Crime Lab Backlog Stalls Task Force Tests On Newest Evidence Won’T Be Back For 3 Months

The clue that could help solve the Spokane serial killings may be among hundreds of pieces of blood-stained evidence stored in a crowded state crime lab.

Each piece is to be tested by a high-tech blood and body-fluid analyzer in the State Patrol Crime Laboratory in Spokane.

The evidence backlog represents 131 murder, rape and assault cases from throughout Eastern Washington.

Some cases involve hundreds of pieces of evidence.

The newest evidence to arrive at the crime lab are two T-shirts found 11 days ago in southeast Spokane, the same place where the bodies of three murder victims were dumped in the past four months.

One of the shirts appears to have blood on it. Investigators don’t know who owned the shirts or who dumped them near 14th and Carnahan.

Blood-type and DNA tests could link the shirts or other pieces of evidence in the serial killings to a particular suspect.

The newest evidence will be given top priority for testing, but investigators say it still may be three months or more before results are known.

That’s because even with amazing breakthroughs in technology, the crime lab hasn’t been able to make a significant dent in the backlog of evidence from crimes throughout Eastern Washington.

“We anticipated this would be an issue when the (serial murder) task force was formed,” Sheriff John Goldman said Wednesday.

“We’ve been given assurances that evidence would be given higher priority when appropriate,” Goldman said.

A new machine hooked up last November at the crime lab takes five days to spit out blood and DNA identifiers for each piece of evidence.

An older machine took nine weeks to do the same job.

Some murder cases, including the serial killings, involved hundreds of pieces of evidence submitted to the lab.

Usually, about a dozen pieces of evidence per case are chosen for processing.

“You take a dozen pieces of evidence from each case and multiple that by five days for each piece, and you can see the kind of backlog we’re talking about,” lab chief Daryl Brender said.

Testing the evidence at another laboratory isn’t a cost-effective option, authorities said. The FBI lab has a similar backlog, and private labs charge as much as $3,000 per test.

“Basically, you’d have to wait in line here at our lab, too,” said Paul Bresson, spokesman for the FBI lab in Washington, D.C.

The FBI lab has the same type of testing equipment used at the state crime labs.

A newer $100,000 DNA machine that can produce results in 24 hours just arrived at the State Patrol’s labs in Seattle and Spokane.

But it will take until November to get the machine online, Brender said. It must have an uninterrupted power supply and must undergo a six-month validation period, he said.

Spokane County Prosecutor Jim Sweetser said the DNA-testing equipment gives police and prosecutors tools they didn’t have just a few years ago.

The prosecutor’s office handled 10 trials last year in which DNA blood tests were used, Sweetser said. But dozens of other tests led to guilty pleas or the elimination of suspects.