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From DNA of Family, a Tool to Make Arrests
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Prince George's County police spokeswoman Sharon Taylor said: "We manage the collection of evidence consistent with the law. It would be inappropriate for us to make any comment beyond that."
The British Model
Britain, with a database of 4.25 million profiles, has been doing familial searching for five years and has solved at least eight cases with it, said Tony Lake, chief constable of Lincolnshire and recent chairman of the DNA Strategy Board.
He cited as an example the "shoe rapist," who attacked at least six women, each time stealing their high heels. Twenty years later, his sister was arrested for driving under the influence and her DNA run against cold cases. That yielded a close match and led police to her brother. When he was arrested, his DNA was a perfect match and police found more than 100 stiletto heels hidden under a trap door.
In Britain, too, concerns have been raised about the use of familial searching at a time when the database is rapidly expanding to include people arrested for minor offenses and children as young as 10. In one case, a 15-year-old was arrested for refusing to get off a public bus and obstructing a police officer. His DNA was taken. Although the charges were thrown out, the police have refused to remove his DNA profile from the database.
A Rape Victim
In the Lake Charles area of Louisiana, authorities in a nine-county area have uploaded 1,500 DNA profiles taken from victims and suspects. The profiles are kept indefinitely, said George Schiro, DNA technical leader of the Acadiana Crime Lab in New Iberia. "There's nothing in state law that precludes us from doing it."
The lab has never run a familial search against its database, he said. But in 2005, in an effort to solve a string of rapes that had taken place in the little town of Ville Platte between 1987 and 2001, an investigator asked Schiro to review another rape case from 1999. Perhaps the suspect in that attack, the victim's ex-boyfriend, was the serial rapist, said Rudy Guillory, an investigator in the prosecutor's office, recalling what he told Schiro.
So Schiro pulled the files and compared the strings of numbers. What he saw ruled out the ex-boyfriend but implicated a relative of the victim. "Y'all need to check her family," Guillory recalled he said.
"It was really a stroke of luck," Schiro said.
The victim's brother was found in Shreveport, La., and gave a DNA sample. Normand Wilson, 53, is now serving a 35-year sentence.
Richard White, Wilson's attorney, said he feared such cases might make rape victims think twice before reporting an attack. "Would I like to have my rape solved, or do I run the risk of having my DNA profile searched in a way that might point the finger at a family member?" he said.
Wilson's sister echoed that thought. "I feel betrayed," she said. "They did everything behind my back."
Race and Justice
Familial searching of offender databases would be of no use "if close relatives didn't commit crimes," said Frederick Bieber, a medical geneticist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
