Monthly Archives: February 2017

A little more than a year ago, a San Diego judge granted a womans request to have evidence from her high-profile murder case tested for DNA, a move the defense hoped would point to someone else as the killer.

The woman was Jane Dorotik, who was convicted in 2001of first-degree murder in the slaying of her husband, Robert. He was strangled at the couples Valley Center home.

Jane Dorotik, now 70, is serving a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.

According to the District Attorneys Office, the items in question a rope used to strangle the husband and fingernail clippings or scrapings from his body were tested by the San Diego County Sheriffs Department Crime Lablate last year.

The results of those tests revealed that DNA found on those items belonged to the victim. Its unclear whether any other contributors were identified.

Whats also unclear is whether this means Dorotiks quest for exoneration has come to an end. She is now represented by attorneys from Loyola Law Schools Project for the Innocent, which is based in Los Angeles.

Reached by phone last week, the attorneys declined to confirm the results of the DNA tests or to discuss the status of Dorotiks case.

No further court hearings have been scheduled in San Diego Superior Court.

Nothing has been filedsince the (DNA) results have come back, said Deputy District Attorney Jill Lindberg, the prosecutor most recently assigned to the case. She said she did not know whether any hearings would be scheduled in the near future.

At the time of the killing, Dorotik wasa high-level executive for a mental health services company. She also raised and trained horses. She and her husband had three adult children.

Dorotik reported her husband missing the evening of Feb. 13, 2000. The last time she saw him, she told authorities, was earlier that daywhen he was getting ready to go jogging.

Robert Dorotiks body was found early the next day, Valentines Day, in a wooded area about two miles from the ranch where the family lived. The body, dressed in running clothes,had been strangled and beaten, authorities said.He was 55.

Jane Dorotikwas arrested a few days later. Detectives found a bloodstained mattress and specks of his blood on the floor, walls and ceiling of the master bedroom, which they said indicated her husband was killed in the house.

After examining the clothing on the body, investigators determined he was likely dressed in the running clothes after he was killed, according to court documents. There were bloodtransfer stains but no spatter stains on his T-shirt. No blood was found on his sweatpants or on his shoes.

Prosecutors relied heavily on circumstantial evidence to provetheir case.Dorotik and her husband were home alone when he was most likely killed. There had also been some discord between the husband and wife, which pointed to a possible motive.

Deputy District Attorney Bonnie Howard-Regan argued to the jury in North Countythat Dorotik killed her husband because she was afraid of losing part of her $118,000 annual salary in a divorce. Robert Dorotik had quit his job as an aerospace engineer to start a business making horse jumps, but it wasnt going well.

Dorotik maintained throughout the trial and afterward that she was innocent, but she didnt know who the real killer was.

San Diego Superior Court Judge Joan Weber, who presided over the trial, has said repeatedly that the most incriminating piece of evidence was Jane Dorotiks bloody thumbprint on a syringe filled with animal tranquilizer that was found in a bathroom next to the master bedroom.

Itwas also Weberwho in November 2015 granted a request filed on Dorotiks behalf to allow post-convictionDNA testing of the rope and fingernail scrapings. Neither of those items had been tested previously.

The judge directed lawyers on both sides of the case to try to agree on which lab wouldperform the tests. But that might have been a task easier said than done.

Last April, Weber ordered the Sheriffs Crime Lab to do the testing, but a month later Dorotik, who by then was representing herself, asked the judge to order the lab to test only half the evidence so the rest could be saved for future testing.

Thatrequest was denied.

Later, after Loyolas Project for the Innocent took over the case, the attorneys clarified her request, saying Dorotik did not want the Sheriffs Crime Lab the same one that conducted the testson all of the evidence used to convict her to be the only lab to test the rope and fingernail evidence.

They said Dorotik was concerned about confirmation bias.

What the Defendant would actually like to request is not that half the sample be shelved for later testing but that an independent lab (unrelated to the criminal investigation of her case and one that is not directly affiliated with law enforcement) conduct independent testing on these important pieces of evidence right away, the attorneys wrote in court documents.

Weber denied the defense motion and confirmed in August that the Sheriffs Crime Lab would do the DNA analysis.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @danalittlefield

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DNA tests completed in 2000 Valley Center murder case; wife had hoped they would exonerate her - The San Diego Union-Tribune

February 26, 2017 12:39 AM By Andria Borba

LIVERMORE (KPIX 5) On the crime show NCIS, one hair leads to a killer. That was once the stuff of fantasy, but no more.

Hair is your crowning glory and soon, thanks to scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Lab, it will provide the evidence necessary to tie you definitively to a crime.

Weve leveraged the fact that protein in your body is essentially an echo of your DNA, says Brad Hart, director of the labs Forensic Science Center. Your DNA is a blueprint for the proteins produced by your body.

In the past, hair evidence was collected at crime scenes but could only be used to identify a suspect with a microscope and an expert opinion comparing samples.

Instead of relying on someones opinion about whether something matches, you can make a measurement, says chemist Deon Anex.

Using only an inch of hair, Hart and Anex can identify the amino acids and peptides that make up your hair. So far, the degree of accuracy is one in a million after the hair is broken down into its parts.

We hope in the future of course, to make that even better, says Anex. If we had a hundred of these identification markers in say an identification panel you might say for hair identification, this would be sufficient to get a unique pattern for a person out of the entire worlds population.

The data that comes out when we do the analysis of a particular hair sample you get peaks and valleys that are displayed here that focuses on each individual peptide that comes out of the mass spectrometer, he says.

The advantage of hair over DNA is how robust it is. Think of the hair balls that live under your bed.

DNA in comparison is very fragile and easily mixed up at a messy crime scene.

You come across a crime scene, you may have a pool of blood, but it may not just be one persons blood the more contributors to that mixture of DNA, the more difficult to figure out whos DNA it was. The nice thing about hair, is that if you find a hair, it only came from one person, says Hart.

Scientists at the lab have been able to test a piece of hair for its markers that is over 250 years old.

Breaking the hair down and getting a profile is almost as quick as Abby on NCIS just 24 to 48 hours with about the same cost as DNA.

It comes into play with connecting suspects to a crime scene, but it would also be very, very important in exonerating people, says Anex.

Up next at the lab will be finding out what treating your hair to the Clairol color wheel means for its genetic breakdown.

Is blonde hair different from brunette hair? If someone had dyed their hair or permed their hair, how do those things affect our abilities to recover these profiles? says Hart.

Andria Borba joined KPIX 5 in October 2013. Born in Modesto, raised in the Central Valley city of Gustine, Andria has a large extended family that stretches from Tomales Bay to the Monterey Bay and all over the San Francisco Bay Area.Andrias last...

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Demi Lovatohas always been one of thosepop stars who is not afraidto share her most personal details with her fans whether it be herhistory of addiction,hermental health, or even her struggles with her weight.

So when the 24-year-oldConfident singer recently received the resultsof an ancestry DNA test, it only made sense that she would share her genetic makeup on social media.

I did a DNA test and found out Im mainly Spanish, with Native American, SCANDINAVIAN (which I had NO idea), Irish, BRITISH. Lovato wrote on Twitter Friday. And Im 1% African!!!!

Lovato then shared a photo of the full test results, explaining in a tweet that she hadnt done a DNA test before and only found out about her ancestry from certain places after speaking with her uncle.

Of course, this being social media, some of her followers were quick to criticize the singer. But not one to let Internet trolls win, Lovato saidthat she didnt mean to offend anyone.

Just thought it was cool and totally random, she wrote. Some of yall are mean af. Twitter sucks.

RELATED VIDEO:Demi Lovato and Boyfriend Guilherme Vasconcelos Share Their Love Fest On Insta!

In addition to her ancestry results, Lovato has a lot to celebrate lately includingnew boyfriendGuilherme Bomba Vasconcelos.

Sheand the Brazilian welterweight, 30,were first linked back in Julywhen aninsider told PEOPLE they had a quick fling that ended shortly after. But the couplerecently rekindled their romance, evenringing in the New Year together.

Vasconcelos posted a touching black and white photo with his girlfriend on Wednesday, holding her tight and smiling at the camera.

The caption read, Baby, along with a red heart emoji.

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Demi Lovato Reveals Details of Her Ancestry DNA Test: 'I'm 1 Percent African!' - PEOPLE.com

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Members of the Toledo Police Cold Case Sexual Assault Task Force say they could find no new evidence to solve a 2000 stranger rape until the victim offered one possibility: her son born from the rape.

On Friday, a Lucas County grand jury indicted Harland Hersey, 33, of Toledo on one count of rape for an April 9, 2000, attack on a teenage girl.

Hersey

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Charles McDonald, an assistant county prosecutor assigned to the task force, said the indictment came after the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation conducted a reverse paternity test on the victims son a test that identified his biological father through DNA.

Its a first for our unit, he said of the reverse paternity test.

Due to the creative and exhaustive techniques used by the investigating officers, a DNA profile was developed sufficient to identify a suspect, Mr. McDonald said.

The 16-year-old victim told police at the time that she and her younger brother had walked to the store and were returning home on Waverly Avenue near Avondale Avenue about 2 p.m. when three young men on a porch called them up and coerced them inside.

Mr. McDonald said that while one of the men allegedly kept the victims brother downstairs, the other two men forced the victim upstairs where she was raped.

After she and her brother were able to flee, they ran home where she called police. The young woman was taken to the hospital where a rape kit was done.

Still, no suspects were ever identified or arrests made.

Nothing ever came of the original investigation, Mr. McDonald said.

An arrest warrant for Mr. Hersey would be issued, police said Friday.

Toledo police Detective Vince Mauro, another member of the task force, said an agent from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation worked the case and ultimately got a hit from the suspects DNA on the FBIs nationwide database known as the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS.

For the past few years, the task force has been re-examining some 1,700 unsolved rape cases that date back two decades.

Contact Jennifer Feehan at:jfeehan@theblade.comor 419-213-2134.

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DNA of rape victim's child lands suspect - The Blade - Toledo Blade