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  • I used DNA analysis to find my birth family, and it sent me across 3 continents | CNN

    I used DNA analysis to find my birth family, and it sent me across 3 continents | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    When I sent DNA samples to genetic testing services searching for my birth family, I had no idea it would launch me on an adventure across three continents.

    In 1961, I was adopted at birth in California. Over the years, I’ve searched for my birth family on and off but have always been stymied by sealed records and tight-lipped officials. In the past decade, however, home DNA testing and easy online access to official records have changed the game.

    I spit into plastic tubes (one for each of the two big players in this industry in the United States: 23andMe and Ancestry.com), dropped them in the mail, and waited, anxiously, for the results. When the email arrived in early 2022, I was stunned.

    After a lifetime believing I was a basic White American, I learned that was only half true. My birth mother was born in Iowa. But it turned out my father was North African.

    I reached out to anonymous DNA matches through 23andMe and Ancestry’s messaging systems, but no one replied. Then came weeks of research using Ancestry.com and various public records databases until I was able to identify both my parents and find contact information for a handful of their close relatives.

    I discovered my birth father had been born in the mid-1930s in Casablanca. Romantic visions of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman (fictionally) escaping the Nazis swam in my head.

    Records showed he had emigrated to the United States in 1959 and ended up in San Francisco. My mother had been raised in San Diego and also moved to San Francisco right after high school. But why had he left Morocco? What brought her to San Francisco? I had to know more.

    After days of imagining the best and worst, I drafted scripts for what to say to genetically close family members who most likely had no idea I even existed. Then I apprehensively reached out.

    To my great relief, my mother’s and father’s families both welcomed me with open arms – despite their shock at discovering I existed.

    I learned quickly that both my biological parents had died and was deeply disappointed I had forever missed my chance to meet them. Would things have been different if I’d searched harder earlier?

    But I was thrilled that all their siblings were still alive.

    From my new family, I pieced together a rough sketch of my parents’ stories: On opposite sides of the world, they had both butted heads with difficult parents and left home at the first opportunity. They both wound up in one of the most free-thinking places on Earth: San Francisco.

    He worked as floor installer in the city’s North Beach neighborhood, where she was a cocktail waitress and dancer. I pictured them meeting while he installed floors in a nightclub where she was working.

    By all accounts, it must have been a very brief affair. My father was living with a girlfriend, and my mother’s sister says she never once heard my mother discuss my father in any way. Other than the sister and her mother, no one else in her family was told she was pregnant. My father’s family says they are 100% certain he was never told, either.

    There were other big surprises: I was told my mother never had another child – or even a serious boyfriend – for the rest of her life. On my father’s side, I was shocked to learn I had a half-brother and half-sister and dozens of cousins in France and Morocco.

    They invited me to visit. I booked a trip to meet my father’s huge, welcoming family.

    The author's extended family owns property on a rocky promontory in Dar Bouazza, a coastal community just west of Casablanca.

    In Paris, a cousin threw me an exuberant party at her sunny suburban home, where I was warmly embraced by the entire French branch of the family. They gave me insiders’ hints tailored to my interests about where to go and what to see off the beaten track.

    At their recommendation, I spent an afternoon in a huge, beautiful city park in eastern Paris called Buttes-Chaumont. I ate dinner at the French equivalent of a working-class diner (a bouillon, named for the broth) called Julien. It was my third time in Paris, but now I saw it through new eyes, imagining myself as something of an honorary son of the city.

    Morocco was another world entirely. I had never traveled to a Muslim country or anywhere outside Europe or the Americas. The experience was a strange and magical combination of foreign adventure and comfort travel, buffered by family looking out for me.

    I spent the first six days in the seaside resort town of Dar Bouazza, about 45 minutes from Casablanca, where my large Moroccan family owns a set of neighboring summer homes just yards from the beach. The houses are built on property my grandfather bought nearly a century ago (when the land was thought to be worthless) as a place to escape the summer heat of Casablanca.

    A photo of Fez at sunset, taken from the roof of a riad in the Moroccan city.

    French is the family’s primary language, and my aunts and uncles don’t speak English. Some younger cousin was usually available to translate, but group conversations at the table or on the back deck were always in French, leaving me no way to join in. I resolved to learn conversational French by my next visit.

    Despite the language gap, I got to know them all – the stern uncle, the motherly aunts, the prankster cousin. And I recognized many of their personality traits and quirks – how boisterous, curious and sly they are – in myself.

    I spent nearly a week wolfing down delicious, authentic Moroccan meals such as lamb tajine (steam roasted with vegetables inside a ceramic dish of the same name) and pastilla (spiced, shredded chicken or game bird wrapped in filo pastry) cooked and served on seaside terraces by the small household staffs common in middle-class Moroccan homes.

    Exploring a new homeland

    Yet I wanted to see more of my father’s homeland, so I left on a tour of Fez and Marrakech arranged by a cousin and her husband, who happen to own a luxury travel company.

    Those two cities were beautiful and awe-inspiring, alien yet weirdly familiar. I experienced them in a unique and very personal way thanks to my DNA journey: as a son just one generation removed from his father’s homeland.

    Professional guides created tours personalized to my interests and my newly discovered family’s culture and history – right down to a side trip to my family’s ancestral mausoleum in Fez.

    I saw the things my father might have seen touring the cities’ colorful medinas (marketplaces) where the guides introduced me to shopkeepers by my new family name. I saw gorgeous mosques and unexpected sidelights such as Marrakech’s largest Jewish temple, Synagogue Lazama. I watched craftsmen at work, making pottery, leather goods and fabric just as it has been done for centuries.

    The Roman ruins at Volubilis are remarkably pristine because of their isolation and the fact that they were unoccupied for nearly a thousand years.

    The highlight of the tour was a side trip to the ancient Roman ruins at Volubilis, between Fez and the Moroccan capital of Rabat. The city was abandoned by Rome around the third century and was not excavated until the early 20th. Seeing well-preserved walls, foundations, and floor mosaics on site – something that simply cannot be seen in the Americas – was a superb experience for a history buff like me.

    The tour was capped by a hike in the High Atlas Mountains to spend an afternoon with a local family who gave me a Berber-style cooking lesson, teaching me how to stew lamb and vegetables in a traditional Moroccan tagine.

    The patriarch even loaned me a djellaba, a traditional Moroccan outer robe, to wear for a photo, which felt both strange and strangely comforting – a perfect encapsulation of the whole trip.

    The author and his host sample the results of his Berber cooking lesson.

    Getting a home DNA test can launch you on your own great adventure – intended or not.

    Former CNN correspondent Samuel Burke created an entire podcast series in partnership with CNN Philippines, “Suddenly Family,” around the surprises – pleasant and otherwise – that can spring from DNA analysis.

    “DNA testing can open up this Pandora’s Box that nobody in the DNA industry talks about,” he said.

    Burke said some people just want to know about genetic health conditions they may carry. Many more are just looking to learn more about their ethnicity, “how Irish, how Jewish, how Native American they are.” But he said few realize the testing services will connect them to other people, sometimes in unexpected ways.

    In Fez, Curran visited several workshops where fabrics, leather goods and ceramics are hand-crafted using ancient techniques and tools.

    Whether you know nothing about your family background or think you know everything, there are likely to be surprises. Among them, Burke lists finding out a parent was unfaithful or that you’re the product of artificial insemination. Or you could discover you’re not biologically related to one of your parents.

    Burke said being prepared is key to avoiding some of the pitfalls.

    “Expect that you will find out something unexpected.” And he says that if you suspect something bad, you can opt out of sharing your results. Burke added the single best piece of advice he’s heard while reporting on DNA is “slow down.” Don’t become “hell-bent on solving the mysteries” and sharing your results as quickly as possible.

    Whether or not your DNA testing has unexpected results, it can inspire some fascinating travel across the country or, as in my case, around the world.

    What I learned on my adventure, however, is that the best part – even more than the places you visit – is the people you bond with, your new-found family who are like you, but also very different.

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  • Killings of 3 women in Long Island went unsolved for more than a decade. Here’s how authorities tracked down the suspect | CNN

    Killings of 3 women in Long Island went unsolved for more than a decade. Here’s how authorities tracked down the suspect | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    After the remains of four women were found near a beach in Long Island, New York, more than a decade ago, investigators say DNA evidence and cellphone data now point to a murder suspect – a local architect whose internet history showed him often searching the status of the case and details about the victims.

    Rex Heuermann was arrested in New York City on Thursday, more than a year after a police task force explored his possible connection to the cold case known as the “Gilgo Four,” named for the beach where the remains were found.

    Heuermann, 59, was indicted on one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in each of three of the killings – Melissa Barthelemy in 2009, and Megan Waterman and Amber Costello in 2010, according to the indictment. He pleaded not guilty Friday during his first court appearance on Long Island and was remanded without bail.

    The defendant, who told his attorney he did not carry out the killings, is also the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, according to a bail application from Suffolk County prosecutors. Heuermann has not been charged in the case, but the investigation “is expected to be resolved soon,” the document states.

    “Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us. A predator that ruined families. If not for the members of this task force, he would still be on the streets today,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said during a news conference Friday, and offered his condolences to the victims’ families.

    “To the family members of Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman. I can only imagine what you’ve had to endure over the last decade regarding knowing that your killer was still loose. God bless you,” Harrison said before hugging a few people standing behind him.

    Authorities had been left with little information after a search for a missing woman in 2010 led to the discovery of multiple sets of human remains at Gilgo Beach. By the time the remains of the missing woman, Shannan Gilbert, were found the following year, at least 10 sets of human remains had been recovered across two Long Island counties.

    As they searched for a suspect in the “Gilgo Four” case, investigators combed through phone records from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area in Long Island – places where the suspect is believed to have used a burner phone, court documents show.

    “For each of the murders, he got an individual burner phone, and he used that to communicate with the victims. Then shortly after the death of the victims, he then would get rid of the burner phone,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said during a news conference Friday.

    In February 2022, Harrison created a task force to focus on solving the cold case. By mid-March, Heuermann’s name showed up on authorities’ radar after a New York state investigator identified him in a database, according to Tierney.

    Investigators say they narrowed cell tower records from thousands of possible individuals down to hundreds and then to a handful of people. Next, authorities focused on residents who also matched a physical description provided by a witness who had seen the suspected killer.

    As the search pool narrowed, they zeroed in on anyone with a connection to a green pick-up truck a witness had seen the suspect driving, according to two law enforcement sources with knowledge of the case. Later, authorities learned Heuermann drives a green pickup truck registered to his brother.

    Eventually, investigators found Heuermann matched a witness’s physical description, lived close to the Long Island cell site and worked near the New York City cell sites where other calls were captured.

    Cell phone and credit card billing records show numerous instances where Heuermann was in the general locations as the burner phones used to call the three victims “as well as the use of Brainard-Barnes and Barthelemy’s cellphones when they were used to check voicemail and make taunting phone calls after the women disappeared,” Suffolk County prosecutors allege.

    The defendant’s next court appearance is scheduled on August 1.

    A major factor in the case that helped point investigators to Heuermann as a suspect is DNA evidence, which was made possible due to the latest scientific innovations in the field.

    After Heuermann was identified as a suspect in March 2022, authorities placed him and his family under surveillance and would obtain DNA samples from discarded items. A team later gathered a swab of Heuermann’s DNA from leftover crust in a pizza box he threw in the trash, according to Tierney.

    During the initial examination of one of the victims’ skeletal remains and materials discovered in the grave, the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory recovered a male hair from the “bottom of the burlap” the killer used to wrap her body, according to prosecutors. Analysis of the DNA found on the victim and the pizza showed the samples matched.

    Additionally, hair believed to be from Heuermann’s wife was found on or near three of the murder victims, prosecutors allege in the bail application, citing DNA testing. The DNA came from 11 bottles inside a garbage can outside the Heuermann home, the court document says.

    The hairs, found in 2010, were degraded and DNA testing at the time couldn’t yield results. But as technology progressed, mitochondrial DNA testing allowed investigators to make the connection, Tierney explained.

    The victims’ remains “were out in a tough environment for a prolonged period of time. So, there was not a lot of forensic evidence,” Tierney told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Friday, and credited the FBI and one of its agents for a “phenomenal job” with extracting the evidence.

    Evidence shows Heuermann’s wife and children were out of the state when the three women are believed to have been killed, Tierney said during Friday’s news conference.

    A search of Heuermann’s computer revealed he had scoured the internet at least 200 times, hunting for details about the status of the investigation, Tierney added. Heuermann’s internet history also turned up searches for torture porn and “depictions of women being abused, being raped and being killed,” Tierney said.

    Heuermann was also compulsively searching for photos of the victims and their relatives, and he was trying to track down relatives, the district attorney said.

    Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman

    While the 10 sets of human remains found are all being investigated as victims of suspected homicide, four of the women found have garnered specific attention due to the similarities found in their deaths.

    The victims known as the “Gilgo Four” were all last seen alive between 2007 and 2010, and their remains were found along a quarter-mile stretch of road in a span of three days in December 2010.

    The women, who all worked in the sex industry, were also buried in a similar fashion, Tierney noted.

    “All the women were petite. They all did the same thing for a living. They all advertised the same way. Immediately there were similarities with regard to the crime scenes,” he said. The killer concealed their bodies by wrapping them in camouflaged burlap, the type used by hunters.

    Authorities have said they believe the death of Gilbert, whose disappearance sparked the searches that found the other victims, may have been accidental and not related to the other killings.

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  • Burner phones. Pizza crust. DNA on burlap. A New York architect was charged with killing 3 women in Gilgo Beach serial killings cold case | CNN

    Burner phones. Pizza crust. DNA on burlap. A New York architect was charged with killing 3 women in Gilgo Beach serial killings cold case | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A New York architect was charged with murder in connection to the killings of three of the women who became known as the “Gilgo Four,” according to the Suffolk County District Attorney, in a case that baffled authorities for more than a decade in suburban Long Island.

    Rex Heuermann – who told his attorney he is not the killer – was taken into custody for some of the Gilgo Beach murders, an unsolved case tied to at least 10 sets of human remains discovered since 2010, authorities said.

    The case was broken open thanks to cell phone data, credit card bills and DNA testing, which ultimately led them to arrest Heuermann, 59, authorities said.

    Heuermann was charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in each of the three killings – Melissa Barthelemy in 2009, and Megan Waterman and Amber Costello in 2010 – according to the indictment. A grand jury made the six charges, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney.

    He is also the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, according to a bail application from prosecutors. Heuermann has not been charged with that homicide but the investigation “is expected to be resolved soon,” the document says.

    This is the first arrest in the long-dormant case, which terrorized residents and sparked conflicting theories about whether a serial killer was responsible.

    Tierney said authorities, fearing the suspect might be tipped off they were closing in, moved to arrest him Thursday night.

    “We were playing before a party of one,” he told reporters. “We knew the person responsible for these murders would be looking at us.”

    See our live coverage here

    Authorities said once Heuermann was identified in early 2022 as a suspect, they watched him and his family and got DNA samples from items that were thrown away.

    During the initial examination of one of the victims’ skeletal remains and materials discovered in the grave, the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory recovered a male hair from the “bottom of the burlap” the killer used to wrap her body, according to the bail application.

    A surveillance team later gathered a swab of Heuermann’s DNA from leftover crust in a pizza box he threw in the trash, the district attorney said.

    Hair believed to be from Rex Heuermann’s wife was found on or near three of the murder victims, prosecutors allege in the bail application, citing DNA testing. The DNA came from 11 bottles inside a garbage can outside the Heuermann home, the court document says.

    Evidence shows Heuermann’s wife and children were outside of the state at the times when the three women were killed, Tierney said.

    The hairs found in 2010 were degraded and DNA testing at the time couldn’t yield results but improvements in technology eventually gave investigators the DNA answers they needed.

    Heuermann was in tears after his arrest, his court appointed attorney, Michael Brown, said Friday.

    “I did not do this,” Brown said Heuermann told him during their conversation after his arrest.

    Rex Heuermann

    Heuermann was remanded without bail. He entered a not guilty plea through his attorney. His next court date is scheduled for August 1.

    Police were still searching his home Friday night, according to a CNN team outside the house.

    Heuermann, who a source familiar with the case said is a father of two, is a registered architect who has owned the New York City-based architecture and consulting firm, RH Consultants & Associates, since 1994, according to his company’s website.

    In 2022, Heuermann was interviewed for the YouTube channel “Bonjour Realty.” He spoke about his career in architecture, and said he was born and raised in Long Island. He began working in Manhattan in 1987.

    CNN has reached out to Heuermann’s company for comment.

    The remains of the Gilgo Four were found in bushes along a quarter-mile stretch of Ocean Parkway in Oak Beach over a two-day period in 2010.

    The skeletal remains of Barthelemy were discovered near Gilgo Beach on December 11. Barthelemy, who was a sex worker, was last seen July 12, 2009, at her apartment when she told a friend she was going to see a man, according to a Suffolk County website about the killings.

    The remains of three other women were found on December 13, 2010: Brainard-Barnes, who advertised escort services on Craigslist and was last seen in early June 2007 in New York City; Amber Lynn Costello, who also advertised escort services and was last seen leaving her North Babylon home in early September 2010; and Waterman, who also advertised as an escort and was last seen in early June 2010 at a Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge.

    Tierney said of the women, “They were buried in a similar fashion, in a similar location, in a similar way. All the women were petite. They all did the same thing for a living. They all advertised the same way. Immediately there were similarities with regard to the crime scenes.”

    Tierney said the killer tried to conceal the bodies, wrapping them in camouflaged burlap, the type used by hunters.

    The suspect made taunting phone calls to Barthelemy’s sister, “some of which resulted in a conversation between the caller, who was a male, and a relative of Melissa Barthelemy, in which the male caller admitted killing and sexually assaulting Ms. Barthelemy,” according to the bail application.

    The court document alleges cell phone and credit card billing records show numerous instances where Heuermann was in the general locations as the burner phones used to call the three victim,s “as well as the use of Brainard-Barnes and (Barthelemy’s) cellphones when they use used to check voicemail and make taunting phone calls after the women disappeared.”

    The district attorney said the killer got a new burner phone before each killing.

    The case against Heuermann came together in the two years since the restart of the investigation by Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison, authorities said.

    Harrison put together a task force including county police detectives, investigators from the sheriff’s office, state police and the FBI.

    Tierney said the task force held its first meeting in February 2022.

    “Six weeks later, on March 14, 2022, the name Rex Heuermann was first mentioned as a suspect in the Gilgo case,” Tierney said. “A New York state investigator was able to identify him in a database.”

    Investigators had gone backward through phone records collected from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area – two areas where a “burner phone” used by the alleged killer were detected, according to court documents.

    Rex Heuermann is seen purchasing extra minutes for one of the burner cell phones connected to some of the crimes at a cellphone store in Midtown Manhattan, prosecutors allege.

    Authorities then narrowed records collected by cell towers to thousands, then down to hundreds, and finally down to a handful of people who could match a suspect.

    From there, authorities worked to focus on people who lived in the area of the cell tower who also matched a physical description given by a witness who had seen the suspected killer.

    In the narrowed pool, they searched for a connection to a green pickup a witness had seen the suspect driving, the sources said.

    Investigators found Heuermann, who matched a witness’s physical description, lived close to the Long Island cell site and worked near the New York City cell sites where other calls were captured.

    They also learned he had often driven a green pickup, registered to his brother. But they needed more than circumstantial evidence.

    When investigators searched Heuermann’s computer, they found a disturbing internet search history, including 200 searches aimed at learning about the status of the investigation, Tierney said Friday.

    His searches also included queries for torture porn and “depictions of women being abused, being raped and being killed,” Tierney said.

    The DA said the suspect was still compulsively searching for photos of the victims and their relatives.

    Heuermann was trying to find the relatives, he added.

    The murder mystery had confounded county officials for years. In 2020, they found a belt with initials that may have been handled by the suspect and launched a website to collect new tips in the investigation.

    Police said some victims identified had advertised prostitution services on websites such as Craigslist.

    The mystery began in 2010 when police discovered the first set of female remains among the bushes along an isolated strip of waterfront property on Gilgo Beach while searching for Shannan Gilbert, a missing 23-year-old woman from Jersey City, New Jersey.

    An aerial view of the area near Gilgo Beach and Ocean Parkway on Long Island where police have been conducting a prolonged search after finding 10 sets of human remains in April 2011 in Wantagh, New York.

    By the time Gilbert’s body was found one year later on neighboring Oak Beach, investigators had unearthed 10 sets of human remains strewn across two Long Island counties.

    The grim discoveries generated widespread attention in the region and sent waves of fear across some communities on Long Island’s South Shore.

    Authorities later said they believe Gilbert’s death may have been accidental and not related to the Gilgo Beach slayings.

    Still, Gilbert’s disappearance led to the discovery of others.

    Crime scene investigators use metal detectors to search a marsh for human remains in December 2011 in Oak Beach, New York.

    Additional remains were uncovered in neighboring Gilgo Beach and in Nassau County, about 40 miles east of New York City. They included a female toddler, an Asian male and a woman initially referred to as “Jane Doe #6,” investigators said.

    In 2020, police identified “Jane Doe #6” was as Valerie Mack, a 24-year-old Philadelphia mother who went missing two decades earlier.

    Mack’s partial remains were first discovered near Gilgo Beach in 2000, with additional dismembered remains found in 2011, according to the Suffolk County police.

    John Ray, a lawyer who represents the family of Shannon Gilbert – whose disappearance and search led to the discovery of “Gilgo Four” and other remains – said Friday he does not know if Heuermann is also responsible for her death.

    “We breathe a great sigh of relief,” Ray said. “We’re happy the police are finally taking a positive step in this respect, but this is just the beginning … This is just the edge of a bigger body of water, shall we say, of murder that has taken place.”

    Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman

    Ray also represents the family Gilgo Beach victim Jessica Taylor.

    “We don’t know if he is connected to Jessica Taylor’s murder,” he said.

    Jasmine Robinson, a family representative for Taylor, said she’s “hopeful for the future and hopeful that a connection is made” to resolve the other cases.

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  • Controversial Chinese scientist He Jiankui proposes new gene editing research | CNN

    Controversial Chinese scientist He Jiankui proposes new gene editing research | CNN

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who sparked global outrage in 2018 when he revealed that he had created the first gene-edited children, has put forward a new proposal for modifying human embryos that he claims could help aid the “aging population.”

    He, who in 2019 was sentenced to three years in prison in China for “illegal medical practices,” reemerged last year and surprised the global scientific community when he announced on social media that he was opening a research lab in Beijing.

    Since that time, updates on his research posted on his Twitter account have focused on proposed plans to develop gene therapy for rare disease.

    But on Thursday, he again courted controversy by posting a new research proposal that experts say is reminiscent of his earlier work, which scientists broadly decried as unethical and dangerous – with the potential to impact human DNA across generations.

    In a succinct, one page document, He proposed research that would involve gene-editing mouse embryos and then human fertilized egg cells, or zygotes, in order to test whether a mutation “confers protection against Alzheimer’s disease.”

    “The aging population is of grave importance as both a socioeconomic issue and a strain on the medical system … Currently, there is no effective drug for Alzheimer’s disease,” he wrote in an apparent nod to China’s growing demographic burden due to a rising proportion of elderly.

    Unlike the science that landed him in jail, this potential experiment involves a kind of abnormal fertilized egg cell generally considered not suitable to be implanted in a woman.

    No human embryo would be implanted for pregnancy and “government permit and ethical approval” were required before experimentation, the proposal said.

    It’s not clear whether He would get approval for such work in China, even if the proposal he put forward were deemed to have merit – and outside experts say the current proposal is not scientifically sound.

    Authorities in China took multiple steps to tighten rules and ethical standards affecting human gene editing in the wake of the revelations about his previous research. They also banned He from engaging in work related to assisted reproductive technology services and placed limits on his work with human genetic resources, according to state media.

    But the scientist’s release of a new proposal involving gene editing of embryos has scientists and medical ethics experts concerned – and confused.

    “The whole thing is, to put it bluntly, insane,” said Peter Dröge, an associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, who focuses on molecular and biochemical genetics.

    The proposed research could be seen as a step to explore if such a method of genetic editing could be used in a viable embryo in future, according to Dröge.

    Apart from ethical considerations, gene-editing an embryo to address a complex disease that affects people toward the end of their life and doesn’t have a clear, single genetic cause is “highly questionable,” he said.

    “He basically wants to genetically modify the human species so they don’t get Alzheimer’s,” he said. “I’m really surprised that he’s coming forward with this again.”

    Joy Zhang, founding director of the Centre for Global Science and Epistemic Justice at the University of Kent in Britain, said the proposal seemed to be “more of a publicity stunt than a substantiated research agenda.”

    “However, we do need to take these public claims with vigilance, as it may nevertheless misguide patients and their families, and tint the reputations not just of science in China, but global research effort in this area,” she said.

    In response to questions from CNN, He said he was “collecting feedback from scientists and bioethicists now” and did not have a timeline for the study.

    “I will make a revision to the Alzheimer’s disease proposal later. I will not conduct any experiments until I get the government permit, and also get the approval by an international ethics committee with bioethicists from USA and Europe,” he told CNN via email.

    “I want to emphasize that this is a preclinical study, no embryo will be used for pregnancy in this study. The research will be open and transparent, and all experiment results and progress will be posted on Twitter,” he said.

    He did not address questions on whether he was limited from conducting certain work in China.

    CNN also approached China’s Ministry of Science and Technology and National Health Commission for comment.

    In 2018, He, formerly a researcher at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, claimed he had used a gene-editing tool called CRISPR to modify human embryos of twin girls in the hopes of protecting them from HIV. A third genetically edited baby was also born from He’s experimentation, a court in Shenzhen later said.

    The research sparked a fierce uproar over the ethics of using new and potentially dangerous technology in people and the risk of unintended mutations being passed on not only to the children but potentially any future offspring. It also raised concerns about cracking open the door to a potentially species-changing future of “designer children.”

    In recent media interviews, He has indicated he feels he acted “too quickly” in conducting the research and has given sparse details on the children, besides indicating they were living “normal” lives.

    Genetic manipulation of human embryos – both viable and nonviable ones – is typically tightly controlled globally and some countries ban all such research, experts say.

    But there is robust global debate around allowing genome editing of human embryos to treat serious genetic conditions or expanding research.

    Scientists say genome editing, including in adults, shows promise for one day treating diseases that are currently difficult to treat or cure, like cystic fibrosis or sickle cell disease.

    Chinese law does not allow gene-edited human embryos used in research to be implanted into humans, or developed for more than 14 days. All gene editing for reproductive purposes has also long been banned.

    Since 2019, a broader raft of regulation of China’s biosciences field has added more legal controls and ethical standards to such research, including a major update to national bioethics guidelines earlier this year.

    There’s also been sharp backlash against He within China’s scientific community.

    In March, over 200 Chinese scholars released a statement in response to his public activities, including what they said was He’s “misleading marketing campaign” over his claimed research plans on rare disease.

    They condemned He’s “attitude and refusal to reflect on his criminal actions of violating ethics and regulations of gene editing,” and called for regulatory authorities to launch a new investigation into He’s “alleged re‐violation of scientific integrity, ethical norms, laws and regulations.”

    “The ethical boundaries shall not be crossed,” they wrote.

    As for the future of He’s research, Canadian bioethicist Françoise Baylis of Dalhousie University said numerous questions should be considered, from whether He has the requisite scientific expertise to test the hypothesis, to whether he can be trusted to follow the rules for research involving humans.

    “It is possible for people to learn from their mistakes and to change their behavior … but many are concerned, however, that He Jiankui may not have learned from his past mistakes,” Baylis said.

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  • What is a species? | CNN

    What is a species? | CNN

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    Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



    CNN
     — 

    A frog that looks like it’s made of tempered chocolate. A rainbow-colored fish that dwells in the ocean’s “twilight zone.” A hairy sloth with a coconut-shaped head.

    These are just a few of the hundreds of newfound species that scientists described in 2022. The animals join a growing list of more than 1.25 million species that have been scientifically described and cataloged since the 18th century.

    But what defines an organism as a species that’s new to science? And what exactly is a species, for that matter?

    Biologists have wrestled with the concept for about as long as the field of biology has existed. Renowned naturalist Charles Darwin wrote in 1859: “No one definition has as yet satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species.”

    Fast-forward to the present, and the debate hasn’t changed much. “There are many definitions, and none of them applies broadly to all life on the planet,” said Bruno de Medeiros, assistant curator of insects at the Field Museum in Chicago.

    And yet, recognizing and distinguishing between species is vital — and not only for biologists. It’s also necessary for cultivating the food we eat, treating diseases caused by different pathogens, and conserving endangered animals, plants and habitats.

    The concept is also a critical part of understanding our own evolutionary history and defining our relationship to all life on the planet.

    Teeming with life, Earth is covered with organisms of all shapes and sizes. Some are too small to see without a microscope. Others may tower hundreds of feet tall. Myriad life forms may gestate in a womb or sprout in soil, hatch from an egg or germinate in a corpse. They could be scaly, chitinous, furry or feathered; perhaps they are leafy, dotted with cilia or slick with slime. They might roam for thousands of miles or spend their lifetimes rooted in one spot.

    Scientists make sense of all this biological diversity by classifying organisms based on shared ancestry and features such as physical appearance, internal structures and reproduction. A universal, hierarchical classification system was proposed in 1753 by Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus, and it’s still generally followed today. This branch of science is known as taxonomy.

    The broadest categories for all life on Earth are the domains. There are three domains — Bacteria, Archaea and Eukaryota — and they organize life based on cellular structure. Eukaryotes have cells that typically contain a single nucleus housing DNA: All multicellular life — animals, plants and fungi — as well as some types of unicellular life, are eukaryotes. Bacteria and Archaea are single-celled microorganisms that don’t have a nucleus, and they are evolutionarily distinct from one another.

    The next category is kingdoms. In each kingdom, there are subcategories: phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. With each subcategory, the criteria for grouping organisms become progressively more specific and selective.

    For example, humans are animals. That means we’re eukaryotes in the Animalia kingdom. Our phylum is Chordata, which includes any animal with a spinal cord. We are part of the class Mammalia. Within mammals, we are primates, sharing ancestry with apes, monkeys and lemurs. Our branch of the primate family tree is Hominidae, which includes our closest relatives: the great apes, such as gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos.

    Finally, we arrive at our genus and species — and our scientific name — Homo sapiens. We are the only surviving lineage in the Homo genus. Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), our last remaining relatives in the Homo group, went extinct about 40,000 years ago.

    Theoretically, “a species is a set of populations or one population of organisms that shares a common evolutionary history and reproduces with one another but not outside that group,” according to Nancy Simmons, curator-in-charge of mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

    Myotis nimbaensis is a species of bat discovered in 2021 that's named for West Africa's Nimba Range, the mountain chain where it is found.

    If an animal population in a certain locale looks more or less the same, behaves the same, and mates and generates fertile offspring only with each other, “usually, we call this a species,” de Madeiros added.

    But color, markings and even size can vary widely within a species; this is true for many species of spiders. Not all life reproduces sexually, so that criteria isn’t universal for defining a species, either. And in some organisms that sexually reproduce, closely related species may interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Coydogs, for example, are fertile hybrids of coyotes (Canis latrans) and dogs (Canis familiaris). Humans and Neanderthals interbred, and portions of Neanderthal DNA linger in the human genome, in people of non-African descent.

    It can take millions of years for new species to evolve; often, what biologists are observing is evolution in progress. Closely related species can differ from each other a lot or a little — anatomically and genetically — depending on environmental circumstances and when they diverged from a shared ancestor.

    In the best-case scenarios for describing new species, there are many data sources, Simmons explained. A candidate typically differs physically from its close relatives, with different measurements, different morphology (anatomical structures), or different colors or patterns.

    “But then ideally we’d have other lines of evidence too — different genetic code or some sort of DNA variation,” Simmons told CNN. Behavior can also distinguish between species. In bats, for example, echolocation calls are often species-specific.

    All these criteria — anatomy, genetics, behavior and location — enabled Simmons and her colleagues to describe a newfound orange-and-black bat species, Myotis nimbaensis, in 2021.

    In recent decades, genetic data has transformed classification. Genomic analysis can reveal species-defining differences in near-identical organisms, as de Madeiros discovered while analyzing DNA sequences for palm flower weevils — a type of beetle with an elongated snout — that he had collected in Brazil in 2013 and 2014.

    Weevils of the genus Anchylorhynchus mate on flowers in palm trees in Brazil. Genomic analysis showed two nearly identical weevil species belonging to this genus living alongside one another.

    Initially, he thought there was a mistake in the data. “I had identical beetles that were clearly very distantly related species,” he said. But when he reexamined the insects, which belonged to the genus Anchylorhynchus, he noticed subtle differences in concave depressions in the males’ undersides. These indentations help the males fit snugly on top of females while mating, and likely are important for helping beetles identify and mate with females from the correct species, de Madeiros said.

    In many ways, genetic data has made it easier for scientists to tell species apart — but it has also raised its own set of issues, particularly when closely related organisms that look alike and exhibit similar behavior are also very similar genetically.

    “We get into questions of how much of a percentage of a difference in the genetic code do you have to have to be a distinct species — and people disagree on that, too,” Simmons said. “So, even when we have genetic data, you don’t find complete agreement about how to interpret it.”

    However difficult it might be to define a species, scientists won’t be running out of new discoveries anytime soon. By some estimates, Earth is home to approximately 8.7 million species — about 6.5 million living on land and 2.2 million in the oceans, which means that roughly 86% of land species and 91% of marine species are yet to be found and described.

    “We have a great challenge ahead to keep describing this diversity — how it evolves and how it will continue existing on our planet,” de Madeiros said.

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  • Supreme Court clears way for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to try to use DNA to prove innocence | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court clears way for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to try to use DNA to prove innocence | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court cleared the way on Wednesday for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to seek post-conviction DNA evidence to try to prove his innocence.

    Reed claims an all-White jury wrongly convicted him of killing of Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old White woman, in Texas in 1998.

    Texas had argued that he had waited too long to bring his challenge to the state’s DNA procedures in federal court, but the Supreme Court disagreed. Now, he can go to a federal court to make his claim.

    The ruling was 6-3. Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the court and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

    Since Reed’s conviction, Texas courts had rejected his various appeals. Celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Rihanna have expressed support, signing a petition asking the state to halt his eventual execution.

    The case puts a new focus on the testing of DNA crime-scene evidence and when an inmate can make a claim to access the technology in a plea of innocence. To date, 375 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 21 who served time on death row, according to the Innocence Project, a group that represents Reed and other clients seeking post-conviction DNA testing to prove their innocence.

    Kavanaugh, in his opinion Wednesday, said that the court agreed to hear the case because federal appeals courts have disagreed about when inmates can make such claims without running afoul of the statute of limitations. Kavanaugh said Reed could make the claim after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately denied his request for rehearing, rejecting an earlier date set out by the appeals court.

    “Significant systemic benefits ensue from starting the statute of limitations clock when the state litigation in DNA testing cases like Reed’s has concluded,” Kavanaugh said.

    He noted that if any problems with a defendant’s right to due process “lurk in the DNA testing law” the case can proceed through the appellate process, which could ultimately render a federal lawsuit unnecessary.

    Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

    Alito, joined by Gorsuch in his dissent, said Reed should have acted more quickly to bring his appeal. “Instead,” Alito wrote, “he waited until an execution date was set.”

    Alito charged Reed with making the “basic mistake of missing a statute of limitations.”

    Reed has been on death row for the murder of Stites.

    A passerby found Stites’ body near a shirt and a torn piece of belt. Investigators targeted Reed because his sperm was found inside her. Reed acknowledged the two were having an affair, but says that her fiancé, a local police officer named Jimmy Fennell, was the last to see her alive.

    Reed claims that over the last two decades he has discovered a “considerable body of evidence” demonstrating his innocence. Reed claims that the DNA testing would point to Fennell as the murder suspect. Fennell was later jailed for sexually assaulting a woman in his custody and Reed claims that numerous witnesses said he had threatened to strangle Stites with a belt if he ever caught her cheating on him. Reed seeks to test the belt found at the scene that was used to strangle Stites.

    The Texas law at issue allows a convicted person to obtain post-conviction DNA testing of biological material if the court finds that certain conditions are met. Reed was denied. He came to the Supreme Court in 2018 and was denied again. Now he is challenging the constitutionality of the Texas law arguing that the denial of the DNA testing violates his due process rights. 

    But the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals held that he waited too long to bring the claim. “An injury accrues when a plaintiff first becomes aware, or should have become aware, that his right had been violated.” The court said that he became aware of that in 2014 and that his current claim is “time barred.” 

    Reed’s lawyers argued that he could only bring the claim once the state appeals court had ruled, at the end of state court litigation. In court, Parker Rider-Longmaid said that the “clock doesn’t start ticking” until state court proceedings come to an end. He said Texas’ reading of the law would mean that other procedures in the appellate process are “irrelevant.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Scientists parse another clue to possible origins of Covid-19 as WHO says all possibilities ‘remain on the table’ | CNN

    Scientists parse another clue to possible origins of Covid-19 as WHO says all possibilities ‘remain on the table’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    There’s a tantalizing new clue in the hunt for the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

    A new analysis of genetic material collected from January to March 2020 at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, has uncovered animal DNA in samples already known to be positive for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. A significant amount of that DNA appears to belong to animals known as raccoon dogs, which were known to be traded at the market, according to officials with the World Health Organization, who addressed the new evidence in a news briefing on Friday.

    The connection to raccoon dogs came to light after Chinese researchers shared raw genetic sequences taken from swabbed specimens collected at the market early in the pandemic. The sequences were uploaded in late January 2023, to the data sharing site GISAID, but have recently been removed.

    An international team of researchers noticed them and downloaded them for further study, the WHO officials said Friday.

    The new findings – which have not yet been publicly posted – do not settle the question of how the pandemic started. They do not prove that raccoon dogs were infected with SARS-CoV-2, nor do they prove that raccoon dogs were the animals that first infected people.

    But because viruses don’t survive in the environment outside of their hosts for long, finding so much of the genetic material from the virus intermingled with genetic material from raccoon dogs is highly suggestive that they could have been carriers, according to scientists who worked on the analysis. The analysis was led by Kristian Andersen, an immunologist and microbiologist at Scripps Research; Edward Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney; Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona. These three scientists, who have been digging into the origins of the pandemic, were interviewed by reporters for The Atlantic magazine. CNN has reached out to Andersen, Holmes and Worobey for comment.

    The details of the international analysis were first reported Thursday by The Atlantic.

    The new data is emerging as Republicans in Congress have opened investigations into the pandemic’s origin. Previous studies provided evidence that the virus likely emerged naturally in market, but could not point to a specific origin. Some US agencies, including a recent US Department of Energy assessment, say the pandemic likely resulted from a lab leak in Wuhan.

    In the news briefing on Friday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organization was first made aware of the sequences on Sunday.

    “As soon as we became aware of this data, we contacted the Chinese CDC and urged them to share it with WHO and the international scientific community so it can be analyzed,” Tedros said.

    WHO also convened its Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of the Novel Pathogens, known as SAGO, which has been investigating the roots of the pandemic, to discuss the data on Tuesday. The group heard from Chinese scientists who had originally studied the sequences, as well as the group of international scientists taking a fresh look at them.

    WHO experts said in the Friday briefing that the data are not conclusive. They still can’t say whether the virus leaked from a lab, or if it spilled over naturally from animals to humans.

    “These data do not provide a definitive answer to the question of how the pandemic began, but every piece of data is important in moving us closer to that answer,” Tedros said.

    What the sequences do prove, WHO officials said, is that China has more data that might relate to the origins of the pandemic that it has not yet shared with the rest of the world.

    “This data could have, and should have, been shared three years ago,” Tedros said. “We continue to call on China to be transparent in sharing data and to conduct the necessary investigations and share results.

    “Understanding how the pandemic began remains a moral and scientific imperative.”

    CNN has reached out to the Chinese scientists who first analyzed and shared the data, but has not received a reply.

    The Chinese researchers, who are affiliated with that country’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, had shared their own analysis of the samples in 2022. In that preprint study posted last year, they concluded that “no animal host of SARS-CoV2 can be deduced.”

    The research looked at 923 environmental samples taken from within the seafood market and 457 samples taken from animals, and found 63 environmental samples that were positive for the virus that causes Covid-19. Most were taken from the western end of the market. None of the animal samples, which were taken from refrigerated and frozen products for sale, and from live, stray animals roaming the market, were positive, the Chinese authors wrote in 2022.

    When they looked at the different species of DNA represented in the environmental samples, the Chinese authors only saw a link to humans, but not other animals.

    When an international team of researchers recently took at fresh look at the genetic material in the samples – which were swabbed in and around the stalls of the market – using an advanced genetic technique called metagenomics, scientists said they were surprised to find a significant amount of DNA belonging to raccoon dogs, a small animal related to foxes. Raccoon dogs can be infected with the virus that causes Covid-19 and have been high on the list of suspected animal hosts for the virus.

    “What they found is molecular evidence that animals were sold at that market. That was suspected, but they found molecular evidence of that. And also that some of the animals that were there were susceptible to SARS-CoV2 infection, and some of those animals include raccoon dogs,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for Covid-19, in Friday’s briefing.

    “This doesn’t change our approach to studying the origins of Covid-19. It just tells us that more data exists, and that data needs to be shared in full,” she said.

    Van Kerkhove said that until the international scientific community is able to review more evidence, “all hypotheses remain on the table.”

    Some experts found the new evidence persuasive, if not completely convincing, of an origin in the market.

    “The data does point even further to a market origin,” Andersen, the Scripps Research evolutionary biologist who attended the WHO meeting and is one of the scientists analyzing the new data, told the magazine Science.

    The assertions made over the new data quickly sparked debate in the scientific community.

    Francois Balloux, director of the Genetics Institute at University College London, said the fact that the new analysis had not yet been publicly posted for scientists to scrutinize, but had come to light in news reports, warranted caution.

    “Such articles really don’t help as they only polarise the debate further,” Balloux posted in a thread on Twitter. “Those convinced by a zoonotic origin will read it as final proof for their conviction, and those convinced it was a lab leak will interpret the weakness of the evidence as attempts of a cover-up.”

    Other experts, who were not involved in the analysis, said the data could be key to showing the virus had a natural origin.

    Felicia Goodrum is an immunobiologist at the University of Arizona, who recently published a review of all available data for the various theories behind the pandemic’s origin.

    Goodrum says the strongest proof for a natural spillover would be to isolate the virus that causes Covid-19 from an animal that was present in the market in 2019.

    “Clearly, that is impossible, as we cannot go back in time any more than we have through sequencing, and no animals were present at the time sequences could be collected. To me, this is the next best thing,” Goodrum said in an email to CNN.

    In the WHO briefing, Van Kerkhove said that the Chinese CDC researchers had uploaded the sequences to GISAID as they were updating their original research. She said their first paper is in the process of being updated and resubmitted for publication.

    “We have been told by GISAID that the data from China’s CDC is being updated and expanded,” she said.

    Van Kerkhove said on Friday that what WHO would like to be able to do is to find the source of where the animals came from. Were they wild? Were they farmed?

    She said in the course of its investigation into the pandemic’s origins, WHO had repeatedly asked China for studies to trace the animals back to their source farms. She said WHO had also asked for blood tests on people who worked in the market, as well as tests on animals that may have come from the farms.

    “Share the data,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program, said Friday, addressing scientists around the world who might have relevant information. “Let science do the work, and we will get the answers.”

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  • Elite athletes with genetic heart disease can safely return to play with diagnosis and treatment, early study suggests | CNN

    Elite athletes with genetic heart disease can safely return to play with diagnosis and treatment, early study suggests | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    In a new study, most elite athletes with a diagnosed genetic heart disease did not experience serious or fatal symptoms of their condition, such as sudden cardiac death. The research suggests it can be “feasible” and “safe” for athletes to continue to participate in their sport.

    Among a sample of 76 elite athletes with a genetic heart disease who had competed or are still competing in either Division I university or professional sports, 73 out of the 76 did not experience a cardiac event triggered by their disease during the study period, according to researchers behind a late-breaking clinical trial presented Monday at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session Together With the World Congress of Cardiology.

    Among those elite athletes with a genetic heart disease, 40 of them – 52% – were asymptomatic, the study abstract finds.

    Over the years, researchers have become more aware of alarming reports about elite athletes experiencing heart problems, or even suddenly collapsing during games.

    “For athletes with genetic heart conditions, and I would add non-athletes, the tragedies occur when we don’t know of their condition,” said Dr. Michael Ackerman, a genetic cardiologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who was a senior author of the new research. “When we know of their condition, and we assess the risk carefully and we treat it well, these athletes and non-athletes, they can expect to live and thrive despite their condition.”

    The new research has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but the findings suggest that many athletes with a genetic heart disease can decide with their health care professionals on whether to continue competing in their sport and how to do so safely, instead of being automatically disqualified due to their health conditions.

    “In sports, historically, we’ve been paternalistic and de-emphasize patient preference and risk tolerance, but we know that athletes come from all walks of life. They are intelligent and when there’s scientific uncertainty, their values should be incorporated in medical decision-making,” Dr. J. Sawalla Guseh, cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, who was not involved in the new study, said during Monday’s scientific session.

    “Shared decision-making when done well can have very favorable outcomes,” he said.

    Elite basketball, hockey, soccer and football players, were among the 76 athletes included in the new study, conducted by researchers at Mayo Clinic and other institutions in the United States. They wrote in their study abstract that this is the first study to their knowledge describing the experience of athletes competing at the NCAA Division I level or in professional sports with a known genetic heart disease that puts them at risk of sudden cardiac death.

    The athletes in the study were cleared for return-to-play at either a NCAA Division I school or at the professional level. They were studied over an average of seven years, and all had been diagnosed with a genetic heart disease in the past 20 years, being treated at either Mayo Clinic, Morristown Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital or Atrium Health Sports Cardiology Center.

    “Only three of them had a breakthrough cardiac event, which means after they were diagnosed and treated, they were still having an event,” said Katherine Martinez, an undergraduate student at Loyola University in Baltimore, who helped conduct the research as an intern in the Mayo Clinic’s Windland Smith Rice Sudden Death Genomics Laboratory.

    Fainting was the most common event, and one athlete received a shock with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, or ICD. None of the athletes died.

    “The majority of these athletes went on to continue their career with no events at all,” Martinez said. But most of the athletes in the study – 55 of them, or 72% – were initially disqualified from competing by their primary provider or institution after their diagnosis. Most ultimately opted to return to play with no restrictions after undergoing comprehensive clinical evaluations and talking with their doctors.

    While each sports league has its own set of rules, historically, some people diagnosed with a genetic heart disease that puts them at an increased risk for sudden cardiac death have been restricted from competitive sports, the researchers wrote in their study abstract.

    “Just because you were given this diagnosis, doesn’t mean that your life, your career, the future that you see for yourself is over, but taking a second opinion from an expert who knows what they’re doing and is comfortable with shared decision-making is the next step,” said Martinez, who worked on the new research alongside her father, Dr. Matthew Martinez, director of Atlantic Health System Sports Cardiology at Morristown Medical Center and an author of the new research.

    Regarding the new study, “the take-home message is, if you have one of these findings, seek out an expert who’s going to help you identify a safe exercise plan for you and determine what level you can continue to safely participate in,” he said. “This is the next best step – the next evolution – of how we manage athletes with genetic heart disease.”

    Leaving their sport due to a genetic heart disease can be “very destructive” for athletes who have devoted their lives to excelling in competitions, said Dr. Lior Jankelson, director of the Inherited Arrhythmia Program at NYU Langone Heart in New York, who was not involved in the new research.

    Yet he added that these athletes still need to consult with their doctors and be watched closely because some genetic diseases could be more likely to cause a serious cardiac event than others.

    The new study highlights that “the majority of athletes with genetic heart disease could probably – after careful, meticulous expert risk-stratification and care strategy – participate in sports,” Jankelson said. “But at the same time, this is exactly the reason why these patients should be cared only in high-expertise genetic cardiology clinics, because there are other conditions that are genetic, that could respond very adversely to sports, and have a much higher risk profile of developing an arrhythmia during intense activity.”

    Separately, the NCAA Sports Science Institute notes on its website, “Though many student-athletes with heart conditions can live active lives and not experience health-related problems, sudden fatality from a heart condition remains the leading medical cause of death in college athletes.”

    For athletes with a genetic heart disease, their symptoms and their family history of cardiac events should be considered when determining their risks, said Dr. Jayne Morgan, a cardiologist with Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta, who was not involved in the new research.

    “Certainly, there is concern with elite athletes competing and whether or not they are being screened appropriately,” Morgan said. But she added that the new research offers “some understanding” to the mental health implications for athletes with a genetic heart disease who may be required to step away from a competitive sport that they love.

    “This study, I think, begins to go a long way in identifying that we may not need to pull the trigger so quickly and have athletes step away from something that they love,” Morgan said.

    The new study is “timely” given the recent national attention on athletes and their risk of sudden cardiac death, Dr. Deepak Bhatt, director of Mount Sinai Heart in New York City, who was not involved in the research, said in an email.

    “These are some of the best data showing that the risk of return to play may not be as high as we fear,” Bhatt said about the new research.

    “Some caveats include that the majority of these athletes were not symptomatic and about a third had an implantable defibrillator,” he added. “Any decision to return to the athletic field should be made after a careful discussion of the potential risks, including ones that are hard to quantify. Input from experts in genetic cardiology and sports cardiology can be very helpful in these cases.”

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  • Murder of Vermont woman solved after more than 50 years using DNA found on a cigarette and the victim’s clothing | CNN

    Murder of Vermont woman solved after more than 50 years using DNA found on a cigarette and the victim’s clothing | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    More than 50 years after Rita Curran’s roommate found her strangled to death in her room, police in Vermont say they have identified the killer using DNA found on a cigarette butt and Curran’s clothing.

    Investigators identified William DeRoos, a man who lived in Curran’s Burlington apartment building, as the person responsible with the help of advances in DNA technology and genetic genealogy, police in Vermont’s most populous city announced Tuesday.

    DeRoos died of a drug overdose in San Francisco in 1986, police said. The case is now closed.

    On the night of the July 1971 killing, DeRoos, who lived with his wife two floors above Curran, had a fight with his spouse and left their apartment to “cool down,” according to a Burlington police investigation report.

    Curran, 24, was later found dead, severely beaten after apparently having put up a “vicious struggle,” a detective wrote at the time. Investigators are now “unanimously certain” DeRoos was responsible, the report released Tuesday says.

    But when investigators questioned DeRoos and his wife the next morning, the couple said they had been together all night and didn’t hear or see anything. After police left, DeRoos told his wife if they were questioned again, she should not admit that he had left the apartment “or they would go after him” because he had a criminal history, police said during a news conference Tuesday.

    A break in the case finally came in 2014 when a DNA profile was extracted from a cigarette butt that had been found next to Curran’s body, Detective Lt. James Trieb said at the news conference. Though the profile was submitted to a national criminal database for DNA, he said, no matches were made. That meant the person with that DNA likely never had genetic material entered into the database, possibly because the person didn’t have a felony conviction.

    In 2019, Trieb reopened the case and decided to take a new approach.

    Instead of having a single detective work the cold case alone – the department’s usual strategy – he treated the crime as if it had just been committed, bringing in a team of detectives and expert technicians to review and discuss it, his investigation report says.

    The team began retesting evidence, Trieb said, and decided to analyze the cigarette DNA using genetic genealogy – a process that uses DNA databases for genealogy research to identify possible family members of the person whose DNA is unmatched.

    An outside genetic genealogy expert then concluded that the cigarette DNA had strong connections to relatives of DeRoos, both on the paternal and maternal sides.

    “She was certain that it was William DeRoos” who put his DNA on the cigarette, the police report says.

    cnn world rugby bryan habana dnafit rugby spc_00013322.jpg

    Why your DNA may be solving cold cases

    Investigators then found a living half-brother of DeRoos who was willing to provide a DNA sample, and that sample bolstered the conclusion that the cigarette DNA belonged to DeRoos, the report says.

    Finally, investigators found that DNA left on Curran’s ripped house coat also matched the DNA on the cigarette butt, the report reads. Investigators re-interviewed his then-wife, who admitted that she had lied about DeRoos’ alibi.

    At the news conference, acting Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said the day was “filled with mixed emotions.”

    “Ultimately, those emotions are ones of relief, of pride for me (and) for this department, but mostly of gratitude to a family that has been through an incredible ordeal for more than half a century,” he said.

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  • Arrest of Idaho students murder suspect brings ‘a great sense of relief’ to university campus before a return to classes this week, provost says | CNN

    Arrest of Idaho students murder suspect brings ‘a great sense of relief’ to university campus before a return to classes this week, provost says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Following the stabbing deaths of four students in November, the tight-knit University of Idaho community was shaken for weeks, but the recent arrest of a suspect may allow the campus to regain a sense of security as students return to classes this week.

    “I think I speak for many in our community that there’s a great sense of relief, but it’s bittersweet because this is still a horrible tragedy,” the university’s provost and executive vice president Torrey Lawrence told CNN Friday.

    Bryan Kohberger, 28, is charged with the murders of students Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20, who were found brutally stabbed to death in an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13.

    The gruesome killings rattled the campus community and city of Moscow, which had not seen a murder since 2015. Anxieties only worsened as weeks passed without a named suspect, leading some students to leave campus and complete the semester remotely.

    Classes resume on Wednesday following the winter break, and though students who are still uncomfortable being on campus have the option to attend remotely, most students are planning to return, Lawrence said.

    “The timing of this for our students was probably good,” the provost said, adding, “Hopefully we can really just be focused on classes starting and on that student experience that we provide.”

    Security will remain heightened on campus, he said, though some measures such as a state patrol presence are no longer in place.

    Still, the “very peaceful, safe community” students enjoyed before the killings has experienced a “loss of innocence,” he said.

    Kohberger, who is the sole suspect, was pursuing a PhD in criminal justice at nearby Washington State University at the time of the killings and lived just minutes from the scene of the killings, according to authorities.

    Investigators say phone records indicate Kohberger was near the victims’ home at least 12 times between June 2022 and the present day, according to an affidavit detailing the evidence against him. The records also show the suspect was near the residence on the morning of the killings, court documents say.

    DNA recovered from the the Kohberger family’s trash was linked to DNA found on a tan leather knife sheath found on the bed of one of the victims, according to the affidavit. The DNA in the trash is believed to belong to the biological father of the person whose DNA was found on the sheath, the document says.

    The suspect’s white Hyundai Elantra was also seen close the victims’ home around the time of the killings, according to investigators. Kohberger received a new license plate for the car five days after the killings, Washington state licensing records and court documents reveal.

    Kohberger had his initial court appearance in Idaho on Thursday and did not enter a plea at the hearing.

    Before Kohberger’s arrest, authorities noted that the suspect thoroughly cleaned his vehicle and was seen wearing surgical gloves repeatedly outside his family’s Pennsylvania home, a law enforcement source tells CNN.

    The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, was briefed on observations made by investigators during four days of surveillance leading up to Kohberger’s arrest at his family home.

    Kohberger “cleaned his car, inside and outside, not missing an inch,” according to the law enforcement source.

    A surveillance team assigned to Kohberger was tasked with two missions, according to multiple law enforcement sources: keep eyes on Kohberger so they could arrest him as soon as a warrant was issued, and try to obtain an object that would yield a DNA sample from Kohberger, which could then be compared to DNA evidence found at the crime scene.

    Kohberger was seen multiple times outside the Pennsylvania home wearing surgical gloves, according to the law enforcement source.

    In one instance prior to Kohberger’s arrest, authorities observed him leaving his family home around 4 a.m. and putting trash bags in the neighbors’ garbage bins, according to the source. At that point, agents recovered garbage from the Kohberger family’s trash bins and what was observed being placed into the neighbors’ bins, the source said.

    The recovered items were sent to the Idaho State Lab, per the source.

    Last Friday, a Pennsylvania State Police SWAT team then moved in on the Kohberger family home, breaking down the door and windows in what is known as a “dynamic entry” – a tactic used in rare cases to arrest “high risk” suspects, the source added.

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  • Idaho suspect in student murders thoroughly cleaned vehicle, also seen wearing surgical gloves multiple times outside family home, source says | CNN

    Idaho suspect in student murders thoroughly cleaned vehicle, also seen wearing surgical gloves multiple times outside family home, source says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students in November had thoroughly cleaned the interior and exterior of his car and was also seen wearing surgical gloves multiple times before being apprehended, a law enforcement source tells CNN.

    Bryan Kohberger, 28, is currently the sole suspect in the gruesome stabbings of students Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20, who were found dead inside their off-campus house in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13.

    Kohberger, who was pursuing a PhD in criminal justice at Washington State University at the time of the killings, “cleaned his car, inside and outside, not missing an inch,” according to the law enforcement source.

    The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, was briefed on observations made by investigators during four days of surveillance leading up to Kohberger’s arrest at his family’s Pennsylvania home on December 30.

    As Kohberger now remains behind bars in Idaho awaiting his January 12 status hearing, new details have emerged elucidating some of the suspect’s movements in the days leading up to his arrest.

    A surveillance team assigned to Kohberger was tasked with two missions, according to multiple law enforcement sources: keep eyes on Kohberger so they could arrest him as soon as a warrant was issued, and try to obtain an object that would yield a DNA sample from Kohberger, which could then be compared to DNA evidence found at the crime scene.

    Kohberger was seen multiple times outside the Pennsylvania home wearing surgical gloves, according to the law enforcement source.

    In one instance prior to Kohberger’s arrest, authorities observed him leaving his family home around 4 a.m. and putting trash bags in the neighbors’ garbage bins, according to the source. At that point, agents recovered garbage from the Kohberger family’s trash bins and what was observed being placed into the neighbors’ bins, the source said.

    The recovered items were sent to the Idaho State Lab, per the source.

    Last Friday, a Pennsylvania State Police SWAT team then moved in on the Kohberger family home, breaking down the door and windows in what is known as a “dynamic entry” – a tactic used in rare cases to arrest “high risk” suspects, the source added.

    On Thursday, Kohberger had his initial court appearance in Idaho after he was booked into the Latah County jail Wednesday night following his extradition from Pennsylvania.

    Kohberger is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. He did not enter a plea at the hearing.

    Steve Goncalves, whose daughter Kaylee was among those killed, he told CNN’s JIm Sciutto in an interview that aired Friday morning.

    “Nobody understands exactly why but he was stalking them, he was hunting them,” Goncalves said. “He was a person looking for an opportunity and it just happened to be in that house. And that’s hard to take.

    “She had her phone right next to her and she couldn’t call 911. So these were just girls that went to sleep that night and a coward, you know, a hunter that went out and he picked his little opponent that was girls, that’s probably why the house was targeted.”

    Goncalves was in the courtroom for Kohberger’s appearance.

    “He knows I want him to look me in the eye. So he didn’t. He didn’t give me that opportunity,” Goncalves said. “He’s scared to look at me in the eyes and start to understand what’s about to happen to him. You know, he picked the wrong family.”

    Authorities spent nearly two months investigating before they were able to name publicly a suspect, a task that grabbed national attention and rattled the victims’ loved ones as well as the community – which had not recorded a murder in years.

    Still, the public’s view of the case remains mired with questions. As of late Thursday, it remains unclear what motivated the killings. It’s also unclear how the suspect entered the house after authorities said there was no sign of forced entry or why two roommates who were inside the residence at the time of the killings survived the attacks.

    Here’s how investigators narrowed the search to Kohberger:

    • DNA: Trash recovered from Kohberger’s family home revealed that the “DNA profile obtained from the trash” matched a tan leather knife sheath found “laying on the bed” of one of the victims, according to a probable cause affidavit released Thursday. The DNA recovered from the trash “identified a male as not being excluded as the biological father” of the suspect whose DNA was found on the sheath. “At least 99.9998% of the male population would be expected to be excluded from the possibility of being the suspect’s biological father,” the affidavit said.
    • Phone records: Authorities found the suspect’s phone was near the victims’ Moscow, Idaho, home at least a dozen times between June 2022 to the present day, according to the affidavit. The records also reveal Kohberger’s phone was near the crime scene hours after the murders that morning between 9:12 a.m. and 9:21 a.m, the document says. The killings were not reported to authorities until just before noon.
    • A white sedan: A Hyundai Elantra was seen near the victims’ home around the time of their killings. Officers at Washington State University identified a white Elantra and later learned it was registered to Kohberger. The same car was also found at the suspect’s Pennsylvania family home when he was arrested last Friday. The suspect’s university is about a 10-minute drive from the Idaho crime scene.

    One of two roommates who were not harmed in the attacks said she saw a masked man dressed in black inside the house on the morning of the killings, according to the probable cause affidavit.

    Identified as D.M. in the court document, the roommate said she “heard crying” in the house that morning and also heard a man’s voice say, ‘It’s OK, I’m going to help you.’” D.M. said she then saw a “figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person’s mouth and nose walking towards her,” the affidavit continued.

    “D.M. described the figure as 5’ 10” or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows,” the affidavit says. “The male walked past D.M. as she stood in a ‘frozen shock phase.’

    “The male walked towards the back sliding glass door. D.M. locked herself in her room after seeing the male,” the document says, adding the roommate did not recognize the male.

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  • Key takeaways from court documents in case against Bryan Kohberger and some questions that remain | CNN

    Key takeaways from court documents in case against Bryan Kohberger and some questions that remain | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    DNA allegedly found on a knife sheath recovered at the murder scene.

    A roommate described a masked figure with “bushy eyebrows.”

    Phone records showed the suspect was near the victims’ residence numerous times in the months before the killings.

    Nearly two months after the killings of four University of Idaho students captivated the country and sowed fear in the small community of Moscow, Idaho, an affidavit released Thursday offered a look at the investigative work that went into identifying Bryan Kohberger as the suspect.

    The 28-year-old PhD student in criminal justice was extradited to Idaho Wednesday from his home state of Pennsylvania. Facing four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary, Kohberger did not enter a plea during his initial court appearance Thursday.

    The suspect was arrested in Pennsylvania December 30, nearly seven weeks after Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20, were found fatally stabbed in an off-campus home.

    Here are key takeaways from the court documents – which include the probable cause affidavit used to support Kohberger’s arrest and obtain a warrant – and some questions that remain.

    Trash recovered from the Pennsylvania home of Kohberger’s family late last month and sent to the Idaho State Lab for DNA testing revealed that the “DNA profile obtained from the trash” matched a tan leather knife sheath found “laying on the bed” of one of the victims, according to the probable cause affidavit.

    The DNA in the trash “identified a male as not being excluded as the biological father” of the suspect whose DNA was found on the sheath.

    “At least 99.9998% of the male population would be expected to be excluded from the possibility of being the suspect’s biological father,” the affidavit said.

    One of two roommates who were not harmed told investigators she saw a masked man dressed in black in the house the morning of the attack, according to the probable cause affidavit.

    Identified in the document as D.M., the roommate said she “heard crying” in the house that morning and a male voice saying, ‘It’s OK, I’m going to help you.’”

    D.M. told investigators she saw a “figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person’s mouth and nose walking towards her,” according to the affidavit.

    “D.M. described the figure as 5’ 10” or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows,” the affidavit said. “The male walked past D.M. as she stood in ‘frozen shock.’”

    “The male walked towards the back sliding glass door. D.M. locked herself in her room after seeing the male,” according to the document, which said the roommate did not recognize the male.

    Authorities reviewed local surveillance footage and were drawn to a white sedan, later identified as a Hyundai Elantra, according to the affidavit.

    The vehicle was seen in the area around the home where the killings took place.

    By November 25, local law enforcement had been notified to be on the lookout for the vehicle, the affidavit said.

    Days later, officers at nearby Washington State University, where the suspect was a PhD student in criminal justice, identified a white Elantra and found it was registered to Kohberger.

    Kohberger’s driver’s license information was consistent with the description the unharmed roommate gave investigators, according to the affidavit.

    The document specifically noted Kohberger’s height and weight – 6 feet and 185 pounds – and that he has bushy eyebrows.

    Kohberger received a new license plate for his Elantra five days after the killings, the affidavit said, citing records from the Washington State Department of Licensing.

    At the time of Kohberger’s arrest last week, a white Elantra was found at his parents’ house in Pennsylvania, according to Monroe County Chief Public Defender Jason LaBar, who said Kohberger had gone home for the holidays.

    Phone records show Kohberger’s phone was near the victims’ residence at least 12 times since June, according to the court documents.

    “All of these occasions, except for one, occurred in the late evening and early morning hours of their respective days.”

    Additionally, records show Kohberger’s phone was near the murder scene – 1122 King Road – between 9:12 a.m. and 9:21 a.m. – hours after the killings, according to the court documents.

    A review of phone records showed Kohberger’s phone left his home at approximately 9 a.m. and traveled to Moscow, the affidavit said, and that the same phone traveled “back to the area of the Kohberger Residence … arriving to the area at approximately 9:32 a.m.”

    Kohberger applied for an internship with the Pullman Police Department in Washington in the fall of 2022, court documents show.

    “Pursuant to records provided by a member of the interview panel for Pullman Police Department, we learned that Kohberger’s past education included undergraduate degrees in psychology and cloud-based forensics,” according to an affidavit.

    “These records also showed Kohberger wrote an essay when he applied for an internship with the Pullman Police Department in the fall of 2022. Kohberger wrote in his essay he had interest in assisting rural law enforcement agencies with how to better collect and analyze technological data in public safety operations.”

    Nearly two months after the killings, however, a number of questions remain.

    It’s not clear why the unharmed roommate did not immediately call 911, or why the roommates were spared.

    The motive for the crime also remains a mystery, and police have said they are still looking for the murder weapon.

    The documents released Thursday shed no light on whether Kohberger had any other reason to be in the area at the time of the killings.

    Why wasn’t Kohberger arrested until more than six weeks after the victims were found dead?

    And authorities have not said publicly whether Kohberger knew any of the victims.

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  • As the University of Idaho homicide investigation enters a critical stage, police must protect information ‘at all costs,’ experts say | CNN

    As the University of Idaho homicide investigation enters a critical stage, police must protect information ‘at all costs,’ experts say | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The investigation into the murders of four University of Idaho students is entering a critical stage in its third week, as police are starting to receive forensic testing results from the crime scene, law enforcement experts tell CNN.

    Dozens of local, state and federal investigators have yet to identify a suspect or find the murder weapon used in the attack last month in Moscow.

    The public, as well as the victims’ family members, have criticized police for releasing little information, in what at times has been a confusing narrative.

    But the complex nature of a high-level homicide investigation involves utmost discretion from police, experts say, because any premature hint to the public about a suspect or the various leads police are following can cause it to fall apart.

    “What police have been reluctant to do in this case is to say they have a suspect, even though they have had suspects who have risen and fallen in various levels of importance, because that’s the nature of the beast,” said John Miller, CNN chief law enforcement analyst and former deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism for the New York Police Department.

    “Police having no suspects is factually incorrect,” Miller said. “Police have had a number of suspects they’ve looked at, but they have no suspect they’re willing to name. You don’t name them unless you have a purpose for that. That’s not unusual.”

    The victims – Ethan Chapin, 20; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Madison Mogen, 21 – were found stabbed on the second and third floors of their shared off-campus home on November 13, according to authorities.

    The quadruple murder has upended the town of 26,000 residents, which had not recorded a single murder since 2015, and challenged a police department which has not benefited from the experience of investigating many homicides, let alone under the pressure of a national audience, Miller says.

    The Moscow Police Department is leading the investigation with assistance from the Idaho State Police, the Latah County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI, which has assigned more than 40 agents to the case across the United States.

    “They have really coordinated this into over 100 people that are operating as one team,” Miller said of the homicide investigation.

    The FBI plays three important roles in the Idaho investigation, according to Miller.

    The first involves its behavioral science unit, which is highly valuable for cases with an unknown offender because it narrows the scope of offender characteristics.

    The second is its advanced technology, such as its Combined DNA Indexing System, which allows law enforcement officials and crime labs to share and search through thousands of DNA profiles.

    Lastly, the FBI has 56 field offices in major cities throughout the country, which can expand the reach and capability of the investigation.

    “The FBI brings a lot to this, as well as experience in a range of cases that would be beyond what a small town typically would have,” Miller said.

    Every homicide investigation begins with the scene of the crime, which allows investigators only one chance to record and collect forensic evidence for processing, which includes toxicology reports on the victims, hair, fibers, blood and DNA, law enforcement experts say.

    “That one chance with the crime scene is where a lot of opportunities can be made or lost,” Miller said.

    Extensive evidence has been collected over the course of the investigation, including 113 pieces of physical evidence, about 4,000 photos of the crime scene and several 3D scans of the home, Moscow police said Thursday.

    “To protect the investigation’s integrity, specific results will not be released,” police said.

    Latah County Coroner Cathy Mabbutt told CNN she saw “lots of blood on the wall” when she arrived at the scene and police said “some” of the victims had defensive wounds.

    Chances are “pretty high” a suspect could have cut themselves during the attack, so police are looking carefully at blood evidence, says Joe Giacalone, adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and retired NYPD sergeant who directed the agency’s Homicide School and Cold Case Squad.

    Lab results from the scene can be returned to investigators fairly quickly, but in this case investigators are dealing with mixtures of DNA, which can take longer, he says.

    “When you have several donors with the DNA, then it becomes a problem trying to separate those two or three or four. That could be part of the issue … toxicology reports can sometimes take a couple of weeks to come back,” Giacalone added.

    The next stage in a homicide investigation is looking at the behavioral aspects of the crime. Two agents with the FBI’s Behavior Analysis Unit were assigned to the case to assess the scene and go over evidence to learn about the suspect or suspects’ behavior, based on the way they carried out the crime, Miller says.

    “Understanding the victimology in a mystery can be very important, because it can lead you to motivation, it can lead you to enemies and it can lead you to friends,” he said.

    Investigators will learn every detail about the four victims, their relationships with each other and the various people in their lives, Miller says. This includes cell phone records and internet records, he says, as well as video surveillance from every camera surrounding the crime scene.

    “When you do an extensive video canvass, you may get a picture of a person, a shadowy figure, and then if you have a sense of direction, you can string your way down all the other cameras in that direction to see if that image reappears,” Miller said.

    At this stage, investigators rely on the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which collects and analyzes information about violent crimes in the United States.

    The program can match a suspect’s DNA found at the scene with that of a person who is already in the system. It also scans all crimes across the country to determine if the way the attack was carried out mirrors a previous one, pointing to the same perpetrator, Miller says.

    “You always start with people who are close to the victims, whether it’s love, money or drugs,” Giacalone told CNN. “That’s generally the first step that you take because most of us are victimized by someone we know. We have to ask things like, who would benefit from having this person or in this case, a group, killed?”

    In an effort to locate the weapon – believed to be a fixed-blade knife – detectives contacted local businesses to see if a similar knife had been purchased recently.

    “It’s highly unlikely, although not impossible, that a first-time offender is going to come prepared with a tactical knife and murder multiple people, even in the face of resistance, and that this is going to be their first encounter with violent crime or the use of a knife,” Miller said.

    One aspect of a homicide investigation is to “keep the media happy,” according to Giacalone.

    “Today in the social media, true crime, community-driven world in these cases, the demand for information is so great that sometimes police departments kind of fill in that blank air and say something just for the sake of saying something, and then realizing that it’s either not 100% true, or it’s misleading,” he said.

    It’s critical for police to protect their information at “all costs” and they always know more than what they release to the public. Otherwise, it could cause the suspect to go on the run, he says.

    The media gathers as Moscow Police Chief James Fry speaks during a news conference.

    Miller said it’s “not fair” to investigators for the public or media to criticize them for not releasing enough information about the case.

    But, ultimately, the department has a moral obligation to share some information with families who are suffering in uncertainty, Miller says, but they must be judicious about what they share.

    “If you tell them we have a suspect and we’re close to an arrest but that doesn’t come together, then everybody is disappointed or thinks you messed it up or worse, goes out and figures out who the suspect is and tries to take action on their own,” he said.

    Investigators rely on the trove of physical and scientific evidence, information from the public and national data on violent crimes to cultivate possible leads, Miller says.

    Public tips, photos and videos of the night the students died, including more than 260 digital media submissions people have submitted through an FBI form, are being analyzed, police say. Authorities have processed more than 1,000 tips and conducted at least 150 interviews to advance the case.

    “Any one of those tips can be the missing link,” Miller said. “It can either be the connective tissue to a lead you already had but were missing a piece, or it can become the brand new lead that solves the case.”

    Every tip must be recorded in a searchable database so investigators can go back to them as they learn new details over the course of the investigation, Miller says. While 95% to 99% of public tips may provide no value, one or several might crack the entire case, he adds.

    “Police in this case could be nowhere tonight, having washed out another suspect, and tomorrow morning they could be making an arrest,” Miller said of the Idaho investigation. “Or, for the suspect they’re working on today, it might take them another month from now to put together enough evidence to have probable cause. That’s just something they won’t be able to reveal until it happens.”

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