{"id":8061,"date":"2019-07-10T08:29:47","date_gmt":"2019-07-10T12:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8061"},"modified":"2019-07-10T08:29:47","modified_gmt":"2019-07-10T12:29:47","slug":"the-bulldog-and-the-helix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8061","title":{"rendered":"****The Bulldog and the Helix"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Double<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Shayne Morrow \u2013 This fascinating true crime story by a\nformer newspaper reporter is set in Port Alberni, a small town on Vancouver\nIsland, the 12,000 square mile island across the Strait of Georgia from the\ncity of Vancouver, British Columbia. Two tragedies from this tiny town tested\nthe limits of DNA technology and forensic practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1977, Carolyn Lee, age twelve, was abducted as she walked\nto her parents\u2019 restaurant after dance class. Her body was found the next day\nin a remote area, face down in the mud. While the police had a strong suspicion\nabout who her murderer was, they had no evidence. In 1996, eleven-year-old Jessica\nStates disappeared from a park near her Port Alberni home, and a massive search\nfinally located her battered body, hidden in a nearby ravine under bark torn\nfrom a tree. In this case, there initially was no suspect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While these tragedies were traumatic for the community, what\npropels them into salience for the wider world is how they demonstrate advances\nin forensic analysis. In the almost 20 years between these murders, DNA\ntechnology arrived. Morrow effectively details how not just the science\nimproved dramatically during that period, but law enforcement procedures evolved,\nand legal requirements related to collecting DNA evidence changed. He describes\na justice system constructed of moving parts. One mistake by the police and an\nentire case could be dismissed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have a practice of moving\nofficers around, much like itinerant preachers, so the officers who first\nworked on the Lee case had long been reassigned. Yet it wasn\u2019t forgotten, and\nthe RCMP hoped the new DNA analysis would finally solve it. Miraculously, some\nof the evidence had been saved from that two decade old crime and from which\nDNA could be extracted. The tenacity and careful work of the officers dedicated\nto solving this cold case\u2014the investigative Bulldog of the title\u2014that finally\nled to a conviction in 1998. Fortunately for the States family, justice was not\nso long delayed, and her killer was convicted in 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These two cases were landmarks in Canadian jurisprudence regarding\nthe treatment of forensic DNA evidence, and author Morrow was the primary court\nand crime reporter for them both. His meticulous retelling of the RCMP\ndecision-making process\u2014which, although it could have gone off the rails at any\nnumber of points, led to a successful prosecution of two killers\u2014is as much a\npage-turner as any novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Graphic: Mehmet Pinarci, creative commons license<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Shayne Morrow \u2013 This fascinating true crime story by a former newspaper reporter is set in Port Alberni, a small town on Vancouver Island, the 12,000 square mile island across the Strait of Georgia from the city of Vancouver, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****The Bulldog and the Helix - a gripping true crime story about how the tragic murders of two young Canadian girls were solved by the rapidly changing technology and forensic standards related to DNA evidence.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,54,632,35,1596],"tags":[598,1597,1598],"class_list":["post-8061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-detective","category-police","category-real-life","category-true-crime","tag-canada","tag-dna-technology","tag-legal-system"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/14025818623_d7a60183c4_z.jpg?fit=640%2C640&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-261","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8061"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8062,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8061\/revisions\/8062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}