COLORADO SPRINGS — A robotic DNA processing machine at the Colorado Springs Police Department will soon be humming as it helps solve murder mysteries up to 60 years old.
Over the next several weeks, two forensic scientists will use the machine to identify DNA left on hundreds of pieces of evidence, including clothing collected from 89 murder victims since 1949.
The tests could identify the man who broke into the home of single mother Cassandra Rundle on Feb. 14, 1985, and fatally stabbed her and her two kids, 12-year-old Detrick Sturm and 10-year-old Melanie Sturm.
The testing could also point to whoever sprayed bullets into the body and head of 34-year-old policeman Richard S. Burchfield on Thanksgiving night in 1953.
Laboratory testing is the third and final phase of a project that began 15 months ago when the Colorado Springs Police Department received a $482,000 grant from the U.S. Justice Department.
Part of the money was used to process DNA evidence in 1,500 unsolved rape and sexual assault cases.
Team takes “systematic approach”
The initiative puts a new department strategy to the test, said Sgt. Jeff Jensen, who supervises the department’s homicide detectives.
In the past, all Colorado Springs homicide detectives would take a certain number of cold cases and work them when they found time. But detectives rarely did.
Now, Detective Joe Matiatos, along with a volunteer staff of four retired law enforcement officers and three other volunteers, work exclusively on cold homicide cases.
“It’s a systematic approach. This is a better way of doing it,” Jensen said.
The team spent the first eight months tracking down evidence in storage lockers and analyzing files to see which cases had the best chance of being solved with DNA testing. They initially identified 35.
Although testing had been done on some of the cases, the new machine can do things older tests couldn’t. It can analyze tiny skin cells left behind when a killer pulls on rope to strangle someone or tears a victim’s clothing.
One case that Jensen and Matiatos have high expectations of solving with the so-called “touch” DNA testing is that of 32-year-old Cecelia “C.C.” Benefiel-Cipriani.
She was fatally shot Nov. 1, 1990, shortly after she became the first female lieutenant of the patrol division in the history of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Department.
In her case, someone broke into her home and placed many of her things in a big pile in the living room. Jensen said it may have been the work of a burglar or someone staging a burglary scene. Either way, the killer touched TVs, radios and other possessions and left something of him behind.
“All sorts of things were moved throughout the house,” Jensen said. “We’re hoping the evidence will identify a suspect.”
Matiatos and the volunteers catalogued evidence and scanned reports from notebooks onto a computer to make them fully searchable. If the same suspect’s DNA shows up in other murder investigations that fact will be known by doing a search of all the records simultaneously.
The department has several homicides that could have been committed by the same killer, Jensen said.
The volunteers are no slouches. They include Charles Hess, 84, who as a CIA agent infiltrated the Viet Cong hierarchy during the Vietnam war and later as a FBI agent served as a liaison with the Mexican government in pursuing fugitives in Mexico.
After retiring and moving to an island off the coast of Mexico, Hess and his wife moved to Colorado Springs in the 1990s to comfort a daughter whose husband was murdered.
In a series of letter exchanges with convicted child killer Robert Browne, Hess persuaded him to confess to 47 murders in nine states and overseas.
Hess volunteers his time several days a week working on the cold-case team.
Awaiting the “thrilling moment”
“I feel like I have a certain understanding for this work,” Hess said. “I’m writing to four different guys who promise to give me (information about) murders.”
As Colorado Springs’ cold-case unit begins the process of turning over torn clothing, murder weapons and frozen body fluids to laboratory scientists for analysis, they have high expectations.
Any DNA profiles found in the lab will be fed into the FBI’s national DNA database. Jensen said it’s likely there will be some hits made, possibly with someone who has been arrested somewhere else in the country.
If detective work has its thrilling moments, it’s when a piece of evidence points to a particular person in a way that identifies him or her as a suspect.
“There’s nothing else in law enforcement that compares,” Jensen said.
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Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
