Better than ‘CSI’: High-tech DNA vacuum cracks cold case

Crime scene investigation shows are some of the most popular on television and some of my favorites. Who doesn’t love the “CSI” crime-fighting trio of Nick Stokes, Greg Sanders and Sara Sidle?

But, as I learned researching this story, lots of the techniques used on those shows aren’t as advertised. One of the biggest discrepancies is the time it takes to match evidence to a suspect. On television it’s nearly instantaneous, but in real life it can take hours, days, weeks or months.

Along the road to finding the newest CSI innovations, I came across a story in which technology really made a difference. Science and technology are game changers in crime fighting. This means bad news for criminals. Crimes committed today have a good chance of being solved. Furthermore, just because criminals got away with something five, 10 or 20 years ago doesn’t mean they’re off the hook. As this technology advances, so does the chance that an old crime will finally be solved.

Case in point: Wasatch County, Utah. Sheriff Todd Bonner and his deputies made an arrest in a murder case that dated back to 1995. Back then, he was still a deputy when he arrived at a crime scene by the Provo River. A girl named Krystal Beslanowitch, just 17 years old, was murdered — beaten with a rock, her body left by the river.

Bonner did what he could. The sheriff’s office interviewed dozens of people. It collected evidence but couldn’t come up with a suspect. Bonner never forgot about Beslanowitch, even after a decade passed. She was never just in the back of his mind; she was front and center. Sheriff Bonner kept a photo of her hanging on the board in his office.

Why did he care so much about this girl? Reports say she was a prostitute, but that didn’t matter to him. He never met her while she was alive, but he still wanted to bring the perpetrator to justice. One of his fears was that the killer was continuing to harm other young women. After all, Bonner is a father to three daughters. He did what he would want law enforcement to do if something happened to one of his children. He says he revisited the case every couple of weeks, but to no avail.

Then one day, everything changed. Bonner learned about “touch DNA,” a process in which blood isn’t required to get a DNA profile. Instead scientists use skin cells. These cells are so small they’re not visible to the human eye. Sometimes you need as few as 16 to 20 cells to acquire a profile.

One of Bonner’s deputies asked if he could run some evidence using this new technology. A rock believed to be the murder weapon was sent to a forensic lab, where a new device from a company called M-Vac Systems was able to pull DNA from inside the rock. The device functions like a DNA vacuum, literally sucking out cells from the rock.

They had a match. In late 2013, suspect Joseph Michael Simpson was arrested and extradited from Florida. In the 1980s, Simpson served time in the Utah State Prison for murder, so his DNA was on record. His case is pending.

In this episode of “TechKnow,” you’ll see how everything is changing — from ballistics to cameras that take you places crime fighters have never been able to go before. Experts have testified in court about touch DNA and have helped both to convict guilty parties and to free wrongly convicted innocents.

The future looks bright for the men and women of law enforcement. But it’s not looking so good for criminals.

Watch "TechKnow," Sunday 7:30ET/4:30PT, to learn more about touch DNA and other innovative crime scene investigation technology.