A DNA expert will be available to answer your questions!

[ScarlettScarpetta]

Or, They will see it was someone they over looked the first time and finally have an answer to this awful crime.

 

[2 percent]

Why even bother to ask? You know you're not going to get any answer, no one ever has before.

I have 20 year old triplets in college who are going to turn 21 in 3 days.

Optimism is the only thing I have right now.:scared:

 

[BOESP]

That's your choice,doesn't make it true though.
I think I asked a pretty valid question but you always avoid those.

madeleine, I agree. You asked a valid question. It is obvious some opinions are clearly based on overstating until the cows come home that they are here to proclaim Ramsey innocence, not to provide information and theories and evidence supporting or advancing the IDI theory.

Ramsey DNA should be all over the blanket, the long johns, the panties, etc. Small, insignificant amounts of touch DNA from an unknown contributor is, according to some, supposed to point to Ramsey innocence. I think even people who read but don't post here can see things for what they are just as the Grand Jury did.

 

[ScarlettScarpetta]

madeleine, I agree. You asked a valid question. It is obvious some opinions are clearly based on overstating until the cows come home that they are here to proclaim Ramsey innocence, not to provide information and theories and evidence supporting or advancing the IDI theory.

Ramsey DNA should be all over the blanket, the long johns, the panties, etc. Small, insignificant amounts of touch DNA from an unknown contributor is, according to some, supposed to point to Ramsey innocence. I think even people who read but don't post here can see things for what they are just as the Grand Jury did.

Of course I think the R's are innocent at this point still.. all this time later.
The DNA that has no match is concerning and until it is matched can not be ruled out.

I am not trying to convince anyone of anything. People believe what they believe. The GJ apparently did not get it right. Of there would have been charges. It really is that simple.

 

[tezi]

Of course I think the R's are innocent at this point still.. all this time later.
The DNA that has no match is concerning and until it is matched can not be ruled out.

I am not trying to convince anyone of anything. People believe what they believe. The GJ apparently did not get it right. Of there would have been charges. It really is that simple.

BBM: Your opinion, not shared by everyone here. And there weren't charges because AH didn't not sign the indictment. It's really that simple. Seriously. Please remember that.

 

[Venom]

Why do we even have grand juries if people are just going to discard what they vote for as them not getting it right. They spent 13 months seeing the evidence and interviewing people. 12 people saw what the evidence totaled.

 

[tezi]

Why do we even have grand juries if people are just going to discard what they vote for as them not getting it right. They spent 13 months seeing the evidence and interviewing people. 12 people saw what the evidence totaled.

Yes, and they came back with not one but two indictments...

Fact, not an opinion.

 

[Linda7NJ]

Two bombshells from the show
The much vaunted DNA evidence that Mary Lacy, Lin Wood, John Ramsey and some others have shamelessly paraded around would NOT BE ADMISSIBLE in court because it is a mixed profile with dropout.
“… there is no generally accepted means of attaching a reliable statistical weight to a mixed DNA profile where allelic drop out may have occurred."
Listen at 54:38 – 58:25
Continuing on with Mary Lacy, Dr Krane said that if she based the exoneration exclusively on the DNA evidence then that was WRONG – “THAT THAT CONVEYS A LACK OF UNDERSTANDING OF DNA.”
Listen at 58:42 – 61:00

[ame="http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9837467"]A DNA expert will be available to answer your questions! - Page 3 - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community[/ame]

Read the above.

 

[otg]

Forget everything you thought you knew about the reliability of DNA testing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/science/dna-double-take.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&

Medical researchers aren’t the only scientists interested in our multitudes of personal genomes. So are forensic scientists. When they attempt to identify criminals or murder victims by matching DNA, they want to avoid being misled by the variety of genomes inside a single person.

Last year, for example, forensic scientists at the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory Division described how a saliva sample and a sperm sample from the same suspect in a sexual assault case didn’t match.

Bone marrow transplants can also confound forensic scientists. Researchers at Innsbruck Medical University in Austria took cheek swabs from 77 people who had received transplants up to nine years earlier. In 74 percent of the samples, they found a mix of genomes — both their own and those from the marrow donors, the scientists reported this year. The transplanted stem cells hadn’t just replaced blood cells, but had also become cells lining the cheek.

 

[ScarlettScarpetta]

To me all that matters is that there is DNA that matches and it was in two different places and it is not sourced. Until they find who that belongs to, There is someone out there that it matches.. and was involved.

 

[SapphireSteel]

Perhaps one day there will actually be a hit in the CODIS database. Perhaps someone will be arrested for some unrelated crime which requires a DNA sample be taken, and BANG! MATCH!! "Where were you on December 25, 1996?"

Then the suspect will be investigated... and it will be found that he/she was living in China at the time and working in a garment factory that made little girls' underwear. :doh:
:takeabow:

Or, working in the laboratory way back in the 90s in Colorado, before you got fired for routinely failing to observe basic cross contamination regulations...:waitasec:

 

[ScarlettScarpetta]

Or, working in the laboratory way back in the 90s in Colorado, before you got fired for routinely failing to observe basic cross contamination regulations...:waitasec:

Or happened to be living close to the R's and was there in boulder that very night.

 

[Charterhouse]

Does anyone know the exact procedure for taking fingernail clippings from the deceased?
They bag the hands. Then does the coroner use a different nail clipper for each nail and put the nail and clipper in a container of some sort? So ten nails and ten clippers.

I have always wondered about this and how it was done. I have not been able to find the exact procedure on the internet.
TIA

 

[Linda7NJ]

Does anyone know the exact procedure for taking fingernail clippings from the deceased?
They bag the hands. Then does the coroner use a different nail clipper for each nail and put the nail and clipper in a container of some sort? So ten nails and ten clippers.

I have always wondered about this and how it was done. I have not been able to find the exact procedure on the internet.
TIA

Yes, that's the way it should be done.

Not only wasn't it done that way, it was done with dirty clippers that could have been used on other decedent sand the very same clippers for all ten nails.

 

[Charterhouse]

Yes, that's the way it should be done.

Not only wasn't it done that way, it was done with dirty clippers that could have been used on other decedent sand the very same clippers for all ten nails.

Thank you Linda. I knew that it was done incorrectly. But I was wondering if anyone knew the exact procedure for Colorado at that time.

I have found CA Dept of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Evidence, Physical Collection Bulletin and then a national one but I have not one specific for Colorado. These were 2013 also.

Just wondering.
TIA

 

[Charterhouse]

This is just chit chat that I have found at various sites regarding using the contaminated clippers:

"When Meyer (the coroner) clipped the nails of each finger, no blood or tissue was found that would indicate a struggle. He used the same clippers for all the fingers, although doing so created an issue of cross-contamination. For optimal DNA purposes, separate and sterile clippers should have been used for each finger. Furthermore, we later learned that the coroner's office sometimes used the same clippers on different autopsy subjects."

"Steve Thomas, JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, pages 45-46
Mitch Morrisey, a forner DNA specialist and the current DA of Denver, stated that Dr. Meyer used contaminated clippers when he clipped JonBenet's nails, causing contamination of the nail clippings. Since this man is not only an expert in DNA collection and is also in LE now, I doubt if he would have issued incorrect information on the issue. I trust what he said."

"Mitch Morrissey, the district attorney in Denver and a national DNA and forensics expert, agrees the case ran into trouble from the start. Among other things, the crime scene was contaminated and the coroner used the same clipper to clip the fingernails of several corpses, including JonBenet and someone else, rendering the fingernail clippings useless as evidence.“They didn’t know about DNA,” says Morrissey."

I also read their was a affidavit by Dr. Meyer admitted to using the same clippers. I can't find it. Can anyone point me in the right direction or have a link?
TIA

 

[Venom]

:bump:

I think this is the thread that talks about what Nom was asking about.

 

[Nom de plume]

:bump:

I think this is the thread that talks about what Nom was asking about.

Thanks Venom! Looks like I have some reading to do.

 

[Anti-K]

I’ve just read through all the posts on this thread, and, of course, I have a few things to say.

First, I want to make it clear that I have listened to Dr Krane on Tricia’s radioblog. I first came across Krane a few years ago through the bioforensics website, and several of his youtube videos (which someone linked to in one of the earlier posts here).

I’m very, very, very far away from being any kind of an expert in this area, but I have a decent enough understanding of the topic, and although I think Krane did a pretty good job of explaining things, I didn’t learn anything from the broadcast that I didn’t already know.

Krane, as far as I can tell, has no inside information about the DNA in this case, and what he does know seems to have come from correspondence with persons such as Cynic (that’s okay, and I have no issue with that). But, I think it’s important to understand that.

On the panty DNA:
Yes, it may be true as a general statement that mixed samples with dropout have no evidentiary value because no statistical weight can be given, but this does not speak to the specifics of the DNA evidence in the Ramsey case. This specific DNA sample was accepted by CODIS, and CODIS does not accept inconclusive samples. If ten markers were identified, as they must have been, then a statistical weight can be given to that sample.

The fact that this sample is in CODIS, and is routinely run through the database, disproves Krane’s claim regarding the panty DNA in THIS case.

Also, it should be noted that the sample Krane refers to is the sample from the panties. The two samples from the leggings were not, as far as we know, mixed samples. Krane’s remarks concerning the panty sample does not affect the legitimacy of the legging samples.

.

Weak samples, or...?
In his book Kolar uses the term (strength/weakness) to confusion because he uses it to describe both individual markers and the number of markers.
For example: he describes the fingernail DNA as being “of insufficient strength to be entered into the state and national DNA databases.” The fingernail DNA did not have enough markers.

The panty DNA, which is the DNA accepted by CODIS, started off as 9 plus one very weak marker. As Kolar describes it “the 10th marker was eventually strengthened to the point” that the panty DNA could be “entered into the state and national DNA databases.”(p. 140) The 10th marker was strengthened, it had been too weak.
In his book Kolar states that he had “been unable to determine the strength of the genetic markers that were identified as the Touch DNA samples found in the leggings;” but Horita told him “they were weaker” than the panty DNA sample.

IIRC, Kolar tells Cynic that in this instance “weaker” means “fewer.” Horita told him so. All this tells me, is that Kolar and Horita don’t understand the term. The leggings DNA may indeed have fewer markers than the panty DNA, but no one in the scientific community would refer to this as a weaker sample because it had fewer markers. “Weak” would be a reference to how distinct (or not) individual peaks show on the electropherogram, not the number of markers.
...

AK

 

[Anti-K]

Krane was asked if Lacey was justified in exonerating the Ramseys as based on the DNA evidence alone:

Cynic: ....When you and I talked I just asked you as a hypothetical, if a District Attorney is, for example, exonerating people that were suspects for many years based exclusively on the DNA that we’ve just discussed here, is that an overreach?

Dr Krane (BBM): Well, let me draw particular attention to the word, “exclusively”: right, if that is the sole basis for the decision, I think that conveys a lack of understanding of what’s involved with those particular types of DNA test results. http://tinyurl.com/krp47ru

Lacey (BBM): We make this announcement now because we have recently obtained this new scientific evidence that adds significantly to the exculpatory value of the previous scientific evidence. We do so with full appreciation for the other evidence in this case. http://tinyurl.com/k7qzwx5
...

AK