Please see our “Did You Know?” section toward the end of this issue.
Topic: The UNT (University of North Texas) System, Center for Human Identification
Please see our “Question to the Expert” at the end of this issue.
Stories over the past two weeks include ongoing debates over an increasing DNA database “giving police an unprecedented crime-fighting tool but prompting warnings that the expansion threatens constitutional privacy protections.” And now “some in law enforcement are calling for a national registry of every American's DNA profile, against which police could instantly compare crime-scene specimens.” Other topics include the growing use of DNA in solving cold cases; and the incineration by police of more than 1,300 DNA samples taken to eliminate possible suspects in the BTK serial killer investigation.
In addition to these stories there are a number of existing and new cases involving the use of DNA evidence.
Brimming with the genetic patterns of more than 3 million Americans, the nation's databank of DNA "fingerprints" is growing by more than 80,000 people every month, giving police an unprecedented crime-fighting tool but prompting warnings that the expansion threatens constitutional privacy protections.
With little public debate, state and federal rules for cataloging DNA have broadened in recent years to include not only violent felons, as was originally the case, but also perpetrators of minor crimes and even people who have been arrested but not convicted.
Now some in law enforcement are calling for a national registry of every American's DNA profile, against which police could instantly compare crime-scene specimens. Advocates say the system would dissuade many would-be criminals and help capture the rest.
"This is the single best way to catch bad guys and keep them off the street," said Chris Asplen, a lawyer with the Washington firm Smith Alling Lane and former executive director of the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence. "When it's applied to everybody, it is fair, and frankly you wouldn't even know it was going on."
But opponents say that the growing use of DNA scans is making suspects out of many law-abiding Americans and turning the "innocent until proven guilty" maxim on its head.
"These databases are starting to look more like a surveillance tool than a tool for criminal investigation," said Tania Simoncelli of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York.
The debate is part of a larger, post-Sept. 11 tug of war between public safety and personal privacy that has intensified amid recent revelations that the government has been collecting information on personal phone calls. In particular, it is about the limits of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from being swept into criminal investigations unless there is good reason to suspect they have broken the law.
Once someone's DNA code is in the federal database, critics say, that person is effectively treated as a suspect every time a match with a crime-scene specimen is sought -- even though there is no reason to believe that the person committed the crime.
At issue is not only how many people's DNA is on file but also how the material is being used. In recent years, for example, crime fighters have initiated "DNA dragnets" in which hundreds or even thousands of people were asked to submit blood or tissue samples to help prove their innocence.
Also stirring unease is the growing use of "familial searches," in which police find crime-scene DNA that is similar to the DNA of a known criminal and then pursue that criminal's family members, reasoning that only a relative could have such a similar pattern. Critics say that makes suspects out of people just for being related to a convict.
Such concerns are amplified by fears that, in time, authorities will try to obtain information from stored DNA beyond the unique personal identifiers.
"Genetic material is a very powerful identifier, but it also happens to carry a heck of a lot of information about you," said Jim Harper, director of information policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington concerned about DNA database trends.
Law enforcement officials say they have no interest in reading people's genetic secrets. The U.S. profiling system focuses on just 13 small regions of the DNA molecule -- regions that do not code for any known biological or behavioral traits but vary enough to give everyone who is not an identical twin a unique 52-digit number.
"It's like a Social Security number, but not assigned by the government," said Michael Smith, a University of Wisconsin law professor who favors a national database of every American's genetic ID with certain restrictions.
Still, the blood, semen or cheek-swab specimen that yields that DNA, and which authorities almost always save, contains additional genetic information that is sensitive, including disease susceptibilities that could affect employment and health insurance prospects and, in some cases, surprises about who a child's father is.
"We don't know all the potential uses of DNA, but once the state has your sample and there are not limits on how it can be used, then the potential civil liberty violations are as vast as the uses themselves," said Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts.
She and others want samples destroyed once the identifying profile has been extracted, but the FBI favors preserving them.
Sometimes authorities need access to those samples to make sure an old analysis was done correctly, said Thomas Callaghan, who oversees the FBI database. The agency also wants to be able to use new DNA identification methods on older samples as the science improves.
Without that option, Callaghan said, "you'd be freezing the database to today's technology."
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref01.html
DA: DNA helps solve cold cases
A prosecutor for 27 years, District Attorney Jan Scully knows well the fear that gripped eastern Sacramento County in the 1970s.
It was then that the East Area Rapist was terrorizing couples. He reportedly was connected to rapes in Carmichael, Citrus Heights, Orangevale, Fair Oaks and Rancho Cordova.
Scully, during a recent talk before the Carmichael Chamber of Commerce, spoke about the connection between the East Area sexual attacks, a double murder and DNA.
Proposition 69, which requires the collection of DNA samples from all felons, and from adults and juveniles arrested on specific crimes, was approved two years ago by voters.
The initiative was bankrolled in part by Newport Beach lawyer Bruce Harrington, whose brother and sister-in-law were murdered in 1980 in their Southern California home.
Although Proposition 69 was opposed by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which argued the measure threatened the privacy rights of people arrested but not charged or convicted of felonies, it passed by a wide margin -- 62 percent yes to 38 percent no.
Scully, in her address to 100 people at the chamber luncheon, called Harrington "our public safety angel."
The Harrington homicides eventually were linked through DNA to the sexual assaults of the East Area Rapist. But the culprit is still unknown.
"We know he is not a California person, because we probably would have identified him by now," Scully said. "He could have left the state. He could be dead."
Scully, elected district attorney in 1994, is running unopposed for a fourth term. She spoke to the chamber May 23 at the invitation of the business group as part of its luncheon speakers program.
"I look forward to another term," she said in beginning her talk about DNA.
Scully traced most people's earliest remembrances of DNA in the courtroom to the O.J. Simpson trial, where Simpson's attorneys raised doubt about the testing procedure.
Today, she said, DNA is one of the most powerful legal tools a prosecutor can use.
Genetic fingerprint profiles are most commonly used in sexual assault cases, because DNA is derived from body fluids, usually semen, she said.
She said the state began to fund crime labs to work with law enforcement to identify old cases with saved DNA. That has led to criminal charges being filed against cold-case suspects, in part because of DNA.
Scully noted that the district attorney's crime lab isn't like the one on the "CSI" television show.
"First of all, my criminalists work on more than one case at a time -- and they don't solve every case in an hour," she said.
Criminalists are scientists, and they are not out taking confessions and arresting suspects, like the ones on TV, she said.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref02.html
In Kansas police incinerated more than 1,300 DNA samples taken to eliminate possible suspects in the BTK serial killer investigation, inviting the media to watch the event.
Dennis Rader, who called himself BTK for his preferred method to "bind, torture and kill" his victims, pleaded guilty last June to killing 10 people from 1974 to 1991. He was sentenced in August to 10 consecutive life prison terms.
Most of the 1,326 samples were taken voluntarily, but some were taken under court order. Some possible suspects had worried that the samples could end up in crime databases, despite police assurances that they would not.
A judge ordered their destruction.
"On this one we wanted to have the media so the public will know - for those 1,300-plus people who took swabs - that this is where they ended up," said Deputy Chief Robert Lee.
About 25 people - all members of the media or law enforcement - watched as white smoke billowed out of an incinerator.
Among those watching was Wichita Eagle reporter Hurst Laviana, one of several journalists whose DNA sample was taken during the long search for the BTK killer.
Laviana had finished covering a routine police briefing in 2004 when a detective pulled him aside and told him five people had fingered him as a suspect in the killings. Laviana allowed police to take the DNA swab.
"I don't have any feeling about it," Laviana said as he watched the burn. "It is just another milestone in the whole investigation - a small one."
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref03.html
Cases involving DNA evidence include:
National - Biological samples from the bodies of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates were delivered Thursday night to the FBI crime laboratory in Quantico, Va.
"Biological materials listed as being from three different individuals, including al-Zarqawi, were received at the FBI laboratory," said special agent Ann Todd, the lab's spokeswoman. "FBI laboratory scientists will be working around the clock to conduct genetic testing."
The biological samples, which the FBI would not describe, were flown to the United States by the military after al-Zarqawi and the others were killed in a U.S. airstrike on a safe house north of Baghdad.
DNA tests will compare the sample from al-Zarqawi with evidence taken from other terrorist safe houses, said John Miller, the FBI's assistant director in charge of public affairs.
"It will give us a window to establish where he's been and may help us learn who's been with him," Miller said.
U.S. authorities have already fingerprinted the body to confirm it is that of the terrorist leader.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref05.html
Texas - Forensic analyst Melody Moore enters DNA profiles into the Texas Missing Persons DNA Database at the health science center every day, but once in a while, a profile is out of the ordinary.
One such profile was DNA from Beverly Charlton, the mother of a missing girl from Washington, who’s DNA was uploaded into the TMPDD in March 2006. Moore said it gave her chills when she entered the information and it matched a sample in the database.
The profile Moore entered into TMPDD matched DNA from an unidentified bone found in Missoula, Mont., in 1984. The match identified the sample as Marcella Bachmann, who ran away from her home in Vancouver, Wash., when she was 16. King County, Wash., Sheriff’s Office reports said she disappeared in 1984, and her body was discovered on Christmas Eve of that year. The report said she had been shot and buried in a shallow grave outside Missoula, Mont. Authorities in Missoula believe she may have been the victim of serial killer Wayne Nance.
The bone sample from Montana was received at the health science center in August 2004, and Lisa Sansom, forensic analyst at the health science center’s DNA lab, entered the profile. “It was really kind of cool,” Moore said about discovering that the two samples matched. “It’s what we’re here for, and it’s so cool when the database works.”
Moore said it was her first “cold hit” — when remains and reference samples are submitted independently of each other without any investigative leads linking the reference samples to the remains.
The database is programmed to seek matches between DNA from remains, such as Bachmann’s, and references, such as that from Bachmann’s mother. After Moore discovered the match in April, further DNA samples from Bachmann’s brother in Missouri and her father in Oregon confirmed the identification.
Raphael Crenshaw, a detective with the King County Sheriff’s office, said this case would have been impossible to solve without the TMPDD. Not only did the TMPDD provide the tool to match DNA from Bachmann’s remains found in Montana to her mother’s DNA from Washington, but the service is free to law enforcement officials, which encourages agencies to take advantage of it. “Montana wouldn’t have shipped [Bachmann’s] sample to Texas unless it was free, and we wouldn’t have shipped [Bachmann’s mother’s DNA] to you, except it was free,” Crenshaw said. “It was a perfect opportunity for us to eliminate [Bachmann] as a ‘Jane Doe.’
For us, it’s a good thing, because it shows the system works.” “The bottom line is, without the availability of the national database administered by the FBI, there would have been no hope of identifying her,” said Arthur Eisenberg, PhD, director of the health science center’s DNA identity laboratory. “There is hope that families, some day, will get a sense of closure, and the hope is to identify who murdered this individual and prevent them from killing anyone else.
For more on this article please go to the following link. You can also get more information on the TMPDD in our “Did You Know” section at the end of this issue.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref06.html
Connecticut - New DNA testing has linked a Georgia man to the killings of four Connecticut women in the early 1990s, and investigators believe he may have been involved in up to six other slayings here.
Emanuel Lovell Webb was charged with murder in the killing of Elizabeth Gandy, 34, on April 19, 1993, prosecutor Jonathan Benedict said.
Webb, 40, is in prison in Georgia on a parole violation. Benedict said authorities were discussing his extradition to Connecticut.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref07.html
Pennsylvania - A borough man was charged with fatally stabbing and beating a man whose body was found in a closet wrapped in a blanket and with a bag over his head. Defendant Antoine Miller’s saliva matched DNA evidence on a cigarette butt recovered at victim Wallace Bivens’ apartment, according to the arrest affidavit. Also, blood on a cell phone recovered from the 40-year-old victim’s stolen car that Miller was observed driving and on a pair of Miller’s sneakers was a match to the victim.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref08.html
Ohio - Shawn Kelley's DNA was found on the neck, breasts and underwear of the 29-year-old Sheffield Township woman he's accused of strangling to death, a forensic scientist testified.
Prosecutors say Kelley, 28, of Elyria, strangled Tanya Kennedy Linkous after trying to rape her in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2005. He also is accused of trying to slay Tammy Lutz, of Lorain, and Charles Baker at Baker's Amherst Township home. Kelley, a former football coach at Lorain Catholic and New London high schools, could be sentenced to death if convicted.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref09.html
Louisiana - A rape case that laid dormant for three years until the crime lab got a match on a DNA sample led to charges today in an attack on a Shreveport church worker.
Willie Evans Jr., 26, was arrested on charges he raped a 43-year-old woman who worked at a church on Kentucky Avenue.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref10.html
North Carolina - A Greenville man is in jail after police got a new lead in a rape case that happened four years ago.
Police arrested 46-year-old Charles Eugene Gardner on Wednesday.
He's charged with attempted robbery and first-degree rape in an attack that happened in May of 2002.
Police say this was a cold case and there were no real suspects.
But a DNA sample finally gave them the break they were looking for.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref11.html
California - Detective Avis Beery of the Sacramento Police Department announced police had partially closed a cold case after a three-year search.
On Thursday, police arrested 22-year-old Vernon Lee Belton after DNA evidence linked him to the robbery and rape of a 22-year-old North Sacramento woman at this apartment complex.
Belton is one of three wanted for the crime. The other two are still at large. Beery says Belton's DNA was matched after he was arrested for a different crime last year.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref12.html
New York - There's another twist two weeks before the scheduled start of the Christopher Porco murder trial.
The Times Union is reporting there may be DNA evidence in the case.
The paper reports DNA matching Christopher's was found on a toll card confiscated the night of the murder.
Christopher has maintained his innocence and said he was at school in Rochester at the time of the crime. But prosecutors are hoping to show the ticket proves he was in the Albany-area the time the murder took place.
Defense Attorney Terence Kindlon said this is another example of prosecutors grasping at straws.
He said, "We have maybe 30 boxes full of papers that have been gathered over the last 20 months, and if you go through each and every one of the papers, there is no smoking gun. So suddenly now when this case is 20 months old, when we are 13 days before jury selection, there is suddenly a claim that DNA evidence exists."
There is no word on whether this new evidence will postpone the upcoming trial date of June 15 at Albany County Court.
Christopher is accused of murdering his father and almost killing his mother with an ax in their Delmar home back in 2004.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref13.html
South Carolina- Jerry Buck Inman, the man accused of murdering Clemson Student, Tiffany Souers is back in South Carolina after waving extradition in a Tennessee Courtroom. Inman was arrested late Monday night by the County Sheriff in Jefferson County, Tennessee.
Inman was spotted just before midnight in his car. Deputies say he surrendered without incident.
The arrest came just hours after the 13th Solicitor's Office issued a warrant for his arrest in South Carolina.
Inman is a registered sex offender in Tennessee and in Florida.
Solicitor Bob Ariail says the case is a "forensics driven case." He said that investigators matched DNA evidence from the crime scene against samples in a national database.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref14.html
Oklahoma - DNA reports that prosecutors say link a defendant to a series of rapes, along with testimony from three young women or girls who were assaulted in Tulsa apartments, were introduced as evidence during a preliminary hearing Wednesday.
In two days of the hearing this week, Tulsa County District Judge Gordon McAllister has heard from 30 witnesses, including seven who prosecutors allege are victims of Gary Lee Graham Jr.'s.
In two other episodes in which Graham is charged, children he is accused of assaulting have not taken the witness stand, but their mothers have testified.
Police maintain that DNA evidence links Graham to a string of crimes, and prosecutors provided McAllister with DNA reports from the Tulsa Police Department's forensic laboratory.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref15.html
Florida - A 41-year-old man was arrested in the death of a 37-year-old Orlando woman whose body was found at a construction site in early May, the Orange County Sheriff's Office said.
Nivardo Nunez was arrested Friday night. The Sheriff's Office said there was "significant DNA evidence and other physical evidence at the scene that we were able to link directly to Nunez."
Lori Lynn Clark was found dead May 3 in a subdivision being built on Lawson Boulevard in the county's southernmost portion. Nunez remained at the Orange County Jail on a charge of first-degree murder.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref16.html
New York - When state police tracked him down June 5, hours after his 17-year-old ex-girlfriend's body was found in Croton Falls, Ariel Menendez gave them a confession.
Prosecutors never used it.
They won a conviction Tuesday in Westchester County Court in White Plains for first-degree murder against the 28-year-old Bronx man with a powerful, mostly circumstantial, case that convinced jurors the Bronx man had sexually assaulted and killed Elizabeth Butler in her sport utility vehicle.
District Attorney Janet DiFiore said yesterday that she was not surprised.
"It was a very, very strong case," she said. "The forensic evidence was undeniable."
There were no eyewitnesses to the slaying, in which Butler was strangled and stabbed 13 times. But Menendez's DNA was found in semen, and Butler's DNA was in blood stains found on clothes he tried to throw away.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref17.html
Cases involving inmates requesting DNA testing to prove their innocence include:
Tennessee - A Shelby County man convicted and sentenced to death for killing his wife has filed a motion for DNA testing on evidence he believes would prove his innocence.
Donnie Johnson, 53, was convicted in 1985 of suffocating his 30-year-old wife, Connie, on Dec. 8, 1984, by stuffing a plastic garbage bag into her mouth.
In a petition filed Wednesday in Shelby County Criminal Court, Johnson’s attorneys ask for testing of the trash bag to determine if there is evidence left by the man Johnson has repeatedly claimed is guilty of the murder — Ronnie McCoy.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref19.html
Kentucky - Brian Keith Moore hopes a 27-year-old pair of pants will spare his life.
Moore, awaiting execution for a 1979 slaying, wants DNA testing on the garment, as well as a pair of shoes, hoping it will show that it was another man, not him, who kidnapped and killed Virgil Harris in a wooded area of Jefferson County.
Moore, 49, is the first Kentucky Death Row inmate to use a state law to seek testing on evidence stemming from a crime predating DNA tests. Jefferson County Judge James Shake said he would rule soon on the request.
Source: http://www.dnalabsinternational.com/email_newsletter/vol_20_jun_06/vol20_ref01.html
Did You Know?
Topic: The UNT (University of North Texas) System, Center for Human Identification
The UNT System, Center for Human Identification offers a unique program combining the services of a molecular identification laboratory with that of a forensic anthropology laboratory. UNTHSC DNA identity laboratory is an FQS ISO accredited laboratory offering mtDNA and STR analysis with CODIS entry of all eligible results. The UNT Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology is headed by a board certified Anthropologist and offers the examination of skeletal remains for identification as well as the cause and manner of death.
Originally established as the Texas Missing Persons DNA Database through Texas Senate Bill 1304 this laboratory has evolved and is now servicing the entire country. The Center for Human Identification (CHI) performs STR, mtDNA on family reference samples and unidentified human remains. Anthropological reviews are also performed on all applicable skeletal remains.
The results of the STR and mtDNA analysis are entered into CODIS at the local level where they make their way up to the National DNA Index System (NDIS). All results are searched on a routine basis. Searches are conducted at the local level weekly, at the State level bi-weekly, and at the National level on a monthly basis. Matches are verified and match reports are sent to submitting agencies.
All testing on missing person’s cases and unidentified remains are performed for law enforcement agencies at NO CHARGE. Family Reference Sample Collection Kits, sample submission forms, brochures and information regarding the collection and submission of specimens are all available at no charge. The only cost to law enforcement agencies is the cost associated with shipping unidentified remains samples. Family reference samples are returned in metered envelopes provided in the collection kits.
To date the CHI has received over 1,400 reference samples and over 600 unidentified remains from 34 States. The first sample for testing received was a reference sample, and it was received on February 28, 2003. Since that time, there have been 52 matches made to date, and of these, 5 have been “cold hits.”
Question to the Expert
Question: We'll have lots of DNA samples in our laboratory in the next couple of years and we plan to keep these samples as long as we can. Regardless of what has been suggested on books, papers and/or manuals, I would like to know that, based on YOUR EXPERIENCE, what is the best temperature to keep genomic DNA samples for both short-term and long-term storage? (Tissue? bone? blood? extracted? what buffer? etc)
Answer: All liquid genomic DNA samples should be frozen for long term storage.
Frozen samples must NOT be stored in a frost free freezer. This is because of the defrost cycling that takes place. Freezers will record temperatures as high as 10 degrees C during the defrost cycle. The continuing freeze/ thaw cycling will destroy DNA.
If you do not want to buy a lot of commercial freezers, then an alternative is to dry down the sample so no liquid is present. This can be accomplished by using a speed-vac system or other suitable products. This will dry down the sample removing all liquid and then the samples can be stored at room temperature. Studies have shown that dried down samples have been reconstituted and complete DNA profiles are obtained.
The DNA Informant is a free bi-weekly email newsletter, published by DNA Labs International.
DNA Labs International is a private, ISO 17025 Accredited, Forensic Serology and DNA Identity Testing Laboratory, founded in 2004 by a Board Certified Fellow in Molecular Biology with over two decades of experience in Forensic Serology and DNA Analysis in United States Crime Labs. Our primary mission is to help our clients identify and prosecute criminals within their jurisdiction by providing timely, accurate and cost effective DNA testing results. To do this we created an organization based on industry best practices from over 20 State Crime Labs around the United States. We are located in Deerfield Beach, Florida, just minutes from the Fort Lauderdale airport.
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