemberment of New York City tech CEO Fahim Saleh.

On Monday, the victim in the only other national, front-page story where Taser ID tags helped crack a case said he remains grateful, nine years later, that the tiny discs of paper helped the FBI and Milwaukee police find the thieves and the violin.

"This was really not public information at the time, that there's this sort of Taser chaff that comes out of the weapon" when it's fired, Almond said.

The spewed-out tags are each printed with a unique number that correlates to the specific Taser cartridge. "It was an industry secret that you could trace a Taser back with all this granular detail."

In the Saleh murder, Manhattan prosecutors say that the tag number was traced back to a weapon purchased by murder defendant Tyrese Haspil, the CEO's former personal assistant, who has pleaded not guilty and is in jail awaiting trial.

In the case of the stolen Stradivarius, the number on the scattered tags linked back to a Taser purchased by a local barbershop owner named Universal Knowledge Allah.

"That's the name he had his name changed to," some time back, Almond explained. "It had been purchased about seven months before," he said of the Taser that shocked him in the chest.

"He bought it under his own name and with his own credit card and had it sent to his own business, which was a barber shop," Almond added.

It was kind of like a Cohen brothers movie plot, the violinist joked about the idiocy of it all, though, thankfully, "not as violent as Fargo."

Rachel Maddow did a whole segment on AFID tags back when the little round specks led investigators to the violin — and to the door of Allah, and the triggerman, Salah Salahadyn. Both pleaded guilty to the theft and other charges in 2014. Salahadyn was sentenced to seven years in prison; Allah to three-and-a-half years in prison.

"The FBI and the Milwaukee police department were able to determine a great deal about the thieves from those tags," Almond noted, calling it, "a huge break in the case."

"Though I don't believe a lot of people in law enforcement were happy about that information becoming public," he said of the telltale tags and their crime-fighting significance.

Almond was concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra at the time, and currently directs the acclaimed, Milwaukee-based Frankly Music chamber series. He doesn't own the instrument — he continues to play it on loan from its owners, close friends who have remained anonymous.

Despite the cold of the apartment attic where it was recovered, the so-called Lipinski Stradivarius, named for 19th-century Polish violinist Karol Lipiński, was basically in fine fiddle.

Reunited, Almond tilted it to his chin and played a few scales, and maybe some Bach just to be sure. But it was "not damaged in any meaningful way, outside of a few external bumps and bruises. I actually played a concert with it a few days later.

"In the end, it would have been better for them to just steal my wallet," Almond said.

Instead, within hours, "The whole world was looking for this violin."