[ SECRET POST #5958 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5958 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.



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03.
[Succession, Roman Roy]



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04.
[minecraft youtube?]



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05.
[Green Hell]



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06.
[Lost Ruins]
























Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 30 secrets from Secret Submission Post #852.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

You... really shouldn't be leaving quantifiable DNA on people that you brush against on the bus. Ew.

[(Anonymous)]

All it takes is one hair or a couple skin cells, with current technology, and I hate to tell you this, but you leave skin cells (and if you have short hair, hair) everywhere you go!

The way crime scene forensics are done makes it very unlikely that DNA from the equivalent of brushing against someone on the bush and leaving a few skin cells on their sweater will just happen to be collected in a usable way. But if it were collected, there's a chance labs could get usable DNA from it, and the more people push DNA, the more likely something like that will end up getting collected and tested and used deceptively in a court case.

And the fact that people don't realize how much DNA they leave around them and how good we've gotten at testing very, very small samples, just makes it all the more likely that juries will assume a match means something significant even if it doesn't.

[(Anonymous)]

My dude, I don't know what podcast you're getting your information from, but no one is getting reliable DNA results from a couple of skin cells or one (1) hair. Hair doesn't even have DNA unless you pull it out by the root and there's a follicle attached.

Don't pull out your hair and put it on people next to you on the bus. It's weird and creepy, even if you aren't a murderer.

[(Anonymous)]

uh, I hate to tell you this, but they are now in fact sequencing DNA from shed hair without follicles. It's not easy and it's not as foolproof as using follicles, but it can be done, and forensics people are working very hard on making it easier.

And I actually mostly got it from my ecology podcasts! The stuff they've been doing with eDNA in the past few years is fuckin' scary. I don't think anyone is doing the scariest parts of it with forensic DNA yet! But the technology is there to do it. A genetic genealogy murder case a couple years ago used a DNA sample of *fifteen cells*. But I don't think that environmental DNA contamination is a huge problem in court cases yet - but like I said, I'm counting down to when it is. And the more people are convicted on no evidence at all other than DNA, the more tempting it will be to use it.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not acceptable as court evidence, which is what we're talking about today. It won't be anytime in the near future, because as you said, it's neither easy (read: cost effective) or reliable. And DNA evidence is never the only evidence used to convict, especially in murder trials. Could this theoretical scenario be used to convict people in the far future? Possibly. But if you're counting down the days until that happens, I hope you've got good genes, because most people here today will either be dead or senile by then.

[(Anonymous)]

Those twelve cells were considered good enough in 2021 that everyone considers the case solved!

Not a lot of those DNA-only genetic genealogy cases have gone to court, but that's because they're often cold cases and the matches are either dead or serving life sentences (or recent enough that the cases haven't gone to court yet). But there's no law or anything barring any particular DNA testing from being OK in court, as long as it was constitutionally collected; all it takes is one "expert" who is willing to convince a judge, and experts have convinced judges of things with way less backing than than "a match on twelve skin cells is a scientifically valid match". If you think it'll take more than ten years for someone to convince a judge that they can show something like that to a jury, you have a way rosier opinion of our court system than I do.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Have any links to the case or the podcast in question?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know if any podcasts have covered it (I don't really do true crime podcasts much, other than Affirmative Murder) but here's an article from the company that did the matching https://dnasolves.com/articles/stephanie-isaacson.html

(It was fifteen not twelve, dunno why I couldn't keep that straight.)

In this case it was almost definitely the right guy - it was a sex assault semen sample and he has a history of violent sex crimes - but it's proof of concept that people are doing it with samples that small, and if it keeps getting hype like this some *will* do it with random dust on someone's sweater eventually.

[(Anonymous)]

Wasn't there a thing where they found DNA on JonBenet Ramsay's underwear that ended up being from a worker in the factory that /made/ them?

[(Anonymous)]

I think that's been one of several theories put forward, yeah.

The "mystery serial killer" I mentioned was the Phantom of Heilbronn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn . She worked in a factory that made DNA swabs.