Using DNA of Family to Make Arrests. Emerging Practice Turns Relatives Into Genetic Informants

[maddezmom]

From DNA of Family, a Tool to Make Arrests
Privacy Advocates Say the Emerging Practice Turns Relatives Into Genetic Informants

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 21, 2008; Page A01

He was a church-going father of two, and for more than 30 years Dennis Rader eluded police in the Wichita area, killing 10 people and signing taunting letters with a self-styled monogram: BTK, for Bind Torture Kill. In the end, it was a DNA sample that tied BTK to his crimes. Not his own DNA. But his daughter's.

Investigators obtained a court order without the daughter's knowledge for a Pap smear specimen she had given five years earlier at a university medical clinic in Kansas. A DNA profile of the specimen almost perfectly matched the DNA evidence taken from several BTK crime scenes, leading detectives to conclude she was the child of the killer. That allowed police to secure an arrest warrant in February 2005 and end BTK's murderous career.

The BTK case was an early use of an emerging tool in law enforcement: analyzing the DNA of a suspect's relatives. In the BTK example, police had a suspect and were looking to tie him to the crime. But now, states are moving to conduct familial searches of criminal databases, looking for close-to-perfect matches with DNA from crime scenes. A partial match with a convicted criminal could implicate a brother or daughter or father of the convict. Such searches, advocates say, constitute a powerful law enforcement tool that, experts say, could increase by 40 percent the number of suspects identified through DNA.

As things stand in some states, lab analysts who discover a potential suspect in this way may not be permitted to share that information with investigators. Such a policy, said William Fitzpatrick, a New York state district attorney, "is insanity. It's disgraceful. If I've got something of scientific value that I can't share because of imaginary privacy concerns, it's crazy. That's how we solve crimes."

more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/20/AR2008042002388.html

[MadMaddie]

1. There is great danger in mis-using dna...especially invading

a womans pap smear to get evidence. Sounds like some major privacy laws were broken.

The problem is that when you bend the rule a little bit for one case you bend it more for the next critical case.

Having said that, if they wouldn't have done this Dennis Rader would still be killing innoncent women.

It's a no win situation.

[jody]

2. We've discussed this issue several times over the past several years on DU. Just wait until every

male child has his DNA placed in a national data bank. LEO will use it to narrow the suspect to a few males who were in the vicinity of the crime scene and have the proper DNA profile.

I participate in a family tree DNA project for my paternal ancestor and all male participants have the same Y-DNA traceable to a single male who first shows up in Virginia in 1695. Exceptions are for male children whose father is other than the expected one.

On my maternal side, my grandfather's Y-DNA traces back to a single male who landed in Boston, MA, 1638. Of course I do not possess that Y-DNA.