03-05-2011, 04:49 PM
(03-05-2011, 12:25 PM)EastCoastKat Wrote: This is long, sorry...
There are many reasons for giving up your DNA, my sister disappeared in 1983 and it took us over 19yrs.....
Sometimes police will get a DNA hit because of familial DNA, a close family member, also. That may have been what happened in Mich. to the guy in prison??
Wow, Kat, what a terrible story. I'm so glad that you had resolution and found out what happened. What awesome detectives, too. So many families go through that and never find out. The stats at The Center for Missing and Exploited Children are MIND BOGGLING. The numbers of missing people is just staggering and many of these go back decades.
Of course, I would consent to DNA testing in a situation like that. What I was saying is that I would not give it up unless absolutely necessary and I wouldn't want it in some data base. There's a lot more going on with DNA collection than catching criminals but that's another subject. Suffice it to say that I am very suspicious about it and I value privacy.
On that Michigan case, once again: DNA testing was done 30 years after the murder. It matched a guy sitting in prison. That guy was a little child when the murder occurred and lived in another city. He could not have been the killer. I think the DNA was recovered blood from the victim's nylons. The only thing that I can think of to explain it is that the lab was sloppy and mixed up DNA, or some adult in that little kid's life killed the victim. Even then, they were claiming it was his blood. How would the blood of a little child have gotten on her nylons?
This doesn't mean that I don't think DNA testing is a good thing. It's been used to free many innocent people from death row and it has convicted killers. It's the kind of thing, though, that tight controls need to be put on. The FBI was exposed for sloppy lab work and a technician who falsified evidence. I don't recall if that evidence was DNA but it's something to think about. Chain of custody is lost, imo, once your DNA goes to a lab because people can and do lie or just screw up.