From your link *thank you*:
“Absolutely,” said Sheriff Mike Chitwood, when asked Wednesday if the DNA result and Hayes being the suspect surprised him.
“When they got the profile back months before, I got a heads up from the detective who told me ‘there is where we are going and by the way the guy is a black guy I am like they told us it was a white guy!’ ” Chitwood said.
“I think it’s a shame because that blinded a lot of people, including the police, to be looking at a certain person that was not there,” said Aneesah Farris, the niece of Iwana Patton. “That detail (the profiled suspect’s race) put people off the track.”
“It was more bothersome and shocking to me to find out that he was a young college student than him being black or white and that he was from my alma mater,” Farris said.
“At the end of the day for me, a killer is a killer,” Farris said. “They found the killer regardless of his race.”
“My aunt would never date a kid,” Farris said. “He must have done something, maybe like dress in a way, to get my aunt’s attention.”
“My aunt was not a prostitute. She was a caregiver — a nurse assistant and medical technician,” Farris said of Patton. “She devoted her life to care giving and her family. Our family has been through so much and we’d like her to be remembered for who she truly was and it was not a prostitute.”
“They had him in hand at one time and I can’t tell you anything about what interviews transpired,” Chitwood said. “I can tell you it’s an absolute legitimate question that that profile factored into the questioning of somebody and he was automatically written off because he was a black male.”
“When he goes down to South Florida, it is interesting to note that there is no DNA from having sex,” Chitwood said. “He changed his modus operandi. He got rid of the firearm, he went to strangling victims.”
“To really get down and dirty to strangle somebody there it takes 12-20 minutes to start to strangle somebody completely to death,” Chitwood said. “So imagine, the force, the rage, the anger that’s in there, the closeness with that when you are strangling somebody as opposed to just pulling gun and shooting them.”
“Oh yeah, even I believed (it was white killer),” Chitwood said.
“I don’t think profiles normally are on target,” Chitwood said, saying profiles are an investigative tool. “I think when you go back and when you look at the BTK killer, and you look at the other killers where they used profiles, they were an assist but I think when you went down and checked out the boxes I don’t think they were right 50% of the time.”
“It’s not uncommon to not get everything right,” she said. “It’s more of a tool to help with suspect prioritization.”
Hoffacker stressed: “You should never discount a suspect because he doesn’t fit into one of the demographics.”
Error in Daytona serial killer profiling? Arrest of black man surprises
