DNA Used to Identify Both Victim and Killer In 1988 Murder
Increasingly we see stories about the use of DNA to solve crimes, some committed years before that most had given up on ever being solved. But not to worry! There is this drive that runs through the human race. A natural drive for closing the “cause/effect” loop to provide clarity about what caused some either natural or man-made effect. There are continual examples of the light finally shining on what before was hidden from view.
Take cyclones! We still don’t know what causes them. But do we doubt that someday it will be revealed by the work of some “weather scientist?” On the contrary, we are collectively sure of it, because we have witnessed so many examples. The human-related versions are even more difficult to deal with, but rest assured that the same principle we know as “The Law of Cause & Effect” applies.
In a 1988 Murder, DNA Is Used to Identify Both the Victim and Her Killer
The authorities employed genetic genealogy to solve a mystery: A 19-year-old “free spirit” traveling the country was killed by a truck driver, who left her body on an interstate in Georgia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/07/us/chahorski-killer-georgia-identified-dna.html?smid=em-share
Genealogy DNA is used to identify a murder victim from 1988 — and her killer
In this photo provided by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, investigators hold a photo of Stacey Lyn Chahorski, a Michigan woman who was found dead in Georgia in 1988.
AP
Federal and state law enforcement officials in Georgia used genealogy DNA to identify both a murder victim and her killer in a 1988 homicide that went unsolved for decades.
They say it’s the first time the novel but controversial forensic technique that connects the DNA profiles of different family members was used to learn the identities of both the victim and the perpetrator in the same case.
“It’s extremely unique,” Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agent in charge Joe Montgomery said at a recent press conference. “That, to me, is incredible because as an agent you live with these cases.”
In March, investigators announced they had identified a body found on a Georgia highway in 1988 as Stacey Lyn Chahorski, a Michigan woman who had been missing for more than three decades.
For years, authorities were unable to figure out who the woman was, until the GBI and the FBI used genealogy DNA to uncover Chahorski’s identity.
On Tuesday, investigators announced they had answered the other question that remained in the case: Chahorski had been killed by a man named Henry Fredrick Wise.
Wise was also identified through genealogy DNA, officials said.
Law enforcement officials had found what they believed to be the killer’s DNA at the crime scene, but they were never able to link it to a person.
Recently, authorities sent the DNA to a specialized lab, which created a genealogical profile for the suspect and produced new leads for investigators to run down.
“The investigation revealed that Wise had a living family member who was interviewed, cooperated, and a DNA match was confirmed,” FBI special agent in charge Keri Farley said.
Killer’s previous arrests preceded mandatory DNA testing
Wise, who was also known as “Hoss Wise,” was a trucker and stunt driver. His trucking route through Chattanooga and Nashville in Tennessee and Birmingham, Ala., would have taken him along the highway where Chahorski’s body was found. Wise burned to death in a car accident at South Carolina’s Myrtle Beach Speedway in 1999.
Though he had had a criminal past, Wise’s arrests came before there was mandatory DNA testing after a felony arrest, authorities said.
Law enforcement agencies across the country have begun using genealogy DNA to investigate cold cases, because it allows them to use the similarities in the genetic profiles of family members to identify possible suspects whose specific DNA isn’t in any police database.
The technique was notably used to identify the Golden State Killer and has led to breakthroughs in other unsolved cases throughout the U.S.
But it’s also raised privacy concerns, and some critics worry that the few safeguards that exist for using available genealogical databases could lead to abuses.
Still, Farley, the FBI agent in charge, suggested this wouldn’t be the last cold case that federal investigators cracked using genealogical DNA.
“Let this serve as a warning to every murderer, rapist and violent offender out there,” she said. “The FBI and our partners will not give up. It may take years or even decades, but we are determined and we will continually seek justice for victims and their families.”
Kirkus Reviews, the gold-standard for independent & accurate reviews, has this to say about
What Goes Around Comes Around:
A stable, positive, non preachy, objective voice makes the book stand apart from others in the genre. A successful guide that uses anecdotes to reveal powerful truths about life.
~ Kirkus Reviews
“I’ve read a number of books that focus on sharing a similar message, including “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, “The Answer” by John Assaraf & Murray Smith, “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield, “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill, and I must say that I find Rob’s to be my favorite.” – Sheryl Woodhouse, founder of Livelihood Matters LLC
DNA Used to Identify Both Victim and Killer In 1988 Murder
DNA Used to Identify Both Victim and Killer In 1988 Murder
Here’s a head scratcher that I’m of two minds about as it relates to the subject in question, though either way it is a great, multiple illustration of “Cause & Effect” in action. On the one hand it is somewhat poetic that Jeff Zucker would have to fire Chris Cuomo for the “brother Andrew” matter, while he himself was hiding his own “peccadillo,” only to have that indiscretion revealed and have to “walk the plank” himself!
However, a rule is a rule is a rule and guess what? Yup! “What Goes Around Comes Around!”
One nuance of the situation for Jeff Zucker, was whether the fact that he was carrying around his own secret may be why he didn’t act more decisively on the Cuomo situation? Not to imply that it means he deserved the firing squad if it was true. But he had signed on to follow the rules and lead by example, which he was abusing at the same time that Chris was understating his role to help Andrew. But still, did he equivocate on Cuomo because in his own mind it seemed hypocritical? In the end, it is a small matter but interesting to contemplate nonetheless.
Colombo Family Crime Boss and 12 Others Are Arrested, Prosecutors Say
An indictment unsealed on Tuesday accuses the organization of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort a labor union.
For two decades, the leadership of the Colombo crime family extorted a Queens labor union, federal prosecutors said — an effort that continued unabated even as members of the mob clan cycled through prison, the family’s notorious longtime boss died, and as federal law enforcement closed in.
Over time, what began as a Colombo captain’s shakedown of a union leader, complete with expletive-laced threats of violence, expanded into a cottage industry, prosecutors said, as the Colombo organization assumed control of contracting and union business, with side operations in phony construction certificates, marijuana trafficking and loan-sharking.
On Tuesday, 11 reputed members and associates of the Colombo crime family, including the mob clan’s entire leadership, were charged in a labor racketeering case brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
All but two of the men were arrested Tuesday morning across New York and New Jersey, prosecutors said. Another was surrendered to the authorities on Tuesday; another defendant, identified as the family consigliere, remained at large, prosecutors said.
The indictment accuses the Colombo family of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort an unnamed labor union that represented construction workers, using threats of violence to secure payments and arrange contracts that would benefit the crime family.
The charges are an ambitious effort by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take down one of the city’s five Mafia families. In addition to the union extortion scheme, which is the heart of the racketeering charge, the indictment charges several misdeeds often associated with the mob, including drug trafficking, money laundering, loan-sharking and falsifying federal labor safety paperwork.
Detention hearings for the defendants in Brooklyn federal court continued into the evening Tuesday, as they entered not-guilty pleas to the charges; prosecutors had asked the court to keep 10 of the defendants in custody.
“Everything we allege in this investigation proves history does indeed repeat itself,” Michael J. Driscoll, F.B.I. assistant director-in-charge, said in a statement. “The underbelly of the crime families in New York City is alive and well.”
Around 2001, prosecutors said, Vincent Ricciardo — a reported captain in the family, also known as “Vinny Unions” — began to demand a portion of a senior labor union official’s salary. When Mr. Ricciardo was convicted and imprisoned on federal racketeering charges in the mid-2000s, prosecutors said, his cousin continued to collect those payments.
Starting in late 2019, prosecutors said, the senior leadership of the Colombo family became directly involved in the shakedown, which extended to broader efforts to siphon money from the union: for example, manipulating the selection of union health fund vendors to contract with entities connected to the family, and diverting more than $10,000 each month from the fund to the family.
Andrew Russo, 87, who prosecutors describe as the family boss, is accused of taking part in those efforts, as well as a money-laundering scheme to send the proceeds of the union extortion through intermediaries to Colombo associates. He was among nine defendants charged with racketeering.
Mr. Russo appeared in court virtually from the hospital Tuesday; he is set to be detained upon his release, pending a future bail hearing.
The family’s infamous longtime boss, Carmine J. Persico, died in federal custody in North Carolina in March 2019.
Federal law enforcement learned of the extortion scheme about a year ago, prosecutors wrote in a court filing Tuesday; investigators gathered thousands of hours of wiretapped calls and conversations recorded by a confidential witness, wrote the prosecutors, who also described law-enforcement surveillance of meetings among the accused conspirators.
The authorities said they repeatedly captured Mr. Ricciardo and his associates threatening to kill the union official. “I’ll put him in the ground right in front of his wife and kids,” Mr. Ricciardo was recorded saying in June.
On another occasion cited by prosecutors in the memo seeking his detention, Mr. Ricciardo directed the union official to hire a consultant selected by the Colombo family, saying: “It’s my union and that’s it.” Prosecutors said his activities were overseen by a Colombo soldier and the consigliere who remains at large.
Much of the activity outlined in the indictment took place while the defendants were either in prison or on supervised release for prior federal mob-related convictions. Theodore Persico Jr., described as a family captain and soldier, was released from federal prison in 2020 and, despite a directive not to associate with members of organized crime, “directed much of the labor racketeering scheme,” prosecutors said.
Mr. Persico, 58, is set to inherit the role of boss after Mr. Russo, prosecutors wrote.
Several of the defendants were named in what prosecutors described as a fraudulent safety training scheme, in which they falsified state and federal paperwork that is required for construction workers to show they have completed safety training courses.
One of the defendants, John Ragano — whom prosecutors say is a soldier in the Bonanno crime family — is accused of setting up phony occupational safety training schools in New York, which prosecutors said were “mills” that provided fraudulent safety training certificates to hundreds of people.
In October 2020, prosecutors said, an undercover law enforcement officer visited one of the schools in Ozone Park, Queens, and received, from Mr. Ricciardo’s cousin, a blank test form and an answer sheet; weeks later, the agent returned to pick up his federal safety card and paid $500.
The purported schools were also used for meetings with members of La Cosa Nostra — the group of crime families commonly known as the Mafia — and to store illegal drugs and fireworks, according to the indictment.
Mr. Ragano wasn’t charged on the racketeering count, although prosecutors also sought his detention pending trial. In addition to the racketeering count, several defendants, including Mr. Ricciardo and his cousin, were charged with extortion, conspiracy, fraud and conspiracy to make false statements.
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
Correction:
An earlier version of this article misstated the number of people identified in an indictment as members of the Colombo crime family. It is 11, not more than a dozen.