Test it to do what with it?
Truly curious. I'm trying to imagine testing all the DNA that was found in the Idaho Massacre home at 1122 King in Moscow, ID (the Kohberger case). Or testing all the DNA that would be found at Puma Path. What is the point of that? What do they do with it after they test it?
Are people really expecting every single person that's ever been at a locale to be inspected and matched to DNA found at that locale? And if not everyone can be located (most won't be without IGG), what then? What is the point?
I'm not getting it at all. Even partial DNA? That could be a composite of several people?
Maybe people don't realize that you could probably eventually find 1000 potential donors of that partial DNA - with about 1-3 years of work by a team of Ph.D.'s with great medical equipment. We don't even have enough of those to provide top notch medical care to every citizen. It wouldn't stop with murder trials - it would be all major crimes. Would we let all the suspects out while this got done or keep potentially innocent people in jail while we testing all this? Crime investigations would routinely take YEARS longer (until we get a complete database of every human's DNA, which doesn't seem to be happening very quickly). Partial DNA can point to a pile of traits, but not to an identity of a person. It's like saying "oh, there are fingerprints, let's go look at ALL people's fingerprints until we find the match." Everyone has to march down to the fingerprint place, everyone has full sets taken and stored.
Except that fingerprints are easier to match. What a cumbersome system. There has to be other evidence that a person is involved a crime. DNA alone is not enough.
Do people not realize that their OWN DNA is in most places they've ever been? And that it persists for centuries? Sure, it can be degraded with chemicals, but most surfaces do not have those chemicals applied and even then, you would get PARTIAL DNA again! The little A, C, T and G pairs might survive bleach or hydrogen peroxide (just scrambled a bit - IOW, PARTIAL DNA again).
What investigation into stranger DNA in Idaho? I think I must be missing your point and am truly sorry. I am very familiar with the Kohberger case and wish there was an "open battle." There isn't. There may be. But it was a FULL MATCH. All 23 pairs of chromosomes present and accounted for. How is that anything like this case?
Bryan Kohberger's cheek swab 100% matched the DNA found on the knife sheath (of which there was enough to get more than one sample - although there wasn't a heck of a lot of it, it only takes one set of 1 - which was present on more than one swab of the use point of the sheath).
I strongly suspect that after a couple of serial killers were identified by DNA, and especially after GSK was apprehended, people came to the conclusion that "you got the DNA, you got your killer".
I wonder if everyone understands that to link DNA to the killer, it had to be found in a very specific place/under specific circumstances. Yes. There. I said it. It has to bespeak a certain action.
Today's SKs know about DNA and changed their behavior. They don't leave it where it will be damning, sorry. Regarding old-time killers apprehended today, we owe a lot to the LE who thought of collecting and keeping the material, and then, maintained unbroken chain of custody untill the technology became available. (The unbroken chain of custody shocks me even more. So there are organized people that can do it for decades...makes me want to cry).
So if it is a serial killer, but, sorry, someone has to word it, not a rapist, some touch DNA somewhere on the clothes, in the house, is hard to connect to a person, unless he leaves touch DNA on all his serial victims, or leaves the knives with his DNA at the handles next to all victims, for years.
This is why I am watching BK's case without making an opinion - you see, a sheath without a knife with just one dab of DNA and otherwise clean, might have been placed. It has to be an overwhelming amount of indirect evidence to persuade me. Until it happens, I am giving the accused the benefit of the doubt.
By the same token, someone's DNA on a glovebox, helmet, bike, in the house doesn't mean anything. A person is fixing an electronic appliance, someone is installing internet, someone brought Doordash delivery and grabbed the handle, someone came to buy antlers from Barry - not a proof of involvement in Suzanne's disappearance. I am thinking, car service, setting up remote garage door opening, cleaning the gutters, what not. Barry's DNA is all over Suzanne - by itself, it easily can be explained.
And BTW, Barry understands it. This is why he is pushing this "Suzanne using drugs" narrative. Because "bad people" could break in. (It is an absolutely ludicrous theory because for bad people selling drugs in rich neighborhoods, their clients have value only when alive - all murders will be among competitors. But Barry hopes we believe him.)
