If shoes could talk

Investigators at crime scenes have long wished shoes could talk. Or T-shirts, a bed, a dog, or a tree.

New technology called STR Typing makes that wish come true to some degree, with resolution in elusive criminal cases more possible than ever before. DNA testing ferrets clues from the smallest T-shirt stain, the slightest hint left on a tree. It can travel back through time and analyze old evidence in new ways.

A program called CODIS links the state crime lab to a national database that looks for matching evidence between unsolved crimes and searches through DNA profiles on convicted offenders. Chris Beheim, acting director of the Alaska Department of Public Safety's crime detection lab, seemed pleased as he explained the extent of what mysteries can now be solved thanks to the technology. Eleven matches in two years have led to new information that moved cold cases forward.

"That's impressive," Beheim said, "considering Alaska's database isn't very old and does not contain that many DNA samples as yet." Alaska has 3,300 listings in its data banks while Virginia's, for example, currently contains 183,000 entries.

One case this spring involved an Anchorage woman abducted and brought to the Valley where she was sexually assaulted. She scratched her attacker, and blood in stains from her clothing was linked to DNA evidence gathered in two previous rape cases. A suspect was then arrested.

In another case, an Alaska woman was raped and murdered in 1995 by a man who fled in a van. It remained unsolved until DNA information in Alaska's database matched with DNA taken from a man convicted of murder in North Carolina. He was serving his sentence in jail and was required to give a DNA sample, which was then entered into the national database. But first police there contacted Alaska authorities to inquire about him because his van bore Alaska license plates.

"These guys travel around, and the database is connecting them from state to state," Beheim said. "Every year, the success rate for solving cases increases incrementally as more data is entered."

The database works on an oft-seen fact of police investigation: Criminals repeat their criminal acts. For instance, evidence left at a crime scene in Alaska matches with a similar act in Oregon because that's where the criminal went next.

Results help victims and families of crime victims find closure. Certain crimes also haunt those in law enforcement long after the case has to be set aside unsolved. Beheim's memory is long from 25 years at the crime lab, and he said he hopes to solve cases that continue to disturb him.

Using this DNA evidence is also cost efficient, saving investigators time by eliminating certain suspects, saving courts time by offering solid proof. And it's a deterrent, Beheim believes, because if convicted felons in crimes against people have to give a DNA sample, they aren't as likely to re-offend.

Under current state laws, those convicted of certain felony crimes must give a DNA sample, usually a mouth swab, which is then entered into the database. Suspects' DNA cannot be legally added to the data base unless legislators change the law, though states like Virginia that enter such data have high success rates for finding matches.

This year, the Alaska Legislature expanded the law to include those convicted of burglary. And rather than focus on entering suspects' information, Beheim would like to see the law extend to all felony crimes, such as drug-related offenses, because, nationally, states that have done so found significant matches in the traditionally "victimless" crimes with offenses that left victims.

It's

elementary

Alaska State Trooper detectives Sgt. Dallas Massie and Leonard Wallner agree the new technology helps. It confirms their findings that criminals don't alter their behavior by much, and that some come to Alaska and repeat a crime done in the Lower 48. "It's another tool we can use, and it can confirm the findings of an investigation," Massie said.

Yet, investigations still require the same mind and foot work of Sherlock Holmes' days. As a team gathers physical evidence that can be forwarded to the lab, the investigators continue to try to answer traditional questions when they work an investigation: Who, what, why, when and how?

"An event occurs and we look at the facts associated with that event. We view those facts, try to evaluate who could have done that and why," Massie said. "You have a starting point -- a body is found in the woods -- and you back-track to find out the victimology, who were his family and friends?"

Investigations work backwards through a chronology, and the best way to understand all possible answers is still the old-fashioned way: Discussion. Massie and Wallner talk a lot to each other when they have a complicated case, going on a team concept that one person might notice a detail that another missed. "One person might be good at interviewing, another person might be better at gathering evidence from a crime scene," Wallner said.

The pairing up of investigators remains a strong tradition even in this technologically-dependent era. Massie and Wallner have a long history together. They first met when Massie wrote Wallner a traffic ticket for speeding 15 years ago. Wallner wasn't a trooper yet, and he ended up beating the ticket at Palmer Court before Magistrate David Zwink. "It was our [Wallner and his wife's] wedding anniversary," Wallner said, by way of explanation.

"I still don't know how you beat that ticket," Massie chided.

Wallner joined the troopers in 1991, then the investigations unit in 1994. Massie became his mentor, he said. "I guess we kind of clicked. He has a lot of knowledge after 22 years on the job."

Other officers, such as Sgt. Dennis Ponder, also were instrumental as Wallner's partners through some of the most serious cases the department handled through the years.

They have no fancy rituals for evaluating crimes. There's no brandy-drinking or cigar chewing as they ponder the clues. It's just an older officer and a younger one often joined with other officers talking through a case.

Intuitive skills play as much a role in the process as any developed skill, the investigators said. They are reluctant to talk about current cases, but can give illustrations from the past. In the 1983 Robert Hansen serial murder case, for instance, certain "facts" didn't make sense. B-Detachment troopers were brought into the case after a woman's body was discovered buried near the Knik River. Massie, as a young trooper, located a spent shell casing not far from the body that eventually matched with Hansen's gun. But, early on, it was difficult to get investigation lined up for an arrest, he said.

"You don't want tunnel vision. You have to think outside the box," Massie said. In the Hansen case, which eventually linked him to more than 20 murders, most of whom had been strippers or prostitutes, the case was slow going even though the clues were there. A woman running from Hansen after being stripped and handcuffed so he could place her in his airplane was a sure witness, yet her ordeal wasn't initially linked by the Anchorage Police Department to the other missing women.

A trooper fish and wildlife officer, knowing Hansen was a suspect, decided to follow him every time he flew. That was one of the major breaks in the case, Massie said.

"You look into peoples' past, their past behavior. Don't listen to what they say so much as how they say it. Look at what they do," Massie said. "Hansen had been a suspect in an arson case. He stole a chainsaw from Fred Meyer even though he owned a bakery. It didn't make sense that he would steal it. There's a reason why, but it doesn't make sense."

Based on that kind of a reaction to known details, tenacity and the desire to keep investigating a case, resolutions are found. Hansen was convicted of murdering most of the women, and is serving a life sentence at Spring Creek in Seward.

Wasilla Police Chief Don Savage, who has 30 years in law enforcement mostly with the troopers and as former Captain of B Detachment, calls the intuitive side of investigation an "art" that compliments the science.

Science's new ability to firmly link suspects with crime scenes still depends on the intrinsic efforts of investigators like Massie and Wallner. It's all fine and well for the shoe to now be able to communicate clues; the officer is still the one who visualizes who wore the shoe and what happened to him or her.

Raising

the benchmark

One of the problems with newer, more refined DNA definitions that track suspects within one-in-one quintillionth of a match, may be that a "benchmark" is raised, Savage said. In the past, good police work gathering circumstantial and physical evidence led to solid convictions without the aid of highly developed science.

Current cases often are delayed by "lab issues," which means officers are waiting for the crime lab to confirm or dispute their findings. In most cases, the body of evidence points in a certain direction, yet an arrest is delayed because the new benchmark for proof is raised, Savage said.

After more than a century of sleuth work, fibers, hair and fingerprints still qualify within a body of evidence, he said. Prior to DNA breakthroughs, the fingerprint provided the best clue.

During the 1870s, the British surgeon Dr. Henry Faulds, published an article in "Nature" on one of the first discussions of fingerprints as a means for individual identification. He was credited for taking the first fingerprint from a greasy print left on an alcohol bottle.

A policeman in Argentina in 1891, working on fingerprint classifications developed by Charles Darwin's cousin Sr. Francis Galton, arrested a woman for murdering her two sons after proving she did it based on a bloody fingerprint. Mark Twain in 1883 made a fingerprint proof for a crime in "Life on the Mississippi," and it was rumored that Jack the Ripper investigators collected fingerprints from his casualties.

For the next 100 years, fingerprinting would become the most fool-proof method for matching a criminal to a crime scene. Today, Beheim said it remains a solid tool.

In Alaska, the kind of DNA typing called DQ Alpha led to Polymarker typing before STR typing was brought online in 1999. Advances in DNA technology have revolutionized the art of identifying biological evidence at the scene of a crime. But it wasn't until STR Typing that DNA data bases become possible today.

"DNA isn't the only thing we do," Beheim said. "Shoe prints, fire arms evidence, crime scene reconstruction, and fingerprints are still what solve a lot of cases."

"Technology is fabulous," Savage said. "You can look around the country and see how it has freed innocent people, too. These are wonderful advancements, but it doesn't replace good investigation, it only supplements and adds credibility."

Interviewing skills are probably the most important asset in collecting information, Savage believes. The criminal justice system still relies on what people see and hear. How a good interviewer extracts that information remains the same, he said.

In the 1980s, catching a child sex abuser largely depended on confessions. Even today, there is not likely to be physical evidence to firmly link in such cases, Savage said. And so the art of being an analytical, independent thinker, relating well to people in a successful interview, remain timeless tools. Officers good at interviewing people are generally compassionate, he said.

Staying in

the boundaries

For the future, law enforcement can continue to look at nationally standardized databases expanded even further. England's goal is to get the entire active criminal population in their database,

Beheim said.

In America, it's probably a reasonable goal to "take one step at a time," Beheim said. "We have privacy concerns. The civil libertarians are afraid the data will be misused. We need to make sure that the DNA

information is only used for law enforcement identifications and impose strict penalties if those are violated."

Names are not used in the data profiles, only case numbers. To find a named linked to a DNA entry, one would need to go to the case number. CODIS is a secure system that requires national security clearance, Beheim said, and there are only two computer stations in Alaska, both in the crime lab.

Alaska was 10th in the nation to upload STR profiles into the national data base. We beat out California, New York and Washington in entering the shared pool of information. Recently Washington and Oregon expanded to include all felony conviction cases. Florida has perhaps shown the most success in solving crimes from databanks, Beheim said, while Virginia also has an impressive record of more than doubling its number of matches between evidence and criminals each year.

Virginia has seen 920 "hits" or matches this year so far, Beheim said. Of those, they estimated that 86 percent would have been missed if they had not been able to include those convicted in all felony categories.

"We are doing some serious work here on DNA data," Beheim said. "The next step is to consider adding all felony convictions."

That would be a political decision, Wallner said. "It is an exciting tool. I've developed cases that I thought I had a good idea of who the bad guy was, and when DNA was tested, it exonerated the suspect. It works both ways, and that's the way it should be."