Category Archives: DNA

Reporter Bill Buell looks at his "ethnic makeup percentage" page, indicating his DNA history, provided by Family Tree DNA.

"Pride of ancestry never possessed my soul."

It's an early 20th century line uttered by a wealthy politician looking to gain favor with the working class. I always liked it, and felt as though it summed up the way I felt about my ethnicity. Yet, I was curious. and while I often feigned my disinterest - and some of the time it was genuine -- I never seriously engaged in researching my family tree. Until now.

Like many Americans across the country and peoples throughout the world, digging into the past is becoming something of a hobby for me. Perhaps I'm not as passionate as some, but with the internet putting just about everything at your fingertips, and the recent popularity of DNA kits providing a detailed breakdown of your ethnic makeup, information about the past has never been so easily accessed.

When earlier this year I had the opportunity to provide Family Tree DNA with some saliva free of charge (saving me around $90), I jumped at the chance. I waited for the kit in the mail - a small package with a couple of cotton swabs and some clear tubes - did what I had to do and then sent them off in the mail. Typically it takes about five or six weeks to get the information back to you, and I have to admit I was quite anxious to see what I'm made of.

According to family lore - much of it provided by my older brother - we were mostly German on my mother's side and Welsh, German and Dutch on my father's side. As it turned out the oral history was pretty accurate. When I opened the email from Family Tree DNA that day, I clicked on the link and discovered that I was 95 percent European and 4 percent West Middle Eastern. The European part of me (by the way, I am a blue-eyed blonde) was also broken down into 80 percent West and Central Europe and 15 percent British Isles.

While the results of the DNA kit were interesting but pretty much confirmed what I had already suspected, other people can have a much more dramatic experience.

Albany's Sharon Smith, who was adopted at birth, spent years trying to find her natural birth mother but never succeeded. However, a few months after sending in her DNA kit to Ancestry.com, Smith got an email with a huge surprise. When she opened it up and clicked on "matches," she found a new woman's name with a "relationship range" of "mother-sister."

"I was shocked, I never saw it coming and never thought it was going to happen, but when I opened the email they had found my biological mother," said Smith. "I was very lucky because she just happened to do a DKN kit herself, and we were so closely matched it had to be my mother. I never thought I was going to find her in a million years. I was very lucky."

Smith contacted the woman, who confirmed that she was indeed Smith's birth mother. The two have become close, and last week, Smith had a very special Mother's Day.

"Previous Mother's Days were always about my mom," said Smith, referring to the woman who adopted her. "This year was a very different situation. I am very happy to have a relationship with my birth mom, and I am very thankful she chose the woman she did to be my mom. So, with that being said, I am very blessed that I have had two amazing women who loved me so much to bring me into this world and to raise me to be the woman I am today. So this Mother's Day, I celebrated two special moms. Not many people can say that."

Schenectady's Don Ackerman, a retired social studies teacher in the Niskayuna school district, was also adopted but had little interest in looking for a birth mother. He just wanted to know where he came from.

"I had assumed that I was German, Dutch and English, but when I got my results back the bulk of me, 44 percent, was Irish," said Ackerman, who grew up in Syracuse. "My wife also did it and she was upset because she was also mainly Irish. She always thought she was Dutch. It was fun and interesting to do it, and I discovered I was 12 percent Scandanavian and 10 percent Iberian Peninsula. I also had 1 percent Pacific Islander. But I was an adopted kid, an only child, and I had a wonderful life so it wasn't about finding my mother."

Nancy Curran, a former newspaper columnist and critic for the Gazette and the now-defunct Union Star, has worked in the genealogy field for nearly 30 years now, researching her own past and helping others look into their family tree. The television mini-series, "Roots," raised interest in family genealogy according to Curran, and then the internet and now DNA kits have made the idea of looking into one's past even more compelling.

"I think interest has been steadily growing since the movie, 'Roots,' which came out around the Bicentennial," said Curran. "People were wondering, 'does my family have anything to do with this wonderful experiment we call America.' And then it was the advent of the internet. You used to have to drive to a major library, find some microfilm with an index that would tell you what other microfilm you should be reading. Now you just click away. Increasingly, more and more documents are being digitized. Almost everything is at your fingertips."

Curran has also used the DNA kit - she is 72 percent Scandanavian - but she likes to remind people that the results sometimes don't provide that much information.

"I think my takeaway from the DNA kits is that it is more likely to be confirmation of information you already have," she said. "If you're looking for a relative it's not always going to be dependable. So much of it depends upon whether anybody whose DNA would be helpful to you has actually taken a test. However, sometimes you do get lucky."

Family Tree DNA, Ancestry.com and 23andMe are among the major companies involved in DNA testing these days. It was Bennett Greenspan who founded Family Tree DNA nearly 20 years ago in Houston, Texas.

"I conceived the idea in 1999 and I took my first commercial order in 2000," said Greenspan, who had owned a photographic supply company in the Houston area. "I saw the digitization of an industry I was in, and every time I sold a digital camera I was cannibalizing my own business. I had to do something else and the DNA technology was very interesting to me. People were immediately very enthusiastic about the idea and things just took off."

Business hasn't let up.

"Last year was our best ever," said Bennett, whose parent company, Gene by Gene, does the laboratory work for many of the other companies selling DNA kits. "My guess is that it will continue to grow. The technology is so easy. I can remember when the first cell phone came out and I said, 'I'll never have one of those.' Two years later I had one and now everybody has one. Soon, everyone will know their DNA and people will actually know for sure if they're 20 percent Native American, 30 percent Irish or Jewish, or whatever."

At the Schenectady County Historical Society, librarian/archivist Mike Maloney gets many visitors to the Grems-Doolittle Library looking to fill in their family tree, and many of them have also gone the DNA kit route.

"I think the popularity of genealogy is still increasing due to DNA kits because it adds an extra level of excitement for genealogists as you can pinpoint what part of the world your ancestors came from," said Maloney. "TV shows like 'Finding Your Roots' add the celebrity aspect to genealogy, and our genealogy-focused programs at the historical society always draw a good crowd."

As popular as the kits are, if you're delving into your family history and looking past your ethnicity, the best place to be is in a library with access to a computer, in particular a library with a collection like that of the Schenectady County Historical Society.

"Increased access to records through the internet allow people to do a lot of research from home," said Maloney. "But here we also have wills, yearbooks, naturalization records, church baptisms and other primary sources. You can usually find a few researchers looking to break through genealogy brick walls at our library."

Originally posted here:
DNA kits keeping genealogy in forefront - The Daily Gazette

Since 2011, Ohio law has required that any person charged with a felony must submit to a DNA collection.

But a man now charged in connection with two rapes and one attempted rape in uptown Athens over a 10-year period starting in 2006 managed to avoid DNA collection when he was arrested by the Ohio State Highway Patrol for a felony firearm offense in November 2015.

Thus, Shawn J. Lawson, Jr., 26, was not arrested in connection with the alleged rapes until earlier this month, when a DNA sample was obtained from him after an alleged sexual assault in Lancaster two months earlier.

If law-enforcement had hit on the DNA match for Lawson after the June 2016 alleged rape in Athens, he at least wouldnt have been free to commit the later sexual assault hes been accused of in Lancaster.

Athens County Sheriff Rodney Smith and county Prosecutor Keller Blackburn have now worked out an arrangement where any person arraigned for a felony in Athens County Common Pleas Court will have his or her DNA collected by the Sheriffs Office unless that persons DNA is already on record.

Athens Police had been hunting for what they described as a serial rapist since at least January 2016. They suspected him of being involved in three sexual assaults in uptown Athens between 2006 and 2015. Lawsons grand-jury indictment states that the crimes occurred against three separate victims on June 11, 2006; June 20, 2015; and Dec. 12, 2015 (Lawson was arrested for an OVI/felony firearm charges on Nov. 22, 2015, and indicted in Athens County Common Pleas Court on Dec. 14, 2015).

The sexual assaults all occurred under similar circumstances, police have said, when the college-aged victism were walking home alone from the uptown Athens area early in the morning. Lawson would have been 15 years old at the time of the first incident in June 2006.

In the June 2015 case, Athens Police Lt. Jeff McCall used a technique called touch DNA to collect evidence, where DNA can be obtained from areas on the victims body that a perpetrator touched. The DNA obtained in that case led to a match with the DNA from the both the June 2006 case and the later, December 2015 case, thus launching the search for the alleged serial rapist.

McCall said after Lawsons arrest that police obtained DNA samples from as many as 30 community members voluntarily in their search for the perpetrator.

But when the Ohio State Highway Patrol arrested Lawson in November 2015 in Athens County for OVI (drunk-driving) and a felony charge of having a firearm in a vehicle while driving intoxicated, his DNA was not collected, Prosecutor Blackburn confirmed.

DNA collection for felony offenses occurs at the Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail in Nelsonville, Blackburn said, but in this case from what he understands Lawson was released into the custody of his then-wife without being taken to the jail, and thus his DNA was never collected.

Ohio Revised Code 2901.07 outlines state law with regard to DNA specimen collection procedure.

Subsection (B)(1)(a) states that after July 1, 2011, any person 18 years old or older arrested for a felony offense shall submit to a DNA specimen collection procedure administered by the head of the arresting law-enforcement agency. The head of the arresting law-enforcement agency shall cause the DNA specimen to be collected from the person during the intake process at the jail, community-based correctional facility, detention facility, or law enforcement agency office or station to which the arrested person is taken after the arrest.

The Athens NEWS sent the Ohio State Highway Patrol media contact an email on Friday morning asking why this had not occurred in Lawsons case but had not received a response as of our print deadline on Sunday.

Section (B)(1)(b) of ORC 2901.07 states that if the head of the arresting law-enforcement agency has not administered a DNA specimen collection procedure upon the person arrested for a felony in accordance with division (B)(1)(a) of this section by the time of the arraignment or first appearance of the person, the court shall order the person to appear before the sheriff or chief of police of the county or municipal corporation within 24 hours to submit to a DNA specimen collection procedure administered by the sheriff or chief of police.

Court records for Lawsons felony firearm case do not show the court ordering a DNA collection. This issue likely would not have been raised unless the court had been informed that DNA collection hadnt taken place due to Lawson not undergoing intake at the regional jail.

On Friday, Sheriff Smith said that his office has obtained hundreds of DNA testing kits from the Ohio State Bureau of Criminal Investigation and will now collect DNA specimens from those arraigned on felony charges in Athens County Common Pleas Court as a catch-all, even if they were arrested by some other law-enforcement agency.

He said that his office began doing so last week after having never done so in the past. The office is able to tell whether a person has had DNA collected previously by running his or her fingerprints through the Ohio Law Enforcement Gateway database, Smith said. If he or she has not, the Sheriffs Office will gather a sample, he said.

If its never been done, thats when we do the DNA test, he said. Its needed and its something thats very important and we want to make sure it gets done.

See the original post:
Would DNA check after 2015 felony arrest have averted later assault? - Athens NEWS

BBC News

Paris police attack: Man charged over 'DNA link to gun' BBC News French police have charged a man with terrorism offences after his DNA was found on the gun used to shoot dead a police officer in Paris last month, judicial sources say. The 23-year-old, who was not named, was not previously known to investigators. and more »

Originally posted here:
Paris police attack: Man charged over 'DNA link to gun' - BBC News

In this 2004 file photo a criminologist for the Arizona Department of Public Safety processes DNA samples at their lab in Phoenix. (Emmanuel Lozano/via AP, File)

PHOENIX (AP) The Arizona Department of Public Safety says a former supervisory forensic scientist failed to test DNA samples in dozens of cases and intentionally hid her caseload backlog.

An audit of the DNA units backlog disclosed the alleged misconduct by Kathy Press, who was demoted and resigned, KPNX-TV reported Thursday.

Press has acknowledged that she was behind but blames it on managers refusal to correct problems.

The lack of timely testing affected at least one criminal case, an alleged 2009 sexual assault in Tempe, in which a police request for further analysis wasnt handled for six years, the station reported.

Press backlog also included cases from Tempe, Glendale, Coolidge, Surprise, Yuma, Tucson and Prescott Valley. The cases included property crimes, sexual assaults and other violent crime.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said the six-year delay in getting DNA results was among factors leading to no prosecution in the Tempe case.

Press denied allowing cases to sit idle to hide incompetence or misconduct. She said she couldnt keep up with a heavy caseload while taking on a leadership role and tried to re-assign cases so they could be completed.

She said the delay in the Tempe case was a true tragedy that was caused by the refusal of leadership within the Department of Public Safety to help fix a backlog they knew existed.

The lapse was discovered by a supervisor after the agency implemented a work-performance accounting and auditing system in 2015.

An internal investigation found that Press hid work files and took steps to conceal her incompetence, the agency said.

The employees lack of professionalism is beyond regrettable, it is reprehensible, the agency stated.

The agency said it has improved accounting processes and has reduced testing backlogs.

Original post:
DNA testing backlog figures in departure of state scientist - The Daily Courier

LOS ANGELES A Hawthorne man linked through DNA evidence to the 2004 killing of a woman in South Los Angeles after his arrest for a fatal hit-and-run in Orange County pleaded no contest Friday, May 19, to murder and other charges.

Jaqwun Laerin Turner, 36, was immediately sentenced to 34 years to life in state prison following his plea to first-degree murder, kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office.

Turner was charged in 2015 with the April 10, 2004, slaying of Leah Deshay Benjamin, whose body was found wrapped in a blanket in an alley in the 10600 block of South Manhattan Place.

The 38-year-old woman died from blunt force head trauma, authorities said.

A background check of Turner revealed he had lived in close proximity to the area where Benjamins body was discovered, according to authorities.

Los Angeles police were notified in 2014 the California Department of Justice had gotten a match between Turners DNA profile and the DNA profile obtained from crime scene evidence. Los Angeles Police Department Robbery-Homicide Division detectives and members of the Scientific Investigation Division conducted a search of the location where Turner had once lived, and recovered DNA evidence linked to Benjamin although the property had been sold in 2005, according to police.

Turners DNA was collected after his arrest by Santa Ana police on Jan. 29, 2014, in the death of Martha Rodenza, 51, of Los Angeles. Rodenzas body was found on the northbound Santa Ana (5) Freeway at the westbound Garden Grove (22) Freeway after she fell from the truck just before 2:45 a.m. on Dec. 8, 2013.

Turner pleaded guilty in August 2014 to a felony hit-and-run charge and was sentenced to a year in county jail and five years probation.Orange County Deputy District Attorney Stephen Cornwell objected to theplea deal, saying later that Turner should have spent time in prison for leaving Rodenza to die alone in the road and failing to contact police.

Defense attorney Errol Cook, who represented Turner in the Orange County case, said last year that Turner had reluctantly agreed to give Rodenza a ride, and that his client was shocked, fearful and pretty much panicked after she opened the door and stepped out of the truck as he was trying to slow the vehicle.

View post:
Hawthorne man gets 34 years in woman's 2004 murder after DNA from Orange County hit-run links him to case - OCRegister

The International Space Station is one big research laboratory. Its earliest research objectives, back in 2000, were pretty straightforward: keep humans alive. Since then, the number of experiments conducted aboard the station has ballooned, and astronauts and cosmonauts spend their days studying how terrestrial science and technology works in microgravity. Over the years, the stations residents have grown zucchini, beheaded flatworms, maneuvered humanoid robots, tended to mouse embryos, watched the muscles of zebrafish atrophy, and drawn their own blood, using their own bodies as test subjects. Scrolling through NASAs full list of experiments, one gets the sense that almost any experiment that can be done in a lab on Earth can be replicated in one floating 200 miles above.

So it shouldnt be too surprising that humans have successfully sequenced DNA in space.

Last summer, NASA dispatched Kate Rubins, a microbiologist with a doctorate in cancer biology, to try it for the first time. Rubins has spent her career studying infectious diseases and worked with the U.S. Army to develop therapies for the Ebola and Lassa viruses. She has sequenced the DNA of different organisms plenty of times on the ground, but the process was a little bit more nerve-wracking on the space station. I didnt want to screw it up, she says.

I spoke to Rubins during her recent visit to NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. about the experiments she worked on during her four-month stint on the ISS. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.

But first, a brief rundown of how DNA sequencing actually works. Rubins used a specially made biomolecule sequencing device, a miniature version of the microwave-sized hardware on Earth. DNA samples are fed into its protein nanopores, tiny structures embedded in a synthetic cell membrane. The device sends an ion current through this membrane. When the bases of DNAguanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosinemove through nanopores, they each create a change in the current. The device measures these tiny disruptions, and scientists use them to determine the sequence of the bases. For the human carrying this out, its actually pretty easy.

OK, lets go.

Koren: So when you first got to the space station, knowing what you know about how communicable disease works, did you ever have a moment when you realized, Im in a giant tube of germs?

Rubins: So were in a giant tube of germs all the time, right? Not to scare you. Sitting here, this room is filled with germs. Most germs arent bad. Youre in a microbial environment all the time. Whats interesting is that weve actually had this microbial environment thats been separate from Earth for 16 years. We havent had real problems with disease outbreaks or that kind of thing happening on the space station, but it is interesting to potentially study its microbial environment, what different species of bacteria there are, and how that changes over time. I would actually say its a little bit better, from an infectious disease perspective, to be isolated. So youre with three or six people, but you actually have less chance of being sick because its not like youre going through an airport or a subway ride where youre in contact with a bunch of people.

Koren: How did you start preparing for the DNA-sequencing experiment?

Rubins: Wed been working on it for a while. One of the questions we had was, how is the equipment going to survive launch? So we did launch vibration tests. We were also unsure about what would happen in microgravityyou get a lot of bubbles forming [in the solution]. Could we prevent bubbles from forming? We ended up deciding to sequence a mix of non-pathogenic viruses, bacteria, and mouse DNA because that gives you the range and complexity all the way from virus to mammalian organism.

Koren: Was there doubt it would work?

Rubins: Yeah, it was really an experiment. We were testing this technology and our question was, is this going be successful? And it was, luckily. But thats pretty much everything in science. You have a hypothesis, you go in, you test it, analyze the results, and see if you have to change anything about the experiment.

Koren: How did the experience compare to sequencing DNA on Earth?

Rubins: I was surprised at how well it worked. I had tried it out a few times on the ground just to see how the mechanics of loading everything would work, and then its pretty different in microgravity, right? You put the pipette on the sequencing flow cell, and you shoot back off in the opposite direction with the same amount of force that you put on the pipette. Anytime youre handling something, you have to stabilize yourself, so that took a little bit to get used to. I brought some foot restraints over and got myself hooked in. The first time I did it, I had a head lamp on so I could see really well, and some magnifying glasses.

Koren: How many runs did it take before it worked?

Rubins: It was actually successful on the first try, so that was great. We had some extra samples just in case it didnt work the first time, so we started actually changing the experiment a little bit. We altered a few parameters, like the length of time that the reaction runs. They all worked.

Koren: What was your reaction after that first successful run?

Rubins: I was extremely excited. I was really nervous loading it the first time. Im usually not nervous when Im just doing a normal bit of pipetting, but I didnt want to screw it up. There was a little bit of adrenaline going. Its within 10 minutes that you start to see the first sequence coming through.

Koren: Did it feel like 10 minutes? Because when youre anticipating something, time can feel like its moving slowly.

Rubins: Oh, no! I was like, I cant even be here. Ive got to float away and try to keep myself busy. And then Id come back and check again, and then Id float away again. We had a communications loop open with the ground team, so when we did start to see everything come through, they put the speaker on so I could hear them all clapping and cheering.

Koren: You also spent some time culturing human heart cells on the ISS. What was that like?

Rubins: Youre tending to the cellsyou have to change the media [in the cell culture], you have to resupply them with nutrients. Instead of having the open cell-culture plate, theyve got lure locks that are designed for space, and you can change the media with a little syringe. It took quite a long time to do the cell-culture change. I was nervous because I didnt want to contaminate the cell culture; if you get bacteria in there, itll overgrow your culture and kill the cells and ruin the experiment. You have to work on very sterile techniques. Its like prepping for surgery. You dont want any microbes getting in the patient.

Koren: Youve said you watched the heart cells beat in unison. How many cells does it take to see that?

Rubins: You can see 20 to 100 cells. For the most part, theyre in sheets or forming clumps or groups of cells, so you can see them together just synchronize that beating.

Koren: And is that weird to see?

Rubins: It was very cool. When I pulled the microscope out, the cosmonauts would come down from the Russian segment of the space station and everybody would float past because they liked watching it. Theres something fascinating about seeing down to the microscopic level and actually watching these heart cells beat.

More here:
How to Sequence DNA in Space - The Atlantic

A special state committee Friday approved a recommendation that New York State adopt the use of familial searching, an emerging DNA procedure employed in some states to identify potential suspects.

By a vote of 5-0, the DNA subcommittee of the New York State Commission on Forensic Science approved the plan to use familial searching, proposals that have been in the works since the beginning of the year. Under proposed guidelines, special DNA analysis will be allowed in cases of homicide, rape, arson and crimes involving a significant public safety threat.

The measure now goes to the full commission, which could vote on it next month. Familial searching is supported by the New York Citys five district attorneys, as well as NYPD Commissioner James ONeill.

Familial searching is a two-step process in which an unidentified DNA sample that doesnt match any genetic profile in the state database is given further analysis to see if it bears any similarities with known profiles. If similarities are found, the unknown samples Y-chromosome is further analyzed to come up with a likely relative of the unidentified person. Police will then locate the relative and possibly get a fresh DNA sample to compare it to what was found at the crime scene.

Though controversial, familial searching is now used in 10 states, including California and Colorado, as well as in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. It has led to the solving of a number of cold case homicides. The method gained attention in New York after the August strangulation death of Howard Beach jogger Karina Vetrano. Investigators recovered an unidentified DNA sample from the 30-year-olds body but couldnt match it to any genetic sample in the state DNA database.

Vetranos family and law enforcement realized the usefulness of familial searching and lobbied for its use in New York State. However, conventional police work led to the February arrest of a man in the Vetrano case.

Critics, notably some civil libertarians and members of the defense bar, oppose familial searching on privacy grounds. They also believe that many of the DNA profiles already in the state database are from defendants of color and that familial searching would amount to genetic trolling that unfairly investigates black and Hispanic families.

But proponents of familial searching say the method is race neutral and would be involved in only a small number of cases. They also note that most of the victims of violent crimes, particularly in New York City, are black and Hispanic. Data from NYPD sources revealed earlier this year that in 2016 of the 11 unsolved homicides with DNA samples that couldnt be matched, nine of the victims were black and one Hispanic.

Go here to read the rest:
State forensic panel approves use of familial DNA to ID suspects ... - Newsday

Ann and Cecilia Cadigan were brutally murdered on their family farm in Casco, Wis., on Nov. 16, 1991. A decade after locking up the wrong person, the real killer of the Cadigan sisters continues to elude the Kewaunee County sheriffs department. Josh Clark/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

Nov. 16, 1991. 90-year-old Ann Cadigan and her 85-year-old sister Cecilia Cadigan were murdered in their rural Kewaunee County home.(Photo: Beth LaBatte, Trial Exhibit)

CASCO -Cecilia and Ann Cadigan lived in a white, two-story farmhouse about 20 miles east of Green Bay. The two former school teachers had few visitors to their family's 1910-era farm before the day someone showed up with a pool stick.

A grain elevator calendar served as their daily diary. "Nov. 16, 1991, Noon, 43 Degrees," Cecilia Cadigan jotted down on her 85th birthday. The sisters had planned to eat an early Swiss steak dinner and were expected to attendthe 4:30 p.m. Mass at the nearby Holy Trinity Catholic Church.

Timeline: Cadigan sister murders

Related:Murder cases often go cold after exonerations

They never made it. About 6 p.m., neighbors found the sisters fatally stabbed and brutally beaten. Ann, who was 90 years old,was slumped over in her favorite chair. Cecilia's body was under a toppled couch. Blood stains were smeared into the living room's rose-colored carpet. The victims' purses were stolen.

Cecilia Cadigan, 85, was brutally beaten and fatally stabbed inside her farmhouse on Nov. 16, 1991. Her sister's slain body was found nearby.(Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

They were in the living room,murdered, said neighbor Larry Tex Dellis. "Everybody was in shock.

Kewaunee County investigators caught what could have been a major break in the case: Someone, the likely killer, had left his genetic material all over the crime scene, including on one of the weapons used in the slayings. But they didn't know it at the time because DNA technology hadn't yet emerged as a powerful tool to identify perpetrators.

Instead, authoritiesfollowed up on suspects based on hunches and circumstantial evidence, discounting each one until they focused on Beth LaBatte of Green Bay as a prime suspect.LaBatte and her boyfriend Chuck Benoit of Sturgeon Bay, had committed a slew of burglaries, break-ins and thefts across northeastern Wisconsin, and they were charged in the sisters' deathsmore than five years after the bodies were discovered.

Ann Cadigan, 90, was found murdered in her family's farmhouse near Casco in 1991. The killing remains unsolved. In 1997, authorities convicted the wrong person, Beth LaBatte. Her case was eventually dismissed in 2006.(Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

The village of Casco,population 600, was relieved that the nightmarish murders had been solved. That feeling of relief didnt last.

An Outagamie County jury found LaBatte guilty in 1997, but her trial judge, Dennis Luebke,overturned her convictions in November 2005. Charges were formally dismissed in August 2006. A year after she was exonerated, LaBatte died in a rollover crash near Redgranite.

As for Benoit, an Ozaukee County jury found him not guilty at his 1998 trial. Even so, he said he has forever been tainted by the wrongful prosecution. "This crap is still over my head," said Benoit, who is now in his 60s, lives in Green Bay, and says he has turned his life around since his younger days.

When the cases against LaBatte and Benoit unraveled due to DNA evidence that pointed to their innocence, the Cadigan murder investigation went inactive. Their killer or killers have escaped justice for 26-plus years.

The Cadigan case highlights a common dilemma in DNA exonerations across the country: The same law enforcement agency involved in the initial miscarriage of justice often remains in control of the case.

Nov. 16, 1991. 90-year-old Ann Cadigan and her 85-year-old sister Cecilia Cadigan were murdered in their rural Kewaunee County home.(Photo: Beth LaBatte Murder Trial Exhibit)

For many agencies, a flawed murder investigation is something they would rather not reopen and pursue aggressively.

"There are cases that law enforcement do take the initiative to follow up on the new leads, but in many, many, cases they still don't want to admit that they made a mistake," said Jim Trainum, a retired Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police homicide detective who has published a book pertaining to wrongful convictions.

RELATED:What ever happened to Bobby Joe Fritz?

RELATED:Weyauwega farmhouse murders still unsolved

"Too often, we want to sit on our hands, and we depend on technologyinstead of asking ourselves, 'What went wrong and is there anything else we can do on this case?'"Trainum said.

In 1997, Beth LaBatte of Green Bay was wrongfully convicted of the 1991 murders of Ann Cadigan, 90, and her sister Cecilia, 85, of rural Kewaunee County. The killer remains at large.(Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

LaBatte's wrongful conviction "brings up a lot of old hurt," said her mother, Maria Brunette. The Algoma woman sat through the trial where her daughter was convicted of a double murder and given a life sentence while the real killer eluded justice.

"I would love to see the person go to prison," she said. "They should be prosecuted."

This month marks 12 years since Kewaunee County learned that none of the DNA evidence recovered from the Cadigancrime scene matched LaBatte. According to 2005 court documents, DNAextracted from one of the recovered murder weapons and one of the victims came from an unknown male attacker.

Asked why his agency hasnt publicized the case for new leads, Kewaunee County Sheriff Matt Joski said, "I don't know if it's productive and beneficial" because the Cadigan murders arealready well-known around the area.

Kewaunee County Sheriff Matt Joski said his agency still hopes that the 1991 double murders of the Cadigan sisters can be solved through the federal law enforcement's criminal offender DNA database.(Photo: Joshua Clark/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

"As a community, it's always something that weighs on our mind," Joski said. "I think if something substantive came forward, I'd expect we would move forward. I've never had anyone that we could have taken to the court for charging."

Joski hopes the FBI's criminal justice DNA databasewill eventually unmask the killer. Every year, more criminals get added to the offender database, increasing the odds for a DNA match, he said.

"Samples have been submitted to allow things to (go)further in the investigation," Joski said. "It's just that a long time has elapsed ... We can't just develop or create a suspect."

The killer had left DNA on one of his murder weapons a bloody pool stick, which snapped during the slayings. Its sales tag was traced to a Kmart in Sturgeon Bay. The killer also left DNA on a pair of white socks he used to wipe up Cecilia Cadigan's blood. Additional DNA was extracted from two hairs found on Cecilia Cadigan's body, court documents show.

Keith Findley, co-director at the Wisconsin Innocence Project, said law enforcement's reliance on the federal criminal database to uncover a DNA match is one of the reasons the Cadigan murders have become a cold case. His innocence team took up LaBattes case and won herexoneration.

"I'm a little surprised and I'm disappointed," Findley said."We had asked for them to reopen the investigation. ... We never really got any additional information from them."

Madison lawyer Keith Findley of the Wisconsin Innocence Project was instrumental in proving that Beth LaBatte was wrongly convicted of the Nov. 16, 1991 brutal beatings and stabbings of Cecilia Cadigan, 85, and her sister Ann, 90.(Photo: University of Wisconsin Law School)

Findley's team unraveled the flawed case of former Kewaunee Countyprosecutors Jackson Main and Elma Anderson. Main and Andersonconvicted LaBatte with no physical evidence and no eyewitnesses linking her and Benoit to the crime scene.

Instead, the two prosecutors relied on now-discredited testimony from a handful of prisoners who testified that fellow inmateLaBatte confessed to murdering and robbing the elderly sisters.

Main, who has since died, speculated in the courtroom that LaBatte experienced a drug-induced blackout, causing her alter ego known as "Bad Beth" to go on a wild rampage inside the farmhouse.

"Bad Beth would know what happened," Main told the jury.

Even though DNA tests later proved LaBatte was innocent, some local residents still wish she had never been released from prison.

"DNA got her off," scoffed Tex Dellis, whose brother and sister-in-law discovered the bodies of the Cadigan sisters. "I do feel she was involved, but this case has never been totally solved."

That kind of sentiment fueled in part by the Sheriff's Department's strategy in trying to solve the cold case has left LaBatte's family infuriated. Her mother contends the decision to let the double murders go by the wayside is appalling.

"No matter how hard you try to clear her name, it just won't work in this county," Brunette said. "I used to call the sheriff's office up, and I checked to see if it was getting solved. I was always being told, 'It's under investigation.It's under investigation.' Well, if you're not collecting any DNA from anybody, then I'm sure you're not going to get any hits."

Nov. 16, 1991. 90-year-old Ann Cadigan and her 85-year-old sister Cecilia Cadigan were murdered in their rural Kewaunee County home.(Photo: Murder Trial Exhibit Beth LaBatte)

Long before LaBatte and Benoit were arrested, authoritiesspent three unproductive years targeting a young man from Colorado as their prime suspect. The man, then 22, had lived in rural Casco and several people told investigators that he had an explosive temper, was supposedly broke and regularly shot pool, court documents reflect.

The man drew heightened suspicion because he moved back to Colorado just four days after the slayings. During the 1990s, he denied involvement and a warrant to search his station wagon in Colorado yielded no forensic evidence. By 1995, investigators disregarded him as a suspect.

In the months after the killings, investigators for Kewaunee County and the Wisconsin Department of Justice also explored whether an inheritance dispute provoked the murders. The Cadigan sisters had never married and had no children and it was revealed their estate was worth at least $500,000.

But that angle never panned out.

A male relative of the Cadigans from Milwaukee drew suspicion after investigators learned that he cryptically asked a girlfriendwhether she believed he could be the killer, Wisconsin Department of Justice records show. The man often visited Green Bay and the Fox Valley on weekends. According to DOJ reports, hetold investigators "he had not been to the Cadigan residence since ... 1989 which appears to be contradicted by information received from ... a friend of the Cadigans."

In 1992, investigators told the man his alibi was shaky. He "replied that he has thought about Nov. 16, 1991 (the date of the murders) and can't produce any new information." The two investigators spent days trying to persuade the man to take a polygraph test. He declined. It's unclear why investigators backed off the man as a suspect.

By 1995, investigators latched on to the theory that LaBatte committed the slayings while Benoit waited outside the farmhouse in his car and served as her lookout.

But at Benoit's trial, his lawyer David Christian of Green Bay presented evidence that his client and LaBatte didn't even meet until February 1992 three months after the slayings.Although Benoit was acquitted, he went to prison for about seven years for his role in burglarizing a Manitowoc County supper club.

During LaBatte's post-conviction appeal, Benoit furnished a DNA sample to prove he was not the killer, he recently told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.

"I was told it wasn't a match," he said.

The case left Benoit feeling bitter for years. Unlike LaBatte, he is not classified as an exonoree because he was found not guilty.After prison, Benoit said he worked in Appleton as a metal fabricator until 2011 when he suffered a heart attack and underwent triple bypass surgery.

"I avoid Kewaunee County at all costs, Benoit said. I've had an opportunity to rent places there, but won't do it. I don't have any respect for them at all. Whether they knew what they were doing is up in the air."

Benoit, too, is upset that local sheriff's deputies haven'tarrested the person or persons who killed the Cadigan sisters.

I dont think they have a clue, Benoit said. Its just unreal to just let it go."

He and LaBatte never reconnected after her murder charges were dismissed in 2006.

"I wanted to see the past stay in the past," Benoit said.

After her exoneration, LaBatte moved to Fond du Lac County where she lived with a boyfriend. On Sept. 1, 2007, she went to a Wautoma tavern and later tried to drive home. She lost control of the truck on Wisconsin 21 near Redgranite and hit a ditch. LaBatte was thrown from the truck and died of massive injuries. Authorities in Waushara County determined her blood alcohol level was 0.21 percent, more than double the legal limit for drivers.

Nov. 16, 1991. 90-year-old Ann Cadigan and her 85-year-old sister Cecilia Cadigan were murdered in their rural Kewaunee County home.(Photo: Murder Trial Exhibit Beth LaBatte)

The weathered farmhouse where the Cadigan sisters lived and the red barns on the property still stand. The sisters share a tombstone in Casco at the peaceful cemetery across from their church.

Dellis, the neighbor, now owns the 130-acre farm. The house has served as a rental property over the years. He's thought about demolishing the dwelling, but that would cost him thousands of dollars.

Today, 26 years later, the haunting double murders stirnothing but awful memories.

Dellis is confident the case will never be solved.

I feel it was bungled from the start; Ill just leave it at that, he said. "Thats the trouble with this case. The public would like it solved, but time has passed too much and the principal people are gone.

Findley, of Wisconsin's Innocence Project, questions why solving the Cadigan murders hasnt been a top investigative priority.Why is Kewaunee County content to let the case go inactive?

Sometimes, theres a reluctance to ask about why errors were made, Findley said. Im not judging what was done or what they could be doing because I dont know.

Certainly, there should not be any reluctance because someone was wrongfully convicted in the first place. Its a horrible crime and the reality is its unsolved, and thats problematic.

September marks the 10-year anniversary since LaBatte's tragic and troubled life came to an abrupt end.

The words she spoke at her 1998 sentencing still ring true:

"God knows that I'm innocent. I'm not guilty, and I know that the Cadigan sisters and Kewaunee County will not be able to rest until the real killer is found."

In 1997, Beth LaBatte was wrongfully convicted of murdering two elderly sisters who lived in Kewaunee County. Her convictions were later overturned after DNA evidence proved that the real killer was an unknown male.(Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

John Ferak of USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin: 920-993-7115 orjferak@gannett.com; on Twitter@johnferak

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

Read or Share this story: http://post.cr/2ruroIy

Continue reading here:
Sisters' murders unsolved years after killer's DNA freed woman - Appleton Post Crescent

Ethnic Muslim Uyghurs in northwest Chinas Xinjiang region are being given mandatory health examinations that include DNA collection, according to residents, causing concern among some observers who have called on Beijing to explain its motive behind the mass checkups.

According to reports by Chinas state media, the General Peoples Health Examination Project that began in September 2016 and ended in March this year provided checkups for 17.5 million people throughout the region, including 9.2 million in predominantly Uyghur-populated southern Xinjiang.

The examinations were carried out on more than 90 percent of the residents of the entire region, and more than 98 percent of the population of southern Xinjiang, the reports said, adding that the project had been 100 percent implemented in Hotan (in Chinese, Hetian)a prefecture almost exclusively inhabited by Uyghurs.

Authorities in Xinjiang appropriated 180,830,000 yuan (U.S. $26.2 million) for the General Peoples Health Examination Project, initially deploying mobile health checkpoints to Hotans Guma (Pishan) county, Aksu (Akesu) prefectures Uchturpan (Wushi) county, and Ghulja (Yining), Nilqa (Nileke), and Qorghas (Huocheng) counties in Ili (Yili) Kazakh Autonomous prefecture, before rolling out the program to the rest of the region.

Official reports said patients were divided into categories by ageinfants to six-year-olds, seven to 14-year-olds, 15 to 65-year-olds, and 65-year-olds and aboveand given a battery of tests that included examinations of the heart, blood, DNA, urine, and blood sugar using electrocardiograms, x-rays, and ultrasounds.

Uyghur residents recently told RFAs Uyghur Service that they were pressured and, in some cases, forced to undergo examinations, and that the results of their tests were stored on a computer system during the checkup.

A Uyghur official from southern Xinjiang, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity, said all of the staff in her department were required to participate in the examination, while her husbands examination was arranged by his work unit and her childrens checkups through their schools.

When they filled out the forms for the checkup, our ethnicity had to be listed clearly, as well as our religious affiliation, she said, adding that her work unit had completed the paperwork for her.

However, they never showed us the results [of the tests]. I dont know if people have been demanding the results or not.

A female college student in Hotan, who also asked not to be named, said she was required to undergo an examination in December last year, along with all of the other students in her school.

They conducted the examination, but didnt give us the resultsthey just said you are healthy and that was it, she said.

They took blood, checked our lungs and hearts. They took blood from our arms and said if there was anything wrong they would inform us, but they never did.

The student said that four other members of her family eventually underwent examinations, including her father, mother, and two brothers.

A farmer from Payziwat (Gashi) county in Kashgar (Kashi) prefecture told RFA that county officials and medical personnel had set up a health checkpoint in front of the area hospital, and local cadres urged residents to get examined.

The farmer said that he and his wife and three children were happy to receive free checkups, but added that he was puzzled over what he called a special focus on women during the examination, without providing further details.

A nurse from the Central Hospital of Uchturpans Zawa township told RFA that a lack of medical personnel had kept her examining the areas large number of residents non-stop through March to meet the projects deadline.

When asked for the reason behind requiring all of the residents of the region to undergo health examinations, a Han Chinese official at the Party Committee of Guma county told RFA nobody at his level knew.

Ask the county government, he said. All we did was implement the order that came from the top to examine everyone.

Project questioned

Observers from the overseas Uyghur exile community told RFA that while free health examinations could benefit inhabitants of the region who might not otherwise have access to health care, the vast expenditure and mobilization of resources, as well as the forced nature of the checkups, raised serious questions about the program.

The Uyghur people must pay special attention to these examinations, said Enver Tohti, a U.K.-based Uyghur physician.

Such a large-scale collection of Uyghur biological information by the Chinese government threatens the very security of the Uyghur people and the survival of the Uyghur race.

Tohti called on the United Nations World Health Organization to request an explanation from the Chinese government regarding the reason behind its examination project.

Earlier this week, rights groups and academics said Chinese authorities in Xinjiang are carrying out mass collection of DNA from individuals not suspected of any crime, with New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) noting that police had already gathered samples from 44 million individuals on a nationwide database, collected without oversight, transparency, or privacy protections.

"Authorities have stated that the DNA databases are used for solving crimes, including terrorism and child trafficking, as well as to identify bodies and vagrants," the group said.

Chinese police in Xinjiang have required all passport applicants to submit DNA samples since November 2016, while police agencies have issued multimillion dollar tenders for the supply of gene sequencing equipment, HRW said.

Leaked tenders by regional governments have said biometric information is being gathered as part of China's nationwide "stability maintenance" regime targeting peaceful critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the exile group World Uyghur Congress, called the policy part of an overall policy of ethnic profiling of Uyghurs by the Chinese government.

China regularly conducts strike hard campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.

While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.

Reported by Eset Sulayman, Gulchehra Hoja, and Jilil Kashgary for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by Alim Seytoff and Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

Original post:
Uyghurs Forced to Undergo Medical Exams, DNA Sampling - Radio Free Asia

The unsolved slaying of Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik in Baltimore in 1969hit another dead end Wednesday when police learned that DNA from a long-deceased priest did not match crime scene evidence that Baltimore County policehave preserved for almost five decades.

In February, police exhumed the body of the Rev. A. Joseph Maskell, the former chaplain at Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore, where Cesnik had taught. Years after Cesnik disappeared in November 1969, and her remains were discovered in the Lansdowne area of Baltimore County in January 1970, a number of women came forward and accused Maskell of sexually abusing them while they were students at Keough. Two of the women sued Maskell, the high school and the Archdiocese of Baltimore in 1994, but the suit was dismissed because ofan expired statute of limitations. Maskellbecame a suspect in Cesniks death but denied any involvement to police. He died in 2001.

[Decades after a nun was slain, police exhume a priests body. This cold case is Netflixs latest mystery.]

The death of the popular Sister Cathy is the subject of an upcoming documentary series, The Keepers, to be released Friday on Netflix.

Baltimore County police said Maskells DNA was sent to Bode Cellmark Forensics in Lorton, Va., to develop a DNA profile. The profile was compared tocrime scene evidence and did not match, police said.

Maskell was not the first person whose DNA has been compared to the Cesnik crime scene over the years, Baltimore County police spokeswoman Elise Armacost said. She said detectives had obtained about a half-dozen DNA profiles and compared them to the crime scene. But so far, no matches. The DNA profile from the crime scene has also been placed into the FBIs national DNA system, also with no hits so far.

Cesnik, 26, was last seen at a shopping center in Baltimore City on Nov. 7, 1969. Another young woman, Joyce Malecki, 20, disappeared from a shopping center in Glen Burnie four days later and was found slain two days after that. And two 16-year-old girlssubsequently were abducted and killed from Baltimore area shopping centers in 1970 and 1971. All are unsolved. Armacost said police are still investigating whether the four killings might be related.

Women who say they were abused by Maskell have said that they told Cesnik of the situation, and she may have been preparing to confront Maskell. Cesnik had moved out of her Baltimore convent and left Keough earlier in 1969, teachingat Western High School and living in an apartment with another nun. One of the women who say they were abused by Maskell told the Baltimore Sun in 1994 that the priest took her to see Cesniks body in Lansdowne, to warn her aboutrevealing her own situation. The Archdiocese of Baltimore subsequently paid settlements to 13 women who alleged that Maskell molested them, lawyers for the women said.

Sister Cathy was a nun, Armacost said earlier this month. So the theory that she was killed because of something she knew in the Catholic Church was something weve been looking at. However, weve never proven thats why she was killed. So there are other theories we are looking at as well.

Following the disclosure that Maskells DNA was not a match, Armacost said Wednesday that Baltimore Countys cold case detectives would continue working the case. Their best hope for solving the case now, Armacost said, lies with the people who are still alive and willing to come forward with conclusive information about the murder. They are cautiously optimistic that the renewed, intense interest in the case may generate useful new leads and encourage people with solid evidence about Sister Cathys murder to come forward to police.Its possible that in the future new forensic technologies will provide new options for testing the remaining crime scene evidence, but for now we have reached the end of the road with forensic evidence in this case.

See the rest here:
Exhumed priest's DNA doesn't match evidence in case of 'Sister Cathy' slaying from 1969 - Washington Post