I feel her family's pain. My father might have been killed by a serial killer, so it's just a weird feeling that never really goes away.
I do applaud her family for being proactive moving forward and trying to help the next family of one of these senseless killings.
They are pushing for the state(s) to use familial dna to find suspects.
http://www.qchron.com/editions/queenswid...e80a2d4708.html
Even with their daughter’s alleged killer behind bars, Phil and Cathie Vetrano urged the state Commission on Forensic Science last Friday to authorize familial DNA testing in an effort to quickly catch perpetrators of violent crimes.
“The testing will not only help solve countless court cases ... it will also prevent crimes,” said Phil Vetrano, who found his daughter’s corpse in Spring Creek Park Aug. 2.
Familial DNA testing is a type of DNA screening in which investigators take a strand from a crime scene and look for a match in criminal databases to determine if it matches that of anyone’s close male relative — the search tests the Y chromosome, passed down by the father.
Investigators can use that information to interview more people and create a lead to the actual perpetrator.
The commission held the hearing last week to solicit input on whether to make New York the tenth state to utilize the method.
Phil and Cathie Vetrano have been pushing for it since late November, weeks before Chanel Lewis was charged with sexually assaulting and killing their daughter.
“I need to stress that our personal tragedy, in reality, familial DNA is no longer our fight,” Cathie Vetrano said. “But despite the fact I can barely walk out the door each day, I came so that I can represent and honor my daughter and still continue this fight.”
Not everyone was supportive of the method, as some raised concerns over the legitimacy of results from the test, invasion of privacy and racial discrimination.
“To be treated as a criminal suspect is a serious matter,” said DNA expert and New York University School of Law professor Erin Murphy. “It can result in the loss of a job, estrangement from one’s spouse or child, alienation from one’s community.”
Brad Maurer, of New York County Defenders’ Services, compared it to the practice of stop and frisk, saying minority communities would be especially targeted by the test.
“Now, instead of what’s in your pockets, law enforcement wants to know what’s in your DNA, all because a relative of yours was convicted of a past crime,” Maurer said.
Still, others said familial DNA is necessary to help law enforcement in investigating heinous crimes.
“Prudent, appropriate, limited safeguards can be put in place to ensure that familial searching is used thoughtfully — not indiscriminately — and that information generated by these searches is handled with sensitivity,” said Eric Rosenbaum, chief of the Queens District Attorney’s DNA Prosecution’s Unit. “With such protections, familial DNA searching would bring to New York a potentially life-saving crime-fighting tool which is already being fairly employed in other jurisdictions.”
Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato (D-Rockaway Park) told the commission, “I believe that familial matching will be a powerful investigative tool in making sure violent people are behind bars, innocent people walk free and we can clearly differentiate between the two.”
It’s unclear when the commission will make a decision on whether to approve the test.
A Senate bill, which passed last week and is carried in the Assembly by Pheffer Amato, could mandate its use if passed by the lower chamber and signed by Gov. Cuomo.