Who killed Ralph Duane Davis, whose body was found off Ortega Highway west of Lake Elsinore in 1979?
And who beat and shot to death Hilda Doria and Ian McBride in Wildomar in 1983?
Those and about 680 other cold cases soon will be reopened by the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, thanks to a contract that supervisors signed in February with a New Jersey company that specializes in DNA research.
The one-year $325,040 contract with Orchid Cellmark will allow the Sheriff's Department to submit evidence for analysis that in the pre-DNA-identification era, could yield only enough evidence for blood-typing or other relatively primitive techniques.
Until now, what tests the investigators could run were limited to what the state Department of Justice lab in Riverside could do. Their work backlog is so great that it typically takes six to eight months to get test results back. With Orchid, investigators will get results in 30 days and will be able to run more tests on complicated cases.
Deoxyribonucleic acid, known as DNA, is in all body cells and contains genetic coding in strands of molecules unique to each person. Labs often can make a positive identification with just a tiny dot of blood or a hair fragment -- any body cell with a nucleus.
Police say DNA has revolutionized their work.
Investigators' success rate in closing cold cases will depend on the quality of the evidence remaining, said Sgt. David Barton of the Central Homicide Unit. Each case closed, however, brings some measure of peace to the family and friends of the victim.
Most likely to be solved using the new evidence techniques are cases from the past 10 to 20 years where possible DNA-bearing evidence was collected.
For the criminal, it's getting harder and harder to escape the reach of science. Using "touch" DNA, for example, investigators sometimes can get enough DNA from skin cells left on a cell phone or other object to identity who recently held or touched it.
The sheriff's cold-case unit was formed a year ago; it is composed of four investigators who have been reviewing the county's 2,441 unsolved homicide cases, some of them dating to 1928.
Even with DNA, investigators say, the older the case, the more difficult it will be to solve. Witnesses have died, memories of the living have faded and evidence gathered in the old days was focused more on static, material evidence, such footprints or a bullet lodged in a wall that matched a gun in the possession of the accused.
"No one would have predicted 10 years ago what we have today," said Philip Kellett, former San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department lab director who now teaches a UC Riverside Extension course in crime-scene evidence gathering. He cited a case a few years ago where some of the evidence consisted of a DNA match on cells gathered where the accused touched a car steering wheel.
DNA is limited to making identifications of people who have DNA samples on file. In California, that database is increasing rapidly. In January, the state DNA database included 1.2 million people convicted of felonies. In January, the state began adding DNA information of anyone arrested on a felony charge, which is expected to raise the database by as many as 350,000 new samples a year.
For police detectives, solving a long-dormant case is "very fulfilling," said Lt. John R. Schultz of the sheriff's central homicide unit. "There's no feeling like solving a homicide."
"The (DNA) technology is amazing," said Capt. Mitch Alm, commander of the sheriff's special-investigations bureau. "Finding the person responsible can take a little longer," he said. "But the message to criminals is 'We will get you.'"
Alm, Schultz and Barton and the other detectives know, though, that perhaps hundreds of killers in the county have yet to be brought to justice or have taken the secret of the deeds to their graves.
Living or dead, many of those who have eluded detection leave family and friends to live with the ache of wondering whatever happened to their loved one.
For example, in 1994, deputies chased a man through the forest west of Lake Elsinore who had run after failing to stop for a traffic violation. Deputies caught the man when he stopped, transfixed at what lay before him. It was the skeletal remains of a woman that, after testing, deputies estimated to be between 20 and 40 years old. Detectives worked on the case for several years, but still have no idea who the woman is or how she was killed.
There are 2,100 unidentified bodies in California, according to the state Department of Justice, which expects that number to shrink.
"Improving technologies -- mostly DNA -- are allowing us to solve more cases," said Abraham Arredondo, a spokesman for the state Department of Justice.
Processing DNA evidence is labor-intensive and expensive, said Gary Asbury, laboratory director at the Department of Justice lab in Riverside, one of 10 in the state. A staff of 40 criminalists at the Riverside lab can handle about 300 cases per year.
"Every case is different," said Mark Traughber, a senior criminalist at the lab. And sometimes surprising. In analyzing a ski mask used in recent robbery, criminalists found a second robber had used the same mask in a different robbery.
In many cases, the best DNA can do is to provide information that can be compared to other evidence.
In the case of the skeleton found off the Ortega Highway, DNA evidence found on bits of clothing and her bones might yield enough clues that finally will allow detectives to identify her and find her killer.
Call staff writer Jeff Rowe at 951-676-4315, ext. 2621.
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