A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post on how the Queens DA had sent a request to the New York State Commissioner of Criminal Justice Services asking for permission to use familial searching of DNA to help solve the murder of Karina Vetrano, a thirty-year-old jogger who was brutally raped and murdered while out for a run on Howard Beach. Basically, what happened here is the police have DNA from the crime scene, but it doesn’t match anyone in the CODIS database. They wanted the state of New York to allow them to search for familial hits in the system to try to track down their killer. For example, maybe someone related to the killer has been arrested of a felony and if they could find a familial hit, it could lead them to their killer. I’ve been keeping tabs on this case, as while I agree that allowing law enforcement to use familial DNA searches could help solve a lot of crimes that have gone unsolved for years, I also worry it is a slippery slope when it comes to an individual’s right to privacy. Click here to read the full blog post!
Missing Person / Murder Victim
Should familial DNA searching be legal in all 50 states?
You know the drill: a murder is committed and investigators gather evidence from the crime scene–fingerprints, strands of hair, and, if they’re lucky, DNA. Once a DNA profile is obtained, police enter it into the national CODIS database, searching for a match. CODIS stands for Combined DNA Index System, a program supported and run by the FBI. One part of CODIS is the NDIS, or the National DNA Index System, which contains DNA profiles contributed by the federal, state, and local law enforcement. Whenever law enforcement enters a new DNA profile into CODIS, it is in hopes that the computer program will return a match. Sometimes that match comes in the form of another crime scene that has been entered into the system that maybe police did not think were linked. Sometimes that match comes in the form of a direct hit on an individual whose DNA has already been submitted into the system after a prior conviction. Sometimes there is no match at all and the case turns cold. In the rarest of occasions, however, there is another kind of hit–a familial match.
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Cal Harris acquitted in wife’s 2001 murder
It has been 15 years and a total of four murder trials for New York millionaire and businessman Calvin Harris. This week, the wild ride finally came to an end as a judge acquitted him of killing his wife, Michele. I’ve been mulling that verdict over the last few days, dancing around writing a blog post about it but not knowing where to start. You see, if you have read my book Missing Wives, Missing Lives
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Maura Murray has been missing for 12 years today
It’s a case that has gripped New England crime sleuths for over a decade. Twelve years ago today, Maura Murray mysteriously disappeared after a one-vehicle car accident on Route 112 in Haverhill, New Hampshire.
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Patty Vaughan has been missing for 19 years
For most families, Christmas day is a time to gather with the entire family and celebrate life, love, and togetherness. For one family in La Vernia, Texas, Christmas day is a painful memory. It is the day their beloved daughter, sister, and mother, Patty Inez Brightwell Vaughan, mysteriously disappeared nineteen years ago. Those close to the investigation have long suspected Patty’s then-husband, J.R. Vaughan, in her disappearance. You might recall this particular case from my first book, Missing Wives, Missing Lives. Each Christmas, I say a silent prayer for Patty and her family, in hopes that one Christmas, they will have the answers to their questions and justice will have been served.
If you have information about this case, please think of Patty’s family on Christmas day and call 210-335-TIPS.
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“Her name was Bella Bond.”
A few weeks ago, I posted about Baby Doe, a young girl whose body was found wrapped in a blanket and a trash bag, discarded on Deer Island in Boston. For several months, we all wondered who this child could be–how no one could notice a sweet, innocent girl had gone missing. Today, we know who she was, and two arrests have been made in the case.
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Who Is Baby Doe?
On June 25, 2015, a woman walking her dog along the beaches of Deer Island discovered a trash bag that contained the body of a young child. Three weeks later, a computer-generated image of the young girl, dubbed “Baby Doe” has been viewed millions of times and we still don’t know who she is. Baby Doe was approximately 4 years old when she died. She weighed just thirty pounds and stood at three-and-a-half feet tall. She had brown eyes and brown hair.
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Since everyone is talking about Robert Durst…
Since everyone is talking about Robert Durst, I thought I’d throw my two cents into the mix. I’ve been following the Durst case for years. I even wrote about his missing wife, Kathie, and the decades that followed in which his family and friends began to suspect that he had something to do with her 1982 disappearance. You can read about Kathie and Robert’s case, along with the cases of twenty-nine other missing women, in my book, Missing Wives, Missing Lives. When Robert’s longtime companion, Susan Berman, was shot execution style in her Los Angeles home in 2000, and then his Galveston, Texas neighbor turned up dismembered in 2001, the coincidences became too large to ignore. I think it’s clear to most people who have followed the case for decades that Mr. Durst has been a murderer walking free for years. If it wasn’t, the HBO documentary, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” has made it abundantly clear.
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Cold Case: Where is Angela “Cherice” Gwinn Stephens?
cherice
Twenty-three-year-old Angela “Cherice” Gwinn Stephens has been missing since October 1, 1993. Today, nearly twenty-one years after she was last seen, Raleigh County Commissioners in West Virginia signed a petition declaring her legally dead. Her husband, Norman E. Stephens II, claims that Cherice dropped him off at work that Friday, and never returned to pick him up at the end of his shift. Instead of reporting her missing, Norman waited twenty-seven days and then filed for divorce. Cherice’s family reported her missing eleven months after she was last seen. Norman reportedly told the police that his wife had called him from out of town, letting him know she was not coming back. He hired a lawyer and refused to take a lie detector test.
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Cold Case: Missing since 1977, Mary Stuart and her two young daughters have never been found
Where are they?
Mary Elizabeth (Danckert) Stuart was born on April 25, 1945. She was married to Byron McCray Stuart, who reportedly was quick to anger and not afraid to resort to violence. Mary left her home in Honeydew, California around 10:00 in the morning on Saturday, December 10, 1977. She and her two young daughters, two-year-old Jessie Flo and one-year-old Fannie Fawn, left in the family’s red Opel station wagon to run some errands. They planned to visit a television repair shop in a neighboring town, the optometrist, and a grocery store. The trio never returned home that evening.
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JJ Slate 