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wednesday, april 21, 2004
DNA helps solve cold case killings
The Associated Press
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — To the family members of the city's hundreds of unsolved homicide victims, Pam Bell has a message: Have patience, because with DNA, a break can come at any time.
"Don't give up hope," Bell said.
"You've got to have hope."
Bell's sister, Debbie Blevins, joined the ranks of the hundreds of homicide victims in Kansas City whose deaths remain a mystery to police when her nude body was found in 1986.
But her file left the cold case cabinet this past weekend when authorities announced they had charged Lorenzo J. Gilyard with the slaying of 12 women, including Blevins, whose bodies were discovered between 1977 and 1993. And the advances in DNA evidence that led to his arrest could be the key to cracking the hundreds of other crimes lingering in the city's cold case files.
"I'm hopeful," said Kristine Olsson, a senior criminalist in the city's crime lab, "because DNA is such a powerful technology and there are several samples that have been retained and are always available to be returned to. So hopefully this will lead to
Most of the 80 to 100 homicides recorded annually in Kansas City are solved by police, but every year, several languish without a suspect. When the Kansas City Police Department formed a cold case squad in December 2002, 956 open homicides were on the books.
James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston, said the national clearance rate for homicides is 62 percent, though many cities have clearance rates in the 40-percent to 50-percent range. He said clearance rates began declining in the late 1980s and early 1990s as gang homicide became more common and suspects became younger and the relationship with their victims more distant.
Last year, Kansas City's cold case squad identified suspects in 16 of the homicides. So far this year, it has cleared 22 more cases, including the killings prosecutors have charged Gilyard with committing. Facing 10 counts of first-degree murder and two counts of capital murder, Gilyard made his first appearance in court yesterday at a hearing that lasted about a minute. He was ordered held without bound.
A year after the cold case squad was formed, a federal grant provided the department with the funding it needed to begin using the latest in DNA technology to test evidence from dozens of unsolved cases —some of them decades old.
In Gilyard's case, police said they connected two of the alleged victims to a common suspect in 1994 but were unable to link the other slayings until the grant allowed them to test evidence from more old cases. As more cases were connected to a common suspect during a 10-month period, police continued to pore through old case files.
Police said Gilyard was identified as a suspect after the analysis of a blood sample taken from him in 1987, when he was a suspect in the death of one of the women he is now charged with killing. Coincidentally, authorities said, his neighbor worked for the crime lab.
It's a story that has repeated itself in police departments across the county. More than 8,000 samples of genetic evidence from unsolved cases have been matched to past or current convicts in the FBI's DNA database. An additional 3,000 samples have been matched to unidentified
suspects in other cases that remain unsolved.
Investigators said that in Louisiana, for example, DNA linked Derrick Fodd Lee, of St. Francisville, to the murders of seven women between April 1998 and March 2003, plus an attack on another south Louisiana woman, Lee, who was arrested in May, has been indicted in three killings and is charged in the other attack. He has pleaded innocent, and his trial in the death of one of the slain women is scheduled to begin May 10.
While police in Kansas City are saying very little about their ongoing investigation into Gilyard and his actions, Chief Rick Easley said Monday that detectives aren't going to stop just because they have charged Gilvard with 12 deaths.
The department's cold case squad received about two dozen calls yesterday from people wondering whether a loved one's unsolved death might be linked to Gilyard, Detective Ray Staley said.
"One thing we knew would happen is everyone would think he is involved in every unsolved homicide involving a prostitute," Staley said, calling that "unrealistic."
Kansans injured in overseas shooting
The Associated Press
Four Kansans are recovering from wounds they suffered in a shooting at a prison in Kosovo that killed two of their co-workers.
The wounded Kansans are Ronald Hicks, of Hutchinson; former Topeka City Councilwoman Beth Mechler, 44; Carrie Bernhardt, 33; and Lori Reeves. Hicks' and Reeves' ages were not available.
They were hurt Saturday when a United Nations police officer from Jordan opened fire on corrections officers who had just finished their first day of training at the prison in the town of Kosovska Mitrovica.
They were among 21 U.S. officers, two Turkish officers and one Austrian traveling in three vehicles when the shooting erupted. The gunman, Sgt. Maj. Ahmed Mustafa Ibrahim Ali, and two female American guards were killed in the ensuing shootout. 11 people were wounded.
people who were Bernhardt, a 1988 Salina Central High School graduate, was
moved Monday to an American military hospital in Germany. Her condition had been upgraded to serious but stable from critical Saturday night.
She and the other Kansans were in Kosovo working for DynCorp, a subsidiary of Computer Sciences Corp., that trains police, corrections and judicial workers overseas.
Hicks, a retired counselor from the Hutchinson Correctional Facility, had been listed in stable condition after undergoing surgery on Saturday, said Ken Roberts, his brother-in-law in Hutchinson.
Mechler, of Topeka, was scheduled to be released yesterday from the Kosovo hospital, said her husband, Topeka police Lt. Randy Listrom.
Reeves, who was born in Garden City and graduated from Fort Hays State University in 1986, was shot in the hand and was expected to return to the United States in the next several days, said Mike Myers, a spokesman at the El Dorado Correctional Facility.
Judge halts gay marriages, recognizes those already granted
The Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. — A judge told Multomah County to stop issuing gay marriage licenses Tuesday, but he handed gay couples a historic victory by ordering Oregon to recognize the 3,000 licenses already granted in the county.
The decision by Multnomah County Circuit Judge Frank Bearden marked the first time in the nation that a judge has recognized gay marriage. An immediate appeal of the ruling was expected.
"These are the first legally recognized gay marriages in the country," said Dave Fidanque, the ACLU executive director in Oregon. "In no other same-sex
marriages that have taken place has there been a court order saying the state must recognize them. That's what's truly historic about this opinion."
The county began allowing gay marriage on March 3, making it the only place in the nation where gays could get married. The county has issued 3,022 marriage licenses to gay couples since then.
Bearden told the county to cease issuing same-sex licenses until the Oregon Legislature has a chance to fashion a new law, perhaps allowing Vermont-style civil unions.
He gave the Oregon Legislisit 90 days from the start of its next session to come up with the new law. If that doesn't happen, Multnomah County can resume
issuing marriage licenses to gays and lesbians.
The Legislature could convene in Salem as early as June, for a special session that was intended to focus on tax reform. But the ruling generated little enthusiasm among lawmakers, who seem leery about getting bogged down in a stalemated special session this summer.
"They don't want to get into special session that is out of control," said Senate President Peter Courtney, a democrat who supports civil unions.
House Speaker Karen Minnis, a republican who opposes gave marriage, said the debate should focus not on allowing civil unions but instead on sending a gay marriage ban to the ballot this fall.
"The best solution would be to amend the state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman _the definition of marriage that Oregonians have known for generations," she said.
The judge's ruling came in a lawsuit that has consolidated all the arguments over same-sex unions in hopes of a quick ruling by the Oregon Supreme Court.
The decision effectively ends gay marriage nationally, at least until May 17, when Massachusetts is slated to begin allowing gay marriage following a high court ruling there.
Kevin Neely, a spokesman for the Oregon attorney general's office, called Bearden's decision
"a big step in what will be a bit longer process."
"Our goal from the beginning was to get a ruling from the Supreme Court, but this initial ruling does provide at least some clarity and a framework for moving to that next step." Neely said. "The real key here is to give the Legislature an opportunity to craft a law that the courts will deem constitutionally sound."
A half-hour after the ruling, Katharine Sprecher and Nitzey Gonzalez sobbed in the corner of the county clerk's office, wiping each others' tears away.
They had filled out a marriage application, gotten married at the Metropolitan Community Church and returned to the county Tuesday with the paperwork to make it all official. But their return was just moments too late.
"I was a little shell-shocked, I was expecting this day to turn out very different," said Sprecher. "I didn't realize there was going to be a ruling today. I thought we had until Thursday."
In other developments related to the gay marriage debate, a California Assembly committee Tuesday approved a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in the state, although the bill's sponsor said such a "milestone event" didn't change what will be an uphill battle to pass it in the full Legislature.
Assemblyman Mark Leno said it was the first time a legislative body has voted to support gay marriage.