DNA Technology Moves Forward

Lifting Skin Cells Pivotal in Getting Match on '96 Rape Suspect

When the Maryland State Police lab told her that the evidence didn't contain enough bodily fluid for a complete DNA profile, Shelly Progovitz was crushed. A man who had brutally raped a 12-year-old girl behind a middle school in Waldorf in 1996 and then tied her hands and feet and forced a sock into her mouth would never be convicted for what he had done.

But Progovitz, a crime scene technician, did not let her disappointment keep her on the sidelines long. That night, she went home and searched on Google for something she had read about in scientific journals but had never used: "touch DNA."

In April, after Progovitz had resubmitted the case to a private lab in Virginia, she got a different kind of call. The lab had pulled a complete profile from clothing at the scene using touch DNA. It matched the DNA of the suspect whom police had in mind since rape, 12 years ago.

"I was running and jumping," Progovitz said. "I was pretty ecstatic."

Not bad for the new girl in town at the Charles County crime lab.

Touch DNA -- using genetic material from skin cells left on an item -- is analyzed just like that from blood or semen. It's typically collected by scraping an object or placing tape on it, then lifting the tape up. The technique, in use for four or five years, gained some prominence this summer when it was used to exonerate the parents of JonBenet Ramsey, said Angela Williamson, director of forensic casework at Bode Technology, a Lorton-based DNA lab.

Many police department labs, including those used by the Maryland State Police and police in Anne Arundel and Montgomery County, also use the technique. Those labs, though, often have significant backlogs, forcing some work to be outsourced to private labs, officials said.

Touch DNA is just as expensive as other sorts of genetic testing, which can range from $1,300 to $1,500 an item, said Ernest Jones, a fingerprint specialist in the Charles crime lab. It also has a lower success rate. You can't see skin cells like you can blood or semen stains, so to get a good sample, you have to have a good idea where a suspect might have grabbed something, Williamson said.

That's where Progovitz came in.

Progovitz was only a year into her first job out of graduate school when the boxes came to the crime lab in La Plata in 2005 -- 25 boxes of more than 1,000 case files, all needing a second look to determine whether they might contain any DNA evidence that could be analyzed.

Her boss, Sgt. Joe Goldsmith, put out a simple request in the office: "Eventually, we have to go through this when someone has time."

Eager to prove her value in the small office, Progovitz, 28, teamed up with Jones, 65, to review the cases.