Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

smacintush · Oct 6, 2006, 09:12 PM

…killed her baby

DNA looks…um…"promising"

So as I understand it, in March in 50 degree (F) weather this guy smells a foul odor while doing yard work on his property. He followed the smell to an old truck cap on his property. He then wipes the grime from one of the windows of the truck cap and sees a garbage bag which he then retrieves.

After walking a bit his curiosity gets the better of him and he opens the bag finding a bag inside. He opens THAT bag and a baby falls out complete with cord and placenta.

He calls the police.

The problem is that the investigating officer said that (due to the temperature at that time of year) there was no noticeable smell. Also there was no sign anyone wiping grime from the windows and it didn't appear that there had been anything placed under that truck cap.

Since the guy found the body they, as a matter of procedure, investigate him and ask for a DNA sample to which he complied. Well, it turns out that it genetically linked him to the baby. A second test gave a positive 99.9999% chance that he is the father.

They arrest his wife and she is also a clear match.

Her friends an family deny that she was ever pregnant and the she COULDN'T have hidden it because she was so thin. I know that I had a coworker that was very skinny and BARELY showed at all and could have easily hidden it. (and her baby was healthy and 6 pounds)

This whole case is weird and doesn't really add up but it's hard to argue a 3 way DNA match.

Every time I hear something like this I always think: WTF is wrong with these people? Indiana is a SAFE HAVEN STATE. All she had to do was leave the baby at the hospital or something and that's it.

Stupid bitch.

Cadaver · Oct 6, 2006, 09:33 PM

Always angers me when I hear of stories like this. If you don't want the baby you just gave birth to, give it to a hospital and let someone adopt it, for cryin' out loud.

Philip J. Fry · Oct 6, 2006, 09:46 PM

Yes, let's dispute DNA evidence.

turtle777 · Oct 6, 2006, 11:55 PM

Originally Posted by Philip J. Fry

Yes, let's dispute DNA evidence.

Yeah, and let's dispute evolution.

After all, she just killed a monkey, right ?

-t

rickey939 · Oct 6, 2006, 11:58 PM

JoshuaZ · Oct 7, 2006, 09:22 AM

Thats messed up.

nonhuman · Oct 7, 2006, 09:29 AM

Originally Posted by Philip J. Fry

Yes, let's dispute DNA evidence.

Actually, there have been cases where the DNA evidence was wrong. The only ones coming to mind off the top of my head were two cases of chimerism where a woman's DNA didn't match that of her children, except when the sample was taken from particular cells. (Story here: http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/stor...693&page=1)

I think there have been other cases where someone was convicted by DNA evidence but later proven innocent. I'll see if I can dig any of those up.

hayesk · Oct 7, 2006, 09:54 AM

Originally Posted by nonhuman

Actually, there have been cases where the DNA evidence was wrong. The only ones coming to mind off the top of my head were two cases of chimerism where a woman's DNA didn't match that of her children, except when the sample was taken from particular cells. (Story here: http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/stor...693&page=1)

True, but that's a false negative, not a false positive. Different case here. Have there been cases of false positive matches?

nonhuman · Oct 7, 2006, 10:08 AM

Originally Posted by hayesk

True, but that's a false negative, not a false positive. Different case here. Have there been cases of false positive matches?

I think I've heard of it happening, but I can't remember any specific cases. I've been trying to google it, but it's hard to get search terms that eliminate the tons of cases where DNA evidence overturned a conviction.

nonhuman · Oct 7, 2006, 10:19 AM

Well, here's one:

Misinterpretation of DNA tests led to the false conviction of Timothy Durham in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Durham was convicted of raping an eleven-year-old girl and sentenced to 3,000 years in prison, despite having produced 11 alibi witnesses who placed him in another state at the time of the crime. The prosecution's case rested almost entirely on a DNA test, which showed that Durham's genotype matched that of the semen donor. Post-conviction DNA testing showed that Durham should have been excluded as a possible suspect, and re-analysis of the initial test showed that the misinterpretation arose from the difficulty of separating mixed samples. The lab had failed to separate completely the male and female DNA from the semen stain, and the combination of alleles from the two sources produced a genotype that could have included Durham's. Durham was released from prison in 1997 after serving 4 years in prison.

It's from an ACLU memo. Although in that case the false positive was due to lab errors, rather than a well-performed test finding a match.

Here's another (albeit less specific) example. This time from some feminist site

These sorts of problems recently culminated in a false positive DNA match in Great Britain which has already gone a long way to creating a huge national database of DNA on most individuals arrested and convicted of crimes (fortunately for him, the man in question had an airtight alibi -- he was in jail at the time on another charge!)

I'm trying to find more details on that UK case, because it sounds like a better bet, but so far no good.

Peter · Oct 7, 2006, 11:29 AM

"friend" == "ex friend" ?

smacintush · Oct 7, 2006, 01:12 PM

Well there was a clear match on the father with 2 different tests and also a clear match on the mother. What are the chances of BOTH the mother and the father being mistakenly linked to this baby? This isn't trying to match up potentially contaminated blood stains with a perp. We have samples drawn from two adults and a very well preserved baby. DNA isn't perfect I'll grant you, but in this case the it seems to be pretty strong so far as what we know.

Plus the body was found on her property, and then there's the inconsistencies with the father's story. They also interviewed 65-75 people and I have HEARD that this woman's mother had told people in the fall of '05 that she was pregnant, despite all the claims by her family that she was not. I don't really think that this case is based completely on DNA but we won't know for a while. The trial starts in March.

As far as a motive: again these are rumors but this woman also has an ex-boyfriend that is friends with my sister and back when the baby was first discovered he had heard that it was Kathy's and that she had an affair, got pregnant by her boyfriend and threw the baby away. Now, it certainly seems to me that the father in this case was sure that the baby WASN'T his. He said as much when he agreed to the first DNA test. It's possible that she did this without his knowledge. (though it seems highly unusual to me)

Also, the consensus of those who know this guy is that he is a protective, controlling asshole. He may very well have either forced her or encouraged her to dump the baby thinking that it was not his.

Of course all of this is conjecture and hearsay.

CMYKid · Oct 8, 2006, 08:55 PM

sounds like yet another tweaker who thought that a brilliant story would fix things when it would've been a lot simpler to keep hiding it wherever it'd been hidden.

Millennium · Oct 8, 2006, 09:12 PM

The "3.6 trillion times more likely" thing seems rather like a case of numeres ex recto; I'd like to know where that number came from. Other than that, however, it does seem quite unlikely that both of the people here being tested would both be mistakenly linked to the child. The story is likely more f'ed up than the test.