I don't see this anywhere: This is most likely not statistically significant. A DNA match might be 99.99% accurate, but when you try to match based on a database of a million people, you're going to get a few false positives. I really hope the police have some more evidence to go on, because otherwise it sounds like they just arrested an innocent person.
DNA wasn't the only evidence police had. 3 pieces of additional information: 1) his history in the Sacramento area, 2) he served in the Navy and law enforcement which fitted the profile police were looking for, and 3) police sketches matched a photo of his from the 70s.
edit: In addition to the physical evidence gathered from suspect's house that could be linked to the crime scenes. This isn't public information yet.
Served in the Navy and law enforcement in Sacramento area isn't that large a set. Something isn't being reported correctly.
This seems more like they got his DNA, and then backfilled the correlations.
While it may have worked in this case, it's more than a little worrying because it changes the police from "finding the correct suspect" to "justifying the DNA identified suspect".
And we already have a case in California where the police let the DNA guide them to the wrong person.
This seems more like they got his DNA, and then backfilled the correlations.
This is always a concern with any investigation or analytical work. I'm curious to find out which other suspects they looked at after the initial DNA lead, and how they went about eliminating other suspects. But keep in mind the public isn't yet privy to all the physical evidence that were collected at the crime scenes.
> But keep in mind the public isn't yet privy to all the physical evidence that were collected at the crime scenes.
Agreed. They almost certainly have more evidence than they ever released to the public.
And, hopefully, they'll find concrete evidence at the house of the man they arrested. Apparently the Golden State Killer took some "souvenirs" from some of the victims and finding those would be very significant.
Lots of people in the DNA databases are relatives to someone who lived in Sacramento.
The lead came from the police searching through DNA databases which identified some set of relatives who were suspicious, but they later obtained the DNA from the suspect himself which was an exact match to what was gathered from crime scenes.
Actually all of that, together, make him a suspect. Any of it might not, but all of it does. Each piece of evidence reduces the likelihood of coincidence. Now that they have the suspect in custody they should be able to do a one-on-one test with the old DNA and confirm their suspicions to a reasonable degree of certainty, assuming they do their jobs well.
But yes, good luck explaining that math to a jury.
Previous to the East Area Rapist, the suspect lived 200 miles away, in the next town over, when the Visalia Ransacker terrorized the neighborhood with over 100 bizarre break-ins. He would break into women's houses and ransack them and only take things of little value while using leaving things of value in sight.
It has long been suspected for a long time the Visalia Ransacker moved to Sacramento to become the East Area Rapist, but there's no conclusive proof (at least yet). There was no DNA taken in the Ransacker cases. The MO and suspect were very similar, it seemed that the East Area Rapist was an escalation of the Ransacker's activities.
The suspect just happened to leave the Visalia area and move to the Sacramento area at exactly the same time the Visalia Ransacker stopped his criminal spree and the East Area Rapist started his in Sacramento.
THEN the suspect was fired from the police force at exactly the same time the East Area Rapist moved his location over 600 miles away from Northern California to Southern California. It's not currently known (to the public at least) where the suspect's whereabouts were from the time he was fired from the police force (in 1979 IIRC) and from the time he took a job at Save Mart back in the Sacramento area in the early 90s.
The crimes in Northern California were conclusively proven to the crimes in Southern California through DNA evidence, unlike the Visalia Ransacker crimes.
There's more... The East Area Rapist mentioned the name Bonnie in one of his attacks http://www.coldcase-earons.com/36.php "After the rape, (HAP: he laid his head on the pillow next to her) and began sobbing "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you Bonnie." (HAP: The victim was not certain that he was saying "Bonnie," but that's what it sounded like)." The suspect, at one point in his life, was engaged to a woman named Bonnie. Bonnie Jean Colwell.
Heh, the math will never even get brought up in the trial. They'll just talk about DNA matches and everybody on the jury will think this guy is scientifically proven to be guilty.
Its not like they just found a statistically matching DNA sample and went "Lock him up, boys!". They found that not only does his DNA match, but he also lived in all of the areas where the crimes were committed, and the crime sprees in a particular area would change around the time that he relocated. He also had experience in the Navy and as a Police officer, which have been long suspected by investigators before this due to some of the behaviors exhibited by the killer. He also apparently has a unique biomarker in his sperm that matches the killer's DNA, futher reducing the chances of a random person matching.
It's not like police & detectives haven't dealt with false positives for the past, oh, all of human history. Each bit of information produces a list of suspects; each list of suspects is compared for the union. If more than one suspect remains, further information is pursued.
Once you have a solid lead it's pretty easy to build a case, especially considering they have mountains of evidence saved from the >60 crimes committed.
I recall reading that you are correct. DNA was originally used as confirming evidence for a case that already had a suspect. They'd identify a suspect the traditional way and then do a DNA test to confirm it. In that scenario it's pretty good evidence. To take a crime scene sample and compare it against the entire population is bound to turn up several near matches. At that point you're up against a common tendency to see things as corroborating the case. Add in the recent discovery that people leave their DNA all over the place and others can leave it in their fingerprints and the value of this approach is very low. One would hope even though they identified him via DNA that they can make a solid case without it now that they know where to look. But I fear the cornerstone of the evidence is going to be the DNA.
