DNA Hit of the Year: A Look Back at Some of the Most Influential Cases
The DNA Hit of the Year program is an international collaboration that is able to share, through real cases, the value of DNA Databases on a global scale. During the first four years, the cases the judges selected as the DNA Hit of the Year, truly opened our eyes to what is possible when the advancement of science is combined with the tenacity of DNA scientists and police officers. Tim Schellberg, President of Gordon Thomas Honeywell Governmental Affairs, along with a global panel of judges and a special guest, discuss those four cases, along with other submissions, and what made them so unique. In this webinar you’ll hear about: •The benefits of incorporating Y-STRs and familial searching into a DNA database program •The advantages of expanding national DNA databases with increased reference samples from arrestees and convicted offenders •Case examples on how modern and historical technologies can be used to identify perpetrators from serial rape cases and decades-old cases
Hello and welcome to DNA Hit of the Year. I look back at some of the most
influential cases
brought to you by forensic and sponsored by Thermo Fisher Scientific. This is
the fourth webinar
in the 2021 Future Trends in Forensic DNA Technology Series. My name is
Michelle Taylor,
editor-in-chief of Forensic and I will be your moderator throughout. For today
's webinar,
you can earn one hour of continuing education credit. Following the conclusion
of the webinar,
you will receive an email with information on how to obtain CE Credit
Documentation.
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Today, Tim Schalberg, President of Gordon Thomas Honeywell Governmental Affairs
along with a global panel of judges and a special guest, will discuss the four
previous cases
selected as DNA hit of the year, as well as other submissions throughout the
years,
and what has made these cases just so unique. At Gordon Thomas Honeywell
Governmental Affairs,
Tim manages daily operations and provides consultancy services primarily in the
Washington,
D.C., and international divisions. For the last 20 years, Tim and his firm have
become the world's
foremost experts on forensic DNA database legislation, public policy, and law.
In addition to representing
clients in the DNA industry, Tim has advised over 54 and state governments on
DNA database
legislation, laws, and policies. He also collaborates with foreign public
security ministries,
parliaments, and other law enforcement and forensic organizations on policy of
forensic
DNA programs on a frequent basis. Tim will be available for Q&A after the
presentation.
So with that, let's get started. Welcome everyone. I'm Tim Schalberg,
Gordon Thomas Honeywell, and it is such a pleasure to be delivering the fifth
annual
DNA hit of the year presentation during the amazing hits conference. The DNA
hit of the year
program is truly an international collaboration that is able to share through
real cases the value
of DNA databases on a global scale. During the first four years, the cases the
judges selected
as the DNA hit of the year opened our eyes to what's possible when the
advancement of science
is combined with the tenacity of DNA scientists and police officers. Let's take
a quick look at
these four cases. In 2017, the judges selected an Italian case, the murder of Y
ara Gombreasio.
Who could forget this high-profile wild and dramatic murder mystery that
unfolded in Northern
Italy and was covered by the global press? Yara, just 13 years old at the time,
was attacked and
senselessly murdered as she walked home from a gymnastics practice. A full DNA
SDR profile
was found on Yara's body, but at the time the Italians did not have a national
criminal offender
DNA database to compare the sample to. That didn't stop the Italian authorities
. They created the
world's largest mass screen ever conducted and collected 15,000 DNA profiles
including YSTRs.
Eventually, this massive task led to a YSTR match. The YSTR match gave the
police what they needed
to lock in on one deceased individual and after further testing, the DNA
suggested the killer
must be one of his three male children. But the STRs did not match any of them.
The police quickly
realized that there must be a secret child that neither the family or the
community knew about.
So, in an attempt to identify the mother of the killer, the police moved to
create a second
DNA mass screen of 500 women that could have been the mistress of the deceased
father. Finally,
they found her, her sons, and were able to identify the killer and bring
closure to this
long dramatic murder mystery. In 2018, the judges selected a United Kingdom
case, the 1984 sexual
assault and murder of Melanie Road. This was an extremely sad case of a young
woman that was
attacked while walking home after a night out with friends. Melanie fought hard
during the assault,
cutting the killer. This allowed the police to find the killer's blood at the
crime scene,
which set up the focus of a grueling 30-year-old hunt for the killer. As DNA
database developed in
the United Kingdom in the 1990s, police searched the database routinely but
never received a match.
But the United Kingdom is one of the progressive countries that allows for
familial searching.
As fate would have it, the killer's daughter was arrested but not convicted of
a very minor
offense of shoving her flatmate. As a result, she was added to the DNA database
. When a familial
search was next conducted, the crime scene DNA from Melanie's murder hit to the
daughter of a
potential relative of the killer. After a quick investigation, the police
confirmed that the crime
scene DNA belonged to her father and justice was served. The police in this
case were the true
champions, a 30-year commitment where they never gave up. But let's also
recognize the unsung hero,
the British Parliament, without them allowing for familial searching and
creating a database
law that includes arrestees from minor crimes. This case would still be
unsolved, a reminder of the
importance your laws play in solving cases with DNA. In 2019, the judges
selected a U.S. case,
the Golden State Serial Murder and Rapeous Case. Between 1973 and 1986, the
Golden State killer
terrorized California by committing over 50 sadistic and torturous rapes and 13
homicides.
The killer left no traces with the exception of his DNA, which would eventually
be profiled
and searched against government DNA databases without ever any results. With 40
years of
investigation and no likely suspects, the Golden State killer developed your
reputation as the most
significant unsolved serial murder case in U.S. history. The luck changed on
this case with the
advent of genetic genealogy when a criminalist from California had the idea to
search the crime
scene DNA against public genetic genealogy databases. As you all know by now,
this led to a match to
a distant relative which in turn allowed genealogists to ultimately find the
Golden State killer.
Not only was it global news to solve one of the greatest murder mysteries in U.
S. history,
but this case set off a mad dash throughout police departments across the
country to use
genetic genealogy to solve hundreds of unsolved homicides in a very short
period of time.
This case showed us that solving crime with DNA does not always have to be
about using traditional databases. There are plan B DNA database approaches
that can work.
It also begs the question of what laws and privacy standards do we need to
utilize genetic genealogy
in an effective but ethical manner. In 2020, the judges selected a case from
Paraguay and Brazil
to 2017, robbery of the century. While the crime was committed in Paraguay,
the estimated 50 criminals that committed the crime were Brazilian, and most of
the criminal
investigation, including all of the crime lab work, was processed by the
Brazilian Federal Police.
If there was ever a case in the hit of the year program that felt like a movie
script,
this was it. Imagine 50 heavily armed assailants with armored vehicles racing
through a town
towards a bank, blowing up that bank to steal millions from a vault and
engaging in a three-hour
shootout with police. There was literally destruction everywhere. When the
smoke cleared,
the Brazilian Federal Police DNA lab had its work cut out for them. 450 pieces
of DNA evidence
needed testing touched DNA from vehicles, boats, weapons, explosives, and blood
from many of the
wounded assailants. After some long days in the DNA lab, they were able to
develop 47 separate
profiles from criminals that participated in the crime. When the 47 profiles
were placed into the
Brazilian DNA database, there were many hits to seriously previously committed
unsolved crimes.
What's more, every few months, another criminal from the bank heist is
convicted of another crime,
placed into the national database and linked back to the bank heist. The
robbery this century
was a major crime that took a major effort by the Brazilian Federal Police lab
to bring this
criminal gang to justice. As you are reminded when hearing the facts of these
cases and role DNA
played in solving them, you can understand why the judges selected them as the
hit of the year.
The top case selected each year is certainly a key part of the hit of the year
program.
However, to me, the hit of the year program is so much more than the top case.
It's about the
hundreds of cases submitted that we will all collectively learn from. So this
year, due to the
pandemic, we decided not to ask for new cases to be submitted for review.
Rather, we are going to
take a deeper look at some of the cases that were not selected as the top case
in the past.
We have assembled a talented and committed panel to help share these cases.
This panel is made up
of previous hit of the year judges, as well as crime lab and police personnel
that worked on
some of the cases we will be discussing today. Our first speaker today is
retired Alameda County,
California USA, Deputy Prosecutor, Rock Harmon. For those of you who don't know
Rock,
he was an early trailblazer on how to get DNA introduced and amissable through
the courts in
the 1990s. A key figure in what is known as the DNA wars in the American
judicial system,
his work helped pave the way for what we and the courts now take for granted
when it comes to DNA
amissability. Before I turn the presentation over to Rock, let me say a few
words about the role
judges for the hit of the year program play and how Rock helped with this
process.
Most of you know that we select new judges each year for the program. This
keeps the discussion
of selecting the hit of the year lively and adds new perspectives. I say this
with one exception,
that being Rock Harmon, who serves as an automatic judge each year. When we
started the program,
I needed a partner that would help me develop the program and achieve the goals
we were looking
to create. Thank you, Rock, for your energy and your dedication to the DNA hit
of the year. Over
to you. Hi, Tim. Thanks for inviting me to be a participant and a judge again
in the hit of the
year. The kinds of cases submitted for consideration is hit of the year of
change over the years as the
science and protocols have changed. In 2019, the judges met to discuss the
finalist cases.
This was the year the Golden State Killer case was submitted as a case for
consideration.
It was an amazing case in that it introduced the world to genetic genealogy as
a means to solve
horrible crimes. I think most of the judges that year wondered why we were
meeting to rank the
cases as Golden State Killer was clearly going to be selected as the top case.
But we had a judge
that I will say was a purist. It was her opinion that the hit of the year
should be from a government
database, not a non-government database like genetic genealogy uses. So we had
lively discussion. It
was fascinating to hear all the opinions from representatives from around the
world in this
matter. A lot of these same lines. One observation I have from being a judge
for the hit of the year
program is how creative and determined the police and crime labs around the
world are to find answers
you to DNA. They are always looking for the next DNA strategy. Over the years,
many of the top
rated submissions, and if you look back on what Tim described with the case
from Italy,
they demonstrated extremely complicated long-term investigations using various
DNA tools
and frequent interactions between the lab and the investigators to help further
the investigation.
Genetic genealogy is provided yet another means to solve cases to supplement
the cold hits produced
by our offender databases. In addition, familial searching provides a similar
hope that unsolved
cases may be solved based on an entirely separate premise and an early highly
regarded submission.
The 32-year-old Melanie Road murder case from Bath United Kingdom is a
wonderful example of a
successful familial search. In order to provide every opportunity to solve cold
cases, we must
evaluate and embrace the policies and processes from countries like the US and
the UK that are
successfully using familial searching while also protecting individual privacy
rights.
The most recent country to embrace familial searching, Sweden, used it on a
1995 case that was part of
the 2020 hit of the year program. In this case, an eight-year-old girl was
abducted and sexually
assaulted in a small coastal town in Sweden as she was riding her bike to
school. It baffled the
police for 25 years. Then the moment the government authorized and introduced
familial searching,
they hit on the suspect and close the case. This is why we need familial
searching. We're fortunate
to have Christina Wyden with us today. She is the co-disadministrator from the
Swedish National
Forensic Center and she's going to tell us about what it meant to solve this
case
and what familial searching has meant to Swedish crime fighting.
Thank you, Roch. Thank you for having me. Yes, this has been a long case in
Sweden. The crime was
committed in '95 already. By then, we didn't have any DNA database. We didn't
do any DNA analysis
either. The case was kept for the future because we knew about that the DNA
technology would develop.
In '99 and also later in 2003, a DNA sample was taken from the t-shirt of the
girl. We can have
a DNA profile from the stain from the t-shirt. This case has involved many
people, many policemen,
many investigators, many colleagues of mine here at the lab. Finally, in 2019,
this was the first
case to be solved by using familiar searching. Of course, this was a great
feeling when we
realized that we could solve the case using familiar searching. For the
community in Sweden,
solving this case has been also very fantastic and for the girl, of course,
good to have this
case solved. We have had many questions about how we solved the case and much
interest has been
put on using the DNA database also with the tool "Familiar Searching". In 2019,
it became legal to do
familiar searches. The lab, before that, we knew that the law was going to be
legal. The lab,
in advance, put together a best practice or how to do this. We found out that
we should do
familiar searching for the most severe crimes or if we have a very serious
crime, we will not do it
with any crime. We also have made good tests so we knew what we were doing and
we also
report good ranked lists to put to the police, also educated the police so they
knew what they
would expect from the list, from the family search that we were giving them.
During the years,
the sample taken from this case has been profiled several times finally then it
was the family
search that made us solve the case. I had a remark about that in Sweden. We are
not allowed to save
the reference samples. We can save them for up to six months. For us, in the
lab, meaning that we
do not cannot do the YSGR analysis. The workload for us at the lab is less but
for the police, it is
more work to do to go through a long release and evaluate the candidates.
But in this case, certain case with a little girl from the rape case from 9 to
5,
when we did this family search, we had only five candidates because we have
some rules. We don't
send the police the whole database ranked. We report all the top candidates
that have a
likelihood reach more than 300 to be close relative. In this certain case, only
five
persons in the database proved to be able to be a parent or child to the sample
. In this case,
the top candidate happens to be the son of the perpetrator.
Thank you, Christina. Obviously, a fantastic outcome in this case. Again, I
have to hand it
to the Swedish government that by permitting familial searching made solving
this case possible.
When it comes to forensic DNA, I am always reminded how much power our
government leaders and elected
officials have over what crimes get solved. They decide through legislation
which criminals go
into the database and whether processes like familial searching are permitted.
These decisions
not only decide who gets caught but also comes with the heavy burden of knowing
if they fail to act.
It means another day that a violent criminal remains in the community and able
to harm others.
People often ask me, "What are some of the cases that have stuck with you from
the
hit of the year program?" Well, the four cases that the judges selected as the
hit of the year are
certainly always on top of mind, but with over 300 cases submitted over the
last four years,
you can imagine there are many others. But I do want to mention a few. One of
the cases I often
think about is the serial rapist case from the Cape Town region of South Africa
. In this case,
the offender raped over 30 women in and around Cape Town between 2011 and 2016.
What the offender
did not realize when he was committing these horrible crimes was that the
government of South
Africa was building both a robust criminal offender and casework national
database.
During this time, they were putting the DNA from the 30 sexual assault kits
into the database.
Of course, this meant that they knew that they were dealing with a serial
rapist,
but they did not have a suspect. The offender was eventually convicted and
placed into the
database for an unrelated crime. And when it was entered, it hit 25 serial
rapes at one time.
This was probably the most hits ever recorded on one offender anywhere in the
world. I always
wonder what it was like to see that many hits in just an instant. Well, we are
fortunate today
to have a person whose department did see that many hits with a single offender
. I have the pleasure
of introducing Philippa Webb. Philippa is a retired reporting officer within
the DNA unit
of the South African police. Philippa, we're looking forward to hearing your
perspective on what it
meant to working on such a significant case that brought closure to so many
victims when it was solved.
Thanks, Tim. It's such a privilege to be on the panel today and to be
discussing the state versus
Cucangaylim key case in Cape Town South Africa. This was a watershed case for
the South African
DNA database because a convicted offender's DNA sample was now loaded onto the
convicted
offender's index. These samples are then compared to samples on the crime scene
index from DNA profiles,
from crime scene samples. In 2013, Miki was arrested on a common assault charge
and spent 11 months in
prison after he pleaded guilty. His DNA sample was taken during this time and
added to the convicted
defendant's index. His DNA profile was then run against intelligence cases. In
South Africa,
we refer to intelligence cases as crime cases where there's no suspect. Crime
scene samples
have been taken and these are loaded onto the database as well, under a
separate index known as
the crime scene index. Miki's reference sample was then run against these
samples and to our surprise,
shock and elation, his profile hit with 30 other cases. I was writing reporting
officer at the time
and I was classifying intelligence cases between cases that gave us results in
cases that didn't.
We were not found that these 30 cases had the same male DNA profile. We were
absolutely surprised.
My colleagues and I couldn't believe that after five years of being between
2011 and 2016,
we were finally able to link a reference sample to so many cases. We were able
to link him via a
full DNA profile. There were no mixtures that were investigated any further and
so his male DNA
profile was directly linked to these 30 cases. During the time span that he was
on his rampage
was in Cape Town, the community was infuriated by the fact that cereal rapist
was on the loose.
In those four or five years that he was committing crimes, the community took
the law into their
own hands and over their time period killed four men in vigilante killings.
This was obviously very
shocking and could have been prevented had his DNA sample being taken initially
and ran into
2011. But at the same time, we were so pleased that we were able to get a match
instead of never
being able to fund the cereal rapist. Personally, I'd never seen a hit on such
a big scale before.
We were linking 30 cases via a single male DNA profile. But credit was not,
needs to be given to
not just the laboratory. Every step along the way was what made this case so
effective. Initially,
match credit can be given to the victims. They took themselves to the police
station,
reported the crime and had crime scene samples taken from their body as well as
from the crime
scene, even though they weren't able to identify the suspect. The district
surgeons involved in
the cases also have to be commended. They were able to take crime scene samples
using rape kits
very effectively from these victims and collect other evidence that was
important. This evidence
was in package correctly and sent to the investigating officer. Investigating
officers in all of these
cases were quite different from a range of police stations within Cape Town.
And this, they can also
be commended for their hard work and for their belief in the database that
suspect would eventually
be arrested. The crime scene technicians can also be commended for their good
work. They were able
to extract male DNA from samples that definitely had a mixture of male and
female DNA as all of
the victims were female. All of this work together resulted in very accurate
results that were able
to link 30 cases to each other. The Cape Town hard work was able to convict him
key on 84 cases.
This was 30 cases of rape, 24 cases of kidnapping, 8 cases of assault and 4
cases of grievous bodily
harm. The DNA evidence pushed this case and eventually the suspect cheated
guilty on all 84 charges.
The court said that this was one of the worst cases they'd ever seen and one of
the most
heinous crimes they'd ever had to witness. The judge mentioned that victims
suffered both physical
and psychological effects from these crimes and this helped to deal a very
heavy sentence towards
the suspect. Had there not been such overwhelming DNA evidence in this case, it
would be very difficult
to have given such a heavy sentence. In the end, he received 15 last sentences
and 125 years in
prison. It was because of DNA and good investigative work from start to finish
and an effective database
that this criminal will be behind bars for the rest of his life. The community
of Kalicha and
adults in Cape Town are a lot safer because of the effect of the database had
on these cases.
Thanks, Philippa. As the world knows, South Africa has an atrocious sexual
assault problem.
It's encouraging to see how you and your colleagues in the South African police
crime lab
are making a difference. Another case I often think about is the 1988 United
Kingdom case
that was submitted to the 2019 hit of the year program. In this case, a woman
is raped during a
home invasion where DNA was found. But being that it was 1988, the DNA was
tested using RFLP technology
and compared to a few suspects but with no matches. In 2014, the United Kingdom
reopened the case
in hopes of solving it by using their highly successful DNA database that did
not exist in 1988.
However, the path to solving this case would bring the UK crime laboratory back
to the foundations
of where forensic DNA all started inside Alec Jepry's laboratory. We are
thrilled to have the
forensic scientists that worked on this case with us here today. Catherine
Turner is a forensic
advisor on cold cases for Eurofins forensic services, which is the company
providing the
United Kingdom with its DNA testing service. Prior to joining Eurofins,
Catherine was a cold case
specialist with the UK's Forensic Science Service. Catherine, you had to go
back into Alec Jepry's
lab to solve this case. You obviously have the audience on edge of what that
actually means.
So please tell us about it. Thanks, Tim. And thank you very much for inviting
me to be part of this
Zoom panel. And rather than leave you on a cliff edge and moving on to those 30
years to 2014,
I revisited this case as part of the joint police review team. And they were
undertaking a large
scale project to forensic review all of their serious undetected sexual
assaults from 1974 onwards.
So in this particular case, in 2014, the only materials we had were two
microscope slides.
And these had been prepared from the original intimate swabs that were examined
in 1988
during the examination for semen. So these slides are like mini biological time
capsules.
We can break open the seal. We can separate off the sperm cells from all the
other cellular material,
and we can subject our new DNA profiling techniques to those samples. However,
having said that,
in this particular case, our slides were really borderline in terms of whether
or not we were
going to get a result or not. So we took things very slowly, and we staged it
and just tested
one slide, and even took that very, very slowly too. So from that testing, we
obtained a low level
mixed DNA profile. However, we weren't able to derive a partial male profile
from that.
And we undertook a one off specialist special search of the DNA database, just
the ones,
because we only had a few components to work with, and we restricted that
search just to those local
force areas. And not surprisingly, because it was a partial profile, we did get
several matches to
the database. However, there was one match in particular that was of interest
because
the particular individual, when they police researched him, had, he lived only
200 yards from
where the victim lived at that time. He had other relevant previous convictions
, and he matched
the victim's description in terms of his age, his appearance, and even his
local accent. So
this was a really interesting lead in this case. However, the view was taken
that the evidence
so far, i.e. this bit of DNA that we've got to get to this named individual,
together with his
antecedents, wasn't going to be enough for a successful prosecution at that
time. So we got
our heads together again. We had a few ideas about what to do next, and there
were two main ideas,
really. One was that we knew in the UK that we were developing some new DNA
techniques,
specifically some more, some better YSTR profiling, more sensitive than we had
before. And also,
we had the next phase of the autosomal DNA profiling, DNA 17, in the UK.
Together with that,
Urophins was also developing some new software to help statistically evaluate m
ixtures. So
all of this was a sort of exciting prospect, but we weren't quite there yet. So
we parked the slides,
we put them to one side, and we moved on to our other thought, which was, can
we go back and
resurrect the old DNA technique? So the RFLP technique, we still had the
original results from this,
was there any chance that we could find some way of recreating that laboratory?
Well, I rang around lots of universities, and eventually had some really
helpful conversations
with Leicester University, who still had some equipment, and they were more
than willing to help.
So between us, we painstakingly rebuilt, tested, validated those original DNA
processes.
And amongst other things, we had to locate one of the original scientists from
30 years ago,
who had samples taken from him as an internal control on all the RFLP plates
that had ever
been produced in the FSS. So it was vital that we had an sample from him so
that we could ensure
reproducibility of our own results, if we got that far.
And as Tim said, it's really interesting to note that by coincidence, all of
this new work and all
this new research and resurrecting took place in the same laboratory that was
used by Professor
Sir Alec Jeffries when he originally discovered the potential of DNA profiling
in forensic science.
So we basically come full circle. So this was where we had old technology
meeting
absolutely brand new technology. So it was really exciting for us to have all
of this all in one
case. But this research and validation process took about two years. And by the
time we got that
up and running, we'd also got up and running with all the current technologies.
So Eurofins had
finished testing all of their latest DNA technology. So we were basically good
to go. So we had old
technology lined up, new updated technology lined up and we gave it a whirl.
And of course,
this has all taken place over a number of years. And so it's only in 2017 by
this time that police
officers visited the victim because it's policy in the UK not to visit the
victim in these old cases,
unless we've actually got something positive to tell them. As you can say, we
think we found
who the perpetrator might be. She was by now living abroad. So that made things
a bit complex.
They updated her on the case, checked that she wanted to pursue a prosecution,
took a new
statement from her, provided support and care, took new reference samples. And
a week later,
the suspect was arrested and samples taken from him. The final forensic tests
were then completed.
And so in summary, we used three different types of DNA profiling systems in
the case. We used
autosomal STRs, DNA 17 in the UK. We used a more sophisticated and more
sensitive YSTR profiling
technique. And we used the resurrected RFLP technique in using the original
results. And in each of
those systems, we had partial profiles in each of those systems and they
matched the corresponding
components in the suspect's reference samples. So this was amazing for us. This
was great.
So viewed collectively and together with the suspect's antecedence, i.e. where
he lived,
the fact that he was close to the scene, the right age, right geography, etc.
All those findings
provided some really compelling evidence. The suspect pleaded guilty on the
first day of his trial in
November 2018 and was sentenced to nearly 10 years for rape and aggravated
burglary. So the case
was closed. And as I said, this was amazing for us bringing together the very
first DNA technology
together with the very latest DNA technology. Thank you, Catherine. What you
and the Eurofins team
did to solve this case is simply incredible. And it really does exemplify the
creativity
and problem-solving spirit that we so often see in the global forensic DNA
community.
Oh, and Catherine, I am not the only person to think what you did is amazing. I
want to hand
it over right now to a special guest. Right, hi everybody. Alec Jeffers here,
greetings from Leicester
and from my retirement and from a little bit over a year of lockdown now. So I
'm having a great time.
Anyway, huge congratulations to Catherine Turner for going back to the old old
days of forensic
DNA and resurrecting basically the dead and getting a great result, solving a
case,
brilliantly done, well done. So let's wind the clock back to I think the first
DNA profiling
systems we developed were in very late 1985 and went into case work in 1987,
associated with a
language which has completely gone dead now. So back in those days, we'll be
talking about
Southern Blots and probes, on-go labeling, mini satellite probes like MS-1, MS-
32, P-lambda-G-3.
We'd be doing our Southern Blots, our hybridisation with pagan enhancement, all
complete, not the
gibberish, and that language has gone dead. Totally replaced by the language of
PCR.
I guess the switchover was roughly 1995, that we saw the end of a traditional
DNA profiling or
RFLP analysis. However, those old DNA profiles, they were important, they did
establish the
entire field of forensic DNA and really paved the way for later PCR
applications to move very smoothly
through courts. So we had some interesting toggles and those very early days as
I'm sure some of
you will remember. Anyway, turning to this case, this was a huge challenge.
Catherine was faced with
the problem of basically resurrecting this ancient technology, went into my old
laboratory at Leicester
and with the help of Celia May, who goes right back to those DNA profiling days
And my research assistant, Rita Neumann, who knows everything about the field
and about where all
the probes were kept and everything, somehow they managed to resurrect the
entire system.
Quite a challenge because this is basically a lost art that they had to red
iscover.
So I think the sort of forensic DNA archaeology is probably the best way of
describing this case.
But anyway, a phenomenally well done job. Congratulations Catherine. I'm glad
you enjoyed your time in
my old lab, which actually hasn't changed all that dramatically since those
days way back in the 1980s
when the first forensic cases were being tackled. So a brilliant bit of work,
well done.
And I'm really happy that this case and Catherine have been recognized by the
DNA hits of the year
programme. I think highlighting cases like this reminds the world just how DNA
and forensic scientists
are making our world a safer and more just place. So I hope you're all having a
wonderful conference.
It was a real pleasure for me to stop by and say hi to you all. So,
so long for now. Cheers and back over to you Tim.
Wow, Alec Jeffries. That was amazing. Thank you so much for joining us Alec.
Our next speaker who participated as a 2017 DNA hit of the year judge is Lorna
Santos.
Lorna has served as chief of the Philippines National Police DNA Unit.
During her tenure, she has worked very hard to lead the effort within the
Philippines National
Police to expand their DNA laboratory and establish a national DNA database.
I believe Lorna will be the first to tell you that she has enjoyed the
international collaborations
on both science and policy to give her ideas as she moved forward with putting
the Philippines
database together, including picking up some thoughts from the DNA hit of the
year programme.
Lorna is going to talk about some of her experiences in developing the
Philippines national
database and share a hit of the year case that has served as an inspiration to
her
as to what is possible when you have a world-class DNA database.
Thank you Tim for the introduction. It is very nice to be here today as part of
the
HIDS conference and participating in the 2021 DNA hit of the year programme.
In 2017, I was asked to serve as a judge for the first DNA hit of the year
programme.
Who could forget that year? I don't think there would be another case like the
Italian mother case
of Yara Gambera. Gambera Russia again. What an incredible dedicated DNA journey
the police
went true to solve this murder. I felt like I was reading a movie script where
the drama had
returned. 2017 was also the year the judges reviewed the Chinese case known to
the world as
the Chinese Japla Reaper. For 10 young women and one child died at the hands of
a serial killer.
This was the first major case that showed the global forensic community how YS
DR database
of criminal offenders are being used to identify suspects. A fascinating case
that reminded us
that there are so many strategies that can be used to harness the power of
forensic DNA.
These databases will allow us to solve crimes quickly thereby removing
dangerous criminals
from the streets so they can commit crimes again. Through these real cases, I
can show to our leadership
and to our congress what is possible. Learning from forensic DNA programmes in
the countries that
pioneered DNA databases is essential for developing countries like the
Philippines.
Ten years ago we were learning about what was possible with DNA databases from
international
visits from the people like Dr. Bruce Budole, Tim Schilberg and many others. We
used this information
to work with the Philippine National Police Radio Shift to develop the first
phase of our DNA database
programme. We now have a high throughput capacity and have 60,000 samples in
our database just to
start up. As we move to the next phase of our database development, we need to
convince our
congress to pass the DNA database legislation to fully authorize our DNA
database policy
and create sustainable funding. One case of the DNA Heat of the Year programme
that shows us what
world class DNA programme looks like is the sexual assault and murder of
Heather Huffman
that occurred in Fort Collins, Colorado, USA in 2017. This exemplifies what is
possible when you have
a DNA programme and an organisation that moves fast. Within one day of finding
Heather Huffman's
body, DNA was collected, tested, compared to the state DNA database, received a
heat and able to
arrest the suspect that same day. Wow, I wish we could do that too. We are very
fortunate today to
have Detective Tammy Tracy who is currently a training officer for the Fort
Collins Police
Department and service Forensic Services Detective at the time of this case.
And also we have the
lead detective on this case called for Al Tessa Jacobson. She is 17 year police
veteran and has
spent much of her career in the crime against person unit with the Fort Collins
, Colorado Police
Department. Thank you, Lauren. It is truly an honour to be a part of DNA Heat
of the Year.
The case that I'm going to talk about is a homicide case of Helena Huffman that
occurred in June of
2017. As a forensics detective at the time and at the call that there was a
body found floating in
the lake. Upon recovering Helena's body there were no obvious signs of trauma.
And so at the time we
weren't quite sure if this was a suicide, an accident or a homicide. But I saw
what looked like
some bruising around her neck. So I wanted to swab areas of her body for
possible DNA collection.
Her body has been in this bacteria infested lake. The likelihood of us getting
any DNA off of her
was probably going to be pretty small. And so we swapped her neck through the
course of the autopsy.
It was also found that she likely had suffered sexual assault. So both anal and
vaginal swabs
were taken as well. The coroner ruled Helena's death to be a homicide and the
cause of death
drowning. We were not coming up with a lot of leads. We were able to get the
DNA swabs
in evidence to our lab the very next day. And we asked our lab if they would
rush the case for us.
During that time we were able to establish a timeline of events for Helena. And
we found out
that her body was likely in the water for at least 13 hours. When we found that
out my heart sank.
After two days the lab called and said we were able to develop a full DNA
profile off of both
the anal and vaginal swabs as well as a YSTR profile from the swab on Helena's
neck. And all
three of those profiled matched the same unknown male offender. It was a good
thing I was sitting down
because I was shocked that not only were we able to get a full DNA profile but
that we were able to
get a profile of YSTR profile off of her skin after her body had been submerged
in water for 13 hours.
It was fantastic news because we finally had a viable lead. As we start to have
some hope of
okay we we have somebody we're looking for our lab immediately put that full
profile into the
national DNA index system to be searched against other known offenders. Two
days later we got the
phone call that there was a match and it matched a known sex offender who was
first registered out
of Kentucky. We finally had a name and we had a solid lead. As I was receiving
the information
from the lab I was feeding it to the lead detective in the case which is the
next person that you're
going to meet Detective Tessa Jacobson. She was in charge of managing the
entire case and seeing
it from start to finish. Thank you Tammy. Tammy and I worked very closely
together on this case.
While the lab was processing the DNA swabs that were collected during autopsy
we were doing work
trying to figure out more about Helena. We were speaking with our coworkers, ex
-boyfriend,
family members, roommates and while we were speaking with all of those people
we were gathering
DNA swabs and DNA samples from them. Once we learned that we had a male profile
established
we sent all of those swabs down for comparison purposes. Unfortunately we
received the devastating
news that none of those swabs was a match. These were the people that seemed
like most likely
suspects as they were people that knew Helena and had spent time with her
recently before her death.
At that point we were realizing that we had a case with an unknown suspect who
is still out on the
loose and could potentially be a danger to other people in our community.
Thankfully about a day
after receiving the information that none of our initial suspects had come back
as a match we
received that DNA profile hit for the suspect out of Kentucky who had recently
moved to our area.
The amazing thing about this was that without that DNA information, without
that hit that suspect
had not been on our radar at all as a potential suspect for the case. He did
not know Helena and
was a complete stranger to her until that night. The information that we
received from the lab
and the quick turnaround time that we received from them helped us to locate
him,
arrest him and ensure that he wasn't able to harm anyone else in our community.
This also gave
Helena's family some peace of mind knowing that they were able to finally know
who had done this
to their daughter and also to help them kind of put some of the pieces together
about what
had happened to her. Thank you, Lorna and thank you, Tammy and Tessa. You are
very
fortunate to work in a department and state that makes solving crime with DNA a
top priority.
Not only does Colorado invest in having the DNA technology and people in place
that can identify
a suspect in two days, but they also have extremely strong DNA database
legislation.
By requiring all arrested and convicted felons to go into the database,
Colorado's crime scene to
offender database hit rate is closing in on 50%. While 48 hours is impressive
to identify a criminal
with DNA, consider where the world is headed with rapid DNA. With all the
excitement we are now
seeing with police agencies actively pursuing rapid DNA, we are not too far off
. When solving a case
like this in two days or even less will be a common occurrence everywhere. This
concludes our 2021
DNA Hit of the Year program. I want to offer a major thank you to our
incredible panel
and also of course a big shout out to Thermo Fisher Scientific for sponsoring
the DNA Hit of the
Year. We simply could not offer this program without your generous support and
so long until next year.
A big thank you to Tim and the rest of our panelists for those in Saraw and
Case highlights.
If you have a question for Tim, now would be the time to submit it through the
Q&A panel on your
screen. While we wait for everyone to submit their questions, let's do just a
couple
polling questions really quickly. Does your agency utilize Y chromosome
analysis?
Yes for sexual assault? Yes for homicide cases? Yes for mixture analysis? Or no
? It looks like
almost half, a little less than half. Do that for sexual assault cases? That's
really interesting.
Alright, let's go to our next one. Have your agency used familial search or
genetic genealogy?
Yes, you've used familial search? Yes, you have used genetic genealogy? No, but
your agency plans
to use familial search in the future? Or no, but your agency plans to use
genetic genealogy in the
future? It looks like a little less than half again, 42 percent have used
familial search,
while 23 percent have used genetic genealogy. Alright, last question here.
Would you like to receive any more information? Alright, well now that we have
done the polling
questions and you guys have had enough time for the Q&A questions, why don't we
get started on that?
And we will bring in Tim. Tim, you still there? I am still here. Awesome,
perfect. Well, we have
a couple minutes left and a couple questions for you. So here's your first one.
How many countries
have a Y database? Great, well if you're talking about the doing a Y database
of criminal offenders
similar to the Amazodal databases, there are three that we're aware of
currently that take full
sets of Y's from people that are convicted or arrested for crimes based on the
laws in those
countries. And those countries are China, Singapore, and Italy. So they've
decided to go down that
step. And I think the reason they've gone down that step is you can't deny that
there's a lot of
success in solving crime with a full set of Y's in your databases. If you don't
hit on the standard
STRs, of course, pretty good chance you're going to hit on a Y. Of course, it
might not be the actual
person that's guilty of the crime, but you have to go out and then follow the
male lineage down to
find your suspect. So they're finding lots of success with that. Of course,
there are
many privacy concerns with this that policymakers need to think about, but
those three countries at
least decided to go down that path. Particularly, I think Italy's a unique one
because I think that
their decision to go down that path was based on that case in the hit of the
year, the YARRA case,
where they used the Y's to get to that result. And it was such a captivating
case for the country
and took so long that I think they decided that based on that, they would
actually
put the Y policy in place. But yeah, three countries so far and I imagine more
coming in the future.
That's a really interesting thing that it possibly has a link back to D&I hit
of the year.
All right, next question for you, Tim. Of the countries that allow familial
searching,
are there special considerations that must be followed before it can be used?
Yeah, and you know, I think that what I'm about to tell you is probably going
to start happening
on the countries that start the Y databases as well, is that the governments
spend a lot of time,
the parliaments, the Congress is around the world deciding who goes into the
database.
And the deal with Y's and familial searching is that you're not hitting on the
person that the
government decided to put into the database. You're hitting on a relative. And
those people were
not intended by those governments to go into the database. So in order to
balance out the public
concern and the privacy issues, I think it's imperative that you develop a
privacy protocol
around the use of familial searching and Y's. And I think that the United
Kingdom and now Sweden
really nailed the public policy. They're basically protocols are this. One, it
has to be a serious
crime to even try familial searching. Two, you need to show that you exhausted
all reasonable
other investigative methods. And three, you need to apply and it's reviewed by
a board,
whether or not you get to actually try the familial search. So that's a lot of
oversight,
which I think is necessary to do it. But the bottom line is, I think countries
need to go down
this path of doing familial searching. And the reason is, it's almost disingen
uous if you're
now allowing, you have a genetic genealogy, which is outside of the government
databases.
And you're using that and that's kind of open. But yet, the government
databases
aren't allowing it. So if you can set up this privacy network and protocols,
I think that it's the right way to go and you're going to solve a whole lot
more crime.
Absolutely. We have time for one more question and then we will wrap it up.
Kim, can you talk to us a little bit about the introduction of rapid DNA
technology and its
impact on cold cases? Yeah, I think rapid is going to be changing the world as
you know,
when it comes to DNA over time. You have a very impressive process that the FBI
is moving forward
with rapid DNA in the booking station for those states to take DNA from arrest
ees.
But inevitably, as we've already seen globally and in the United States through
the amazing
Arizona project and now that's moving into other states as well, is that they
're using it for case
work. And of course, you can't upload a case work sample to the FBI's and this
network yet,
maybe Sunday in the future, but you can develop an investigative lead. And as
long as you can take
two good samples from the crime scene, you can run one on rapid quickly and
save the other one to
be run on your your court technology if it ever goes to court. And being able
to do this out of
your workflow quickly, you know, within a day of the police coming in and
giving the lab the sample
or wherever that rapid machine is located and getting a hit, doing the
investigative lead might
it does. It's shown to solve a lot of cases and be a great tool. So this
investigative lead with
rapid is starting to really take off throughout the world. All right, that
sounds great. Audience,
that about wraps up the time we have for Q&A today. I'd like to thank our
fantastic presenters
and of course, Tim, as well as Thermo Fisher Scientific, the sponsor for today
's webinar.
In 24 hours or less, this webinar will be available on demand if you would like
to watch it again
or share it with friends and colleagues. Additionally, you will receive an
information,
you will receive an email with information on how to obtain CE credit
documentation for your
participation in today's webinar. The next webinar in the series, Breakthroughs
in forensic DNA analysis
using next generation sequencing, will be held November 18th at 8am Pacific 11
am Eastern.
You can register for the webinar now on the forensic website, www.ferenzignaz.
com.
There you can also see the other webinars in this series on demand. Thank you
and we hope you have
a wonderful day.