Kin-do cops
IF NYPD detectives can’t find Karina Vetrano’s killer, maybe they can find the killer’s brother.
Police Commissioner James O’Neill and Queens District Attorney Richard Brown have joined the father of a murdered jogger’s demands that the state Commission on Forensic Sciences allow a DNA test on a sample left at the crime scene — a method many believe could help find Vetrano’s killer.
Vetrano, 30, was jogging through Spring Creek Park in Howard Beach on Aug. 2 when she was sexually assaulted and strangled. Police recovered her killer’s DNA from Vetrano’s body, but the sample did not match anyone in New York and national DNA databases compiled of convicted criminals.
Yet with familial DNA testing, which is only done in nine states, investigators could find close matches to the sample in criminal databases — and that could lead to the killer’s blood relatives.
Critics have blasted familial DNA tests, claiming that such searches raise Fourth Amendment privacy concerns against unreasonable investigations of innocent people whose genetic material is used to identify a family member.
Because of these legal minefields, many states like New York have avoided familial testing and have adopted a “partial match” search — which experts say is not as effective.
“(Familial testing) has proven effective at generating important DNA investigative leads in cold cases in many other states and thus it could presumably help to solve any number of New York State cases — including that of the Queens case,” Brown said in a letter Thursday to the state Commission on Forensic Science.
O’Neill said familial testing could help detectives find a relative of the killer that could be in state and national DNA databases.
“The success of any investigation depends directly on the amount of available evidence and information to assist the detectives,” O’Neill said. “Access to existing data sources may provide valuable leads to assist further investigative efforts.”
“We got to get this done,” said Vetrano’s father, Philip Vetrano, a retired firefighter. “(The testing) just targets criminals — it’s one criminal related to another criminal, so it’s only targeting the bad guys.”
His wife, Cathy Vetrano, also demanded the tests be done.
“The only thing we want in the world right now is to find who did this, and any method that’s available, that’s what we want,” she said. “We will do anything and everything to find the animal that did this to my daughter.”
Vetrano’s relatives started a Change.org petition to get New York to perform familial DNA testing. As of Thursday, 9,308 people had signed the petition.
According to the National Institute of Justice, familial DNA helped track down three rapists in Wisconsin and Virginia in 2014 and four rapists in Britain in 2013.
A spokeswoman for the state Commission on Forensic Science will discuss the use of familial DNA searching at a meeting slated for Friday.
“(We are) constantly evaluating scientific techniques to better assist law enforcement and obtain justice for victims,” the spokeswoman said.