From 1985-88, a serial killer targeting young black women ravaged the greater Los Angeles area. After a failed attack in November 1988, the murders, connected by DNA and ballistics evidence, stopped.
Fourteen years later, they began again. Police officials believe the attacker from the 1980s returned to claim three more victims from 2002-07. Nicknamed the "Grim Sleeper" because of the long hiatus between crimes, a suspect, Lonnie David Franklin, Jr., was finally identified this year before his July 7 arrest in Los Angeles. Franklin was charged with 10 counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.
Authorities used the DNA of his son, Christopher, whose DNA police had on record because of his prior felony conviction, to identify Franklin. This complex process has not been widely used in the United States, adopted thus far only in California since 2008 and Colorado since 2009, said Gail Jaspen, chief deputy director of the Virginia Department of Forensic Science.
But now, Dan and Gil Harrington - parents of Morgan Harrington, the Virginia Tech student who was abducted and slain last fall after leaving a concert at John Paul Jones Arena - are making a push for the testing to be available in Virginia to spur on the search for a suspect in their daughter's case, Gil Harrington said yesterday.
"Familial DNA testing is a process used in an attempt to identify a close blood relative - typically a parent, child or sibling - of a perpetrator in a crime when the DNA profile of the specific perpetrator is not identified in a routine search of a DNA databank," Jaspen said.
This past Saturday, the Harringtons made a road trip from their hometown of Roanoke up to Fairfax, Va. Painted on the outside of their car was a composite sketch of the suspect. Forensic evidence links Harrington's case to that of a 2005 rape case in Fairfax, the victim of which survived and gave a physical description to police officials.
"We were surprised to get to Fairfax and find - after distributing copies of the sketch in the park that abuts the Fairfax Police Station - that two people in the park thought they saw this man," Gil Harrington said. "Obviously, it could have been somebody else ... But it validated our reasons to keep shaking the tree."
But "shaking the tree" using familial DNA evidence is a controversial investigation practice because it uses someone potentially not involved with the crime to find the real suspect.
"[The testing] has been met with some privacy concerns because its purpose is to identify someone who is not believed to be a perpetrator of a crime, but someone who might provide an investigative lead," Jaspen said. "Essentially, this investigates innocent people."
These investigations, Harrington said, are legitimate inquiries that could provide valuable breakthroughs.
"DNA can be submitted for cause, for suspicion," she said. "Virginia collects DNA for felony offenses but does not submit it to databanks unless there's a conviction. There might be a DNA sample on somebody's evidence shelf from the last five years that has never been submitted in between Charlottesville and Fairfax."
The state has started looking into the possibility of incorporating the technique in its investigations. Next Monday, the Virginia Department of Forensic Science will make a presentation about familial DNA testing to the Virginia State Crime Commission.
"We don't know which seeds will bear fruit, but we want to keep dropping them," Harrington said. "Perhaps it's a long shot, but one worth checking into, if not for Morgan's case, just to have the ability to cross-reference DNA is very valuable."
Harrington argues that advances in DNA testing should be embraced by investigators.
"America's system of justice and culture is so based on the individual and should be reevaluated," Harrington said. "The law is slow, but technology is going mighty fast."
Next week, while Dan Harrington attends the Virginia Department of Forensic Science's presentation, his wife will be across the Atlantic Ocean in Zambia, dedicating a wing of a school named after their daughter.
"Morgan wanted to be an educator," Gil Harrington said. "Although she can't do that, there will be many kids taught in her honor"
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