Australia Claremont Serial Killer, 1996 - 1997, Perth, Western Australia - #20

[Akai]

<snip>
How many years was it before the Kimono and other evidence was sent off to the UK for DNA analysis?

<snip>

The link between KK and CG was reported in 2015, but I think I have read that police found the (previously) untested DNA on CG around 2009 after the Schramm review and that was when it was sent to the UK and came back a match for KK. I haven't been able to find the article about that.

I think the kimono was found as part of an examination of old evidence that police considered may be worth checking with new DNA techniques. I believe this happened around late 2015/early 2016 (piecing together information from various reports). I don't think the kimono was sent to the UK.

So we're looking at around 28 years with the kimono DNA.



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[Akai]

Oh Canning Vale what a dreadful experience! You know people should hear these stories of what goes on in some of these jury rooms. That poor woman who begged that other juror, the anguish she must have felt and the desperation! People's true natures come out when they get a "little bit of power" sometimes, quite frightening. It's the fact that 99% of people just don't care one way or the other about justice. It's a broken system, but it's the only one we've got.

I think the system just hasn't moved with the times. When it was developed evidence was testimony from people - witnesses, character, police interviews. The jury's job was basically to judge the truthfulness of what people were saying. So having twelve peers was quite sensible as it avoided a judge's bias (they generally came from the "ruling class"). I'm massively simplifying here, obviously.

It hasn't evolved with the development of new evidence techniques - psychologist insight, forensics, technology. I think the only real adjustment to juries has been the inclusion of people of colour and women, plus anyone over 18. Historically I think you had to be a white male who also owned property.

(Note this is about our Westminster system; I'm not talking about others.)

Of course there is the possibility of a judge only trial. I'm in two minds about this. On one hand the Claremont killings are highly emotive and a jury might be vulnerable to that emotion. On the other hand juries are unpredictable and as there is truckloads of evidence a jury might be more bamboozled by that. Plus I imagine the defense will consider possible appeals when making their decisions on trial strategy.




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[Canning Vale]

PD,

Regarding fingerprints many thanks for the link.

Perhaps some finger prints were obtained from the Huntingdale home. Like the door handles, windows or bedhead - if there was a bedhead. Though any fingerprints outside doesn&#8217;t actually prove he went inside.

 

[Spooks-R-Us]

I reckon the cop is holding up THE actual kimono. In 1988 DNA was a new science and so heavy protocols about 'protecting' the integrity of evidence probably didn't exist yet.

Let's hope the kimono DNA was from a semen sample on the fabric, and not just random hairs or skin flakes.

Even pics of cops sifting through dirt at CG's d-site in 1997 showed the cops NOT wearing gloves or hair nets. So obviously protocols protecting collection of evidence that we see today were still not common place in 1997 either.


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[Akai]

One of the more interesting forensic victories that I've seen is that in the Greenough/MacKenzie family murders.

A woman and her three children were brutally murdered. William Mitchell raped Karen MacKenzie using hand lotion he found in the bathroom. He took the hand lotion with him, but left a sticky palm and partial fingerprints in the hand lotion on the wall just near the doorframe. Mitchell was a friend of Karen's and had been at the house a day or so prior to the murder so he had reason for his fingerprints to be there. A forensic specialist spent weeks (maybe months) analysing the hand lotion samples to determine if it was the same lotion to connect the prints to the murder.

It is an episode of Murder Uncovered on Channel 7, which can still be found (I think) on their App.

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[Akai]

I reckon the cop is holding up THE actual kimono. In 1988 DNA was a new science and so heavy protocols about 'protecting' the integrity of evidence probably didn't exist yet.

Let's hope the kimono DNA was from a semen sample on the fabric, and not just random hairs or skin flakes.

Even pics of cops sifting through dirt at CG's d-site in 1997 showed the cops NOT wearing gloves or hair nets. So obviously protocols protecting collection of evidence that we see today were still not common place in 1997 either.


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You could well be right. I agree they didn't take precautions back then in the same manner, but it does show them wearing gloves at some points, so I'm hopeful they would have used gloves in this instance.

If not, the defense will have a field day. That would mean the kimono was handled by at least one other person, possibly multiple, and sat in evidence storage for decades potentially contaminated by other sources. It already has contamination issues IMO depending on how it was was found and where it came from, and whether they even know where it came from. Would seem quite easy to claim that any DNA samples including semen could have come from somewhere else (such as the unknown owner or owner's partner).

I actually think the kimono has issues regardless of whether police preserved it properly.

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[petedavo.au]

The link between KK and CG was reported in 2015, but I think I have read that police found the (previously) untested DNA on CG around 2009 after the Schramm review and that was when it was sent to the UK and came back a match for KK. I haven't been able to find the article about that.

I think the kimono was found as part of an examination of old evidence that police considered may be worth checking with new DNA techniques. I believe this happened around late 2015/early 2016 (piecing together information from various reports). I don't think the kimono was sent to the UK.

So we're looking at around 28 years with the kimono DNA.



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According to this a complete nDNA profile can't be recovered after such a long time span. Only mtDNA can, and that can't differentiate individuals, as it's shared on the mother's hereditary lineages.
View attachment cas_sample.pdf

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[petedavo.au]

You could well be right. I agree they didn't take precautions back then in the same manner, but it does show them wearing gloves at some points, so I'm hopeful they would have used gloves in this instance.

If not, the defense will have a field day. That would mean the kimono was handled by at least one other person, possibly multiple, and sat in evidence storage for decades potentially contaminated by other sources. It already has contamination issues IMO depending on how it was was found and where it came from, and whether they even know where it came from. Would seem quite easy to claim that any DNA samples including semen could have come from somewhere else (such as the unknown owner or owner's partner).

I actually think the kimono has issues regardless of whether police preserved it properly.

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According to this study, Semen degrades very rapidly, and samples must be collected within hours.

Doesn't a Spermatozoa itself only contain half of a donor's DNA, just like an unfertilised Ovum?

Seminal fluid on the other hand would contain a complete DNA profile of a donor, however is that included in this degradation chart?View attachment Davies and Wilson. The persistance of seminal constituents in the human vagina.pdf

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[Akai]

According to this a complete nDNA profile can't be recovered after such a long time span. Only mtDNA can, and that can't differentiate individuals, as it's shared on the mother's hereditary lineages.
View attachment 131457

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(I was just reading the PDF and looking for other information on mtDNA after I posted about the timeframe.)

That would explain the use of familial DNA. If the DNA they are referring to is mtDNA then that means the sample they collected could be anyone on the maternal side, tracing back through mother, maternal grandmother, maternal greatgrandmother etc. That's quite a broad canvas area, depending also on the size of families historically. They may have had someone in the database several steps removed from BRA that linked it to that particular family, and then worked from that point. That would also, I think, increase the possibility that they can use something like ancestry.com.

I am not sure about inter-agency collaboration for privacy reasons. I assume they would have to go to court to get permission to access medical records related to genetic testing, but maybe not if the person (for example, a grandmother) is dead.

That may also explain the links between the DNA on the kimono, KK and CG. Perhaps it is mtDNA not nDNA.





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[aequitas]

According to this study, Semen degrades very rapidly, and samples must be collected within hours.

Doesn't a Spermatozoa itself only contain half of a donor's DNA, just like an unfertilised Ovum?

Seminal fluid on the other hand would contain a complete DNA profile of a donor, however is that included in this degradation chart?View attachment 131458

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the article I posted today referring to another case contained an interesting face refgarding semen degradation. If a man ejaculates inside a woman, her body will break down it down quickly; however, if she is killed shortly after the man ejaculates, the degradation process does not occur and it is more likely preserved. It also allows forensic to figure sequence of rape and subsequent homicide. Interesting!!!

 

[Akai]

According to this study, Semen degrades very rapidly, and samples must be collected within hours.

Doesn't a Spermatozoa itself only contain half of a donor's DNA, just like an unfertilised Ovum?

Seminal fluid on the other hand would contain a complete DNA profile of a donor, however is that included in this degradation chart?View attachment 131458

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That raises an interesting question: did they only come across something on the kimono that they could test recently, or were samples taken at the time and they simply came across those to retest?

Normal cells are diploid, which means they have a pair of each chromosome. Spermatozoa's and ovum are haploid, which means they only have a single of each chromosome. It is still a full DNA profile (with the exception that spermatozoa only contain an X or a Y, not both).

I couldn't open the link to the degradation chart on either of my devices for some reason. I will keep trying.

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[petedavo.au]

I reckon the cop is holding up THE actual kimono. In 1988 DNA was a new science and so heavy protocols about 'protecting' the integrity of evidence probably didn't exist yet.

Let's hope the kimono DNA was from a semen sample on the fabric, and not just random hairs or skin flakes.

Even pics of cops sifting through dirt at CG's d-site in 1997 showed the cops NOT wearing gloves or hair nets. So obviously protocols protecting collection of evidence that we see today were still not common place in 1997 either.


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I don't think DNA had ever been used in a court case in 1988.
The FBI for instance had only started working on creating the first Codis database in 1996.
https://www.swgdam.org/publications

Therefore, I doubt if WA Police were sampling for nDNA back in 1988

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[Akai]

petedavo, I haven't been able to open your link, but I found it online separately. It seems to focus on spermatozoa.

However, this article talks about both spermatozoa and seminal fluid and seems to indicate that both are broken down at about the same rate: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4637504/#!po=21.7647


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[Canning Vale]

With regard to the familial DNA &#8211; I don&#8217;t understand all the high-tec lingo.

My understanding is certain DNA is either from the mother&#8217;s side (maternal) or from the father&#8217;s side (paternal). There&#8217;s been no mention of nieces and sisters. Is anyone able to expand but in layman terms? Pretty Please!

 

[Akai]

With regard to the familial DNA – I don’t understand all the high-tec lingo.

My understanding is certain DNA is either from the mother’s side (maternal) or from the father’s side (paternal). There’s been no mention of nieces and sisters. Is anyone able to expand but in layman terms? Pretty Please!

Sure, CV. I have the advantage that my father is a biologist!

Cells are made up of a number of components. All our cells actually contain two types of DNA: in the nucleus (nDNA) and in the mitochondria (mtDNA).

The DNA we typically hear referred to is the nDNA, which is our unqiue genetic fingerprint. This comes from our mother via the ovum (egg) and our father via the spermatozoa (sperm). They each contribute 50% of our nDNA.

Within the egg there is also mtDNA. (While there is also mtDNA in the sperm, this appears to be destroyed upon fertilization. This is an area of debate for scientists.) This means that the mtDNA is passed directly from mother to child, unmodified. mtDNA travels unmodified down the maternal side of any family.

To give an example: a woman has two children - a male and a female. They will both have her mtDNA. If they both have children, the female will pass the mtDNA to her child. However, the male's partner will pass the mtDNA to the child. So the child of the female child will have the exact same mtDNA as the original woman, but the child of the male child will not have any of it.

By contrast, the two children of the original woman will have nDNA that is comprised of 50% hers and 50% their father's. Their children will have 50% theirs and 50% their partner's. So both the male and female grandchildren will be only 25% of the original woman.

So if you have a sample of mtDNA you can connect it directly by following the maternal bloodline both forwards and backwards as far as you like. If you have nDNA you can follow it to parents, grandparents and potentially siblings, but it gets harder the further out you go.

I hope that helps!

(I realise for anyone reading this with a biology background that my language and percentages oversimplify genetics, but they are just being used to provide an overview and comparison.)

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[Akai]

I don't think DNA had ever been used in a court case in 1988.
The FBI for instance had only started working on creating the first Codis database in 1996.
https://www.swgdam.org/publications

Therefore, I doubt if WA Police were sampling for nDNA back in 1988

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In the US, DNA testing started in 1985 and the first conviction was in 1987.

http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1905706,00.html

Hard to say if this would have translated to WA by 1988. However, it might have. This article suggests that DNA testing was very quickly adopted in Australia for paternity testing. It's possible that translated to criminal matters around the same time.

https://tasa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Gilding.pdf


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[Frequant Flyer]

I've said this previously but in 1988 1989 the police were taking DNA samples , I know because they took mine , mouth swab , I had to give permission

I have no idea when they started using DNA in court cases , but they took them then , this was in WA

 

[lampformypath]

Lamp & CV, your experiences ring so true. I could comment and expand on each and every thing you both said without even touching on the many other aspects that never even register with half of your usual jury. Not to mention the games the lawyers play in disrupting proceedings and getting juries removed from the court room at critical times when they think they're "losing them", or when something is making their case look very sketchy. I wont even start on the way the police put things together to make them seem a certain way. They are the holders of the evidence & all the info afterall. Legislation or not regarding full disclosure, did it really exist if its not there and no one knows about it?
I'll say no more about that though except to say that sometimes it really is a case of whos lawyer tells the best story or who the jury gravitate towards for whatever reason.

The thing that really gets my goat about our imperfect system though, is the uproar you hear from all the armchair experts who have followed a case through media reporting only and who write letters of outrage expressing their disgust at the sentences handed down by the judges. Not only have they sat through the entire case, heard all the evidence, have the knowledge to know how to sift through the important parts and follow the strictest of guidelines that govern the laws of sentencing as passed by parliament & taking into account all the precedents previously set - apparently, they're the ones who are out of touch! Thats mind blowing.

Thank you so much Noname, it seems everyone has a horror story of being on a jury or knowing someone who was. Let's pray for more judge only trials, like you say, they really do know how to sift the wheat from the chaff, or should that be the *advertiser censored* from the bull? (That's an old saying by the way, I'm not being rude - "*advertiser censored* and bull story" meaning:

an implausible story used as an explanation or excuse.)​

 

[lampformypath]

Interesting, but there's no hint of it in the media. However you might want to consider this:

How many years was it before the Kimono and other evidence was sent off to the UK for DNA analysis?

Extract from the attached PDF>


So if there's a long time between collecting the sample and analysis then on mtDNA can be recovered?

So a cousin would have the same mtDNA if their mothers were sisters? As would a sibling, the mother, the aunty, and cousins in that scenario? Interesting. So it might be possible to have two or more people in samples, however the testing couldn't tell them apart, and so one might not know?

If I'm reading this document correctly, and it's not out of date as far as technological abilities to recover nDNA from old samples, or to differentiate individuals from mtDNA.View attachment 131423

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Oh WOW Petedavo, what a tangled web that mtDNA is? Absolutely fascinating! DNA - maybe it stands for Don't Know Anymore?

 

[lampformypath]

I think the system just hasn't moved with the times. When it was developed evidence was testimony from people - witnesses, character, police interviews. The jury's job was basically to judge the truthfulness of what people were saying. So having twelve peers was quite sensible as it avoided a judge's bias (they generally came from the "ruling class"). I'm massively simplifying here, obviously.

It hasn't evolved with the development of new evidence techniques - psychologist insight, forensics, technology. I think the only real adjustment to juries has been the inclusion of people of colour and women, plus anyone over 18. Historically I think you had to be a white male who also owned property.

(Note this is about our Westminster system; I'm not talking about others.)

Of course there is the possibility of a judge only trial. I'm in two minds about this. On one hand the Claremont killings are highly emotive and a jury might be vulnerable to that emotion. On the other hand juries are unpredictable and as there is truckloads of evidence a jury might be more bamboozled by that. Plus I imagine the defense will consider possible appeals when making their decisions on trial strategy.




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Terrific post Akai! Exactly what I was thinking about how out of their depth people feel with all the latest technologies etc. and how it is such an ancient method that has not kept up with the times. Agree totally about the good ole Westminster System and the ruling classes. Women on the jury? What?? Next thing they'll be wanting the vote and wearing trousers, ha ha! And people of colour, and younger ones, never!! I was amazed how close we all sat to the accused, just across what wasn't a large room with a very low wooden partition not even waist high around him and one lonely and seemingly disinterested guard, who was a bit on the scrawny side. Let's just say it didn't make any of us on the jury feel particularly "safe" either!