IAPE Evidence Blog

Canaiden Online Media Net­work, connecticutplus.com
BYLINE: Conencti­cut Depart­ment of Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion
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Hart­ford, CT

HARTFORD, CT — On the heels of a suc­cess­ful pilot project, the Depart­ment of Con­sumer Protection’s Drug Con­trol Divi­sion is offer­ing help to towns wish­ing to start a drug dis­posal drop-box pro­gram to remove unwanted pre­scrip­tion and over-the-counter med­ica­tions from res­i­den­tial households.

In July, the Drug Con­trol Divi­sion helped the Lower Fair­field County Regional Action Coun­cil and four local police depart­ments to cre­ate ongo­ing, secure col­lec­tion pro­grams for unwanted med­ica­tion. Since incep­tion three months ago, these sites have col­lected more than 50 pounds of unwanted med­ica­tion, Divi­sion Direc­tor John Gadea, RPh., said today.

“After host­ing mul­ti­ple col­lec­tion days where res­i­dents turned in old pre­scrip­tions and other drugs for safe dis­posal, the towns of Green­wich, Ridge­field, Wilton, and New Canaan wanted to make the col­lec­tion process per­ma­nent,” Gadea said. “We worked with their Regional Action Coun­cil and local police depart­ments to develop a plan that pro­vides great­est access for the com­mu­nity at the most rea­son­able cost to the towns.”

“This col­lab­o­ra­tion brought about a cost-effective, work­able solu­tion for the pilot com­mu­ni­ties, and now their out­come is avail­able to any com­mu­nity that wants to move for­ward with it,” Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Com­mis­sioner William M. Ruben­stein said. “For safety’s sake, com­mu­ni­ties need to pro­vide res­i­dents with a way to get unwanted, unused med­ica­tions out of their homes in a way that is secure and envi­ron­men­tally friendly. This option cer­tainly meets those objec­tives, in addi­tion to being effi­cient and low-cost.”

The plan involves plac­ing a locked, well marked, drop-box in local police depart­ments, where res­i­dents can dis­card their unwanted or unused med­i­cines any time the police depart­ment lobby is open. Res­i­dents need not com­plete forms nor answer ques­tions about the items they drop off; how­ever, the boxes do not accept nee­dles or liq­uid medications.

When the col­lec­tion con­tainer inside a drop-box is filled, two des­ig­nated police offi­cers or an evi­dence clerk and a police offi­cer seal the con­tainer and place it into evi­dence as aban­doned prop­erty, fol­low­ing the police department’s usual pro­ce­dures. The col­lected med­ica­tions are then peri­od­i­cally destroyed through wit­nessed incineration.

The cost to each town is min­i­mal, requir­ing only a one-time cost of $500 to $600 for the drug drop-box. Some towns found a cor­po­rate donor for the drop-box. Since the med­i­cines are “law enforce­ment aban­doned prop­erty,” towns are not charged for incineration.

Gadea says the pro­to­col has received approval from the fed­eral Drug Enforce­ment Agency as a safe and secure means of drug dis­posal at the com­mu­nity level, and hopes that more towns will adopt the strategy.

“It’s a one-time effort that pays for itself almost imme­di­ately, in terms of remov­ing unwanted drugs on an ongo­ing basis, rather than sched­ul­ing, pro­mot­ing and host­ing rou­tine drug col­lec­tion events,” he said.

The writ­ten pro­to­col for towns wish­ing to estab­lish a secure, local drug drop-box is now online at www.ct.gov/dcp on the home page. To learn more, please con­tact the Depart­ment of Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Drug Con­trol Divi­sion at (860) 713– 6065 at drug.control@ct.gov.

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

The Hook, issue #1010, readthehook.com
BYLINE: Courteney Stu­art | stuart@readthehook.com
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New Haven, CT

“Why haven’t you picked me up sooner?”

State Police say that no evi­dence links the East Coast rapist, left sketch, with the still unknown man wanted in the death of Mor­gan Har­ring­ton. POLICE SKETCHES

That was the ques­tion that 39-year-old unem­ployed truck dri­ver Aaron H. Thomas allegedly asked inves­ti­ga­tors upon his Fri­day, March 4 arrest in New Haven, Con­necti­cut. Believed to be the so-called East Coast Rapist, Thomas is not sus­pected in the Char­lottesville killing of Mor­gan Har­ring­ton but is linked by DNA to at least 17 attacks from Rhode Island to Vir­ginia over a dozen years.

One Vir­ginia pros­e­cu­tor says the arrest would have come sooner if inves­ti­ga­tors had access to a con­tro­ver­sial tool for which Mor­gan Harrington’s par­ents have been push­ing: famil­ial DNA searching.

“If it had been avail­able, this case would have been solved in ’07,” says Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attor­ney Paul Ebert, adding that sev­eral females, includ­ing the three teenage girls Thomas allegedly abducted and raped in 2009 in Prince William, might have been spared.

Con­necti­cut does not have the famil­ial DNA search­ing soft­ware which might have pointed to a rel­a­tive of Thomas incar­cer­ated for a felony in Con­necti­cut, where sev­eral of the rapes occurred.

While Vir­ginia State Police spokesper­son Corinne Geller says “no evi­dence” links Thomas to the 2009 killing of Mor­gan Har­ring­ton or to a DNA-connected 2005 Fair­fax rape, Harrington’s par­ents hope the search for their daughter’s killer gets a dose of famil­ial DNA, which enables inves­ti­ga­tors to nar­row the search by look­ing for looser DNA matches than the exact matches required by tra­di­tional testing.

“We’re hope­ful they’ll get it up and run­ning and use it in Morgan’s case and other unsolved homi­cides,” says griev­ing mother Gil Har­ring­ton. She expresses frus­tra­tion that while Vir­ginia has obtained the nec­es­sary soft­ware to con­duct the searches, inves­ti­ga­tors tell her it could take as long as a year to estab­lish proper protocols.

“I don’t under­stand why it’s tak­ing so long,” says Har­ring­ton, scoff­ing at pri­vacy con­cerns voiced by the ACLU.

“This is just some­thing to point you in a direc­tion of peo­ple to ques­tion,” says Har­ring­ton, adding that DNA is only col­lected from felons or those who’ve been arrested for a vio­lent crime.

“We are work­ing as expe­di­tiously as we can,” says Pete Marone, of the Vir­ginia Depart­ment of Foren­sic Sci­ence, declin­ing to offer a firm timetable.

As reported in the Hook’s Jan­u­ary 27 cover story, “Famil­ial Pain: Har­ring­tons press police for con­tro­ver­sial DNA test,” it was famil­ial DNA that enabled Cal­i­for­nia inves­ti­ga­tors last sum­mer to catch a ser­ial killer dubbed the Grim Sleeper who com­mit­ted a string of mur­ders over 25 years. After his arrest in July, 57-year-old Lon­nie David Franklin Jr. pleaded guilty to 10 mur­der charges after he was linked to a man con­victed on a felony weapons charge: his son.

Pros­e­cu­tor Ebert says he hopes the Grim Sleeper arrest and the knowl­edge that a faster arrest in the East Coast Rapist case could have pre­vented sev­eral rapes will help expe­dite implementation.

“That,” says Ebert, “would be one good thing that could come of this.”

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

The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, MA)
BYLINE: Patriot Ledger staff

Daniel­son, CT

Judge gives for­mer Quincy res­i­dent 20-year sen­tence for 1988 Conn. attack

DANIELSON, Conn. — A sex­ual preda­tor who a judge said “honed and per­fected” his tech­nique while liv­ing on the South Shore was sen­tenced to 20 more years in prison fol­low­ing his con­vic­tion for a 1988 rape in Connecticut.

James Thomas Ward, 44, was liv­ing on Cum­mings Road in Quincy when he was first linked through DNA to the rape of a 20-year-old new­ly­wed at her Killingly home.

The woman was home alone on a week­day morn­ing when Ward knocked on the door, say­ing he had car trou­ble. He talked his way into the house and the woman gave him water for his car. He left but returned a few min­utes later with a knife and threat­ened to kill the woman before rap­ing her.

Judge Patri­cia A. Swords on Tues­day called the crime “heinous to the extreme” and sen­tenced Ward to 20 years in prison. She threw out a jury’s guilty ver­dict on the charge of first-degree kid­nap­ping, which dropped the max­i­mum sen­tence by 25 years.

The vic­tim was in court Tues­day and took excep­tion to the judge’s ruling.

“It’s been over 20 years,” she said. “I’m very con­fused. I’m very angry. What I don’t under­stand is why we both­ered to have a trial.”

Con­necti­cut pros­e­cu­tors suc­cess­fully argued that the five-year statute of lim­i­ta­tions on sex­ual assault cases did not apply because Ward had fled the state and was liv­ing in Mass­a­chu­setts, first in Brain­tree and later in Quincy.

Swords said Ward was “hon­ing and per­fect­ing his tech­nique” when he sex­u­ally assaulted a stu­dent in her dorm room at East­ern Nazarene Col­lege in Quincy a year after the Killingly rape. Ward had tracked the young woman, broke into her dorm room in the mid­dle of the night wear­ing gloves, and then raped her, Swords said.

Ward also was con­victed of sex­u­ally assault­ing a woman, who was sun­bathing in her dri­ve­way in 1994. He was jailed in 2004 after sev­eral domes­tic vio­lence and pro­ba­tion vio­la­tion charges.

In court Tues­day, defense attor­ney William Pet­zold said Ward, who is serv­ing a prison sen­tence in another case, has had suc­cess in sex­ual offender treat­ment and asked that Ward not be “ware­housed for the rest of his life.”

Ward apol­o­gized in a tear­ful plea for leniency.

“I do know it was a hor­ri­fy­ing and trau­matic expe­ri­ence that you in no way deserved to endure,” Ward said. “I’ve had this on my con­science for more than 21 years.”

Swords said Ward’s actions, includ­ing the fact that he took the case to trial and made the vic­tim relive the hor­ror of the assault, were incon­sis­tent with some­one who is remorse­ful and look­ing to ease his conscience.

Mate­r­ial from Gate­House News Ser­vice was used in this report.

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