IAPE Evidence Blog

The Express-Times, lehighvalleylive.com
By Pre­cious Petty | The Express-Times
Link to Article

Inde­pen­dence Town­ship, NJ

Dou­glas Lanterman

Ques­tions remain about the cir­cum­stance of Dou­glas James Lanterman’s death, but author­i­ties say there is no evi­dence to indi­cate the War­ren County man was a vic­tim of homi­cide or foul play.

Author­i­ties this week declared Lanter­man dead after a fish­er­man dis­cov­ered the young man’s femur in Knowl­ton Town­ship on the banks of the Delaware River in May. Lanter­man went miss­ing March 13, 2009, from East Stroudsburg.

DNA sam­ples taken from the bone match DNA sam­ples taken from the miss­ing man’s fam­ily mem­bers. Sci­en­tists at the New Jer­sey State Police DNA lab­o­ra­tory in West Tren­ton used the national Com­bined DNA Index Sys­tem, or CODIS, to con­nect the samples.

NJSP, Inde­pen­dence Town­ship police and Stroud Area Regional police con­tinue to inves­ti­gate the death for clues about what hap­pened to Lanterman.

Read Tom Quigley’s com­plete report: Ques­tions remain unan­swered in the death of Inde­pen­dence Town­ship res­i­dent Dou­glas Lanterman.

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Ques­tions remain unan­swered in the death of Inde­pen­dence Town­ship res­i­dent Dou­glas Lanterman

Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 21, 2011
By TOM QUIGLEY
The Express-Times

INDEPENDENCE TWP. It was a fish­er­man who found the femur that foren­sics spe­cial­ists linked to a miss­ing War­ren County man declared dead this week, after DNA sam­ples from fam­ily mem­bers matched up with the upper leg bone, police said.

But the bone dis­cov­ered last spring on the banks of the Delaware River in the Knowl­ton Town­ship por­tion of the Delaware Water Gap National Recre­ation Area tells only part of the story behind the dis­ap­pear­ance and death of Rus­sling Road res­i­dent Dou­glas James Lanterman.

The rest remains a mys­tery for now, but offi­cials at this time don’t believe there’s any evi­dence of a homi­cide or other foul play.

“We have a puz­zle in front of us right now and we want to put some pieces together,” said Inde­pen­dence Town­ship police Chief Den­nis Riley.

The iden­ti­fi­ca­tion occurred through a national DNA database.

Lanter­man went miss­ing from East Strouds­burg, Pa., on March 13, 2009, after telling his par­ents they might not see him again.

A state police foren­sic arche­ol­o­gist deter­mined the bone was human after it turned up on the river­bank last May 8, accord­ing to Joseph Paster­sack, civil­ian direc­tor of the New Jer­sey State Police DNA lab­o­ra­tory in West Tren­ton. The lab­o­ra­tory is part of the state police Office of Foren­sic Sciences.

Foren­sic sci­en­tists at the Uni­ver­sity of North Texas then obtained DNA sam­ples from the bone and entered the DNA pro­file in the national Com­bined DNA Index Sys­tem, or CODIS.

CODIS is a com­puter pro­gram designed, in part, to enable law-enforcement offi­cials to iden­tify uniden­ti­fied bod­ies or body parts.

Riley, the Inde­pen­dence Town­ship police chief, said his depart­ment received a lab report Tues­day show­ing a match among the DNA taken from the bone and sam­ples taken from the miss­ing man’s fam­ily members.

Ques­tions remain, how­ever, about the cir­cum­stances of Lanterman’s death.

The New Jer­sey State Police Major Crimes Unit con­tin­ues to assist the Inde­pen­dence Town­ship Police Depart­ment in the inves­ti­ga­tion, but Riley stopped short of label­ing what type of inves­ti­ga­tion is being conducted.

Riley said the report he received con­tained no infor­ma­tion about how long ago Lanter­man had died. He said if it were pos­si­ble to deter­mine that from the femur, then the lab report would surely have included that information.

The Stroud Area Regional Police Depart­ment and Inde­pen­dence Town­ship police are still inves­ti­gat­ing, Riley said.

Riley said he and his offi­cers found the case trou­bling, and it was dif­fi­cult to notify the Lanter­man fam­ily of the death.

Reporter Tom Quigley can be reached at 610 – 258-7171, ext. 3574, or tquigley@express-times.com. Talk about issues in your town at lehighvalleylive.com/forums.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

Lin­coln Jour­nal Star, journalstar.com
By PETER SALTER / JournalStar.com
Link to Article

Lan­caster County, NE

Dar­rel Parker car­ries a bucket of sun­flower seeds to a bird feeder in his Moline, Ill., back­yard. Parker retired as parks direc­tor of Moline, Ill., but still works part time as a courier for a law firm. (KEVIN E. SCHMIDT/Quad-City Times)

A pair of court employ­ees spent Thurs­day sift­ing through boxes and boxes of old court files but found none of the evi­dence miss­ing from a 55-year-old mur­der case.

And another employee’s mem­ory that the evi­dence was given to the Nebraska State His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety a quarter-century ago also failed to yield the DNA sam­ples that could clear a man’s name.

“I’m sort of at a stop-still … because I’ve looked at all I can look at,” said Lan­caster County Dis­trict Court Clerk Sue Kirkland.

On Jan. 14, a judge gave the clerk’s office 15 days to pro­duce evi­dence and old court doc­u­ments in the 1955 mur­der case against Dar­rel Parker, who is seek­ing $500,000 from the state under its wrong­ful con­vic­tion and impris­on­ment law.

Kirk­land sent two deputies to the office’s off-site stor­age on Thurs­day with instruc­tions to look at every file.

They opened box after box — about 100 in all — even though none was labeled as the Parker case. Some of the doc­u­ments dated to the 1950s, although most were gen­er­ated in the past 30 years.

“We still went through them, just because I couldn’t be cer­tain they weren’t there and the court had asked me to care­fully check,” Kirk­land said.

But the His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety tip may have answered at least one ques­tion: whether the phys­i­cal evi­dence ever had been stored at the clerk’s office.

Until then, Kirk­land had believed the office had housed only doc­u­ments related to the case, not exhibits that had been entered into evidence.

An office employee’s mem­ory from 1988 changed that.

“It was her rec­ol­lec­tion that the Parker evi­dence boxes and the doc­u­ments had been in the clerk of dis­trict court’s office at the time,” Kirk­land said. “She was talk­ing hard evi­dence. That would not be the pol­icy we would fol­low currently.”

The employee also recalled the boxes going to the His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety for display.

They’re not there now. The His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety main­tains some files related to the case, but not the evi­dence Parker and his lawyer are seeking.

“It cer­tainly is not up here,” said Gayla Koert­ing, cura­tor of gov­ern­ment records. “We don’t take in phys­i­cal evidence.”

Parker, Lincoln’s first city forester, was accused of rap­ing and killing his 22-year-old wife, Nancy, in Decem­ber 1955. He con­fessed to the crime — he said he was coerced — but soon recanted and since has main­tained his innocence.

After serv­ing 13 years, he was paroled in 1970 and par­doned in 1991. He is 79 now, liv­ing in Moline, Ill., and try­ing to for­mally clear his name.

He and his lawyer are seek­ing the evi­dence from his case, includ­ing semen sam­ples taken from his wife’s body and their bed. They hope DNA test­ing could elim­i­nate Dar­rel Parker and, pos­si­bly, con­firm Wes­ley Peery as the killer.

Peery was on death row for the 1975 killing of a Have­lock woman when he told a pair of Lin­coln lawyers he had killed more than a dozen peo­ple — includ­ing Nancy Parker.

Many of his claims never were sub­stan­ti­ated, but he had been a sus­pect early in the Parker case and he gave a con­vinc­ing and detailed account of the crime.

Peery died of a heart attack in 1988.

Reach Peter Salter at 402 – 473-7254 or psalter@journalstar.com.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org