DNA Questions, "Touch DNA" & "Familial DNA"

Now look what you made me do! I was trying to give this up.

 

THIS IS INTERESTING!
http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?CMP=KNC-YahooPI

sORRY. gO DOWN TO THE MIDDLE RIGHT HAND SIDE AND CLICK ON THE DNA STORY. IT's a good short video on the advances of DNA and crime fighting.

 

I was reading this again. You have analyzed this scene so well, DeeDee.

 

Thanks. I do try to go through all the steps the perp would have done in my mind. When you do that, the Rs web of lies becomes even more pronounced.

 

Quote:
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=6 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=alt2 style="BORDER-RIGHT: 1px inset; BORDER-TOP: 1px inset; BORDER-LEFT: 1px inset; BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px inset">Originally Posted by Elle_1
I was reading this again. You have analyzed this scene so well, DeeDee.

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A good way to attack it, DeeDee. I like to think of the actual scene too!
There's one scene which doesn't add up with me, and that's Patsy Ramsey coming down those stupid spiral stairs and finding the ransom note. Ridiculous!

 

Well, I think most realize that didn't happen anyway. No intruder would leave a note there- especially a SFF who wouldn't know the family routine. An intruder would have left it in the place they took the child- the place her parents would look for her in the morning- her bedroom.
LHP was the one who told police that PR always left things on the spiral stairs for her, specifically PR left her handbags there for LHP to clean out. So PR was in the habit of putting things on those spiral stairs. It was the first thing that popped into her head when she had to say where she "found" the note.

 

This is a little O/T but I just have to say I cringe every time I read this little fact about Miss Patsy. Doesn't asking the "housekeeper" to do this seem to be a bit beyond the her work duties? Yet Patsy seemingly had no problem asking LHP to do this. This isn't part of "housekeeping" IMO, and I think Patsy was treating LHP just as a Southern Belle would treat the "help".

 

Absolutely! I think asking your housekeeper to vacuum out your handbag is above and beyond what most housekeepers would be willing to do. And it doesn't surprise me in the least that PR asked her to do it. Regardless of how friendly PR was to LHP or LHP's daughter Ariel, to PR she was "the help".

 

Putting the note on the stairs was one of the many HUGE blunders the stager made. Another possibility is that claiming to have found the note on the stairs was a conscious attempt on Patsy's part to implicate the housekeeper LHP who knew of Patsy's routine to use these stairs.

 

People who have money to burn very often have this attitude toward their housekeepers or cleaners. I've beeen at the receiving end of such an attitude myself, having cleaned homes for quite few years as a student (when it was paid work, I did a better job than in my own home ).
Their wealth gives them the feeling of being entitled to all kinds of "servants" around the house like (gardeners, nannies, cooks, cleaneres etc).

At first glance it sounds odd that these people often confide so much in their housekeepers. Patsy for example gave LHP insights into details of her sexual relationship with John. IDIs often claim that LHP made this up, but I myself have made the experience of these people indeed often pouring out most intimate info to their housekeepers. Divorce battles, custody battles, sexual prowess of (ex)spouses or lack thereof, worries about their children, marital problems with philandering husbands - just some examples of what I have heard from them.

My guess is they feel safe in telling these things to people they consider as so much lower in the social hierarchy than themselves.
For admitting problems or weaknesses to a "rivaling peer" is often far more difficult.
I'm convinced that with her "Merry Wifes of Boulder" club, (Roxy Walker, Barbara Fernie, etc), Patsy presented herself mostly as Patsy Perfect ("everything is great, no problems, wonderful life, fantastic, superachieving kids .....). Her bragging Christmas letter is a typical example.

Imo LHP got to see far more of the real Patsy beneath the mask of Mrs. Perfect. No surprise that the Ramseys fought tooth and nail to prevent the publishing of the housekeeper's book.

 

Patsy was still wearing her tiara and lording it over the help. Good grief, how lazy can you get, not tidying up your own handbag (?). What a character she was, playing the Beauty Queen to the hilt.

According to Linda Hoffman Pugh, little JonBenét Ramsey was quick to pick up on this behaviour. Little JB never spoke to the housekeeper in a nice manner.

 

http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/world-news/2009/03/26/phantom-killer-a-myth/police-track-DNA-of-cotton-bud-maker-for-two-years.html



Police in Germany hunted a sinister phantom killer for two years after finding the same DNA at 39 different crime scenes - only to discover that the source was a woman who made the cotton buds used to collect the sample!


But there was no progress, despite investigators finding her DNA at so many crime scenes.

The police were stumped. They eventually offered a 300,000 euro reward to find the killer.
It's no surprise the money was never claimed, however, because the so-called ‘phantom killer’ was a complete myth!

Detectives had apparently been tracking the DNA of a factory worker who packaged cotton buds used by the police to collect samples, according to ‘Stern.de’

Police linked the 'killer' to seven murders.
The most notorious case was in April 2007 in Heilbronn where a 22-year-old policewoman was shot dead and her colleague (25) seriously injured. On the back seat of the police car, detectives found what they thought was DNA from the mysterious killer.
As part of the investigation, 800 previously convicted women were questioned - but there was no match to the sample.
Her DNA was found over and over again: in bottles, tank lids, on bullets – and once even on a biscuit!
Traces were found in southern Germany, Austria and France. Thousands of saliva tests were taken but there was still no answer.
In April 2008, detectives ran out of ideas, so an internal inquiry was launched.
And yesterday Bernd Meiners, a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in Saarbrucken, revealed: “There are considerable doubts about the existence of the ‘phantom killer’. The DNA has instead been linked to investigation materials.”
An employee at the cotton bud manufacturer has apparently been pretty careless!
According to reports, the maker of the buds is a company in Hamburg, with branches in Baden-Wurttemberg and the Saarland as well as Austria and France.
The company has been supplying the police investigators with cotton buds since 2001.

 

The case is currently making huge headlines here. And oh, how did they hunt for that alleged 'ubiquitous phantom woman killer' in the media before!
It looks like instead of applying Occam's razor (look for the most probable explanation first), they went on a wild goose chase here.

 

From Delmar:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7966641.stm


'DNA bungle' haunts German police
Police investigating the murder of a police woman in 2007
This 2007 murder was believed to be the work of the phantom killer

Police in Germany have admitted that a woman they have been hunting for more than 15 years may never have existed.

Dubbed the "phantom of Heilbronn", the woman was described by police as the country's most dangerous woman.

Investigators had connected her to six murders and an unsolved death based on DNA traces found at the scene.

Police are now acknowledging that swabs used to collect DNA samples may have been contaminated by an innocent woman - possibly during manufacture.

'Serial killer'

Police suspected the unnamed woman of being a serial killer who over 16
years carried out a string of six murders, including strangling a pensioner.

She was alternatively called the "woman without a face" and the "phantom of Heilbronn" after the city in southern Germany where she allegedly killed a policewoman.

Police suspicions were based on traces of identical female DNA they found at 40 crime scenes across southern Germany and Austria.

After finding her DNA at the scene of the murder of a 22-year policewoman from Heilbronn in 2007, police offered a 300,000 euro reward for information leading to her arrest.

However, police did not come any closer to identifying their most-sought
suspect.

First doubts

According to prosecutors in the south-western town of Saarbruecken, doubts about the existence of the "phantom killer" were raised when her DNA appeared on documents belonging to a person who had died in a fire.

When police first tried to identify the victim, they found the phantom's DNA on the dead person's ID. But in a subsequent test, no trace of the phantom's DNA could be found on the document.



It shouldn't have happened Ulrich Goll, Justice Minister for Baden-Wuerttemberg

That was the point at which alarm bells started ringing and investigators
began to suspect that the test material itself may have been contaminated with DNA, prosecutors say.

Police in the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg are now
investigating if the cotton buds used to gather DNA at the crime scenes may have come in contact with DNA before being packed.

Thousands of cotton buds are being tested for contamination and workers at the cotton buds factory are being asked to give DNA samples.

'Very embarrassing'

The justice minister for the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Ulrich Goll,
believes the case is now closed. He thinks the DNA found at the scene of the crimes is probably due to contamination at the factory.

"It shouldn't have happened," he told a regional radio station said.

"The investigators are not to blame. They can't tell if a cotton bud has DNA sticking to it."

The state interior minister, Heribert Rech, wants to wait until the
investigation is finished. "Hasty conclusions are misplaced," he said.

The head of the union of police officers in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Josef
Schneider, also wants to wait until the results of the investigation are
published.

However, he admitted that "if the trace does belong to a woman working in the factory, it'll be very embarrassing".

 

This DNA business really causes confusion, rashomon. If there was a class anywhere near me, I would attend it.

 

Ella, I wish I had paid more attention in my biology class way back when we learned about DNA ...

I've just watched the 22 p.m. news here in Germany - they have identified the source of the unkown DNA: it is a female worker employed in a firm where the cotton buds were packaged.

 

Yes, this is what the articles were more or less saying, rashomon, I'm glad it was confirmed.

You probably didn't know way back then, you would be posting on a criminal board years later. Neither did I (?) However, it's never too late to learn more about a subject.

"Watching You" has posted a lot of great information here, and I am going to go over her posts. again. She is very knowledgeable on the subject of DNA, having worked for a DNA expert. I wish I had her brains when I'm trying to understand it all. I seriously do want to know more, but I want to hear it from the horse's mouth. Know what I mean. I may search the net for a good DVD on it.


http://www.forumsforjustice.org/forums/showthread.php?t=6573&page=2

 

This is incredible! Thanks for posting it Elle. I realise one of the sources is the BBC, but I haven't seen it on the news here - probably because I tend to only read BBC Scotland and BBC UK and this seems to have been reported on BBC Europe.

But you are absolutely right about Occams razor.

Presumably they knew from the DNA that it was a woman? Imagine if they'd located her but not made the connection of the cotton buds?