Jury hears how crime scene DNA, fingerprints were linked to Sweeney murder suspect
CTV
Jurors at the trial of Robert Steven Wright spent Thursday listening to DNA and fingerprint experts explain how they helped link Wright to the crime scene.
Jurors at the trial of Robert Steven Wright spent Thursday listening to DNA and fingerprint experts explain how they helped link Wright to the crime scene.
Wright is on trial in Sudbury for the second-degree murder of Renee Sweeney, who was stabbed to death Jan. 27, 1998, while working at an Adults Only Video store on Paris Street.
Thursday, an expert from the Centre of Forensic Sciences (CFS) in Sault Ste. Marie explained how advances in DNA technology helped lead to Wright as a suspect – and his arrest in December 2018.
Tara Brutzki, a forensic scientist who manages the CFS’s biology section, explained to jurors that DNA is a “genetic blueprint or set of instructions for all living things.”
“It’s what makes a dog a dog, a horse a horse and a human and human,” she said.
DNA analysis can be used to create a genetic profile, Brutzki said, that comes out as a series of peaks on a graph. Modern techniques have evolved to the point that 15 unique points of a DNA profile can be identified, compared to just four in 1998 when the murder took place.
Brutzki said a cold case review of the Sweeney murder began in 2014, using the more advanced techniques.
