No one has hours to scour the papers to keep up with the latest news, so we’ve curated the top news stories in the field of Forensic Science for this week. Here’s what you need to know to get out the door!
Tip, DNA Match Lead to Suspect in Grisly 1982 Killing of California Girl (KIRO7– 8/12/2022)
A Hawaii man suspected of raping a 15-year-old girl before stabbing her 59 times in 1982 was arrested at his home this week and charged with the 40-year-old murder.
Gary Gene Ramirez, 75, of Maui, is charged with murder, kidnapping and rape in the death of Karen Ann Stitt, of Palo Alto. Stitt, who had taken a bus to Sunnyvale on Sept. 2, 1982, to visit her boyfriend, was found raped and murdered next to a nearby business the next morning.
Bristol Cold Case Unit Expands to Include Missing Persons (Forensic – 8/15/2022)
The already-effective Cold Case Unit out of the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office is hoping to continue their success as they now expand their scope to include all missing persons in the last 50 years.
Bristol County (Massachusetts) District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III made the announcement late last week.
“Although DAs don’t normally get involved in missing persons cases, Quinn saw a deficiency in the fact that there is no statewide or countywide missing persons database,” an office representative said in a statement. “He decided to use [the] Cold Case Unit to solve that deficiency.”
Currently, the Missing Persons project has 19 people listed on its website, the youngest being 15 years old at the time of his disappearance in February 2016.
Verogen and Gene by Gene Form Partnership to Accelerate Adoption of Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (Forensic – 8/15/2022)
- Verogen, Inc. and Gene by Gene today announced a partnership to accelerate the adoption of forensic investigative genetic genealogy. As part of the agreement, Gene by Gene, parent company of FamilyTreeDNA, will support DNA uploads generated from the Verogen ForenSeq Kintelligence kit, the only ANAB accredited technology approved for forensic investigative genetic genealogy (FIGG).
This partnership effectively doubles the number of profiles available for FIGG matching. Leveraging database knowledge, scientists from both organizations will also create superior algorithms and software that increase the probability of generating uploadable single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) profiles and lower bioinformatic costs enabling standardization of the FIGG workflow.
DNA Results from 1970s Rape Cases Both Promising and Alarming (Forensic – 8/15/2022)
Body of Teen Murdered in 1959 Exhumed for Modern DNA Testing (Forensic – 8/15/2022)
Authorities in the Albany area are hoping modern DNA tracing techniques will help solve the murder of an 18-year-old woman more than 60 years ago.
The body of Ruth Whitman was exhumed from a cemetery in Glenmont last week to perform DNA testing. The case had been cold since the 1990s when police pursued what turned out to be a bogus tip, but was reopened in 2012 when Whitman’s family approached police.
Some of the evidence collected by state police at the time of Whitman’s murder was lost over time, but police are hopeful the evidence gathered from the exhumation will lead to a suspect.
Police Used a Baby’s DNA to Investigate Its Father for a Crime (WIRED – 8/15/2022)
IF YOU WERE born in the United States within the last 50 or so years, chances are good that one of the first things you did as a baby was give a DNA sample to the government. By the 1970s, states had established newborn screening programs, in which a nurse takes a few drops of blood from a pinprick on a baby’s heel, then sends the sample to a lab to test for certain diseases. Over the years, the list has grown from just a few conditions to dozens.
The blood is supposed to be used for medical purposes—these screenings identify babies with serious health issues, and they have been highly successful at reducing death and disability among children. But a public records lawsuit filed last month in New Jersey suggests these samples are also being used by police in criminal investigations. The lawsuit, filed by the state’s Office of the Public Defender and the New Jersey Monitor, a nonprofit news outlet, alleges that state police sought a newborn’s blood sample from the New Jersey Department of Health to investigate the child’s father in connection with a sexual assault from the 1990s.
Everest’s Wildlife Mysteries are Being Solved with Environmental DNA (Technology Networks Genomics Research – 8/16/2022)
A team of scientists led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Appalachian State University used environmental DNA (eDNA) to document the breadth of high-alpine biodiversity present on Earth’s highest mountain, 29,032-foot Mt. Everest (8,849 m). This critical work is part of the groundbreaking 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition, the most comprehensive single scientific expedition to the mountain in history.
Describing their findings in the journal iScience, the team collected eDNA from water samples over a four-week period in ten ponds and streams between 14,763 feet (4,500 meters) and 18,044 feet (5,500 meters). The sites included areas of the alpine zone that exist above the tree line and contain an array of flowering plants and shrub species, along with the aeolian zone that reaches beyond the range of flowering plants and shrubs at the uppermost reaches of the biosphere. From just 20 liters of water, they identified organisms belonging to 187 taxonomic orders, which corresponds to 16.3 percent, or one sixth, of the total known orders across the tree of life – a family tree of Earth’s biodiversity.
Man Found in a Tucson Parking Lot in 2019 Identified as James “Mark” Chaparro (DNA Doe Project – 8/17/2022)
On July 28, 2019, a man was found unresponsive in the parking lot of a shopping center in Tucson, Arizona with no identification and keys to a car that was not in the lot. After three years, the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner and the DNA Doe Project have confirmed his identity as James “Mark” Chaparro, who lived less than half a mile away from the place where he was found.
Mr. Chaparro was 64-years old when he died, and had been raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Researchers located records from October, 2019 of an eviction for non-payment of rent at his home near where he died. It’s thought that he had walked to the store and simply never made it home. According to family members, they believed he was living in China so they never filed a missing persons report in Tucson.
Bruce Anderson, Forensic Anthropologist with the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner brought the case to the DNA Doe Project in the spring of this year. Four expert volunteer investigative genetic genealogists from the non-profit organization began work on this case in June of this year, and were able to place John Doe in a family tree that was complicated with adoption, misattributed parentage, and Hispanic ancestry – notoriously hard to trace as that ethnicity is underrepresented in the public database at GEDmatch.
The team built a family tree going back to Mr Chaparro’s great-great-great-grandparents in order to fit matches they found in GEDmatch into the tree.
John Doe Remains Found in Tucson Identified (DNA Doe Project – 8/17/2022)
Investigators with the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, working with the DNA Doe Project, have announced the identity of a man found in a homeless encampment in Tucson as Tommy Gayle Pool, Jr. from Virginia.
On February 26, 2019, the body of Mr. Pool was located without any identification among his belongings. Investigators estimated his age to be between 32 and 50 years old, but he was actually 61 years old at the time of his death. This year, Bruce Anderson, forensic anthropologist from the ME’s office brought the case to the DNA Doe Project to try to use investigative genetic genealogy to determine an identity. The Medical Examiner had collected a blood sample that was used to develop a DNA profile that was then uploaded to the GEDmatch Pro database.
Minnesota Man Convicted in Woman’s 1986 Rape and Murder in a Case Revived by Genealogy Database Analysts (CBS News – 8/17/2022)
A jury on Tuesday convicted a man charged with raping and killing a woman 36 years ago on Minnesota’s Iron Range in a case that was revived by genealogy database analysts.
Michael Allan Carbo Jr., 54, of Chisholm, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder while committing criminal sexual conduct in the 1986 slaying of 38-year-old Nancy Daugherty, also of Chisholm. Her death “prompted one of the most exhaustive investigations in St. Louis County,” county attorney Kimberly Maki said in announcing the verdict.
Daugherty was found dead in her home on July 16, 1986, by police conducting a welfare check.
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