Idaho murder victims' hands could contain DNA evidence crucial to solving quadruple murder case: Experts
This article is based on sources and MEAWW cannot verify this information independently.
MOSCOW, IDAHO: The hands of the four victims who were fatally stabbed in November at their home away from the University of Idaho campus could contain information that is essential to solving the case. The four college students, Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, and Madison Mogen, 21, were slain on Sunday, November 13, between 3 and 4 am while they were resting in their off-campus house.
According to Latah County Coroner Cathy Mabbutt, Idaho detectives bagged the victims' hands as part of their crime scene preservation efforts to preserve any clues before removing their bodies from the crime scene The forensic specialists as per the report said, it's likely that the hands of the four victims may include evidence, such as skin or hair beneath their fingernails, that might be extremely helpful in identifying the culprit.
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If they made personal contact with the perpetrator or killers, their hands could have also come into contact with DNA. "This is good crime scene protocol, which also they can say that if they did this right, then more than likely everything else was done right, too – which should allay some of the concerns from people," said Joseph Giacalone, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor and retired NYPD sergeant. "When you have an up-close attack like this, the chances are good that the victim scraped at the face or the arms [of the assailant] as they try to defend themselves. So this is an awesome development," he told Fox News Digital.
"DNA can be found in any kind of cellular material." In crime scenes, investigators try to determine whether "someone's touched a surface or handled a surface or whether they've left blood, saliva – any kind of bodily fluids" and then "identify areas where there might be tissue or touch DNA," Director of Forensic Services Laboratory Systems for the Idaho State Police Matthew Gamette, told the station. He added, "And then we would be trying to develop DNA profiles from those surfaces, in the case of latent prints." He further explained, "We might be working a room or a car or something of that nature to be able to develop latent prints or fingerprints from a person that are visible to the naked eye. And then we would be looking to either compare those to known individuals, or we would be looking to put them in a database to see if we can identify someone."
Experts point out, due to the complexity of the crime scene, it is not always possible for investigators to recover DNA, but if they do, police can compare the samples to those in the state DNA database of Idaho, the state fingerprint database, and other databases in an effort to try and identify a potential perpetrator. "Generally, what we're looking to do is first to identify a potential suspect or suspects – potential perpetrators of a crime if there [are] not any," Gamette said, adding, "There may be some already identified. And if that's the case, then we'll ask the officers to collect items from them that can be used to either match to their samples from the scene or to eliminate them as potential contributors of things like fingerprints and DNA."
The entire process could take weeks depending on the complexity of the crime scene which would mostly contain mixed DNA as "a cut-and-dry case with DNA" is the least possibility due to the fact that the home where the victims were killed, a college rental just steps off campus, Giacalone said as per the report. Moreover, the experts say, a second scientist has to check everything a scientist conducts at the laboratory to make sure that they get the same findings as the first scientist arrived at.