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DNA matches made on 48 unsolved crimes Posted
3/16/2004 11:44 AM
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Forty-eight unsolved crimes, mostly rapes, have
been tentatively linked by a statewide DNA database to people
already in jail, state police say.
Capt. Brian Wynne of the State Police Crime
Lab said the matches are the product of private labs in New Orleans,
Virginia and Texas analyzing evidence that had not been processed in
about 500 cases.
Another 500 cases are scheduled to be tested,
he said.
The analysis was made possible in 2003 when
the state House of Representatives made $650,000 in surplus money
from its own operating budget available for the crime labs.
The House allocated the money during the hunt
for the southern Louisiana serial killer, who has been linked by DNA
evidence to the deaths of seven women, most of whom were also
sexually assaulted.
Derrick Todd Lee, 35, of St. Francisville,
was arrested in May 2003 and is awaiting trial. Before Lee's arrest,
the focus on cases without suspects was put on unsolved rapes in
Baton Rouge, Lafayette and New Orleans.
The evidence was compared to a database of
DNA taken from convicted felons and people arrested for felonies in
the state. About 41,500 samples have been taken and 15,000 uploaded
into the database.
Lee has not been linked to any of the 48
crimes, but Wynne said the DNA matches are still gratifying. Most of
the agencies that investigated the 48 cases will be notified of the
matches this week, he said.
Because the matches were made from a
database, the evidence is probably not thorough enough for an
arrest, Wynne said. However, the matches are grounds to seize more
DNA from suspects and compare it directly to evidence in the cases,
he said.
Forty-six of the matches came from rape
cases, one from a murder and one from a kidnapping. Wynne did not
say where the crimes occurred.
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