DNA scientist in 'Maddie' podcast helps overturn wrongful murder conviction

By Mark Saunokonoko
12:14pm Jul 16, 2019



The advanced DNA testing methods which could potentially blow the Madeleine McCann cold case wide open have helped overturn the wrongful murder convictions of two US men who served more than 30 years in prison.
Ralph Birch and Shawn Henning, both from Connecticut, were convicted as teenagers in the 1985 brutal stabbing and beating to death of Everett Carr, 65.
For three decades, the pair protested their innocence.

Ralph Birch (pictured) and Sean Henning have had their murder convictions overturned by the Connecticut Supreme Court. (Fox)

Earlier this month, following an appeal in the Connecticut Supreme Court where startling new DNA evidence was presented, a judge ordered Birch released from prison. His co-defendant, Henning, had been granted parole in 2018.
Birch had been sentenced to 55 years, while Henning was hit with a 50-year term.
Dr Mark Perlin, chief scientist of Pittsburgh forensic laboratory Cybergenetics, assisted the Innocence Project, who had taken up the Birch and Hanning case, by using his powerful computational testing methods to reanalyse crucial evidence from the crime scene.
He concluded there was no DNA evidence Birch or Hanning were inside Mr Carr's home, where he had been found lying dead in a pool of blood, after being stabbed to death 27 times.
Bloody footprints led to the second-floor bedroom, where police had discovered a bloodstained white owl cigar box in a dresser drawer.

Cybergenetics chief scientist Dr Mark Perlin has pioneered tremendously powerful software to solve extremely complex DNA evidence. (Supplied / Credit: Andrew Rush)

Dr Perlin's team concluded an unknown woman's DNA was on the white owl cigar box.
The woman's DNA was also on the Mr Carr's clothing, the knife found under his body and on the wood floor where he died.
Connecticut prosecutors are yet to decide if they will retry Birch and Hanning over Mr Carr's murder.
In Maddie, nine.com.au's hit podcast investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, Dr Perlin claimed he could decipher previously unsolvable DNA from the 2007 case.
After nine.com.au supplied Dr Perlin with DNA reports from the McCann mystery, a request was lodged with London's Metropolitan Police to release 18 samples from the investigation.
The 18 samples, judged inconclusive in 2007, were from the McCann family holiday apartment and the boot compartment of a rental car hired 25 days after Madeleine went missing.
Dr Perlin claimed he could solve those samples in less than a fortnight and would assist Scotland Yard detectives for no cost.
Media from Australia, UK and US all reported on Dr Perlin and the DNA developments first aired exclusively in Maddie.

Police photographs show where floor tiles were lifted behind a blue sofa in the McCann holiday apartment and DNA samples were swabbed. (Supplied)
Diagram showing where cadaver and blood dog alerted inside apartment 5A, where Madeleine McCann's family stayed. (Nine)
Dr Perlin today confirmed to nine.com.au he had still received no response from Operation Grange, the taskforce set up to investigate Maddie's disappearance.
Successfully solving DNA samples taken under tiles and around skirting board near a blue sofa inside the McCann's holiday apartment could help identify an offender, Dr Perlin said.
"[If] a lab can produce informative data, even if it is complex and mixed, but they can't interpret it then you can have tremendous injustice; of guilty people not being convicted, of innocent people staying in prison," Dr Perlin told the Maddie podcast.
"What is needed is an objective and accurate interpretation that can scientifically resolve the DNA."

British girl Madeleine McCann before she went missing from a Portuguese holiday complex in May 2007. (AAP)
In the final episode of Maddie, Dr Perlin's offer to solve the DNA was extended to Gerry McCann, Madeleine's father. Mr McCann did not respond.
Madeleine McCann has been missing since she vanished on holiday in Portugal in May, 2007.
The computational testing methods of Cybergenetics, a system known as TrueAllele, has helped give legal relief or exonerate nine men.
Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2019

https://www.9news.com.au/world/dna-tests-that-could-help-madeleine-mccann-hunt-used-to-overturn-wrongful-murder-conviction/fd67290b-b999-4485-b7e4-d6fa575a1ec6