In 1999, state forensic experts took a DNA profile of a man who raped and fatally stabbed 16-year-old Holly Andrews in 1976, entered it into a computer database and in so doing lit a fuse.
Nine years later, the fuse exploded into a murder charge after Ricky Lee Harnish was convicted of a methamphetamine crime and gave a DNA sample that matched that of Andrews’ killer.
Every month, CBI adds 1,800 DNA profiles of convicted felons into a database containing 123,000 similar profiles, said Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
Sixty new profiles a month of yet unknown killers, rapists and burglars taken from victims or crime scenes are cross-checked with the offender names, Clem said. The profiles are identifying from 20 to 50 crime suspects a month, he said.
“The potential is that the numbers will continue to grow exponentially,” Clem said.
The matches don’t always trigger charges as in Andrews’ murder case. Her case would actually become a prime example of why much more evidence is needed to convict a killer.
“The DNA was just the beginning of the investigation,” District Attorney Mark Hurlbert said.
Holly’s body, nude except for blue knee socks, was discovered on a dirt road 5 miles west of Georgetown by cross-country skiers on Dec. 27, 1976, a day after she had been picked up hitchhiking in Littleton, raped, stabbed once in the chest and six times in the back.
In 1983, Henry Lee Lucas was charged with killing Andrews after confessing he stabbed her during a cross-country killing spree. Holly’s mother, Leona Madson, died in 1997 believing that Lucas was the killer. But after Lucas recanted in 1998 and his DNA didn’t match samples taken from Holly’s body, charges were dismissed.
In 2007, Harnish, now 55, was serving a community corrections sentence in an Aurora halfway house when his DNA was matched to Andrews’ body.
Harnish was charged in the killing, but prosecutors weren’t yet able to establish that the same person who had sex with Andrews also killed her that day. At Harnish’s preliminary hearing on April 17, 2008, Clear Creek County Judge Rachel Olguin-Fresquez dismissed charges.
Investigators needed more evidence. They needed to prove that Harnish didn’t have consensual sex with Holly before she met up with her killer later.
Hurlbert refiled charges against Harnish.
Physical evidence was retested, and CBI agents and sheriff’s investigators scoured 8,000 pages of reports and interviewed witnesses from Texas to Oregon.
They first had to prove that Lucas did not kill Holly.
On Aug. 24, CBI agent Chris Schaefer interviewed Lucas’ niece Aomia Almeda Sage, who told him that Lucas was staying with her family in Martinsville, Va., on Christmas of 1976, and he couldn’t have been in Colorado.
Investigators persuaded Harnish’s family, including his mother, to cooperate. She turned over pictures of him from the 1970s, including one of his canary yellow Opel, matching the description of the car Holly climbed into. A friend of Harnish’s from the 1970s, then living in Wyoming, was able to place Harnish in Littleton within a mile of Holly’s house that Christmas.
DNA expert Mary Schleicher recalls the day when several cart loads of evidence were rolled into the laboratory.
“It was pretty daunting,” Schleicher said.
But the DNA evidence was critical in showing a sequence of events indicating that whoever had sex with Holly also killed her, according to crime scene expert Tom Griffin, who analyzed the evidence.
Schleicher ran DNA tests on Holly’s pants and panties. While touch DNA samples matching Harnish were discovered on the waistband of Holly’s panties, indicating he had at least been there to remove them, there was no DNA found in the crotch of the panties or her jeans where it would have been found if she put her clothes back on after sex, Schleicher said.
Harnish’s DNA was also co-mingled with Holly’s blood on a jacket used as a blanket on the snow and on a bra clasp that had broken off and was found under her body.
It was 22 degrees that night, so she was not likely to remain undressed voluntarily while alive. Therefore, prosecutors were prepared to show jurors that she was killed soon after her clothes were removed.
Days before the case was to go to trial, Harnish agreed to a plea deal and to accurately describe how he killed her. Holly’s family wanted to know, and it would help investigators in future cases.
Faced with the overwhelming evidence that started the day DNA from Holly Andrews’ body was entered in the database, Harnish finally told the truth.
He will spend 24 years in prison.
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Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
