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Cold
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By ROSALIO AHUMADA
BEE STAFF WRITER
Last
Updated:
Analysts
at the Ripon crime lab are used to searching through a mountain of evidence to
find the best sample to solve a crime.
Jennie Smythe
has worked as a criminalist there for five years and has been analyzing
“We get bags
and bags of it,” Smythe said of the evidence law enforcement agencies submit.
“We can go through a lot of it just to find that small sample.”
With improved
technology and a growing databank of DNA samples, investigators are looking to
crime labs more frequently to solve cases — old and new.
The state has
invested more money into crime labs focusing on DNA analysis. The California
Department of Justice has a DNA databank that contains about 245,000 samples.
Inmates convicted of violent felonies have been required to give blood samples
since 1994.
DNA analysts
have been able to use the databank samples to solve recent crimes by matching
it with the collected DNA evidence. They also have been able to use the
databank with old, unsolved crimes known as “cold cases.”
Recently,
Stanislaus County District Attorney James Brazelton announced that DNA evidence
linked Arthur Sanchez, a state prison inmate, to the rape and murder of
65-year-old Mary Martha Odermatt in
While a DNA
match is powerful evidence in a criminal case, the science behind the
investigation is labor-intensive. It could take a very long time before
analysts can find a match, also called a “cold hit.”
The
Criminalistics Laboratory in Ripon is one of eight regional crime labs the
Department of Justice operates in
John Yoshida,
lab director, said the number of law enforcement requests for DNA analysis has
quadrupled since 1999. New technology has allowed analysts to refine their
work.
“It’s not that
crime is up, we’re just able to do more with smaller quantities,” Yoshida said.
He said
DNA-matching allows investigators to look at evidence that was once not as
important. For instance, a robber’s ski cap can provide hair and skin samples
that can be matched with samples from a suspect.
Since DNA
evidence can be an almost absolute match, he said, analysts will take their
time to get it right.
“Even though
you don’t see a face when you’re working with evidence, you do know it’s
important,” Yoshida said. “You have the power to send someone to jail or allow
someone to walk.”
But with the
increased load of evidence submitted to the lab, analysts have trouble keeping
up with the pace.
“It’s becoming
impossible to work an entire caseload,” Yoshida said. “The backlogs will simply
grow.”
On top of the
criminal cases that occurred recently, Yoshida said, more cold-case evidence is
being submitted. He said analysts have worked on cases from the 1960s through
the 1980s.
“The science is
solid, but the labor is complicated,” said California Department of Justice
spokesman Nathan Barankin. “The smaller the size and the more degraded the
sample, the harder it is to extract the DNA.”
State crime
labs are working with evidence from 8,800 cold cases, Barankin said. To date,
DNA matches have solved about 1,000 such cases, with criminalists turning up
about two hits a day. In 1999, there was only one match for the entire year.
With the
advance of DNA analyzing technology, local law enforcement agencies in the
state are giving cold cases another chance. Barankin said investigators are
pulling out old rape kits, shirts with spots of blood and anything else that
might produce DNA material.
“What law
enforcement agencies would do is just toss their old, unsolved cases in the
garbage,” Barankin said. “They have figured out that DNA is powerful and it is
possible to get it.”
Bee staff
writer Rosalio Ahumada can be reached at 578-2330 or lahumada@modbee.com.
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