CASE STUDY:
The First RFLP Case (State of Florida versus Tommy Lee Andrews) For the police on Orlando, Florida, the year of 1986 was marked by over 20 cases of prowling, breaking and entering, and attempted suicide assault. In each case, the man would stalk his victim for weeks, prowling around her house, and peeping through her windows. When he attacked his victims, the assailant always managed to arrange things so that he was not directly observed for any length of time. Tommy Lee Andrews was finally arrested, based mostly on composite drawings extracted from fleeting glimpses by his victims. Hal Uhrig, a private defense attorney, was appointed council for Andrews, Little did he know that he was about to become involved in the first …show more content…
But one of the most challenging cases we have dealt with dates back to the 1950s and has extended the frontiers of forensic DNA analysis.
The case concerned a man who, relatively late in life, discovered that the man that he had always thought was his father might not have been. Both his mother and his putative father were dead by the time his suspicions were aroused and he had no real clues to go on. One possibility for his paternity appeared to be a man living overseas with whom his mother had corresponded. Analysis of DNA in saliva on the backs of postage stamps on mail found amongst his mother’s possessions had the potential to hold the key – saliva that had been deposited more than 50 years ago!
Standard techniques produced weak, incomplete profiles of the DNA. It was not possible to exclude either of the men on the basis of these profiles, so we decided to attempt a new form of profiling that analyses DNA on the male-specific Y chromosome only. Y- chromosome profiles are passed on pretty much intact from father to son for generation after generation and so can provide a particularly powerful means of establishing paternity. In this case, the Y-chromosome profiling showed that the recent information was incorrect and indicated strongly that his father had been the man he …show more content…
With mail, we tend to look first for saliva on the backs of postage stamps and envelope flags, but the process does not end there. Each case is different and may present opportunities for evidence other than DNA to be found, which enables items to be ‘clustered’ as having come from a common source. In these cases, DNA profiling tends to form just one prong of the overall investigative strategy, albeit a very important one.
Other types of cases –
There are many types of circumstances where DNA profiling has been instrumental on resolving suspicions or matters in dispute. One of the more unusual ones concerned a medical doctor whose excessive prescription of certain drugs had been noticed. As part of the investigation, his consulting room was searched and injection needles were recovered from several safety disposal bins. Twenty needles were submitted for examination and blood in 10 of them was sent for DNA analysis. All 10 needles generated DNA profiles that matched the doctor’s own DNA profile, and it became clear that he had been taking the drugs himself.
Criminal
The First RFLP Case (State of Florida versus Tommy Lee Andrews) For the police on Orlando, Florida, the year of 1986 was marked by over 20 cases of prowling, breaking and entering, and attempted suicide assault. In each case, the man would stalk his victim for weeks, prowling around her house, and peeping through her windows. When he attacked his victims, the assailant always managed to arrange things so that he was not directly observed for any length of time. Tommy Lee Andrews was finally arrested, based mostly on composite drawings extracted from fleeting glimpses by his victims. Hal Uhrig, a private defense attorney, was appointed council for Andrews, Little did he know that he was about to become involved in the first …show more content…
But one of the most challenging cases we have dealt with dates back to the 1950s and has extended the frontiers of forensic DNA analysis.
The case concerned a man who, relatively late in life, discovered that the man that he had always thought was his father might not have been. Both his mother and his putative father were dead by the time his suspicions were aroused and he had no real clues to go on. One possibility for his paternity appeared to be a man living overseas with whom his mother had corresponded. Analysis of DNA in saliva on the backs of postage stamps on mail found amongst his mother’s possessions had the potential to hold the key – saliva that had been deposited more than 50 years ago!
Standard techniques produced weak, incomplete profiles of the DNA. It was not possible to exclude either of the men on the basis of these profiles, so we decided to attempt a new form of profiling that analyses DNA on the male-specific Y chromosome only. Y- chromosome profiles are passed on pretty much intact from father to son for generation after generation and so can provide a particularly powerful means of establishing paternity. In this case, the Y-chromosome profiling showed that the recent information was incorrect and indicated strongly that his father had been the man he …show more content…
With mail, we tend to look first for saliva on the backs of postage stamps and envelope flags, but the process does not end there. Each case is different and may present opportunities for evidence other than DNA to be found, which enables items to be ‘clustered’ as having come from a common source. In these cases, DNA profiling tends to form just one prong of the overall investigative strategy, albeit a very important one.
Other types of cases –
There are many types of circumstances where DNA profiling has been instrumental on resolving suspicions or matters in dispute. One of the more unusual ones concerned a medical doctor whose excessive prescription of certain drugs had been noticed. As part of the investigation, his consulting room was searched and injection needles were recovered from several safety disposal bins. Twenty needles were submitted for examination and blood in 10 of them was sent for DNA analysis. All 10 needles generated DNA profiles that matched the doctor’s own DNA profile, and it became clear that he had been taking the drugs himself.
Criminal