When Todd Allen Reed was arraigned last week in the deaths
of three women found in Forest Park, the public let out
a collective sigh of relief. Some serial killers have
eluded the police for years--if not forever--yet the Portland
Police Bureau seems to have solved this mystery in just
eight weeks.
"Can you think of any other serial case [where an arrest
was made] in six weeks?" asks Detective Sergeant Cheryl
Kanzler. "I can't."
More amazing, perhaps, is that the case could have
been wrapped up even sooner if authorities had more
up-to-date scientific methods available. Despite round-the-clock
detective work, there's a chance--in theory, at least--that
Reed could have been arrested weeks earlier.
On May 7, police found the body of a woman in Forest
Park. The next day, they found another. Although they
didn't say so at the time, police recently revealed
they found a used condom near one victim's body.
That provided the first--and perhaps best--clue to
the suspected killer's identity. Authorities won't say
exactly how they handled this case, but normally, when
police don't have an immediate suspect in a case, they
examine clues (such as the semen in the found condom)
to develop a profile of the suspect's DNA. That profile
is then compared against a vast computerized database
of 11,500 other DNA profiles gathered from people convicted
of murder, rape and promoting prostitution in Oregon
since 1991. If the suspect's DNA matches any of those
in the database, there's an extremely good chance that
they belong to the same person.
When investigators get a match in such circumstances,
that's called a "cold hit"--a jackpot, to be sure, but
one that was a distinct possibility in this case. Reed's
DNA had been on file in the database since 1992, when
he was convicted of attempted rape.
But that's not how Reed was caught. Instead, police
first identified Reed through a July 7 undercover prostitution
sting. It was only after Reed was identified through
the sting that they compared his 1992 DNA sample to
a sample from the condom.
From the date investigators found the condom to the
date of Reed's arrest, more than two months passed--a
stretch of time in which a third body was found in Forest
Park.
So why didn't authorities get a cold hit the first
time around? According to Ray Grimsbo, a private forensic
investigator who used to work in the state police crime
lab, the state is behind the times.
In the 1980s, law enforcement officials around the
country began using a DNA analysis process called RFLP.
"That's the old classic DNA fingerprinting," explains
Beth Carpenter, a state crime lab supervisor. The RFLP
system has a couple of drawbacks, Grimsbo and Carpenter
agree. It requires a relatively large sample--say, a
blood spatter the size of a dime--and takes weeks to
get results.
No one is criticizing Oregon for going down the path
it did. Many states adopted the RFLP method, but technology
quickly progressed beyond RFLP's capabilities.
Around 1992, Grimsbo was already using another DNA
analysis method, called PCR, in his private lab in Northwest
Portland. With the PCR method, he says, the sample can
be as small as a pinhead. Plus, results come in days
instead of weeks.
"It's a far superior technology," Carpenter says. "[PCR]
is here to stay for a long time. It's a very robust,
fantastic system."
Unfortunately, Oregon is a long way down the RFLP path,
and its data cannot be used with the PCR technology.
That's because RFLP profiles look similar to bar codes,
while PCR profiles rely on color coding. "It's like
comparing English to Japanese," Carpenter says. Most
states now use the PCR method, although many old databases,
including the FBI's, still haven't been converted to
PCR.
Right now, the state crime lab is switching to the
PCR format. That means it has to retest all of the old
DNA samples it has kept on file, then re-enter the results
into the new database. The process is so time-consuming
that the state is considering contracting with a private
lab for help. The task will take at least a year to
complete.
Had the state started out using the PCR method, Grimsbo
believes, "they would have known if they had a 99 percent
hit inside of two days" on the DNA sample from the Forest
Park condom.
Carpenter says it's not always that simple, although
state forensics officials theoretically could have come
up with a preliminary cold hit in a week or so, then
passed that information on to Portland officers while
the results were being verified.
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Willamette Week | originally
published July 28, 1999
