10ofRods
Verified Anthropologist
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MOO I would say he thought he cleaned it like all his gear, but the snap area grabbed a bit of TDNA and retained it.
Thank you for this thoughtful post.
It's a good time to mention that you cannot clean so well that you remove all of your own DNA from what you're cleaning. Even with gloves.
We exhale DNA with every breath. I suppose he could have gotten in a space suit (but how would he do that without touching said space suit?) He'd have needed a respirator mask. No witness has said he was wearing a respirator mask that night (it would have been obvious).
It doesn't matter how well BK thinks he cleaned something. When he put the gloves on, there's no way they were completely devoid of DNA on the outside. The fact is, though, he probably thought about cleaning the knife itself, but did not remember to attempt to clean the DNA from the snap every time he used it. But if he had, the likelihood of him removing all of it from the grooved area around the snap is virtually zero. DNA persists a long time and is very very small.
So not only did he touch the snap without enough protection (or just breathed on it), he's the only one who touched it/breathed on it. Makes me think he took it out of the packaging himself. The snap was likely machine installed and while some worker somewhere touched the knife, for sure, it's possible that only 1-2 gloved workers ever touched the outside of the sheath (and not the snap). If they do find other human DNA on the knife, I predict it will align with someone of Mexican descent, which is where the sheaths are made, IIRC. The defense will make a big deal of that, I suppose, but as we've seen in the Murdaugh trial, juries are smart enough to figure out what's going on.
IMO.