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Posted on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 |
DNA swab numbers cut
BY HURST LAVIANA
The Wichita Eagle
Her statement that 4,000 DNA
samples had been taken was wrong, District Attorney Nola Foulston
said.
DNA swabs have been collected from only
about 1,300 people in the BTK serial murder investigation, Sedgwick
County District Attorney Nola Foulston said Tuesday -- less than
one-third the number she reported in an earlier news conference about
the case.
Foulston said the 4,000 figure she used in January actually referred
to the number of tips that were cleared by the 1,300 samples. In many
cases, Wichita police asked a person for a sample after receiving
multiple tips about him.
Foulston said the discrepancy in the numbers surfaced during a meeting
about the case Tuesday morning.
During an afternoon news conference, she said the DNA "elimination
samples" were compared only to evidence collected in the BTK
investigation. She said the samples would not be put into any criminal
DNA database.
Police started collecting DNA samples from potential suspects in March
2004 after BTK sent a letter to The Eagle that claimed responsibility
for a 1986 murder that had not previously been linked to him.
Ten other packages have since turned up that reportedly were connected
to the killer. One contained a computer disk that reportedly led
police to the arrest last month of Dennis L. Rader. Rader is awaiting
a preliminary hearing on 10 counts of first-degree murder.
During the news conference, Foulston apologized for the mix-up in the
numbers and said she did not blame it on the Wichita Police
Department, which oversaw the collection of the samples.
"It was my fault, not their fault," she said. "I don't know why no one
corrected me... before today." The 4,000 figure had been widely
reported in the past two months.
Foulston said the DNA samples probably will be held in the crime labs
that processed them -- one at the Sedgwick County Forensic Science
Center and one at Kansas Bureau of Investigation headquarters in
Topeka.
Although some have questioned plans to hold onto the evidence from
people who have been cleared, Foulston said state law requires
evidence in criminal cases to be kept as long as the case remains
open. If and when the BTK investigation is closed, she said, it will
be up to a judge to decide what to do with the evidence. She said a
judge could decide to simply destroy it.
In the meantime, Foulston said, law enforcement officials will make no
attempts to solve other crimes with the samples.
"This evidence will not, shall not and cannot be placed in any
database at all," she said.
The evidence is not subject to the Kansas Open Records Act, she said.
"These records are not available to anyone in the media," she said.
"These records are not available to anyone on the street. These
records are protected.
"We are the guardians of this evidence, and evidence is being
protected."
One Wichita defense lawyer with an interest in the topic is
Dan Monnat,
who represents a man who was forced through a court order to submit a
DNA sample to police. The man, Roger Valadez, went to court last week
in an effort to get the sample back.
"Negotiations are ongoing with the state of Kansas in that case, and
we are hopeful that the matter will be resolved by agreement,"
Monnat
said.
Foulston declined to comment on the
Valadez case.
Reach Hurst
Laviana at 268-6499 or
hlaviana@wichitaeagle.com.
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