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SOULFLY "Territory" live 10/05/13 @ DNA Lounge CAPITALCHAOSTV.COM
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SOULFLY "Territory" live 10/05/13 @ DNA Lounge CAPITALCHAOSTV.COM - Video

A malfunction in a DNA processing machine led to the scrambling of samples from 11 Denver police burglary cases, officials acknowledged Friday. It took more than two years for the department to discover the errors.

As a result of the mix-up, prosecutors are dismissing burglary cases against four people, three of whom had already pleaded guilty.

All four people had confessed to at least one burglary, but the DNA error meant they were charged with the wrong ones, Denver district attorney spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough said.

The problem caused evidence from one case to be tied to another. Authorities have since sorted out the samples, but prosecutors won't refile charges against the four people because the statute of limitations has expired. Two of the dismissed cases were against juveniles.

They will file charges in a fifth burglary case, against an adult who is already jailed on unrelated crimes in Adams County, Kimbrough said.

The mistake happened after an $80,000 DNA processing machine "froze" while running a tray of 19 DNA samples on June 13, 2011. An analyst in the city's crime lab then called the manufacturer, which supplied directions for putting the samples back onto the machine in the right sequence. Either the directions were incorrect or the analyst misinterpreted them, and the samples were replaced in the wrong order, said Lt. Matt Murray, the department's chief of staff.

The crime lab didn't suspect the possibility of an error until after the machine froze for a second time on Nov. 22, 2013, and an analyst again requested directions from the manufacturer. The analyst became concerned because the directions seemed different the second time.

Further review over the next month uncovered the earlier mix-up, Murray said.

"The samples were returned to the tray out of sequence," Murray said at a news conference to announce the error. "None of the DNA was compromised; it was merely associated with the wrong case when we were done."

Lab officials notified the police department of the problem late Thursday, he said. District Attorney Mitch Morrissey was notified Friday afternoon.

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Problem with DNA robot led to Denver police DNA mix-up

By Ryan J. Foley

A killer who was executed in Missouri for the 1987 murder of a 12-year-old girl was also responsible for a long-unsolved triple homicide in Iowa three years earlier, investigators announced Friday.

New DNA evidence implicates Andrew W. Six in the 1984 bludgeoning deaths of 20-year-old Justin Hook Jr.; Hook's fiancee, 19-year-old Tina Lade; and Hook's mother, 41-year-old Sara Link, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and Wapello County Sheriff Mark Miller announced.

"What we know for sure is that Andy Six is responsible," Miller said at a news conference at his office in Ottumwa, in southeast Iowa.

Missouri authorities executed Six, then 32, by lethal injection in 1997 for the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Kathy Allen. Six and his uncle kidnapped the girl from her family's trailer in Ottumwa, then slit her throat and dumped her in northern Missouri.

Retired DCI supervisor Sam Swaim said that Six was always a suspect in the 1984 triple homicide, but that investigators could not come up with enough evidence to charge him. He said that he was happy that scientific evidence has linked Six to the crime but wishes Six had been caught earlier.

"I regret that we didn't get that case solved. That would have saved Kathy Allen's life," he told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

Hook's body was found one day after his trailer was burnt down in rural Drakesville, a sleepy town of 200 people near the Missouri border, in April 1984. When authorities tried to notify Hook's mother, they learned that she was missing.

Days later, a farmer found her body on a hilly, wooded section of his property near Eldon, about 15 miles northeast of Drakesville. Two days later, police dogs found the body of Lade in a ravine a half-mile from where Link's body was recovered. Investigators said all three had been killed by blows to the head.

The discovery of the bodies shook the rural area with little violent crime. Hook had given Lade, of Ottumwa, an engagement ring days before their deaths on the birthday they shared, when she turned 19 and he turned 20.

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DNA links executed convict to 1984 murders

Charles Q. Choi

A well-known dolphin species, the clymene dolphin, arose from mating between two separate and distinct dolphin species, report genetics researchers.

Also known as the "short-snouted spinner dolphin," the clymene dolphin (Stenella clymene) grows to nearly seven feet (2.1 meters) long and dwells in deep waters in tropical and temperate parts of the Atlantic Ocean.

Evolutionary biologists have seen other such hybrid species elsewhere in the animal kingdom. The new discovery, reported in the journal PLOS ONE by a team led by marine biologist Ana Amaral of Portugal's University of Lisbon, adds to increasing evidence of such cross-breeding commonly leading to new species, even in the wide-open oceans.

Clymene dolphins feed mostly at night when squid and fish come to the surface of the water. The short-snouted dolphin gets its name from the ocean nymph Clymene of Greek mythology. (See "Dolphins Have 'Names,' Respond When Called.")

Researchers initially thought the clymene dolphin was a subspecies of the spinner dolphin (Stenella longirostris). However, in 1981, a closer look at the clymene's anatomy revealed it was a distinct species.

But experts remained uncertain about the clymene's relationship with its close relatives. Although its outward appearance and behavior are more similar to those of the spinner dolphin, its skull features closely resemble those of the striped dolphin (Stenella coeruleoalba).

DNA Analysis

To help solve this mystery, the study scientists analyzed skin samples from 15 clymene dolphins, as well as from 21 spinner and 36 striped dolphins. They collected the DNA from free-ranging dolphinsusing special tissue-collecting dartsand from dead, stranded dolphins.

The investigators looked at nuclear DNA, which is found in the cell's nucleus and comes from both the mother and father, as well as DNA from their mitochondriathe cell's powerhousewhich possesses its own genes and is passed down solely from the mother.

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DNA Discovery Reveals Surprising Dolphin Origins