In the nearly four months since 30-year-old Howard Beach jogger Karina Vetrano was strangled in Spring Creek Park, teams of NYPD detectives have worked the case with no suspects. The best lead so far has been DNA left on Vetrano’s body that hasn’t matched any profiles in state or national databases of convicted criminals, police said.
But the analysis of this trace evidence, especially in the years before DNA became reliable in the early 2000s, has been dubbed junk science by several experts including scientists, FBI analysts, judges and defense attorneys.