Does Catching a Serial Killer Make Violating DNA Privacy Okay?

When the Los Angeles 'Grim Sleeper' murderer was caught earlier last month, I was skeptical about the way law enforcement had nabbed the killer. After all, to catch the man, police turned to a controversial new DNA testing technique — one that's a gross violation of DNA privacy.

The state started by running DNA from a crime scene through a database. No hits — the accused killer wasn't on file. So the state tried again — this time by searching for 'near matches.' They located the killer's son, and that near match allowed the police to investigate the son's male blood relatives, and eventually arrest his father.

At the time of his arrest, many claimed that the case was proof positive that near-match DNA testing was an irreplaceable investigative tool — privacy implications be damned. ("We have been waiting for a case like this to hit a home run," said a Harvard geneticist.)

All that triumphalism didn't sit right with me. It turns out that the killer was actually a repeat offender with a penchant for carrying guns and stealing cars. In other words, he should have been a prime suspect all along — DNA or no DNA evidence. As I wrote then, “It's enough to make the cynical among us wonder whether the case would have been solved much sooner if the victims weren't living in East Los Angeles.”

Now, some great reporting from the LA Times gives further weight to that hypothesis. This week, they published a chilling story which reveals that from 1984 to 1993, when the 'Grim Sleeper' was operating, over 100 women — almost all of them African American — were killed in south L.A. and nearby neighborhoods. The media paid them scarcely any attention.

"Could you imagine — more than 100 women killed and nobody notices?" says Margaret Prescod, who founded an organization 24 years ago to campaign for a more aggressive response to the killings. "Could you imagine it in Beverly Hills? Palos Verdes?"

The paper dug up some additional facts that suggest the 'Grim Sleeper' case could have been solved without DNA. In 1987, for example, someone called 911 to report that one of the 'Grim Sleeper's' victims was being dumped out of the back of a van, but the tape was not released by the police until 22 years later. Even more shocking, the one woman known to have survived an attack by the 'Grim Sleeper' provided the police with a description of a unique car (orange Ford Pinto with white racing stripes) that the accused continued to drive for years — in the neighborhood where the attack occurred — without being questioned.

Yes, it's great that the 'Grim Sleeper' was caught. But there's no avoiding the fact that the case could have been solved using available clues. Especially as DNA collection laws become increasingly popular, we have to remember that invasion of DNA privacy can't (and shouldn't) replace good old-fashioned crime-solving.

Photo Credit: Korean Resource Center