{"id":4142,"date":"2022-12-07T22:58:12","date_gmt":"2022-12-07T22:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/justiciaforense.org\/2022\/12\/07\/murder-suspect-with-worlds-smallest-dna-sample\/"},"modified":"2024-09-09T17:10:36","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T17:10:36","slug":"murder-suspect-with-worlds-smallest-dna-sample","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justiciaforense.org\/en\/2022\/12\/07\/murder-suspect-with-worlds-smallest-dna-sample\/","title":{"rendered":"Murder suspect with world’s smallest DNA sample"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Using a mere 15 cells of DNA evidence, Las Vegas police have identified a suspect in the 1989 slaying of a 14-year-old girl, officials announced Wednesday.<\/p>\n

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Kim Murga, head of the Metropolitan Police Department\u2019s forensics lab, said the sample used to identify Darren Roy Marchand as the man suspected of sexually assaulting and strangling Las Vegas teen Stephanie Isaacson more than 30 years ago now holds the world record for the smallest amount of DNA ever used to help solve a crime.<\/span><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The cells were analyzed using new DNA technology that was funded through a donation from local entrepreneur and philanthropist Justin Woo, homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said during a Wednesday news conference.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Stephanie went missing on June 1, 1989. She left home that morning to walk to class at Eldorado High School but never arrived and never came home, police said. Her father reported her disappearance. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

At the time, Las Vegas police conducted an extensive search for the girl. Her body was located that evening in what was then a desert lot near Nellis Boulevard and Stewart Avenue. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad they found who murdered my daughter,\u201d Stephanie\u2019s mother, who was not named, said in a statement, which Spencer read aloud. \u201cI never believed the case would be solved.\u201d <\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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New technology<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Murga explained that DNA testing had been done multiple times in Stephanie\u2019s case over the last three decades, but the case likely could not have been solved without Woo\u2019s donation. She said older DNA technology was used in 1998, then a DNA profile was obtained from semen found on Stephanie\u2019s shirt in 2007. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

From 2007 to 2020, LVMPD\u2019s lab compared over 30 DNA samples against that DNA profile, but none of them matched. To this day, Murga said there still has not been a hit from the FBI\u2019s national DNA database. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The November donation from Woo was used to help solve homicide cases with little DNA evidence. Police did not say the exact amount that Woo donated. But using the funds, investigators in January selected Stephanie\u2019s case and sent what little DNA evidence they had to Texas lab Othram, police said Wednesday. <\/p>\n

\u201cWithin seven months, that testing was completed, just a week or two ago,\u201d Murga said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In a Facebook post on Wednesday afternoon, Woo said that the news was \u201cbetter than vacationing in Greece.\u201d Previous posts indicated he was vacationing in Santorini, Greece, as recently as Sunday. <\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u2018No justice\u2019<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The Texas lab was able to identify Marchand as a suspect through a testing procedure called genome sequencing. In 2018, California\u2019s since-convicted Golden State Killer was identified through such testing, and Murga said that LVMPD has utilized the testing in at least 15 cases over the last five years. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

David Mittelman, CEO of Othram, said the lab is more affordable than many other forensic testing options \u2014 typically costing around $5,000 end-to-end.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the advantages of having your own lab and doing everything in-house is that you can really refine the methods,\u201d Mittelman said. \u201cI\u2019m hoping that this case will inspire other agencies to dig through their backlogs and find cases that may look hopeless or unsolvable, but really are tractable with some of this new technology.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Three years before Stephanie\u2019s death, Marchand, of Las Vegas, was arrested at age 20 in connection with the 1986 strangulation of another local woman, Nanette Vandenberg, who was in her 20s, police said. Marchand was released later that year when the case was dismissed due to lack of evidence. He died by suicide in 1995, Spencer said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good to have some closure, but there is no justice for Stephanie at all,\u201d her mother\u2019s statement continued. \u201cWe will never have complete closure because nothing will ever bring my daughter back to us.\u201d <\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Darren Roy Marchand<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Original article: reviewjournal.com<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suspect in 1989 murder identified with world’s smallest DNA sample<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justiciaforense.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justiciaforense.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justiciaforense.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justiciaforense.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justiciaforense.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/justiciaforense.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justiciaforense.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justiciaforense.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justiciaforense.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justiciaforense.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}