Tag Archives: Evidence

COLIN PITCHFORK MURDERS — THE BIRTH OF DNA FORENSIC EVIDENCE

Colin Pitchfork. Just the name conjures up a devilish image—an evil monster—a story-villain of homicidal psychopathy. But Colin Pitchfork wasn’t a fictional work, though, like Hannibal Lecter. Pitchfork was a real serial murderer and sexual deviant who raped and strangled at least two teen girls in England in the mid-1980s as well as committing countless sexual offenses. And he was the first killer in the world to be convicted through DNA forensic evidence.

Four decades later, DNA forensic evidence is commonplace. So commonplace, in fact, that juries expect it. Through a phenomenon called the CSI Effect, clever defense counsels can plant doubtful seeds in jurors’ minds where they’ll wrongfully acquit a perfectly guilty person if there’s no DNA evidence linking the accused to the crime.

That wasn’t the case with Colin Pitchfork. He was perfectly guilty of murder, and DNA evidence proved it. We’ll look at the Pitchfork case facts in a moment and then do a DNA Forensic Evidence 101 crash course, but first let me tell you a bit of my police investigation background and why I have the authority to write this piece on the birth of DNA forensic evidence.

In the 1990s, when DNA evidence was under development, I was an active homicide detective with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Serious Crimes Section. I was peripherally involved in surreptitiously collecting a biological sample from a suspect (later convicted) in the first DNA evidence trial in Canadian courts. Ryan Jason Love was taken down solely through DNA evidence for the 1990 murder of Lucie Turmel, a female cab driver who Love stabbed to death in the resort town of Banff, Alberta.

I was in the right place at the right time (DNA career-wise) in 1995 when Canada passed Bill C-104 Forensic DNA Analysis, a federal law. This legislation authorized search warrants for DNA sample collection on uncooperative suspects. The day the bill passed senate assent, I investigated a violent sexual assault where a police dog tracked and not-so-gently tackled a fleeing suspect. I executed the first DNA search warrant in Canada that resulted in convicting serial rapist Rodney John Camp.

Enough about me and my DNA exploits. Let’s take a quick look at the Colin Pitchfork murders and then try to make simple sense of this complicated business called DNA forensic evidence.

The Colin Pitchfork Murders

In November 1983, 15-year-old Lynda Mann’s body was found in the Narborough area of England, approximately one hundred miles northwest of London. She’d been beaten, raped, and murdered along a deserted pathway known as the Black Pad. Forensic evidence, at that time, determined semen on her was from a relatively common blood type that matched ten percent of males. The case fell cold after months of extensive investigation.

A second girl, 15-year-old Dawn Ashworth was found dead in July 1986. She’d also been beaten, raped, and strangled in a secluded Narborough footpath called Ten Pound Lane. As with Lynda Mann, the same semen type was on and in her body.

The Ashworth investigation revitalized the Mann file and the two cases became the Narborough Enquiry. Famed American crime writer Joseph Wambaugh would later write his book The Blooding about the phenomenal effort British authorities put into the investigations. Homicide detectives knew they had a serial killer—the similar blood types, the locations, and the modus operandis (MOs) were too strikingly similar to suggest otherwise.

The question was who donated the semen and how police could conclusively prove it.

Enter Alec Jefferys and his scientific team at the British Forensic Science Service. They’d been hard at work identifying Deoxyribonucleic Acid—the DNA double-helix molecule that provides a genetic fingerprint that’s unique to an individual except for identical twins. Jefferys & Company knew they were onto a world-changing forensic evidence breakthrough, and they used the Narborough Enquiry as a test case.

Initially in the Ashworth file, a strong suspect developed. He was a developmentally challenged youth named Richard Buckland who confessed under duress to the Dawn Ashworth murder. However, Buckland strongly denied the Lynda Mann slaying.

Alec Jefferys

By late 1986, Alec Jefferys’ team had their DNA identification process to the point where they were confident it could withstand courtroom scrutiny. The police took a blood sample from Richard Buckland and delivered it to the Jefferys lab. Conclusively, the lab results said, Buckland was not the semen donor in either the Mann or Ashworth killings. However, the DNA profile conclusively proved the Narborough killer was the same man.

Richard Buckland was a first—the first wrongfully accused person to be exonerated by DNA forensic evidence. Relying on a false confession is a law enforcement lesson harshly learned by detectives, but the British investigators moved on to find the real killer. The question was how?

The answer was a process of elimination.

The Narborough Enquirers took on the monumental task of getting blood samples for DNA analysis from as many late teen and adult males in the Narborough region as possible. This became known as “blooding” suspects and, after over 4,500 bloodings, it paid off.

Colin Pitchfork

In August 1987, police got a tip that one Ian Kelly had fraudulently submitted his blood sample to cover up for a friend, Colin Pitchfork. Both men worked as bakers in Narborough, and the plan backfired. Police took blood from Pitchfork under a court order. It matched the semen DNA profile in the Mann and Ashworth murders.

Colin Pitchfork confessed and got a life sentence. He also admitted to performing around 1,000 indecent exposure acts as well as other violent sexual assaults. Pitchfork’s motive for killing Lynda and Dawn, he said, was not for sexual gratification. He did it because the girls could identify him.

Since the first blooding that led to DNA forensic being soundly based in worldwide courtrooms, and even compounding the frustrating CSI Effect problem, DNA extraction and processing science has advanced leaps and bounds. Today, processing DNA for forensic evidence is mostly routine. Here’s a brief look—call it a crash course—in DNA Forensic Evidence 101.

DNA Forensic Evidence 101

Scientists have studied genetics since the early 1800s when Gregor Mendel suggested his theory that all living organisms had genetic blueprints that described and allowed their physical structure. Mendel also theorized all living organisms shared basic hereditary traits. Mr. Mendel did an interesting experiment with peas and proved that dominant and recessive genes got passed from parent to offspring. It’s a principle applying to peas and humans alike.

In the 1860s, Friedrich Meischer was the first to identify DNA in human blood white cells. (Note: DNA molecules do not appear in red blood cells because red cells are not really cells—they don’t have a nucleus which DNA needs to build a cell—DNA being the building blocks of cells.) By the 1920s, mainstream science widely accepted the DNA theory of genetics and inherited traits. And in the 1950s, famed genetic scientists James Watson and Francis Crick accurately described and isolated chemical structure in the double helix molecule.

Knowledge of this structure, the double helix, allowed Alec Jeffreys and his team to develop extraction, multiplication, and comparison techniques of DNA signatures within all species. DNA blueprints are present in the smallest of life’s creatures like gastropod mollusks to the largest like blue whales and are around 99.9% similar in every living species known to science. It’s that small 0.1% difference that makes species, and specimens within each species, entirely unique.

Your human body produces around 230 billion new cells each day. Nature programmed you for cell division where, uncontrolled by your conscious actions, your cells will divide into two with the new half receiving behavioral instructions from the old half. People being people and nature being nature, there are always small errors or slight changes to the genetic blueprint. Over time and through trillions of cell splits, we all become slightly different. Except, of course, for monozygotic or identical twins. (Science now finds tiny differences in monozygotic DNA structures at the mitochondrial level, but that’s for DNA 301.)

Genetic mistakes, or unintended differences, are where forensic scientists capitalize for evidence. Variances in DNA replication or sequences are called Single Nucleotide Polymorphism or SNPs. These variances normally go unnoticed, health-wise, but they’re the reasons things like hair and eye color vary, metabolisms aren’t the same in family members, and possibly why some seem to have God-given talents.

There really isn’t a lot known about why some relatives have two left feet and why some are Olympic athletes, but one thing that can be taken to the evidentiary bank is each human (save for those pesky twins) have tiny DNA blueprint variances, and that’s where the forensic folks go when examining DNA evidence.

Without stepping into DNA Forensic Evidence 201 or beyond, what’s needed for this crash course is knowing about markers and loci. DNA scientists break down the individual biological sample they’re examining and give it a barcode snapshot similar to a binary code. They have highlights called markers and loci which show unique traits of the sample. Quite simply, they make a graph of the markers and loci then compare the sample they’re questioning against the “known” one. If the markers and loci match, it’s an identification.

Caution! Spoiler Alert: DNA forensic evidence matching isn’t an exact science. It’s a complicated and precise process but, unlike fingerprinting with ridges, valleys, whorls, deltas, and accents which are 100% physically conclusive—to the elimination of all other humans in the world—DNA matches rely on conclusions based on statistical probabilities. However, the statistical matching models return such enormously large matching probabilities of 1:13 billion and such, that this circumstantial opinion or viewpoint is regularly accepted by juries as cold, hard fact.

DNA Forensic Evidence 101 isn’t the place to examine specific processing techniques like Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP), Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), Short Tandem Repeats (STR), or Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (ALFP). It’s not the place to touch on Touch DNA (Low Level DNA), Mixtures, Rapid DNA, CODIS, or Southern Blot analysis. But it’s worthwhile knowing the DNA evidentiary processing chain from crime scene to courtroom. It goes like this:

Collection — where a biological sample is found at a crime scene.

Extraction — where DNA is released from the cell at the lab.

Quantification — where the lab determines how much DNA they have to work with.

Amplification — where the lab copies the DNA to characterize it.

Separation — where the lab separates amplified DNA for identification.

Analysis and Interpretation — where the lab compares DNA to other known profiles.

Statistical Computation — where the lab calculates a match’s probability.

Quality Assurance — where the lab triple checks process accuracy.

Evidence Delivery — where the lab testifies about their conclusion(s).

In 1987, the birth of Colin Pitchfork’s DNA evidence process was slow, labor extensive, and extremely expensive. It might have even been painful. That’s no longer the case, as four decades has taken this science—originally deemed pseudoscience—and molded it into fast, economical, and highly reliable forensic evidence used around the world. Now, if science could find a permanent remedy for the CSI Effect, that’d be a real breakthrough.

So, you’ve graduated from the DyingWords crash course in DNA Forensic Evidence 101 and your certificate is in the mail. If there’s enough interest, I may run crash courses 201 and 301 where I’ll invite some expert DNA guest lecturers to explain the differences between loci and markers and why the Southern Blot is so slow compared to Rapid and maybe talk fun stuff like Touch DNA, Mixtures, CODIS, and Dirty. In the meantime, if you’d like to continue with this third-degree program, here are five Forensic DNA websites well worth checking out:

http://www.forensicsciencesimplified.org/dna/DNA.pdf

https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/bc000657.pdf

https://wyndhamforensic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/WyndhamForensic_Presentation_DNAAnalysis.pdf

https://www.fbi.gov/services/laboratory

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3561883/

RFK ASSASSINATION — THE SECOND GUNMAN EVIDENCE

It’s been 50 years since United States Senator Robert Francis (Bobby) Kennedy’s murder in the kitchen of Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel. Bobby Kennedy just won the California Democratic nomination as their presidential candidate. Kennedy left the hotel ballroom after his acceptance speech and cut through the pantry where he suffered three bullet wounds, one of them fatal. Caught red-handed—holding a smoking gun—was Christian Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, later convicted of RFK’s assassination.

Despite overwhelming evidence that Sirhan intentionally shot at Bobby Kennedy, there’re dark doubt shadows looming over the case. They indicate Sirhan didn’t act alone. Problems with witness statements, autopsy findings and ballistic testing suggest evidence that a second gunman conspired in RFK’s shooting. Mistakes and incompetence in the original police investigation also amplify suspicion of a second gunman accomplice.

A highly-credible medical team recently reviewed the original RFK medical and autopsy evidence. For the first time in history, independent professionals looked at the facts and circumstances surrounding Kennedy’s injuries and treatment. In June 2018, they published findings in a medical field’s leading gazette, the Journal of Neuroscience. This clear and concise report examines what happened from a medical perspective and whether there’s any pathological basis providing evidence that a second gunman helped shoot Bobby Kennedy to death.

RFK’s Deadly Road Towards the Presidency

In 1968, Bobby Kennedy seemed certain to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for United States President. Riding on his experience as his brother John F. Kennedy’s attorney general, sympathy over JFK’s assassination and the famous Kennedy name, RFK was well on his road to winning the American presidency. Lyndon Johnson declined a second term, and other Democratic candidates ran a distant second to RFK’s popularity.

Despite being admired, Bobby Kennedy had his enemies. As AG, RFK took on the mob and the communists as well as volatile groups like the Teamsters Union and the Ku Klux Klan. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover hated the Kennedys, and the high profile name made Bobby a target for right-wing activists and lefty nut cases alike. Without a doubt, there were many sights gunning for Robert F. Kennedy.

Unlike today’s tight reins, there was little security for presidential primary candidates back in 1968. The Secret Service had no detail for political candidates, and they did little or no threat assessment or background checks on anyone thought dangerous to candidates. RFK’s security team consisted of a retired NFL linebacker, a former Olympic Medalist and a hired part-time security guard carrying a .38 Special. That’s all the protection Bobby Kennedy had when he arrived at the Ambassador Hotel in downtown LA.

Securing the California primary significantly strengthened RFK’s run for the White House. Democratic runner-up, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, fell further behind as did former Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon seemed certain to be Kennedy’s challenge for the Oval Office. Had Kennedy lived, Nixon might have lost, and Watergate would never have happened.

That’s not how history went down. On June 4, 1968 Bobby Kennedy won the California Democratic nomination and gave a rousing acceptance speech to a packed house of enthusiastic supporters. Just after midnight, at 12:15 am on June 5, Kennedy stepped from the podium and exited to the kitchen where a smaller crowd of hotel staff and assistants wished him well. RFK moved through the packed pantry, shaking hands and acknowledging folks.

Sirhan laid in wait at the galley’s west end. As Kennedy approached, Sirhan whipped out a .22 caliber, 8-shot Iver Johnson Cadet revolver and emptied it towards RFK. Bullets struck Kennedy three times and collaterally wounded five bystanders. Bobby Kennedy fell to the floor, semi-conscious but mortally wounded with a gunshot wound to the brain. Kitchen staff jumped Sirhan. They wrested the now-empty gun from his hand.

RFK lay motionless for 17 minutes before first responders arrived. A dispatch communication mistakenly sent Kennedy to the nearby Central Receiving Hospital instead of the larger Good Samaritan Hospital which was far better equipped to handle cranial gunshot wounds. Assessing Kennedy’s grave condition, Central’s staff transferred him directly to Samaritan. The delay took nearly an hour post-shooting, however, the 2018 medical review determined it made no difference to RFK’s fate. Despite heroic surgery attempts, his brain wound was untreatable.

Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1:44 am on June 6, 1968. The nation mourned another Kennedy assassination. RFK’s road to the presidency ended in violence, and his dream of furthering civil rights and middle-class prosperity died with him. Sirhan stood trial as the lone gunman. He was convicted, sentenced to death, but later commuted to life in prison. Today, Bobby Kennedy rests under the grounds of Arlington and Sirhan sits behind bars in San Diego.

The RFK Conspiracy Theories Start

Like most high-profile deaths, there are those refusing to buy official conclusions despite how solid evidence seems. John Kennedy’s assassination is the mother of all conspiracy theories, but little brother Bobby’s fate is no exclusion. In fact, there are three deeply disturbing discrepancies in the RFK murder worth investigating.

The big problems with the RFK assassination lie in the true number of shots fired as well as the position and distance of Sirhan relative to Kennedy in the kitchen. Officially, Sirhan fired all 8 shots in his revolver from the front and approximately 2 to 3 feet ahead of RFK. Unofficially, more than 8 shots went off with some bullets allegedly fired from behind Robert Kennedy. That suggests a second gunman.

Further, the eye-witness evidence appears clear that Sirhan maintained some distance, firing from the front on a level and downward angle. The medical and autopsy evidence seems clear that RFK’s fatal brain wound came from a near point-blank gunshot occurring behind his right ear and from an upward angle. Again, that suggests a second gunman.

On the surface, this conflicting evidence is more than troubling. There was also trouble during Sirhan’s trail with inaccurate testimony and confusion by police forensic experts over identifying the RFK murder weapon. There were so many errant issues raised that the United States government appointed a 1975 commission to reinvestigate the RFK assassination. It was supported by the FBI who took no role in the original murder case as the Los Angeles Police Department maintained primary jurisdiction.

The RFK reinvestigation struggled with inconsistent witness statements, confusing forensic evidence and now-missing pieces to the puzzle. Despite perceived problems with proof and procedure, the commission ruled Sirhan Bishara Sirhan acted alone. They found no credible evidence of a second gunman. That was despite being unable to explain a few troubling issues.

Many people don’t accept Sirhan’s original trial verdict or the commission conclusions. This takes in members of the Kennedy family like Robert F. Kennedy, Junior. As well, some of the victims wounded in the Ambassador Hotel shooting and various eyewitnesses present at the time are convinced of a second gunman. Like other conspiracy theorists, they point to the perceptual problems associated with the number of shots and the location of RFK’s fatal wound.

No sensible spectator or serious student of the RFK assassination suggests Sirhan didn’t fire 8 shots. That evidence is overwhelming. But, there’s a lot of information published pointing to more than eight bullet strikes in the Ambassador kitchen. How credible that information is—is the question.

The other major issue—according to conspiracy promoters—is the head wound. By all official accounts, Sirhan never got within a few feet of RFK and remained facing him from the front. The medical and autopsy evidence clearly shows stippling from gunpowder residue burns on Kennedy’s skin and hair at the bullet entrance wound. That evidence seems consistent with the fatal firearm being discharged within inches of RFK’s head, not several feet.

The 2018 independent review published in the Journal of Neurosurgery examined RFK’s hospital treatment and autopsy evidence. They didn’t deal with the “more-than-8-shots” issue. The expert panel left that for the conspiracy theorists and those wanting to research RFK crime scene examination evidence.

The 2018 Journal of Neurosurgery (JNS) Review

Three prominent neurosurgeons and trauma practitioners privately reviewed RFK’s medical records and autopsy report. This was independent of any government agency or special interest group. First, they outlined the history of Robert Kennedy’s campaign and the circumstances bringing him in contact with Sirhan.

Next, the review panel outlined RFK’s emergency treatment and follow-up surgery as well as post-op care. Then, the panel focused on the so-called “perfect autopsy” performed by the famous Los Angeles coroner and forensic pathologist, Dr. Thomas Noguchi. Finally, the experts reassessed Kennedy’s medical care to see if anything more could have been done to save RFK’s life.

Robert F. Kennedy suffered 3 separate .22 caliber gunshot wounds. Two were superficial and non-life-threatening. The third was ultimately fatal. One entered the right side of his back. This bullet was recovered intact inside RFK’s body. The second non-lethal bullet entered his right armpit and exited his shoulder. It was not recovered. The fatal bullet entered RFK’s skull behind his right ear. It fragmented, sending lead shrapnel and bone chips deep into RFK’s brain, remaining in the gray matter.

The JNS report outlines the brain injury and medical treatment in impressive detail. The doctor panel concludes so much cranial damage occurred that it was a miracle RFK lived as long as he did. They credit the 1968 medical intervention as first-rate. They report even with today’s medical advancements, if RFK was shot this way in 2018, no modern trauma team would be able to save him.

The JNS panel confirmed Dr. Noguchi’s autopsy findings of close-contact gunshot residue (GSR) stippling identified at RFK’s headshot entrance wound. They correctly observed in the autopsy report Noguchi made no reference to the distance the firearm’s muzzle was from RFK’s skin at discharge. Rather, they reported “a discrepancy between eyewitness reports that Sirhan came no closer than 12 to 18 inches from Kennedy when the shooting occurred and Noguchi’s later writings, stating the gun was no more than 3 inches of the right ear when fired”.

The JNS team also referenced a public Noguchi quote where he made clear his autopsy report didn’t imply Sirhan was the lone shooter. That early quote forever fueled conspiracy fires and formed the foundation for those purporting the second gunman claim. On the record, Noguchi always maintained whoever fired the fatal gunshot into Bobby Kennedy was slightly behind him and in very close quarters.

The More-Than-8-Shots Issue

The JNS doctors steered clear of this positioning can of worms. Rightfully so. This wasn’t their field of expertise. That evidence belongs in the police and forensic investigation wheelhouse. Arm-chair detectives with a half-century of hindsight picked the position puzzle apart from every angle. So they’ve done with the number of shots.

Essentially, the Los Angeles police investigators accounted for eight crime scene bullets. They also tested Sirhan’s .22 caliber, 8-shot revolver and ballistically linked the recovered bullets to Sirhan’s gun—except for the fatal bullet from RFK’s brain. It was too fragmented to identify microscopic striations unique to Sirhan’s firearm.

Most of the “evidence” for the more-than-8-shot theory came from news media reports focused on a photo apparently displaying two bullet holes in a door frame in the Ambassador kitchen. Conspiracy theorists used the logic that if eight bullets were already accounted for, then two extra holes formed positive proof of a second gunman. After all, Sirhan’s revolver contained 8 empty shell casings. He did not have time to reload.

Conspiracy theorists also rely on varying eye and ear witnesses to support their more-than-8-shot suspicions. Many in the kitchen reported hearing 10, 12 and as many as 15 shots blasting off. The RFK case even took a scientific sound step where a media recording allegedly taken during the assassination captured the shots on audio. Various forensic experts extensively analyzed the audio but can’t conclusively agree there were more than 8 shots fired.

There’s a rabbit hole of hints, innuendo and suggestions of extra shots out there in the RFK assassination world. But, there’s one true fact not resolved by the official investigation. That’s that the fatal fragments from RFK’s brain have not been forensically linked to Sirhan’s revolver. It leaves the suspicion door open that it’s physically possible for a second gunman being involved.

Nowhere in the documented RFK assassination evidence is there any reference to forensic authorities trying other tests on the brain bullet fragments than examining for microscopic striations. Bullet lead composition analysis (BLCA) and neutron activation analysis (NAA) techniques were available in 1968. In fact, the John F. Kennedy assassination investigators employed both scientific processes. BCLA and NAA became a ballistic cornerstone establishing Lee Harvey Oswald as JFK’s lone assassin.

Every experienced forensic investigator realizes that BLCA and NAA analysis are indicative or exclusive tests rather than conclusive evidence like tool markings left by firearm rifling engravings. That means running BLCA and NAA tests on RFK’s brain fragments and comparing them to groups analyzed from the known Sirhan bullets would either eliminate or associate them as originating from the same ammunition source.

Unfortunately, there’s no record of anyone conducting these two important forensic examinations. Assuming the RFK bullet exhibits are still available, there’s no reason they couldn’t be done today. That could establish or further rule out the second gunman theory. But, there’s no apparent appetite for any official review, regardless of requests from Kennedy family members to reopen the case.

Sirhan Bishara Sirhan’s Background and Motive

Every homicide investigation team looks at their suspect’s motive and associates. It’s always necessary to establish or rule out accessories to the crime. The RFK murder is no different for investigating who Sirhan was, why he did it and if he had help.

Sirhan originated in the Middle East’s Palestinian region. He was a Christian, not a Muslim as many believe. Sirhan immigrated to America in 1956 when he was 12. His family settled in Pasadena, California where he matured. Little in Sirhan’s history shows him as a potential political assassin.

Investigation after RFK’s murder found Sirhan’s diary which was full of apparently psychotic references repeating “Bobby Kennedy Must Die”. It seems Sirhan, in some twisted way, fixated on killing RFK and sought an opportunity. That presented at the 1968 Democratic convention when Sirhan simply walked into the Ambassador kitchen through an unlocked door, hung around and then opened fire.

Nothing in Sirhan’s background found him politically linked or motivated by terrorist agenda. He seemed an immigrant Arabic lone wolf version of the All-American psychopath. Like Oswald, Sirhan gained fame by shooting someone famous.

Sirhan was a rubber ball of confessions, recantations and failed recollections. Initially, Sirhan told police investigators he shot RFK because of Kennedy’s policy of arming Israelis with Phantom fighter jets to bomb Palestinian people. At trial, Sirhan denied this motive but admitted being the shooter. Later, he totally recanted his testimony. Over the decades, Sirhan molded himself into a self-serving position of failed memory due to some form of external hypnosis influence during RFK’s shooting.

One thing’s consistent about Sirhan’s statements. Although his motive remains questionable, he never outwardly accused anyone of being his accomplice. Sirhan never said there was a second gunman—at least to his knowledge. He leaves it to conspiracy theorists and authorities to explain inconsistencies like the number of shots fired, the gunshot residue, the distance from the muzzle to RFK’s skin and the relative positions while Bobby Kennedy was shot.

Reconciling the RFK Assassination Discrepancies

And, every murder investigation has evidentiary discrepancies being tough to reconcile. There’s no reason RFK’s assassination should be the exception. Experienced homicide investigators understand a value found in Occam ’s Razor. That’s the age-old problem-solving principle—when presented with competing hypothetical answers to a problem—one selects the answer making the fewest assumptions. Usually, the simplest answer to reconciling a discrepancy is the best and proper answer.

The JNS review panel dealt with Sirhan’s position relative to Bobby Kennedy’s gunshot entrance wounds with a simple observation. While eyewitnesses varied about distances between the shooter and victim, they agreed on body positions. Yes, Sirhan was to the west and ahead of RFK, but Kennedy was turned to his left, exposing his right side to Sirhan. The right side and behind the ear hits were a matter of predetermined physical geometry. So was the apparent upward angle of the fatal brain shot. Kennedy was aside of Sirhan and bent over talking to a busboy.

The JNS reviewers were cautious about distance reports. They note Noguchi made no distance reference in his postmortem exam report. He only verified gunshot residue presence on RFK’s skin and hair. It’s later media recorded comments from Noguchi that committed his estimating an RFK muzzle distance of 3 or less inches.

Again, Occam’s Razor applies to assess Noguchi’s statements. Although Dr. Noguchi was an experienced pathologist, he wasn’t necessarily an expert in GSR distances and patterns. Noguchi’s credibility has to be questioned in this case. He had a reputation as being an egotist thriving on his fame as the “coroner to the stars”.

Thomas Noguchi performed autopsies on celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, John Belushi and Sharon Tate. Some suggest Noguchi loved the limelight and extended his realm of expertise with unqualified opinions. Interpreting gunshot residue patterns may be beyond Noguchi’s talent. He might simply be wrong about estimating GSR discharge distance in RFK’s case.

Plenty of forensic science literature in murder investigations show GSR patterns present from muzzle distances of 1 or more feet. There’s no reason GSR from a short-barreled .22 Iver Johnson revolver couldn’t have produced stippled powder burns on RFK’s skin and hair from several feet away. Note the only link with the RFK-GSR second gunman theory comes from Noguchi’s belated media opinion. There’s no other source qualifying maximum muzzle measurement.

With gunshot angles and distance discrepancies reasonably rectified, the only remaining trouble area is the number of shots fired. Again, all RFK crime scene investigation evidence accounts for 8 fired bullets. There’s no credible case for more than 8 shots in RFK’s murder. There’s only speculation based on unsupported information.

Applying Occam ’s Razor to conspiracy theories in Robert F. Kennedy case concludes Sirhan Sirhan fired all shots. He acted alone without an accomplice. There’s no credible evidence otherwise, and that’s because non-events leave no evidence. It never happened any other way.

There was no second gunman in the RFK assassination.

WAS ALBERT DESALVO REALLY THE BOSTON STRANGLER?

The Boston Strangler was America’s first modern serial killer case. From June 1962 until January 1964, someone terrorized the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts with thirteen sexually-motivated murders. Single women of all ages were raped, sexually brutalized and killed inside their apartments. Apparently, they voluntarily let their killer in.

The slaying string suddenly stopped. No one was apprehended, charged or convicted. Today, the Boston Strangler serial murders remain officially unsolved. The files—whatever left of them—sat shelved with other cold cases. Day-by-day, the trail got icier. That’s until modern forensic science revisited the evidence.

Authorities long debated whether Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler. He was a serial sexual predator and certainly capable of strangling women while raping them. In fact, Albert DeSalvo admitted being the Strangler and claimed responsibility for the thirteen cases, plus other homicides. But, DeSalvo also recanted his confession, blamed others and many pieces implicating him didn’t fit.

Boston area detectives didn’t have Albert DeSalvo on their radar during the early investigation. It wasn’t until late 1965 that DeSalvo surfaced after making a jail-house confession to a cellmate who happened to be represented by high-profile lawyer F. Lee Bailey. Bailey took on DeSalvo’s case and tried to broker a deal with Boston Police and the D.A. It was having Albert DeSalvo ruled criminally insane so he could move from the harsh penitentiary to a comfortable hospital.

The police were very cautious about credibility in DeSalvo’s confession. There was absolutely no physical evidence—at the time—to connect Albert DeSalvo to any of the Strangler scenes. DeSalvo was well known for exaggerating and fabricating stories. Further, DeSalvo seemed wrong about some Strangler scene key facts such as times, mechanisms of death and various evidence points. It seemed to investigators that DeSalvo could have got his information from the news, made some up, or possibly heard it in jail from the real killer.

Albert DeSalvo was written off as a braggart and a pathological attention seeker. He was never charged for the Boston Strangler murders and died in prison in 1973 after being shanked by fellow inmates. The Strangler case sat dormant until 2013 when the Boston PD got special cold case funding from the National Justice Institute. With it, they assembled a team and applied DNA analysis from questioned male biological evidence retrieved at one Strangler death scene and compared it with known DNA extracted from DeSalvo’s exhumed body. The results finally settled the question, “Was Albert DeSalvo really the Boston Strangler?”

Boston Strangler Case History

The killings associated with the Boston Strangler serial murder case happened over a 19 month period from the summer of 1962 until the winter of 1964. All victims were females alone in apartments who were killed by manual or ligature strangulation. Some were also stabbed. All were sexually violated in some manner, and most had their nylon stockings cinched around their necks. However, there were marked differences in modus operandi (MO) between the killings. There was also a huge age range. The youngest Strangler-attributed victim was 19. The oldest was 85.

Initially, the Strangler case was called the “Silk Stocking Murders”. This label changed when the Boston Sunday Herald ran the July 8, 1962 headline “Mad Strangler Kills Four Women in Boston” after the fourth victim was found. Then, a panic surge swept Boston causing women to arm themselves, buy guard dogs and rig alarms in their homes.

The print, radio and TV media industry didn’t help calm peoples’ fears. They sensationalized the Boston Strangler case as Boston’s crime of the century. Interest intensified as the Strangler’s body count grew. Through good investigative journalism and helpful leaks from police officers, much of the Strangler key-fact evidence got published.

Normally, this critical information—only known to the true killer and the principal investigators—would be held back in strictest confidence. Not so with many of the individual Strangler murders. Descriptions of exact ligatures, body posings in lurid sexual positions and notes allegedly left by the killer appeared in newspapers and on the air.

Another challenge was the multi-jurisdictional overlap in the Greater Boston police departments. Strangler victims surfaced in Cambridge, Salem, Lynn and Lawrence as well as central Boston. This was the sixties and way before modern communication links in law enforcement. The media had better information channels than the cops and were making case links that seasoned detectives doubted.

The sixties weren’t sophisticated times as forensics and informatics go. But, the Boston detectives were no strangers to murders and were well-equipped with gut sense. The wide gap in victim ages, race, social class, crime scene modus operandi and event spacing puzzled the initial investigators. There were so many different patterns that it was hard to believe that, behaviorally, the crimes were committed by one person.

Many officers still believe that today. They feel that more than one killer was at work in the Boston area during that period and to seasoned officers, that makes sense. However, there was one obvious common denominator in all thirteen murders. Not a single scene had any sign of forced entry. Somehow, the killer had to have been let in.

The Boston Strangler Victims

Initially, the Boston Strangler victim list held fifteen names. After a time, two cases were solved and found to be independent perpetrators. The police also proved these assailants were not connected to the unsolved cases they cautiously suspected were the Strangler’s work. Here is the list of victims historically associated with the Boston Strangler.

1. Anna Slesers – age 56. Found: June 14, 1962 at 77 Gainsborough St., Back Bay, Boston MA. MO: Sexually assaulted with unspecified foreign object. Non-fatally strangled with a belt then fatally strangled with bathrobe cord tied in a bow around neck.

2. Mary Mullen – age 85. Found: June 28, 1962 at 1435 Commonwealth Ave., Boston MA. MO: Sexual assault in progress but died of heart attack during strangulation attempt.

3. Nina Nichols – age 68. Found: June 30, 1962 at 1940 Commonwealth Ave., Boston MA. MO: Sexually assaulted with a wine bottle. Fatal ligature strangulation with one nylon stocking. Two more postmortem nylon stockings tied around neck in a bow.

4. Helen Blake – age 65. Found: June 30, 1962 at 73 Newhall St., Lynn MA. MO: Raped and fatally strangled with nylon stockings. Another nylon and bra tied around neck postmortem.

5. Ida Irga – age 75. Found: August 19, 1962 at 7 Grove St., Beacon Hill, Boston MA. MO: Raped and manually strangled. Pillowcase around neck postmortem.

6. Jane Sullivan – age 67. Found: August 21, 1962 at 435 Columbia Rd., Dorchester, South Boston, MA. MO: Raped and fatally strangled with nylon stockings.

7. Sophie Clark – age 20. Found: December 5, 1962 at 315 Huntington Ave., Back Bay, Boston MA. MO: Raped and fatally strangled with nylon stockings. Petticoat wrapped around neck postmortem.

8. Patricia Bissette – age 23. Found: December 31, 1962 at 515 Park Drive, Back Bay, Boston MA. MO: Raped and fatally strangled with interwoven nylon stockings. Blouse also tied around neck postmortem.

9. Mary Brown – age 69. Found: March 6, 1963 at 319 Park Ave., Lawrence MA. MO: Raped, bludgeoned with a pipe, stabbed in breasts with fork and manually strangled. No ligature involved.

10. Beverly Samans – age 23. Found: May 6, 1963 at 4 University Rd., Cambridge MA. MO: Raped, stabbed four times in neck, twenty-two times in torso. Two scarves and one nylon stocking tied around neck postmortem.

11. Evelyn Corben – age 58. Found: September 6, 1963 at 224 Lafayette St., Salem MA. MO: Raped, forced to perform oral sex and fatally strangled with two nylon stockings.

12. Joann Graff – age 23. Found: 23 November, 1963 at 54 Essex St., Lawrence MA. MO: Raped, beaten and fatally strangled with nylon stockings. Black leotard wrapped around neck postmortem.

13. Mary Sullivan – age 19. Found January 4, 1964 at 44-A Charles St., Boston MA. MO: Sexually assaulted with broom handle, forced to perform oral sex, fatally strangled with nylon stocking. Two scarves tied around neck postmortem. Posed on bed with back against wall, legs spread and hand-written sign placed at feet reading “Happy New Year”.

How Albert DeSalvo Surfaced

Hindsight is a marvelous thing. Many police and forensic investigators wish they were issued it when they started their careers. Hindsight may be 20/20, but that’s not the real world in active, fluid police and forensic worlds.

Analyzing modus operandi, or method of operation, is also a marvelous thing. In hindsight, the Boston Strangler’s MOs appear glaringly obvious. But, it’s just not that clear for field investigators on the ground. These professionals had to do the best with what they had at the time. Usually that’s a name and they didn’t have Albert DeSalvo’s as a murder suspect.

Looking back, Albert DeSalvo was proficiently active across the crime spectrum. DeSalvo was a con-man duping people on scams. He boosted cars and broke into businesses. DeSalvo dealt drugs and fenced goods. But what Albert DeSalvo was really good at was scamming innocent people into letting him enter their homes.

Before the Boston Strangler case started, Boston police were baffled by sexual predators called the “Measuring Man” and the “Green Man”. They appeared to be two different entities because of two different MOs. Both behaviors were far from how the Boston Strangler operated.

The Measuring Man started his Boston business in 1960. He was a clean, well-dressed and cheery man who randomly appeared at single ladies apartment doors, confidently portraying himself as a modeling agency rep. The ruse was the lady had been recommended by her anonymous friend to be a model. The Measuring Man was asked in, took critical bust, waist and hip sizes and was never seen again.

The Green Man was more aggressive. He appeared at single women’s apartments dressed in green work clothes. His ruse was repairs, and he was let in to do his job. That turned out to be raping women, but leaving them alive. Most gave a very good description and one victim later led the police to Albert DeSalvo.

Boston police arrested Albert DeSalvo for the Green Man rapes on October 27, 1964. This was eight months after the last Boston Strangler murder. Based on DeSalvos description and distinct Green Man MO, they charged him with multiple counts of rape and related sexual assaults. DeSalvo was held in custody and remanded for a psychiatric assessment. It was the same place and time holding George Nassar.

Albert DeSalvo Meets George Nassar

George Nassar was a violent Boston area criminal. Nassar was also in psychiatric remand for cold-bloodedly killing a gas station attendant during a robbery. He was already convicted of a previous murder. They wrote the penal code for guys like George Nassar, and he’d already checked off most of the boxes.

Somehow, Albert DeSalvo and George Nassar were cell mates. No one except Nassar knows how the conversation started. He’s still alive, but not talking. However, back then, the increasingly high-profile American defense attorney F. Lee Bailey represented George Nassar. Though Nassar and Bailey—Albert DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler.

This toxic mix of masterful manipulators gave Boston police investigators the willies. Nassar was known as a cruel murderer with sexual deviancy. Bailey was an up-and-coming publicity hound. And Albert DeSalvo had absolutely no priors for anything indicating murder.

F. Lee Bailey (later famous for clients like Sam Sheppard, Patty Hearst and OJ Simpson) recorded 50 hours of interviews with DeSalvo producing 20,000 transcript pages. Bailey remained the middle man and the police never talked to DeSalvo directly.

Boston and other PD detectives carefully analyzed Albert DeSalvo’s statements. They concluded that DeSalvo got may details wrong about the crime scenes, particularly times of death that contradicted autopsy evidence. They also concluded details DeSalvo got right—certain key fact information—could well have come from another capable criminal like George Nassar.

DeSalvo suddenly recanted his confession. Police suspected a ruse between Nassar and DeSalvo to split a reward and prefer facilities. DeSalvo was already facing life imprisonment and Nassar had an appeal shot. Police also mistrusted F. Lee Baily and for a good reason, given Bailey’s track record. Eventually, Bailey goes home. DeSalvo dies. Nassar does life. And the Boston Strangler serial killings go unsolved.

Mary Sullivan and Albert DeSalvo’s Families Join Forces

This might sound like an unlikely joint venture, but the families of Mary Sullivan—13th on the Strangler list—and Albert DeSalvo joined forces to exonerate him. Both families had agendas. DeSalvo’s family wanted his name cleared as the Boston Strangler and Sullivan’s family long suspected a copycat—an associate of Mary Sullivan’s roommate.

The Sullivans and DeSalvos did a private investigation in 2000. The Boston police and other law enforcement agencies weren’t involved. Because both families had next-of-kin and executor powers, they convinced the medical examiner to exhume Mary Sullivan and Albert DeSalvo’s bodies for DNA examination.

Their goal was to isolate the killer’s DNA profile on Mary Sullivan’s remains and a known DNA profile from DeSalvo’s remains. Theoretically, this would link or exonerate the two. This was despite Mary Sullivan decomposing for 36 years and Albert DeSalvo rotting for 27.

They exhumed Mary Sullivan on October 13/14, 2000 from her grave in Hyannis MA. The forensic report of her disinterment and forensic examination is fascinating for the forensically inclined. Foreign DNA signatures developed on what was left of Sullivan’s underwear, pubic hair and head hair. They produced two separate donor profiles through degraded mitochondrial DNA profiling. The question was, “Were they contributed by Albert DeSalvo?”

The DeSalvo family authorized the Medical Examiner to exhume Albert’s body. The private team isolated suitable material and developed a unique DNA profile for Albert DeSalvo. When compared, the foreign DNA on Mary Sullivan clearly wasn’t contributed by Albert DeSalvo. Albert DeSalvo seemed innocent.

For the next 13 years, both families and many others were convinced Albert DeSalvo didn’t murder Mary Sullivan. That wasn’t so with the Boston police who still held the original semen swabs and slides from Mary Sullivan’s autopsy. They were waiting for forensic science to catch up so degraded DNA could be positively processed.

Boston Police Examine Strangler DNA in 2013

Boston and other police departments had no involvement in the 2000 private exhumations and DNA analysis. Neither did the Medical Examiner’s office or District Attorney. They let a privately-funded—and expensive—venture play out and let the private conclusions stand for what they were worth.

The authorities are no fools. They analyzed the private process flaws and waited till technology advanced. By 2013, forensic DNA analysis had three decades under its belt and was far more precise on old, degraded serology swabs and slides like those still retained from Mary Sullivan’s autopsy in 1964.

Two forensic labs worked tandemly to profile mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the foreign, or questioned, semen samples taken at Sullivan’s postmortem. They produced a clear biolgical picture of her killer. Now, the forensic team needed a known sample from suspects.

For years, Albert DeSalvo was the leading Boston Strangler suspect. Certainly, individual investigators had their personal opinions. But, the preponderance of evidence pointed to DeSalvo and the overall modus operandi pointed to all thirteen murders being related.

Now the Boston police and the forensic team needed a known sample from their prime suspect—Albert DeSalvo. The problem was, DeSalvo was dead. Unlike the NOK/family loop that allowed exhumation, the cops had to convince a judge to issue a search warrant.

Again, the authorities are no fools. They needed a live link to the dead for an indicative DNA donor. That lay in a living male relative of Albert DeSalvo and, by now, the cooperative ones had dropped off. The closest living DeSalvo was a nephew. He wasn’t cooperating.

So, the Boston PD did a sting where they surveilled the nephew till he discarded a plastic water bottle. From that, the forensics team developed a Y-Chromosome DNA profile that showed that someone from the DeSalvo male lineage was 99.9% likely to be Sullivan’s foreign sperm donor. This powerful biological indicator provided grounds for a second Albert DeSalvo exhumation, authorized by a court warrant. Direct nuclear DNA from Albert DeSalvo was crucial to precisely proving or disproving the connection.

On July 10, 2013 Boston police and their forensic team once again dug up Albert DeSalvo and extracted DNA from his femur and three teeth. Nine days later, the Boston PD chief, the local DA and the Massachusetts Attorney General jointly announced that Albert DeSalvo’s DNA matched Mary Sullivan’s sperm donor with odds of one in 220 billion.

It follows that if Albert DeSalvo’s semen DNA match conclusively links him as Sulivan’s killer, then the intricate MO—the nylon stocking nexus—connects DeSalvo to all thirteen killings. That evidence combination is the holy grail in a serial killer investigation and there is no doubt—no reasonable doubt—that Albert DeSalvo really was the Boston Strangler.