Dutch Cold Case Murder Solved After 8000 People Gave Their DNA

sciencewatcher writes "A 1999 cold case rape and murder in The Netherlands has been solved. Dutch police asked 8000+ men living within 5 kilometers of the crime scene to volunteer their DNA so that the murderer could be traced through (close or distant) family members sharing part of this DNA. As it turned out, the man now in custody turned in his own DNA, resulting in a 100% match. The request of the police was discussed here on Slashdot in September. The percentage of people participating was closing in on 90%; in the midsize town of the victim it was 96%."

Comments

Interesting

[MyLongNickName]

It is interesting to see the different attitudes toward volunteering information to the government. If NYC asked something like this, it would be an outrage and participation would be roughly 1% if it moved forward at all.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

"volunteering"...?

"You can volunteer your DNA to eliminate yourself as a suspect, and eliminate the need of SWAT kicking down your door to get the DNA."

Re:Interesting

[interkin3tic]

I would hope so. It could be that one "success" of volunteer submissions could pave the way to some lawmaker suggesting it be "encouraged." Then outright mandatory. I'd rather err on the side of having murders and rapes go unsolved, rather than err on the side of police having everyone's DNA sequences.

Re:Interesting

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

I'd rather err on the side of having murders and rapes go unsolved, rather than err on the side of police having everyone's DNA sequences.

Why? Not trolling, but it seems to me that if everyone's DNA were on record the crime rates would drop through the floor.
Maybe I feel this way because a good friend of mine was raped a few years ago, and if all DNA were recorded the asshole who did that to her would probably be rotting in jail right now.

Re:Interesting

[mariox19]

There is no end to the amount of crimes that could be prevented or solved if only we were ready to embrace draconian governmental invasions of our privacy and restrictions on our freedom of choice. Do you realize that if we only had laws forbidding women from traveling alone in public without being escorted by a male relative how many rapes we might prevent each year?

Privacy issue: DNA dragnets

[concealment]

I don't like the idea of DNA dragnets.

Just because I'm a male within 5km of a rape does not mean I should be required to give up my DNA.

First, who owns it? Does it get destroyed? Do I trust government to do that competently? No: it will be sold to the highest bidder.

Second, am I coerced into doing this? Will they shame me publicly for not giving up my DNA?

Finally, who else knows about it? Is my health insurance going up because they've found I'm susceptible to lung cancer or AIDS? What if there's a way to tell if I'm gay or prone to alcoholism (hic)?

There's got to be a better way to solve these rapes than asking all of us to give up private information at the threat of arrest.

Re:Sounds improbable

[BLKMGK]

The DNA matched DNA found on a cigarette lighter found in her schoolbag - not DNA from the rape itself apparently. It's possible in my mind that the guy is innocent of rape\murder and guilty of selling a schoolgirl a lighter or her guilty of stealing it. More details need to come out, this isn't "solved" in my mind unless they have DNA evidence from the rape itself that matches.

Mod parent up

[crazyjj]

That's a VERY important point in this case. People hear "DNA" these days and automatically think "irrefutable evidence." But in this case, it's just further evidence--NOT ironclad proof of guilt.

Prosecutor's Fallacy

[McGregorMortis]

I haven't RTFA, but from the summary, this sounds like a textbook example of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor's_fallacy, which is a special case of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

If you have a suspect in hand, then DNA evidence can be pretty compelling. But when you comb through the population trying to find a suspect using DNA evidence, then you're walking straight into a miscarriage of justice.

Re:Sounds improbable

[rtfa-troll]

What if it's a false positive?

Given that the chance of a false positive is normally between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1000 in DNA tests (this is based on cases where people have actually tested labs by sending them known matching and non matching samples - not the statistics of DNA) and they have carried out 8000 tests, that's pretty likely. Most likely they had multiple false positives, but he's the one which repeated when they retested. If he was actually guilty he probably wouldn't hand his sample in.

The most likely explanation, given that he's a farmer, is that his DNA was present on some food the lab technician put next to the original sample. Now there's no way he can prove his innocence (were were you on the 1st of May 1999? can you prove that?). He's fucked. Serves him right for trusting the police.

Let's see if the Dutch police actually investigate or if they just assume his guilt. From what I've seen whilst probably honest they're pretty narrow minded.

Re:Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years back, the TSA had just started requiring people to put their shoes through the X-ray scanner, but it wasn't completely mandatory yet. At one airport, we were informed that we didn't have to take off our shoes, but if we didn't, we could be subject to additional security. Needless to say, everyone "voluntarily" took their shoes off. If there's a punishment for not complying, it isn't voluntary.