Category Archives: Transhuman News

CORAL SPRINGTS, Fla., Feb. 25 (UPI) -- The murder of a 20-year-old south Florida woman 23 years ago has finally been solved because of improvements in DNA technology and procedures, police say.

However, the suspected killer was executed in 2011 for a 1989 triple murder, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Tuesday.

Ivelisse Berrios-Beguerisse was found naked and asphyxiated in November 1990 in a Coral Springs neighborhood three hours after she left work at a Broward County mall. Investigators gathered genetic evidence, said cold-case investigator Dan Cucchi, but the technology at the time was less sophisticated than today. Additionally, there was no database of DNA from convicted criminals with which to compare it.

Cucchi and his partner, Brian Koenig, were assigned the case in August. They asked for DNA evidence collected more than two decades to be retested.

The DNA matched Oba Chandler, convicted in 1994 in the rape, strangulation and killing of Joan Rogers and her two teenage daughters in St. Petersburg.

He was executed by lethal injection three years ago.

Chandler's DNA was collected when he was convicted, four years after the death of Berrios-Beguerisse, but "it's just that we didn't have a profile from our victim's rape kit at that time," Cucchi said.

In the interim, forensic technology also changed.

"Back in 1990, rape kits and the DNA collection process were not the same but now it's way more advanced," the detective said. "You can actually take a smaller sample and through the new technology they can develop potential profiles and suspect DNA, where in the past they could not."

Koenig said he and Cucchi are also examining other cold cases that might have similar evidence.

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Better DNA technology helps Florida police solve 23-year-old murder

Authorities in Florida say they have solved the 23-year-old mystery of a woman's strangulation death in Broward County and linked the crime to a convicted killer who was executed in 2011 for a triple murder.

DNA evidence identified Oba Chandler as the suspect in the murder of Ivelisse Berrios-Beguerisse, who was found dead in a quiet Coral Springs neighborhood on Nov. 27, 1990, police said Monday.

Dan Cucchi, a cold case detective with the Coral Springs Police Department, told the Sun-Sentinel that the original investigators on the case had gathered and processed DNA samples without much success because the technology was less sophisticated and a database with criminals' DNA did not exist at the time.

"Mr. Chandler, when he was convicted in 1994, that's when his DNA profile would have been entered into the national database, so it was in there in that time period," Cucchi told the newspaper. "It's just that we didn't have a profile from our victim's rape kit at that time."

Chandler was convicted in the rape, strangulation and killing of a St. Petersburg woman and her two daughters. He was executed by lethal injection in 2011 at the age of 65, the Sun-Sentinel reported.

Berrios-Beguerisse was last seen leaving work at the Sawgrass Mills mall. Her husband went to the mall and called police after finding her 1985 Ford Tempo with two slashed tires, the report said.

Her body was found three hours later with ligature marks on both wrists and ankles and brown packing tape stuck in her hair, Cucchi said.

"Back in 1990, rape kits and the DNA collection process were not the same but now it's way more advanced," Cucchi told the newspaper. "You can actually take a smaller sample and through the new technology they can develop potential profiles and suspect DNA, where in the past they could not."

Cucchi andfellow detective Brian Koenig were assigned the cold case last August and asked the Broward Sheriff's Office Crime Lab to perform tests on the DNA samples again.

If Chandler were still alive, he would be charged with the strangulation death of Berrios-Beguerisse, police told the Sun-Sentinel.

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DNA tests solve 23-year-old Fla. murder case

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) -

A DNA analyst took the stand in the trial of a man police said killed three people in Mecklenburg County.

Justin Hurd is accused of killing Kevin Young, Kinshasa Wagstaff and Jasmine Hines in 2008. Detectives said Hurd and another man tried to cover up the triple murder by burning down the home where the victims lived.

On Monday a jailhouse snitch testified Hurd confessed.Justin Hurd has been in jail since 2009 when he was arrested in Ohio and accused of the triple murder In North Carolina.Two jailhouse mates testified.The second one was still on the stand Tuesday as defense lawyers attacked his credibility.

"You started out your interaction with Mr. Hurd by saying I'm facing life in jail but nonetheless he picked you as a confident," asked defense lawyer Alan Bowman of Louis Misenheimer.

"No we started out playing basketball together," said Misenheimer.

Misenheimer also said that he was hoping to have his sentence reduced in connection with his testimony that Hurd told him he was involved in the killings.

Prosecutors transitioned the focus back to hard evidence and prepared to introduce DNA collected by the lead investigator, detective Phillip Rainwater, who went to Ohio and described to the jury the man he met.

"The second subject from the left side at that table wearing black jacket, striped silver black tie, white shirt, beard, glasses," said Rainwater pointing at Justin Hurd.

For a long time the defense and prosecution argued about whether Rainwater could tell the jury Nate Sanders, the man prosecutors said worked with Hurd to kill the three people, was dead and was murdered. Defense lawyers said if the information is openly shared they want the jury to be aware another man is accused of the killing and indicted.

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DNA expert takes the stand in triple murder trial

Originally published February 24, 2014 at 12:43 PM | Page modified February 25, 2014 at 5:43 AM

Federal health regulators will consider this week whether to green light a provocative new fertilization technique that could eventually create babies from the DNA of three people, with the goal of preventing mothers from passing on debilitating genetic diseases to their children.

The Food and Drug Administration has framed its two-day meeting as a "scientific, technologic and clinical" discussion about how to test the approach in humans. But the technique itself raises a number of ethical questions, including whether the government should sanction the creation of genetically modified humans.

The FDA panel will hear from several prominent critics who oppose any human testing of the approach, arguing that it could be a slippery slope toward "designer babies," -- in which parents customize traits like eye color, height and intelligence.

But the field's leading U.S. researcher will be on hand to explain and defend his work, which he describes as "gene correction," rather than "gene modification."

"We want to replace these mutated genes, which by nature have become pathogenic to humans," says Dr. Shoukhrat Mitalipov, who will present on Tuesday. "We're reversing them back to normal, so I don't understand why you would be opposing that."

The FDA meeting was prompted by Mitalipov's research at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, where he and his staff have produced five healthy monkeys using the DNA-replacement technique. He is seeking FDA approval to begin testing in a handful of women who carry defective genes that can lead to devastating diseases in children, including blindness, organ failure and epilepsy.

An estimated 1 in 5,000 U.S. children inherit such conditions because of defective DNA in their mitochondria, small energy-producing organs found in the cell. Unlike most DNA -- located in the nucleus of the cell -- mitochondrial DNA is passed along only by the mother, not the father.

The experimental technique, if approved for use, would allow a woman to give birth to a baby who inherits her normal nucleus DNA but not her defective mitochondrial DNA.

To accomplish this, researchers would remove the nucleus DNA from a healthy female donor's eggs and replace it with the nucleus DNA of the prospective mother. After fertilization, the resulting child would inherit the mother's nucleus DNA -- which contains most inherited traits like eye color and height -- but the donor's healthy mitochondrial DNA.

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Making baby with DNA of 3 people: FDA weighs new technique