Family DNA nets killers, but stirs up controversy
Expert says it could help solve Sonia Varaschin’s murder, but tech not permitted in Canada
It has been more than seven years since Sonia Varaschin was murdered, and forensics expert Rockne Harmon believes familial DNA searches could hold the key to cracking the case.
But, the process is not permitted in Canada.
A traditional search requires DNA collected at a crime scene to be a perfect match with a profile that already exists in the Criminal Offenders Database.
Familial DNA searching, on the other hand, is designed to identify close relatives from the collected DNA.
The process uses a male hereditary test, so it will not identify aunts, second cousins or half-brothers. But it will confirm or refute whether or not the person who left the DNA at the crime scene is a father, son, or full sibling of someone who is already in the database.
In countries where the process is permitted (the U.K., Netherlands, New Zealand and several U.S. states), it is generally only used when all other avenues have been exhausted and a match has not been found through a traditional search. It is an intelligence tool to be used in an investigation — not proof.
Harmon, a prosecutor in the highly publicized O.J. Simpson case, worked as a senior deputy district attorney in California for 33 years.
Now retired, Harmon works as a forensic cold case consultant and spends much of his time advocating for the use of DNA typing in criminal cases around the world.
The longtime district attorney was the driving force behind the California attorney general’s decision to implement familial DNA searching in the state, which led to the arrest of the “Grim Sleeper” serial killer in 2010.
“When I go somewhere to talk about familial searching, something that
people are unfamiliar with, it is important to make it very concrete rather than abstract,” Harmon said. “There is nothing more concrete than a dead woman.”
A petite woman in her early 40s, Varaschin was reported missing after her blood-spattered vehicle was found abandoned behind a store in Orangeville on Aug. 30, 2010. A massive search was launched, with police reporting neighbours hearing screams coming from her apartment the night before she was reported missing.
Her body was discovered a week later, on Sept. 5, 2010, in a wooded area along Beech Grove Sideroad in Caledon, by a resident walking their dog.
Police received hundreds of tips from the public over the years, however the case remains unsolved today.
At a news conference in 2011, the OPP announced that some 600 DNA samples had been collected from men over 18 in the surrounding area — but again the efforts did not see successful results.
“These sweeps, or drags for DNA, are very rarely successful,” said Harmon. “Not only is the process of collecting hundreds of samples like that far more expensive than familial searching, those kinds of interactions between police and lawabiding citizens create a certain kind of tension.”
So, what then is the issue with familial searching? According to Cecilia Hagemen, a Canadian criminal lawyer and forensic scientist who has served as an expert witness on more than 130 criminal cases in Ontario, she says that it is not a question of science, but rather politics, which has yet to be answered concretely in Canada.
“The science of it is not at all controversial,” she said. “It’s introductory genetics.”
The political question is whether or not the offender’s database should be used for a purpose different than what it was originally established for, Hageman says.
“If you are an offender, you are forced to give your sample to the national DNA data bank,” he says. “But does that offender not have some privacy interest in his or her own DNA? And if I am related to someone on the national DNA data bank, do I not have some privacy interest in that relationship?”
According to the office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada — yes, you do.
“While DNA profiles can help solve cold cases as you suggest, and bring emotional closure to victims and families, their collection and retention must respect the highest possible standards of fair balance between security and privacy,” said senior communications adviser Tobi Cohen.
“Familial searching, according to the privacy commissioner, would implicate not only suspects, but innocent family members, ushering in a host of new privacy, ethical and societal issues that would need to be carefully thought through. And the proper protections would need to be in place, before it could be allowed.”
In the eyes of the commissioner, the process would turn family members into “genetic informants” and turn people into suspects, not because of what they have done, but “simply because of to whom they are related.”
But, according to Harmon, privacy arguments are often made based on a general lack of understanding of the process.
“The Canadian legal system has a little bit more decorum and dignity than in the U.S., but the concepts are the same. And I can tell you for certain that there is no privacy issue,” he said. “If you look at the results being produced around the U.S., the test is designed to either produce a true relative or nobody.”
Familial testing involves a two-step process. The first step is ordering matches from the most likely to least likely. And the second step is a male hereditary test, which confirms or refutes whether or not anyone on that list is a close relative (father, son, full sibling).
“At the end of this process, in the majority of cases, no one on that list is a match and that’s the end of it,” said Harmon.
In some states, investigators are permitted to run the test a second time six months to a year later, in the case that anyone new who has been added to the list turns up as a match.
In the case of the Grim Sleeper in Los Angeles, Harmon explained the test did not have any positive results the first time around.
But, the second time, someone new popped up on the list — and showed investigators that the DNA they were looking into, and the DNA that matched on the offender list, were a father and son combination.
“Since we were looking at very old cases, we knew that it couldn’t be the son, because he would have been too young at the time to have committed those crimes,” Harmon said.
Investigators then used this information — lawfully obtained in a sample from a cup the father had used — to get a DNA match and proved the case. He was charged on 10 counts of murder.
“Politicians like to use buzz words and red flags to alert and polarize people. But when you get down to it, they don’t usually actually apply, ”Harmon said. “But while bureaucrats come up with reasons to not use it, families of people like Sonia Varaschin sit and wait and hope for answers, when there is a technology available right this moment that could possibly help solve the case.”