Shayne Morrow

If you watch forensic shows on TV and you don't know anything else about the use of DNA in solving crimes then this book is going to come as a surprise to you. There's a lot of steps between gathering DNA and matching it in a lab to the sample of a perpetrator. And then after that matching using the evidence to get a guilty plea is never a sure thing. Shayne Morrow has done an excellent job of showing how the process actually works in Canadian courts.

Shayne was a journalist with the Alberni Family Times from 1994 to 2011. In 1997 Port Alberni was shocked by the violent murder of a young girl, Jessica States. The worst part is that twenty years previously, in 1977, another young girl from the community, Carolyn Lee, was abducted, raped and murdered. Although the police had a good idea who had killed Carolyn they couldn't lay charges. So the murder remained unsolved and the cold case was handed to RCMP Corporal Dan Smith when he joined the Port Alberni detachment in January 1988. He was supposed to just file a form every six months to say the case still remained open. That was not what Dan Smith did and that's how he became "The Bulldog" of the title. As Shayne Morrow writes on p. 13 "...look a little closer at those photographs--especially the candid newspaper shots taken of Dan Smith on the job, poring over evidence or speaking at a press conference--and you will notice a characteristic set in the jaw, a relexive clench in moments of concentration, hinting at a man with deep reserves of focus and determination. You get the impression that, like the legendary bulldog, once this guy sinks his teeth into something, he's not going to let it go. And, as his Port Alberni colleagues discovered, Dan Smith was not a man to let a homicide investigation slip through the bureaucracy--not when it involved the rape and murder of a child." Smith read the file but it was during a visit to the dentist that he had an idea about how to catch the killer. While waiting for his appointment he read an article in Equinox magazine the talked about DNA and the work done in England by researchers at the University of Leicester to develop a DNA fingerprint that was used to solve two murders. DNA fingerprinting was still in its infancy but Smith could already see how it could transform criminal investigations and, in particular, the case of Carolyn Lee. So the bulldog bit down and didn't let go until the murderer was convicted. By 1997 DNA evidence was more commonly used but investigators in the Jessica States case didn't have a possible suspect to match with the evidence. They resorted to what is called "blooding" where they take DNA samples from many people known to be in the vicinity and hope one of those is a match. One of them was but because of the number of samples involved and the workload of the RCMP lab in Vancouver it took years to analyze that one sample.

Despite knowing a fair amount about DNA fingerprinting I was unaware that it was a case from Port Alberni that was the proving ground in Canada for using the technique to gain a conviction. Since Morrow is a journalist and not a scientist his explanation of the technology is simple enough for a layperson to understand so I have no hesitation in recommending this book to anyone interested in crime and justice in Canada.… (más)

This is a highly interesting account of the early days of using DNA technology to capture criminals in Canada. As the technology becomes available, and improved, over time, RCMP in Port Alberni were able to solve the murders, 20 years apart, of two young girls in Port Alberni, B.C. This is a fascinating account of scientific discovery and a testament to dedicated police officers who work so hard to find killers of children.

The author was a crime reporter in Port Alberni during the investigations and has brought the story to life with solid writing.… (más)

This fascinating true crime story by a former newspaper reporter is set in Port Alberni, a small town on Vancouver Island, the 12,000 square mile island across the Strait of Georgia from the city of Vancouver, British Columbia. Two tragedies from this tiny town tested the limits of DNA technology and forensic practice.
In 1977, Carolyn Lee, age twelve, was abducted as she walked to her parents’ restaurant after dance class. Her body was found the next day in a remote area, face down in the mud. While the police had a strong suspicion about who her murderer was, they had no evidence. In 1996, eleven-year-old Jessica States disappeared from a park near her Port Alberni home, and a massive search finally located her battered body, hidden in a nearby ravine under bark torn from a tree. In this case, there initially was no suspect.
While these tragedies were traumatic for the community, what propels them into salience for the wider world is how they demonstrate advances in forensic analysis. In the almost 20 years between these murders, DNA technology arrived. Morrow effectively details how not just the science improved dramatically during that period, but law enforcement procedures evolved, and legal requirements related to collecting DNA evidence changed. He describes a justice system constructed of moving parts. One mistake by the police and an entire case could be dismissed.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have a practice of moving officers around, much like itinerant preachers, so the officers who first worked on the Lee case had long been reassigned. Yet it wasn’t forgotten, and the RCMP hoped the new DNA analysis would finally solve it. Miraculously, some of the evidence had been saved from that two decade old crime and from which DNA could be extracted. The tenacity and careful work of the officers dedicated to solving this cold case—the investigative Bulldog of the title—that finally led to a conviction in 1998. Fortunately for the States family, justice was not so long delayed, and her killer was convicted in 2001.
These two cases were landmarks in Canadian jurisprudence regarding the treatment of forensic DNA evidence, and author Morrow was the primary court and crime reporter for them both. His meticulous retelling of the RCMP decision-making process—which, although it could have gone off the rails at any number of points, led to a successful prosecution of two killers—is as much a page-turner as any novel.… (más)