DNA evidence

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For the First Time, Tree DNA Leads to a Conviction

Timber poacher Justin Wilke gets 20 months

(Newser) - DNA evidence is now solving crimes against trees as well as crimes against people. Justin Andrew Wilke, ringleader of a group of timber poachers that operated in Washington state's Olympic National Forest, was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison earlier this week after the first federal trial to...

DNA on Beer Cans Helps Solve 25-Year-Old Murder

Kenneth Stough Jr. is accused of killing a convenience store manager in Orlando in 1996

(Newser) - A discarded Budweiser beer can has led authorities to a man accused of stabbing a convenience store manager 73 times in 1996. Terrence Paquette, 31, was preparing to open the Lil' Champ Food Store in Orlando, Fla., before 6am on Feb. 3, 1996, when he was gruesomely attacked, per KIRO...

The Paintings Remain Missing, but Authorities Say There's DNA

Nils M has been charged in the Netherlands

(Newser) - His resume fits: a Dutch man identified as Nils M spent five years behind bars in connection with the 2012 theft of a 17th-century church vessel from a museum whose doors he blasted open. Prosecutors allege he struck again following his release. The 59-year-old was arrested in April and stands...

Detectives Charged With Perjury In Wrongful Conviction Case

Three homicide detectives are accused of coercing a confession and lying about it in court

(Newser) - A man who spent 25 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of murder was set free after his second trial in 2016 cleared him. Now, a grand jury has indicted the three Philadelphia police officers who put him away in the first place and tried to keep him in...

DNA Evidence Solves Crime, This Time With a Twist
DNA Evidence Solves Crime,
This Time With a Twist
in case you missed it
Jul 17, 2021 8:31 AM CDT

DNA Evidence Solves Crime, This Time With a Twist

For the first time, tree DNA was used in a federal criminal trial

(Newser) - That prosecutors used DNA evidence to convict a criminal isn't too surprising. But in this case—a first—the DNA came from a tree, reports the Seattle Times . A jury in Tacoma, Wash., convicted 39-year-old Justin Wilke last week of illegal tree harvesting in Olympic National Forest, per the...

Mom Arrested in Newborn's Death, 14 Years Later

Another cold case helped along by DNA evidence in 2007 homicide in Pennsylvania

(Newser) - "Baby Mary Anne" would have been 14 this year, had she not been killed as a newborn and dumped in a trash bin at a Pennsylvania YMCA. Now, justice may be around the corner, thanks to DNA evidence that has helped along yet another cold case. PennLive.com reports...

DNA Cracks 65-Year-Old 'Lovers' Lane' Double Murder

The presumed killer, Montana native Kenneth Gould, is dead

(Newser) - The children of a Montana native who died almost a decade and a half ago have learned the man with no known criminal history was in fact a double murderer. It wasn't a skeleton in the closet, but rather genetic genealogy that supplied the shock. Since 1956, detectives have...

California to Review Infamous Murder Case

Death row inmate Kevin Cooper has long maintained in his innocence in 1983 slayings of 4 people

(Newser) - A wish has been granted to death row inmate Kevin Cooper, a Black man convicted of quadruple murders in 1983. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order Friday calling for an independent investigation into the stabbing deaths of Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica, and 11-year-old neighbor...

Australia to Try to Solve One of Its Greatest Mysteries
Australia to Try to Solve
One of Its Greatest Mysteries
in case you missed it
May 23, 2021 1:25 PM CDT

Australia to Try to Solve One of Its Greatest Mysteries

Somerton Man's remains exhumed in hopes of creating a DNA profile

(Newser) - Australian authorities are hoping to get to the bottom of one of the 20th century's most intriguing cold cases : that of the still-unidentified Somerton Man, a suit-clad, 40-something man who was found dead on a beach near Adelaide—possibly by poison—on the morning of Dec. 1, 1948. Now,...

DNA Ties Man to 1995 Murder of Bridesmaid in His Wedding

Clayton Foreman is accused of killing teacher Mary Catherine Edwards in Beaumont, Texas

(Newser) - Thanks to DNA evidence, an Ohio man has been arrested and charged with murder, 26 years after a woman who served as a bridesmaid in his wedding was brutally killed in her Texas townhouse. Mary Catherine Edwards, a 31-year-old teacher who lived alone in Beaumont, was last seen on Jan....

DNA to Be Tested Decades After Warmus' Conviction

Killer spent 27 years in prison for killing her lover's wife in 1989

(Newser) - Prosecutors in New York have consented to DNA testing of evidence from the 1992 trial of so-called "Fatal Attraction" killer Carolyn Warmus, who was paroled two years ago after serving 27 years in prison for the murder of her lover's wife. Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah consented...

4 Years After His Execution, New Evidence Raises Doubt

Profile of unknown male found at murder scene in Ledell Lee case

(Newser) - Ledell Lee maintained his innocence even up to the day of his execution in Arkansas in 2017. Now, new tests on DNA evidence from the 1993 murder scene lends support to those still trying to clear his name, reports Complex :
  • The tests turned up the profile of an unknown male
...

Burglar ID'd Thanks to Bite of Sausage

It only took 9 years

(Newser) - German police say they have solved a nine-year-old burglary after DNA found on a half-eaten piece of sausage matched that of a man detained in France over an unrelated crime, reports the AP . Police in the western town of Schwelm said Thursday that the sausage belonged to the victim, and...

DNA Solves 1999 Cold Case Hospital Slaying

Cops used a public genetic genealogy database

(Newser) - The 1999 murder of a 23-year-old Colorado woman whose body was found wrapped in plastic in the stairwell of the hospital where she worked has finally been solved. Per Fox News , Colorado Springs police announced Wednesday that they finally found the man who murdered Jennifer Watkins over two decades ago,...

DNA Leads to Mother's Arrest in 2003 Slaying of Twins

Woman decided no one would know about boys' birth: police

(Newser) - Cook County sheriff's detectives watching Antoinette Briley waited for her to finish her cigarette. She dropped it, and they picked it up, giving them the DNA sample they needed. Briley, 41, is now charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her two newborn twins, WBBM...

DNA Slavery Study Yields Suprises
DNA Slavery Study
Yields Surprises
NEW STUDY
Jul 24, 2020 12:20 PM CDT

DNA Slavery Study Yields Surprises

More enslaved people came to the US from Nigeria than previously thought, researchers say

(Newser) - Using historical records has been the most traditional way to shed light on the dark stain of slavery in the United States. Now, per new research that the Scientist calls "the largest DNA study to examine African ancestry in the Americas," gene analysis is helping put more pieces...

Killer IDed in 38-Year-Old Cold Case, but He Won't Go to Prison

Harold Warren Jarrell, suspected of murdering 8-year-old Kelly Ann Prosser in Ohio, died in 1996

(Newser) - In September 1982, 8-year-old Kelly Ann Prosser was abducted while walking home from school in Columbus Ohio, then beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled to death. Her body was discovered in a field two days later, but her killer was never found. Now, nearly four decades later, authorities say they have...

Neighbor Arrested 40 Years After Calif. Woman's Murder

Philip Wilson, 71, identified via familial DNA, accused of killing 20-year-old Robin Brooks

(Newser) - Since 1980, Maria Arrick has hoped her sister's killer would be caught. A day before the 40th anniversary of Robin Brooks' rape and murder, police in Sacramento, Calif., apparently found their man. Brooks' 71-year-old former neighbor, Philip Wilson, was arrested at his Sacramento home on Thursday and charged with...

1963 Killing May Be Solved— but Suspect May Not Be Alive

Authorities have been searching for months with no luck

(Newser) - Margaret "Peggy" Beck was serving as a counselor for the first time at a Girl Scout camp in Colorado on the night of Aug. 18, 1963, when her tent mate got sick and went to the infirmary for the rest of the evening. So Beck, 16, was alone in...

How 29-Year-Old's Arrest Led to Alleged 'Pillowcase Rapist'

Authorities believe Robert Eugene Koehler was building a 'dungeon' under his Florida home

(Newser) - More details are trickling out on a Florida man police believe raped more than 40 women in the Miami area over a five-year stretch in the '80s. In a Thursday presser, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said the DNA of registered sex offender Robert Eugene Koehler has been...

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