DNA Database IDs Serial Rapist in Missouri
Using the state's DNA database, Kansas City Police and Jackson County prosecutors have charged a 49-year-old man, already imprisoned in Missouri for 115 years for one rape in 1987 but up for parole this year, in 11 previously unsolved sexual attacks from 1985 and 1986. The case marks the 50th time since 1997 that authorities have broken old Jackson County cases through new DNA technology.
Source: Christine Vendel, “DNA Tests Lead to Charges in 11 ‘Westport Rape' Cases,” The Kansas City (Mo.) Star, 26 July 2005: A1
CODIS Solves 2004 Rhode Island Robbery
In the first CODIS cold hit in Rhode Island, Johnston Police were able to use blood stains found at a burglary crime scene to match a felon in the New York database following lab work by the Department of Health. Additional investigative work was used to build up the case, and a warrant was placed in NCIC for the man who was subsequently picked up in New York City on a criminal-trespassing charge.
Source: Seth McLaughlin, “Police link DNA at burglary scene to N.Y. man,” The Providence (R.I.) Journal, 20 July 2005: D1
Information Sharing in Central New York State
Many police agencies in Onondaga County, N.Y. will soon be linked through the Central New York Law Enforcement Analysis Database System (CNYLEADS), which has been used by the Syracuse Police Department for about a year. The goal of the Web-enabled database is to link all 19 police agencies in the county and allow them to more easily and quickly share information and communicate with each other.
Source: Elizabeth Doran, "Police Records Go Wireless," The Post-Standard (Syracuse, N.Y.), 31 July 2005: B1
Madison County, Ill. Sheriff Sets Up Computer Crimes Unit
Using $9,000 in department funds, the Madison County (Ill.) Sheriff's Department is starting a Forensic Computer Crimes Unit to investigate computer crime, including identity theft, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. Before formation of the unit, the sheriff's office relied on outside help to analyze evidence related to technology-related crimes.
Source: Leah Thorsen, "Computer crime unit is going online in Illinois; Madison County sheriff notes increase of such cases in last 3 years," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 26 July 2005: B5
NYPD Solves Murders Using IAFIS
Dogged detective work and advances in fingerprint technology has helped the NYPD make an arrest in the stabbing deaths of three Bronx teenage girls in 1988 and 1990. Two NYPD detectives regularly checked partial fingerprints found in 1988 against the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), eventually linking an inmate still serving time for a 1995 robbery to the murders.
Source: Lindsay Faber, Deborah S. Morris and Rocco Parascandola, "Persistence finally pays; Detectives who kept checking fingerprints connect inmate to '88 and '90 slayings of Bronx teens, cops say," Newsday (New York), 30 July 2005: A8
DNA Cold Hit by California Lab Solves Three Murders
A man sentenced in June 2001 to life in prison in Montana for murdering a male acquaintance has been linked by genetic evidence to the murder of a woman at an Arkansas highway rest stop in Aug. 2000 and the slayings of two women in California later that year. Using DNA evidence from one of the California cases, the California Justice Department’s Bureau of Forensic Services linked the Montana inmate to all three crimes.
Source: Amy Upshaw and Jim Brooks, "Man tied to killing in state a roamer," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 23 July 2005
