DNA question

I'm not sure what you mean, Karen. What wasn't done?

I don't know when others heard about DNA under fingernails matching that in the panties, but the first I read about it was at the Swamp, and as a general rule, I don't believe anything that comes out of that one's mouth until it's been verified by credible resources. I think we sometimes forget that very little has been said by the BPD investigators about the evidence. So much of what we've heard has been spin by the RST, and that's a fact, folks.

If you've ever been a jameson watcher (sort of like watching a train wreck, I know), then you know she sometimes changes her stories. In the days when I was keeping track of her tomfoolery, I noticed she would state something as fact in a huge way, then later on she would downplay her own words, but in a much smaller way.

How many times did we hear "the DNA under her fingernails matched the DNA in her panties?" I read that ad nauseum at the swamp (and, of course, from the liar mame, who said there was "flesh" under her fingernails, LOL). Yet, not so long ago, when I was still bothering to read there, jameson Bennett herself said there were only two or three readable markers in the DNA under her fingernails.

Come on, people, did we just fall out of a tree, here? They had to really struggle to get 10 loci of the CODIS-required 13 loci on the alleged foreign DNA in her underwear. CODIS criteria calls for 13 loci to be used in the identification process. Now, I suppose they could use those 10 loci to match against someone's DNA, but I don't know how far anyone would get in court with that, since the regulations read 13 loci for identification. But, I digress.

Common sense tells us that if the crusty old gunk under JBR's fingernails yielded 2 to 3 markers of someone else's DNA (or was it just stutter?), how on earth could those 2-3 markers prove a match to anything? What are they really saying - that the 2 or 3 markers were the same or similar to 2 or 3 markers of the 10 markers they were able to pull out of the panty DNA? How is this a match? That DNA was so old, they couldn't pull out any more than 2 or 3 markers.

What does it mean? It means that JBR did NOT, as the RST likes to claim, "get a piece" of her killer. It means that she did NOT gouge her neck trying to get the ligature off. It means there was no flesh under her fingernails. It means the RST took that old, degraded DNA and twisted it to "match" the DNA in her underwear.

This is just an example of why I do not trust anything that comes from the RST, and that includes the unbelievably Ramsey-biased Lou Smit. He, along with the DA's office in Boulder, both past and present, did this case nearly insurmountable damage with their twisted logic.

In short, no one except the RST would ever call degraded DNA with 2 or 3 legible markers a match to DNA with 9 or 10 legible markers. It is not only unscientific, it is ludicrous.

 

Oh WY I just was wondering if you meant a "full strand of DNA WAS NOT developed ." I think you've anwsered my question in other posts tho. Thanks!

 

It is ludicrous, and it's totally unscientific, but most people don't understand that. They saw the "teasers" for the TV show and the articles and they are willing to buy it, which was the only point in releasing the "new facts".

What's the old saying "A lie repeated enough times becomes the truth?"

What really gets me is that some of the same people who believe this is a "good" match were unwilling to believe that OJ Simpson's DNA could possibly match the DNA left at the murder scene of his wife. (I can't remember how many markers matched, but it was a good match).

 

The blood DNA left at the scene of Nicole Brown's and Ron Goldman's murders belonged to OJ Simpson. There was absolutely no doubt about that - the DNA was a match - all the identifying markers were there. The jurors in that case chose to believe the police planted all that evidence in spite of evidence that they could not have done so. Simpson is a double, cold-blooded murderer, not to mention one of the biggest as$holes ever to walk the face of the earth.

Then, there's the Molesterfield supporters like the holier-than-thou Susan jameson Bennett. They are of the ilk who believe whatever supports their own mangled logic. In the Ramsey case, they choose to believe an intruder killed JBR and left his calling card in her underwear in the form of degraded DNA. They don't get that any DNA that is in that underwear cannot be dated to the night of the murder, and they don't get that DNA will NEVER identify any perp, because it has nothing to do with the murder.

However, in Danielle's death, her blood was found in Molesterfield's motorhome - the same motorhome he left home with after Danielle went missing. There was never any doubt it was Danielle's blood DNA, but the same people who insist that an intruder left DNA in JBR's underwear that night are the ones who claim no one can put Danielle in the motorhome when we was kidnapped. IOW, she could have left that blood there at any time, so there is no proof she was in the motor home during the period she was missing. Nevermind that no one ever saw Danielle in that motorhome prior to the time of the kidnapping and subsequent murder.

I don't know why some people are hell bent on twisting facts to their own causes, but we have all seen how they do it. Maybe it has something to do with things that have happened in their own lives - maybe they don't like or trust law enforcement; maybe they just hate cops, period; maybe they have a little bit (or more) of the criminal element in their own characters; maybe they are plain stupid; or maybe they just identify with criminals. I don't know why, but I do know they get on my nerve.

 

In the Jeffrey McDonald case, the defendant was an upstanding medical doctor, green beret, and good-looking white guy. The prosecution didn't have DNA yet, but they had four different blood types in the crime scene, three from the victims and one from the defendant. The evidence against McDonald was overwhelming, but the prosecutor feared that the jury would still side with the attractive defendant. To handle this, the prosecutor told the jury - "If I prove to you that he did this, then I don't have to prove to you that he could have done it." And McDonald, who's out on TV again these days saying he's innocent, was convicted.

(The OJ Simpson case was about something beyond the murder of the two poor souls killed in Brentwood - at the trial prosecutors proved that he did it, but the jury was never going to believe that he could have done it.)

With this case, so many of the "intruder people" seem to me to be influenced by the status of the Ramseys. Hey, even the Ramseys themselves might believe they couldn't have done it. And Alex Hunter was never going to stand in front of a jury and say what the McDonald prosecutor said, because he doesn't have the courage. He's actually the person in this case who seems to me the most vulnerable to the "could have done it" problem - the most interested in status, the most egotistical (plea-bargaining every case instead of having citizens sit on juries) and, I have recently learned from this site, perhaps financially vulnerable.

Some questions in the light of all this evidence - are any Colorado entities currently investigating the JonBenet Ramsey death? Was the Keenan intruder statement the last thing the DA is ever going to say? Has there been any feedback on the petition?

Since I've been reading this site, I've become even more convinced that a terrible injustice is being done.

 

Wombat, Mary Keenan is all show and no go. There is no money in her budget this year for the JBR case. There's nothing being done in the case. Period. However, she does not want anyone else coming in and investigating the case.

If an outside, truly impartial, investigative team is ever assigned to reopen that case, they will have to wear gas masks as they peal back the putrid layers of corruption since the very beginning. Keenan will work hard to keep that case buried. She has to - she's part of the corruption.

 

The Ramsey Crime Scene....

Despite all of the man hours spent and all of the detectives and forensic investigators who have worked on the Ramsey murder and who have gone over and over the DNA evidence collected from that carefully combed scene, all that has ever been found are two old, degraded, partial strands of DNA which can be easily explained as having come from the manufacture of the clothing JonBenet wore or picked up innocently from her everyday life....

It has never been proven that those old, incomplete, and degraded strands of DNA were related to JonBenet's murder....Even one of the most premier and astute forensic scientists of our time, Dr. Henry Lee, has emphatically stated that this is not a forensic case....

What is most damning to the senior Ramseys and points to the residents of the Ramsey home as the perpetrators, is the LACK of foreign DNA .....If an intruder was indeed the murderer, and in their home for hours writing the ransom note, moving JonBenet from her bedroom to the basement, torturing, molesting and murdering this child then surely he would have left one hair, one finger print, one tiny bit of siliva.....Something of himself behind....

Why is there nothing left behind, if as the Ramseys claim, he was in the house for hours while they were out having a Christmas celebration at the Whites, awaiting their return? Because an intruder was never in the Ramsey home....The DNA and other forensic evidence in the home and at the crime scene is from the Ramsey family....What could be more damning evidence than the exclusion of all other fresh and usable DNA?

Voyager

 

You're right, Voyager. It's not only the lack of DNA, it's the lack of any forensic evidence whatsoever pointing to anyone outside the house. I've heard some say that the lack of evidence isn't evidence. Well, yes, it is. If an intruder was in that house for hours on December 25 and into the wee hours of the morning on the 26th, there damn well should have been plenty of forensic evidence showing he was there - fibers, hairs, fingerprints, a ton of debris from that basement window he supposedly squirmed through - debris that would have clung to his shoes, clothing, hair - not to mention fibers and hairs he should have left in that cubby hole of a window well.

Bah - it's all BS. They got away with murder. But, that doesn't mean they aren't guilty as hell.

 

Watching You and Voyager,

You've both mentioned something that has become so crystal clear to me that I feel like repeating it.

There is no evidence of an intruder in that house. The only evidence is of the people who lived in that house. So when all of this degraded and tiny bits of DNA first became known or public the Ramseys through their paid for spokeperson, Woody, had to jump on that band wagon because there was no other evidence except theirs. So the longer and louder Woody proclaimed that the DNA was that of the killers the more they all believed it to be true. They had to hammer it home bcause there was nothing else. And now that that so called evidence of the degraded DNA has been shown to be of no value the Ramsey camp still has to hammer it home as if it were the thing that will set them free. The old saying: The lie repeated often enough becomes the truth is very much in evidence here.

 

Does it also follow that since there's no real non-Ramsey DNA at the crime scene, that the Ramseys didn't really have too many close friends? Despite the social whirl Patsy allegedly lived in, and how many people were in the house over the holidays, there's no traceable foreign DNA.

Or would that support their ridiculous case by saying that visitors didn't leave DNA so the intruder wouldn't either.

I don't know - can DNA be expected to be found around the house, like on light switches or doorknobs?

 

I don't know that anyone can say there was no traceable foreign DNA anywhere in that house, because there is no way all the surfaces in the house were tested for DNA. They collect visible evidence, such as blood and saliva evidence, anything connected to the immediate crime scene, such as her body, where her body was "found," etc. If there were visible blood drops on the staircase, they would have collected those blood drops, but they don't swab every inch of a home hoping to find foreign DNA.

We all shed millions of dead skin cells and hairs every day - it's in the dust on our furniture and vacuumed from our carpets. Just walking through a home is not going to leave a significant amount of DNA. However, if someone cuts himself and uses a tissue or washcloth to wipe the blood, there's foreign DNA. If some slob spits somewhere in the house, there's foreign DNA. If someone sheds a hair in the house, there's foreign DNA.

Sweeping a floor and hoping to find foreign DNA is folly. It's not going to happen, even if a hundred people have tromped through the home, because any skin cells shed are indiscernable and not of a sufficient quantity to be tested.

In the case of an intruder who has been inside a home for hours, though, there should be something left of him there. The person(s) who killed JBR and staged the crime scene had close and personal contact with her and items in the home. During that time, hair should have been shed, fibers should have been shed. The debris from the window well should have been transferred from the intruder throughout the house. Leaves and dirt stick to clothing. In all the moving about this alleged intruder supposedly did, why not one iota of debris from that window well inside the house?

In fact, if there were going to be DNA anywhere, that window well would be a good bet. It's rough concrete, tight quarters - a good combinatioin for scrapes and getting hair and clothing caught. Yet, there was nothing there.
It's so simple. There was no intruder.

 

I should have known better to post when I am half asleep.
I know it was OJ's blood. There were 2 things that the defense claimed though (and I heard from people at work who "bought" both of them).
#1 was the claim that OJ's blood had been removed from the blood tubes collected from OJ and planted in the evidence.

#2 was the "match"; not whether the markers matched OJ's blood, but the odds that they matched OJ and only OJ. The prosecution came up with something like a 1 in 7 million chance that it could also match someone else. The defense came up with a smaller number (I can't remember if they were saying 1 in 10,000 or less), but even if it was a one in 10 chance, OJ still was the one who had the shoes, the gloves, the chance and the motive to do the crime.
Some of the people I know though who thought that was enough of a "reasonable doubt" believe in the intruder theory for JonBenet. THat was the point I was trying to make. It doesn't make any sense.

 

If I recall

In the OJ case, the defense based their scenario of police planting OJ's blood on the deposition of the person who collected his blood. They asked him how much blood was in the syringe and the tech made an estimate. Later it was shown there was actually maybe about 3 cc. less in the syringe than estimated and viola!, the police must have used the rest of that blood because it was "missing". The lab tech had a heart attack and was recovering from open heart surgery during that portion of the trial and couldn't testify that the first number was just an estimate and that there was no blood missing. Even if there were 3 cc. missing, there is no way 3 cc. could make up the amount of drops of OJ's blood that was found. Blood on the gate, blood in the Bronco, blood on his socks, blood on the sidewalk.

At the time of the trial I did a little experiment and I think I got 16 drops of water out of a 10 cc. syringe. Water is thinner than blood so I would expect fewer drops of blood to come out. Now if you consider that allegedly there were only 3 cc. missing you could only plant about 4 or 5 drops of blood at the max. The prosecution didn't do a good job, imo. They certainly could have countered the blood being planted if they would have tried.

 

Texan,

your recall of that most infamous case is excellant...the OJ case. I too, followed it daily because I lived in Los Angeles County at the time and had my pick of about 14 TV channels to choose from. I sure used the remote during that time...and also I had just retired so I had the time.

But I must comment on your "drops". There are many sizes of drops...such as from a needle vs. the end of the syringe without a needle or from the tube that the blood is in.

And yes, that lab tech just estimated the amt and then all the hoopla started from there. Actually 3 cc's is a considerable amt in a standard test tube of blood when collected from a person. It is usually the standard amt that is collected in one tube at each blood draw. ...So to be missing that amount is kind of strange. But to have allowed the tech to only give an estimate and then go on it was very strange. Several of my co-workers and I wrote to the DA's office at the time explainting it to them.....believe it or not! We got no reply however. We were all in the business of drawing blood all day long and had a good grasp of what we were talking about at that time. (Before my retirement that is)

 

Well, then, we're back to the big question - at least it seemed to be a big question, except to the jurors - how did the cops plant Simpson's blood on the sidewalk at the murder scene, and how did they plant drops of his blood in the driveway (oh, that's right, he cut his hand on his cell phone, LOL), and how did they plant a mixture of OJ's, Nicoles, and Goldman's blood in the Bronco while Simpson was still in his hotel in another city? They hadn't even drawn Simpson's blood; yet, the blood drops were witnessed by many, before OJ's plane even touched down in California.

Oh, wait, all the cops and witnesses were lying because they were trying to frame Simpson - they were trying to frame him WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING WHERE HE WAS THE NIGHT BEFORE. Simpson could have been at a party with dozens of witnesses - the cops would have looked pretty silly trying to frame him without even knowing if he had an alibi or not. The jurors must not have thought about that.

And, why would they? Why would the cops who sucked up to Simpson in the past now want to frame him for Nicole's and Goldman's murders? What would be the motivation? It made no sense then, and it makes no sense now, and all I do is make myself crazy when I think about how the prosecution not only messed that case up but also how that jury was so bent on ignoring overwhelming evidence of his guilt. Cochran gave them unreasonable doubt, and they ran with it. That's not the way it's supposed to work - the criteria is Reasonable Doubt, not Unreasonable Doubt.

 

Well WY,

at this very late date I didn't think I would be discussing the OJ case again but here is my take on the whole thing. I think there were some bloopers made by the forensic team but none of them were a case killer. ANd I didn't think the prosecution did all that badly either.

What I believe killed the whole case was the simple yes or no question that Mark Furhman was asked. And when he answered (lied) and said that he had never used the racial slur "N" the case went South. That is it in a nut shell for me. And the peculiar thing of all of that is that in the Brown Family there was no such thing as racial anything. They all loved OJ and his being black was the farthest thing from their mind. They had all lived with that marriage for over 15 years. So race did not play into it as far as the Brown family was concerned. It was that stupid jury that was led to believe that racial everything was at fault and that is why they did not convict. Race played no part in these murders. It was the act of a jealous ex husband who was spying on his wife. Johnnie Chochran had to do something to free his client and when the chance came up to use race he took it and made the absolute most of it. He knew that the evidence was overwhelming against OJ. And he also knew how to play the race card. That was the whole case to him once they got Furhman to lie because of his huge ego.

Can you just imagine for a moment if only Furhman had said yes he had used the racial slur where we might be with that case. Wow! OJ in jail for life. And the entire case, the entire case was doomed because of that simple answer. :flipper:

 

the prosecution

could have attempted to salvage the case by pointing out that Fuhrman had actually done some investigating ( I believe it was done on his own time also) and helped free a black man who was wrongfully accused of murder.

I had only read about the missing 3 cc. being in a 10 cc. syringe but of course it is usually in a test tube. I can see that there would be varying sizes of drops.
Maybe I should do some more experimentation but with blood this time.

I think WY is right though - the evidence was collected before OJ got back to town, with the exception of the blood drops on the back gate which were found later. The cops also would have been stupid to try to frame OJ before they knew if anyone else's DNA was there too. It would look funny to have maybe blood from a dude involved in a drug cartel (the defense's silly theory) and also OJ's planted blood.

 

The unidentified DNA in JonBenet's underwear has always perplexed me. From my understanding it was male, a mixture of blood and saliva, contained only three markers, and was mixed in a 1/2 inch spot of her own blood in the crotch area. The only way I can think of for there to be a mixture of blood and saliva is due to a finger injury. What is the first thing you usually do when you cut your finger? You bring it to your mouth and suck on the wound. JonBenet's underwear had been pulled back up to her waist and whoever did this had to have used his or her fingers to do so. Therefore, I would expect for this unidentified DNA to be also found on the waistband area of her underwear. I hope this makes sense. (My apologies if it doesn't.)

 

Not quite correct. It has been stated that the foreign DNA #might# be from saliva and the most up to date official statement we have about it is that it may not be the killers and that it is so miniscule that it could have been from a cough or a sneeze. It has not been suggested anywhere that the foreign DNA might be blood. The blood was JonBenet's.

Nor is it only 3 markers. They have 9 good markers and a 10th weaker one which has enabled it to be run against the CODIS database. You may be confusing this with the fingernail DNA. I believe that 1 marker was obtained from one hand and 2 markers from the other hand (making a total of 3). This is too weak to be of much use. I certainly don't think they can claim a match from such a degraded sample.

One of the annoying things about this case is that the Ramsey camp have been putting out a lot of misinformation about the case. Recently they claimed they had a complete DNA sample and they have also claimed that the fingernail DNA "matched" the panty DNA sample. Tom Bennett then broke his 2 year silence to say that the DNA may NOT be the killers and that it could indeed have gotten there during the manufacturing process. There has never been an official statement to say that the DNA samples "matched". I think if they did match, the Official Investigators would have cleared the Ramseys and would not have made a statement saying that it could have gotten there during manufacturing.

 

I still do not understand (nor am I convinced it's the truth) how CODIS accepted DNA with 9 decent markers and 1 weak marker, when the criteria for acceptance into CODIS is 13 markers. 9 + 1 = 10 the last I heard, and 10 does not equal 13.

What I suspect happened is Keenan and her mousy crew of "investigators" asked CODIS to check those 10 markers against their data base, even though the resulting chances of a "match" might be 1 in 1,000 instead of 1 in 1 billion.