Cop uses crowdfunding to pay for DNA test and gets pulled from case
An Indianapolis police detective exceeded his financial goal on Tuesday when he used crowdfunding to raise money for a DNA test in a cold case murder.
But it’s unclear whether police officials will authorize the test by a Utah lab that uses DNA to identify genetic descent, the Indianapolis Star reports. The detective, Sgt. William Carter, has been pulled from the case.
A police investigations official says the department rarely uses DNA ancestry in investigations and he doesn’t know if officials will permit it. “It’s not a test that has been proven to be useful in a lot of cases, according to the crime lab,” Maj. Chris Bailey told the Star.
Carter isn’t a cold case investigator, but he was pursuing the 22-year-old rape and murder case in his spare time, the story says. The victim, 19-year-old Carmen Hope Van Huss, was discovered dead in her apartment a day after neighbors reported hearing her yell, “Get off me, Get off me!” early on the morning of March 23, 1993. Earlier, neighbors said, Van Huss and a man could be heard laughing and talking in the hallway.
Carter told the Star he had hoped to use the test to narrow a list of more than 100 persons of interest. He came up with the crowdfunding idea after police used it to pay for surgery for a police horse with skin cancer.
Carter said the police department had previously authorized $1,600 for the DNA case in the Van Huss case, but the crime lab sent the wrong sample. Police refused his request to pay for a second test. Bailey said the payment for the first test was a mistake due to a miscommunication.
Bailey said Carter was reassigned after a review of procedures. “We just want to make sure that people stay in their lanes,” Bailey told the Star. “We have cold case investigators, and we want to let them do their job.”
Hat tip to the Marshall Project.
