Monthly Archives: January 2014

Unsealed court records reveal yet another surreal twist to the continuing saga of convicted "Stocking Strangler" Carlton Gary.

This twist involves the same issue uncovered this past November when prosecutors revealed a DNA test appearing to clear Gary in the Oct. 25, 1977, rape and strangling of Martha Thurmond was the result of laboratory contamination.

The same DNA profile developed from the Thurmond evidence showed up on a BB gun found after a 2011 shooting in Atlanta's Morningside neighborhood.

The suspect in that shooting, Michael Christopher Lloyd, does not match the DNA found on his BB pistol. Now 32, he was born three years after the last of the seven serial killings that occurred here between September 1977 and April 1978.

Lloyd deepened the mystery when he told Gary's lead defense attorney he regularly kept the pistol in a 1970s-era surplus Army flak jacket he'd bought -- raising the possibility old cells in the jacket rubbed off on the gun.

Defense attorney Jack Martin's conjecture was that the jacket once belonged to a soldier stationed at Fort Benning back in the 1970s, who may have been involved in the stranglings.

But Martin said prosecutors claim the gun's DNA profile comes from the same Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime laboratory "control sample" that tainted the Thurmond evidence. The sample is a known DNA profile technicians use to test their equipment.

The defense motions mentioning the Lloyd case were filed July 6, 2012, but were sealed from public disclosure while authorities investigated the match.

Muscogee Superior Court Judge Frank Jordan Jr. ordered the documents unsealed this past December.

They tell the story of two Atlanta men who had a long-running feud that led to the shooting. William Paul Garey, now 60, a resident of Greenland Drive, east of Atlanta's Piedmont Park, had sued Lloyd and got a restraining order against him.

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DNA profile from Gary case turns up in Atlanta shooting

Published: Saturday, Jan. 4, 2014, 9:00p.m. Updated 8 hours ago

DNA from criminal suspects arrested in Pennsylvania could be put into a state computer database if law enforcement interests trump privacy concerns during the upcoming legislative discussion.

The state House of Representatives is considering Senate Bill 150, which would require police to collect a DNA sample from suspects arrested for any felony and for misdemeanors requiring registration as a sex offender. The legislation has touched off a debate that pits individual privacy concerns against a desire among law enforcement officials to track potential offenders.

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, said his proposal would put Pennsylvania on par with more than two dozen states that have expanded their forensic DNA databases in hope of solving more crimes.

It's not a question of if, it's a question of when, he said.

Pennsylvania collects DNA from individuals convicted of felonies.

Andy Hoover, legislative director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said Pennsylvania's proposed expansion might not withstand legal scrutiny.

It's questionable whether or not something this broad would be constitutional, he said.

Patrick Livingston, a Pittsburgh-area criminal defense attorney with about 30 years of experience, said DNA collected upon arrest could be jumping the gun. No burden of proof would be required before the DNA was taken, and it could be used in court as evidence in a way that otherwise may require a warrant, he said.

It raises, in my mind, a lot of administrative headaches in the garden variety case that gets reduced or dismissed, he said.

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DNA registry would help solve crimes, police, prosecutors say

BATON ROUGE, -- Officials say DNA results prove a Louisiana man is the father of an infant found dead in a garbage truck in 2002 and he now wants to give a statement in the murder trial of the girl's mother.

Matthew Crane, a 30-year-old Baton Rouge man, told The Advocate that he didn't know his ex-girlfriend gave birth in December 2002 until she was arrested in January 2012.

The child was buried as Christine Noel Love, the name given by a private group called Threads of Love, which provided a funeral.

Crane wants to give his daughter the name Cecilia Noelle Crane, and make a victim impact statement in the criminal case of JoAnn King, the child's mother.

Police say King admitted throwing the infant into a trash bin, probably the day after she was born. Garbage truck workers discovered the baby Dec. 6, 2002, dangling from a ripped garbage bag in the back of the truck

King, 30, of Baton Rouge, is charged with second-degree murder and faces a Feb. 10 trial date. She is free on bond.

Her court-appointed attorney, Fred Kroenke, said Friday that King is "totally and completely remorseful and incredibly sad." He has said previously she wants to atone "more than anything else in the world."

District Attorney Hillar Moore III confirmed that the results proved Crane to be the child's biological father.

"I always felt in my heart that I was the father to the child ... but this long wait has been torturous," Crane said. "Finally, knowing the results, I can proceed with appropriate actions and, hopefully, find closure in the process."

Crane, who described this as a "very difficult time" for his family and said he hopes its privacy will be respected, conceded that his only recourse is to let the justice system run its course.

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DNA proves man is father of dead child

A Kiwi backyard invention is changing crime scene investigations around the world. For the first time, police can take samples that contain more than one person's DNA and unravel the strands.

Among the crimes it has been used to solve was a multiple-homicide in Australia, where a spot of blood found at the killer's house contained blood from several of the victims.

In Nelson, it was used to solve an arson case where an unexploded incendiary device was found at the scene of a forest fire. The handle of a shopping bag found inside the device yielded a mixture of DNA.

Another case, in the United States, proved a soldier rolled a jeep despite his claim it had been stolen from him. A shoe found at the scene contained a mixture of his DNA and another person's.

In the past all this evidence would have been discarded. Mixed DNA was useless DNA. There was no way to separate out the strands of genetic code. But now, with a tool developed in the "backyard" of some Kiwi scientists, the problem that has long stymied international forensic scientists has been solved.

The software, called STRmix, has already been sold to the US Army, and the FBI is in talks to acquire the rights.

Institute of Environmental Science and Research scientists John Buckleton and Jo-Anne Bright, in collaboration with Duncan Taylor from Forensic Science South Australia, developed STRmix using standard mathematics and "Monte Carlo processes" - sampling thousands of different possibilities and using chance "many, many times".

The program was put into case work in August 2012 and has since generated "enormous international interest", Buckleton said.

In many cases of sexual assault, particularly those involving more than one offender, any DNA recovered was often mixed. "We had no tool that could interpret mixed, low-level strains. Uninterpretable DNA was put aside - the report goes out as inconclusive."

The tool works in seconds for simple cases or up to days for complex cases. It currently can separate four strands.

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New Kiwi crime tool unravels mixed DNA