Page 1002 - Data Base News Today

A gas form. and i do that by heating the sample up. the gas is then collected or absorbed into the charcoal strip. >> they analyzed the samples and compared them to a database of over 750 known reference samples. >> it is like a doctor looking at an ekg. i have to be able to visually recognize what it is that im looking at. the sample that was removed from threshold was positive for gasoline. >> now investigators wanted to know who was the last person inside anns home on the day of the fire. int...

To examine diane maxwells clothing. >> if we could do the dna for the sexual assault and to get that and put it into the database, because now all the offenders as they go to prison theyre taking dna samples. and were getting a lot of cold hits on the dna database. >> but dianes clothing was gone. to their shock and dismay, it had been thrown away. >> over a period of years, i guess folks in the property room just had to make room for new property coming in. >> next, ramsey tried to interview th...

>> after months of looking through all of the case files, someone finally found them. >> they just put it in the wrong file. you know, it was just a clerical error. >> of all the evidence lost, at least the fingerprints had been recovered. by this time, the year was 2003, and sophisticated computerized fingerprint systems were everywhere. jim ramsey had the prints from diane maxwells car compared to those in the texas state-wide database. unfortunately, there were no hits. undeterred, ramsey ran...

And so i know that was an impetus. but i think it was just an ongoing impetus. >> so at the age of 37, david maxwell was accepted into the oldest and most exclusive law enforcement agency in north america, the texas rangers, an elite group with only 134 members. >> i thought about it a great deal, that if i became in law enforcement, if i was able to eventually get into the texas rangers and it remained unsolved, that i would be able to reopen the case and eventually solve it. >> and by this tim...

Not one time. the only time i saw remorse is when he came to court and he pled guilty and a judge sentenced him to life. he didnt care about diane. >> diane maxwells father lived long enough to see her killer brought to justice. >> this database has been such a boost to law enforcement, to be able to help solve these crimes that otherwise would go unsolved. and now with the dna database, and thats doing the same thing, i mean, its just been a tremendous boost to those of news law enforcement who...

The other in the backyard. dna from the saliva on two of the cigarette butts matched the dna from the blood on the stairs. it also matched dna from skin cells on the rubber band holding the plastic zip ties. the dna profile was entered into a national database of 4 million known offenders. there was no match. again, police had to consider the unthinkable, that they were dealing with a serial killer who had successfully eluded them. >> thats the worst kind of crime to try to investigate, because ...

Somehow falsified, and he didnt hesitate to use it. >> we had earl manns dna in our database because we take dna from every convicted felon. and so we had his dna. we did confirm that it did match directly with the dna taken from the crime scene. >> in december of 2005, more than six years after he was wrongfully convicted, clarence elkins was a free man. >> its just a time of joy and happy tears. >> sadly, even though melinda was responsible for clarences freedom, their marriage did not survive...

That gap had to be filled in. >> he also passed a polygraph test. >> one of the detectives did come to my work and he asked to see me. at that time, i said, am i still considered a suspect? and he says, mr. church, yes, you are. and i said, well, i think that you need to look somewhere else. >> diane church was also considered a suspect. >> they gave me a lie detecter test, a horrible thing to go through to go to the police station and be fingerprinted and lie detecter test and all this kind of ...

So, carney needed to identify every database that had fingerprints which were not on file with the fbi. >> i just contacted every state and tried to track down every system in every state, including canada and even mexico. >> carney identified 92 fingerprint databases in north america that hadnt been searched for the prints from the heather church case. >> i left a note for our photographic lab saying please make 92 sets of the heather dawn church crime scene latents and im going to mail them ou...

>> i remember looking at the glass and saying, we have some really good footwear impressions here. >> today, forensic analysts have access to sophisticated databases of all kinds of shoe impressions. it includes mens, womens, even childrens shoes, both dress and leisure from all over the world. this database is called sole mate. >> elements of the shoe patterns will be entered in by the operator. so, if it has squares in the ball area of the shoe or the toe area of the shoe, you would enter that...