Sep 09 2022

This Week in Forensic Science

No one has hours to scour the papers to keep up with the latest news, so we’ve curated the top news stories in the field of Forensic Science for this week. Here’s what you need to know to get out the door!

A Somber Search (Science – 9/1/2022)

• • Can sophisticated research tools, such as plucking environmental DNA from water and the sea floor, speed the recovery of long-missing service members?

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DNA Leads to Arrest 15 Years After Violent Rape at Kentucky Motel (KIRO7 – 9/3/2022)

• According to court records obtained by WXIX, Ian Angel, 47, was arrested and has been charged with rape and robbery for his alleged involvement in a rape that happened on August 23, 2007, at a Fort Mitchell, Kentucky Super 8 motel.

  Police took a DNA sample from a rape kit, according to WXIX. Police used cellphone records to identify Angel as the suspect in 2007, but Fort Mitchell Police Detective Jess Hamblin told WXIX that they were unable to locate him. The case eventually went cold.

  According to WLWT, the rape kit from the attack was recently entered into a database which is how investigators got a match. It matched DNA entered into the database in 2011 for an assault charge in Las Vegas. The suspect in that case was Angel.

Genealogy Helps ID Cherokee Nation Woman Featured on Cold Case Cards (Forensic – 9/6/2022)

• The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) is announcing that a woman found partially buried on Aug. 31, 2008 near Lake Thunderbird has been identified as Angela Mason. Mason, who was 25 at the time, was found partially decomposed in a shallow grave. She was discovered by several fishermen, and a Park Ranger requested OSBI assistance with the investigation.

  In August 2021, having exhausted all investigative leads, retiring Director Ricky Adams approved the case for genetic genealogy testing.  Criminalists from the OSBI Forensic Science Center sent DNA from Mason’s remains to Parabon Nanolabs in an effort to locate relatives. Parabon returned results in March of 2022 identifying a possible relative. Special Agents contacted the relative and asked for a DNA sample to compare to the victim. The results came back positively identifying Mason as the deceased.

  With this critical information, OSBI agents and analysts have intensified their investigative efforts to determine what happened to Mason.

Investigators: New DNA in 20-Year-Old Kansas Double Murder (U.S. News & World Report – 9/6/2022)

• Investigators announced Tuesday that they have collected new DNA evidence they hope will lead to a break in the killing of two Kansas women at a bakery 20 years ago.

  A delivery driver found the bodies of 24-year-old Mandi Alexander and 79-year-old Mary Drake the evening of Sept. 4, 2002, at a Dolly Madison Bakery outlet in Great Bend, Kansas.

  Latham said in the last year, KBI agents and forensic scientists reviewed all the evidence collected in the case, focusing on technology that has advanced beyond what was available in 2002. Investigators did not find enough DNA to enter it into a national database of criminal offenders. However, investigators could compare it to a sample of someone’s DNA if they were to find a suspect.

   

The Killer of a Michigan Woman Who Was Missing for 33 Years Has Been Identified using Genealogy Technology, Investigators Say (CNN – 9/7/2022)

• • Investigators have used genealogy technology to determine the killer of a Michigan woman who was missing for 33 years before her remains were identified using the same technique earlier this year, authorities said.

    Stacey Lyn Chahorski was reported missing in January 1989, but it took more than three decades for investigators to determine that a body found in Dade County, Georgia, in December 1988 belonged to her, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced earlier this year.

    Now, her killer has been identified as Henry Fredrick “Hoss” Wise, a truck driver who drove through Dade County on his regular trucking route, FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta Field Office Keri Farley said during a news conference Tuesday.

    Chahorski’s case is “the first time that we know of that investigative genealogy was used to identify both the victim and the killer in the same case,” Farley noted.

Mystery May Soon be Solved in Case of Girl Found in Victorian-Era Coffin at Maine Construction Site (WMTW8 – 9/7/2022)

• • Skeletal remains discovered in a Victorian-era coffin, unearthed during a construction project five years ago in Sanford, are one step closer to being identified. There once was an old school that sat on a corner in the downtown area. It had been torn down. Then there was a playground, but in the late 1800’s, it was Woodlawn Cemetery. By the 1930s, they thought all the graves had been moved to the new Goodall Cemetery down the road. Auger involved his students to help solve this archeological mystery. They found ribs, finger bones, and pieces of a jawbone with half a dozen teeth still intact. Then Sanford enlisted the help of a national organization — the DNA Doe Project — which has successfully solved more than 90 cases by uploading information into genealogy sites like Ancestry.com to search for a match.

     

Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, HPD, and the Texas Rangers Team with Othram to Identify 1982 Homicide Victim (DNASolves – 9/7/2022)

• • In July 1982, the partially skeletonized remains of a young man were found in a field in the 4200 block of Schurmier Road in Houston, Texas. The unknown man was a white man presumed to be in his 20s and he was found wearing gray corduroy jeans, a tan and red-brown plaid shirt, and tan cowboy boots. Through an autopsy, investigators determined that the cause of death was asphyxia due to injury to the neck. The injury was consistent with manual strangulation and therefore the death is suspected to be a homicide.

    In August 2021, as part of a collaboration between the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, Houston Police Department (HPD), and the Texas Rangers Unsolved Crimes Investigation Program, skeletal remains from the unknown man were sent to Othram with the hope that advanced DNA testing might produce new leads to the man’s identity or to the identity of a close family member. Othram scientists developed a DNA extract from the heavily degraded remains and then used Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing® to develop a comprehensive DNA profile for the unknown man. The laboratory casework was funded by philanthropist and genealogist, Carla Davis.

According to the Study, Forensic Scientists are Generally Whiter and Less Diverse than the US Population They Serve (Canada Today – 9/8/2022)

• • A year-long study examining ethnic and racial diversity in forensic science found that the diverse disciplines, which often work closely with law enforcement, are also generally whiter than the US population they serve.

    The report, published Thursday in Forensic Science International: Synergy, is one of a few that has looked at the relative representation of people of color in areas of forensic science today. After an early vigorous debate among the prospective authors, they quickly discovered one reason why so little has been done on the subject: there is next to no good data.

    The results highlighted large disparities between the general US population and those working in these social sciences or science fields. By and large, those who identified as Asians were overrepresented in most forensic jobs except as specialized psychologists. But individuals who identified as Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous were grossly underrepresented across the board.

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