Never Drink From a Cup Offered by a Cop

The 5th of December 1975 is the day that one would not easily forget. This is because it had a huge impact in Manor Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. At the age of 19, and having got married only once, Lindy was discovered in her apartment, horrifically murdered by her aunt and uncle. They have expected a wonderful visit which will be filled with merry conversation and exchange of ideas but they have met a terrible picture. This blood was everywhere in the house – on walls, floors, and even a knife sticking out of her neck, Biechler lay lifeless in the living room. Shortly after, the police stated that she had been stabbed with two different knives 19 times, and other indications of the battle would suggest she had chances to resist. The crime scene bear the nature of the attack on it, however, DNA testing was not a tool in the investigations then.

While the number of traces of DNA at the scene was considerable, the cold case of Biechler still remained. It wasn’t until 2022 that it was DNA profiling that finally identified the murderer of her. However, the path to reach an arrest involved many years in which science and technology were continually evolved.

The landscape of criminal investigation has been greatly reshaped and the introduction of geneticist Alec Jeffreys in 1984. She was committed even before co-founding DNA project at Leicester University (in UK) to learning about and discovering the inherited diseases. Before the DNA project was launched, this technique was developed to identify the individual from their DNA sequences. It was his discovery that initially found critics championing its plausibility until it eventually proved its value in criminal investigation.

The first case that was able to make use of Jeffrey's discovery was the murders of two girls whose ages were between 14 and 17 in Netherhall Heath in Leicestershire, England. Asked for help to build footpaths on roads at night, Lynda Mann was 15 years old then, strangled to death by a sack on November 1983. Even cations of the killer's blood type and enzymes profile were known nothing actually net could be narrowed to identify the defaulter. The case was not solved until the began since another 15-year-old girl named Dawn Ashworth was murdered in the same manner. The closeness of the incidents communicated to us the crisp of the serial killer he was.

The body of 17 years old simpleton named Richard Buckland confessed to Ashworth's murder whereas vehemently denied the accusation of Mann's death. The prosecutors, relying on Jeffreys' innovation in fatal DNA, started working on assisting to piece the puzzle of the connections between the murders together. In fact, Jeffreys, her analysis shed light on Buckland, a gentleman he was innocent of both crimes and that a single culprit murdered the two women.

To understand just how far the DNA technology made the police investigation progress, let us take a look at the Buckland exoneration which was the first large scale DNA based distribution on the grid. They garnered several DNA samples from over 5,500 people in the local community, yet there was none that corresponded with the evidence. The development turned up after a tip-off led to Colin Pitchfork, who evaded testing by having a friend posing for it and blamed the result on the previous offender. The forensic DNA followed the pattern that was present on both crime scenes which led to his arrest and lifelong confinement.

In this case, the use of dna profiling demonstrated its powerful capability and laid a new rule which is application of DNA profile not only in solving a crime and identify a perpetrator but also in exonerating the innocent.

The impact of Jeffreys' work not only was felt in her native England, but it influenced criminal investigations in other countries, including many that are located abroad. DNA profiling took an epidemic form and served for the resolution of a plethora of cases. In the USA, it is responsible for the acquittal of the death sentenced prisoners and the release of innocent people who perhaps in other places had long ago died in jail.

DNA profiling seems to have an obvious example from the determination of The Golden State Killer to Joseph James DeAngelo as the most prominent employments over the last years. During his crime spree, DeAngelo killed or raped 13 women using a variety of methods in a zone of nearly 2,000 square miles between 1974 and 1986. The use of DNA recruitment allowed the investigators to construct complex family trees which led them to pinpoint DeAngelo. In 2018 the culprit was arrested and a piece of DNA gathered from his car door handle and a tissue box was sent to the lab. The DNA proved him as the one behind the murders.