Posted on 07/11/2012 10:49:28 PM PDT by Irenic
Hopes of solving 2004 murder of aspiring actress dashed after DNA 'match' at Occupy protest caused by NYPD botched evidence
A mistake by an NYPD employee was to blame for the sensational DNA connection between the murder of Sarah Fox and the Occupy Wall Street movement, dashing hopes that after eight years her killer might finally be brought to justice.
It was originally thought that DNA found on a padlock chain dropped during an OWS protest this year matched that discovered at the 2004 murder scene of the aspiring Julliard actress.
However it is now believed that a worker at either the police crime lab or Medical Examiner's office, who handled evidence in both cases, botched the job.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Did the NYPD use this as a ruse to collect OWS DNA?
I bet this has put Sarha's family through the wringer.
About five years ago in Germany...the cops had put together this growing file of a number of murders across the German countryside....all tied to the DNA of one person. From one basic description at one single scene...their best guess was this was the work of one single female around the age of seventeen. She was killing someone every two to three months. At one point, a cop in some parking garage...was killed and the DNA matched up to the “phantom killer”. A task force was mounted and thousands of man-hours were put into the hunt.
Well..someone pulled out a DNA kit one day and just submitted it for DNA analysis (it hadn’t been used). Don’t how or why this occurred, but it did. It came back....identified to the “phantom killer”. So the cops were puzzled and went to the one and only factory where they got these DNA kits from.
To be honest, the swabs weren’t really connected to specialized DNA kits to start with. They were just regular swabs. The cops walk into the factory and notice a hefty German gal....probably in the heat of the summer....grabbing up a whole bunch of these swabs with her open arms. Obviously, her sweat would have gotten into the swabs, and they would have gone out into the world in neatly packed DNA kits.
The cops stopped buying their DNA kits from that company. Strangely enough....there were no more murders by the “phantom killer”.
It’d make a great movie, but the ending would be so lame...you’d start laughing and think it was all fictional. But it wasn’t.
Someone put on the ol' thinking cap.
That’s a great story!
I wonder what stories like yours and the Sarha Fox/OWS story will do for defense attorneys? It seems it could hurt DNA as evidence.
The whole NYPD story seemed suspect from the beginning, in my opinion.
They would have had to have collected DNA off 20 chains from March and 4 chains from November. The chains looked to be 4 ft-ish?
How did they decide what portion to swab of these 24 chains, did they swab all 24 chains? If not, why not?
If they only swabbed a few, why did they choose those few?
At first I was thinking it is awful expensive to do all that testing but after thought, maybe not? HOA’s test dog poop now, right?
But not knowing enough, I would guess testing dog poop is a little less complex than testing and probably amplifying what they would find on whatever areas of the chains.
Then there is the suspect they have who has suddenly returned from South Africa.
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-06-12/news/32199766_1_sarah-fox-tips-cops-murderer
If I am reading and understanding correctly, the NYPD collected DNA from OWS people under the guise of trying to catch a murderer/eliminate them.
This story seems like it will end up being a wonderful gift for defense attorneys, especially the ones in NYC.
Why would the NYPD really think they could get any value from DNA off the chains anyhow?
At the hardware store the chain is generally on a spool available for all to touch and fondle.
Kids love to roll it back and forth as their parents are shopping and an employee usually cuts the desired length of chain.
The chain was used in a mass transit area, where many people would have passed possibly touching or even sneezing on it.
The video provided of the chain being attached to the gates, showed a masked and gloved woman and with a man filming her (I assumed the filming man was a reporter of some sort). The other video was two people walking down the street, nothing could really be determined from that.
What value could the NYPD get from all this? Five seconds and a defense attorney would blow that DNA out of the water.
I think they wasted a bunch of money or it was just a way to trick the OWS punks into giving up their DNA.
Just goes to show, you never know where hefty Frau DNA is going to end up.
To point this out...because I’ve personally seen the results of OWS in the DC area...it’s a magnet for homeless people. Out of every hundred OWS folks standing around in an area...at least ten are homeless folks who just attach themselves to the group. This murder in NY? If there is a DNA match....it’s a pretty fair assumption that it relates to a homeless guy-killer within the group.
Reminds me of an incident near here back in the Clin-toon nightmare.
Two people were kidnapped, taken across state lines and had their throats cut.
A perp was identified, and packaged money seized.
The money was sent to the FBI crime lab to check the wrapping for prints.
The people at the FBI lab failed to read the instructions, and tore off the wrapper and discarded it. No wrapper, no prints, the perp walked.
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