Cold cases thawing with tech advances
1968 Mercer death area's latest to land in court thanks to CSIs
By Christine Rook
Lansing State Journal
September 24, 2006
Today's perfect crime is likely to be tomorrow's solved case.
Forensic science advances every year, turning old unusable fingerprints, random shell casings and once-fuzzy voice recordings into a prosecutor's opening argument.
"There tend to be those monster leaps," said David Foran, director of the forensic science program at Michigan State University and an expert in molecular genetics.
"So all of a sudden you'll have something like an automated fingerprint system."
There's no better place than Mason's 55th District Court to see how advances in science can thaw a cold case.
On Oct. 2, Dr. Charles Mercer will be back in court, answering a charge of murder in the 1968 death of his wife, Sally Sue.
When she died, polio was blamed. But according to court transcripts, a 2003 autopsy revealed her remains contained lethal levels of the pain reliever propoxyphene.
Why didn't investigators detect that in 1968? The technology wasn't good enough, testimony revealed.
But advances in technology will continue to create case-solvers out of what was once unusable evidence.
Two decades ago, for example, blood was just blood. Today, it is a genetic ID card often used to confirm the guilt of someone already in custody. Decades from now, Foran said, blood could tell police a lot about who they should be looking for - say a woman with blond hair, blue eyes and a fair complexion. It's even possible they'll be able to estimate her age. All of that information and more is stored in a single white blood cell.
Useful tomorrow
Scientists can't accurately read the code today, but what about tomorrow? And what about all of the other molecular evidence that criminals unwittingly leave behind?
"Sometimes they're leaving stuff they don't even realize," said crime scene expert Philip Nardone, "trace evidence and shoe impressions."
Nardone is a crime scene investigator with the Lansing Police Department. It is his job to collect what can be used today and what might be used tomorrow.
Advances in technology this past year solved a 1999 Lansing homicide that Lt. Frank Medrano worked. Medrano runs the city's CSI unit and recalled that in '99 he had almost no evidence to link to a killer. All police had was the body of Rebecca Huismann, her car, her fingerprints and a single gunshell casing. In the years following, though, a national ballistics database was built, and in the fall of 2005, a gun matching the shell casing was found in North Carolina.
The man who had possessed the gun later killed himself while in custody in North Carolina.
"I was glad for the family," Medrano said, "because there was some closure."
Automation, experts say, is a key development in the world of forensics.
"The big push when I go to meetings is to automate," Foran said.
Experts talk about data mining - where police access the electronic data that is collected each day on an average person.
For example, use a debit or credit card, and the transaction is logged. Visit a store with video security, and a face shot is recorded. Recently, monitoring equipment was installed at key intersections in Lansing to improve traffic flow. Some day, though, similar equipment may be used to record the movements of people.
MSU at the forefront
Michigan State University is helping to lead the way in forensic advances.
Foran's lab is researching how to use DNA to determine who handled an explosive device. DNA, it turns out, doesn't get completely destroyed in a blast.
"We've had better than 50 percent success in identifying who assembled it," Foran said.
In the College of Engineering, professor Anil Jain's researchers are looking at ways to improve the national fingerprint database. They hope that partial prints can one day be used the way complete prints are used now.
Jain noted that one day fingerprints may not even be needed to ID a criminal. A store with an iris scanner could record the identification of everyone who comes and goes.
"Within 20 years, we will have a very good sensing system," Jain said.
What does that mean for CSI members such as Medrano and Nardone?
They collect everything, sometimes 100 pieces of evidence even if only four are to be used at trial.
"You don't know today," Medrano said, "what is going to be good 20 years from now."
What's next Eventually, local experts say, authorities may be able
to use the following to nab criminals:
• A single white blood cell. It could provide clues about hair
color, complexion, even approximate age.
• Electronic databases. They may record movements of people, their business transactions and other patterns.
• DNA. It's already used, of course, but eventually it may be collected even from explosions to determine who the bomber was.
• Iris scans. A quick look in the eye could identify a person.
Contact Christine Rook at 377-1261 or clrook@lsj.com.
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