FREEHOLD A stain on the inside of a pair of jeans found in Paul Caneiro’s basement after his brother’s family was murdered in 2018 initially provided no useful information to investigators when it was examined using the traditional method of DNA analysis, a state DNA expert testified Monday
But when the DNA extracted from the stain was reexamined last year and run through a sophisticated computer software program that New Jersey State Police first began using in 2022, some of it turned out to be the DNA of Caneiro’s murdered people. cousin, 11-year-old Jesse Caneiro, state police DNA forensic scientist Christine Schlenker testified.
Schlenker took the witness stand during an ongoing hearing on the admissibility of DNA evidence at Paul Caneiro’s upcoming trial. Caneiro, 57, of Ocean Township, is accused of killing his brother Keith, 50, sister-in-law Jennifer, 45, niece Sophia, 8, and nephew Jesse, whose bodies were found during a fire at Keith Caneiro’s Colts Neck mansion on 21 November 2018.
In order to declare the DNA evidence admissible, Superior Court Judge Marc C. Lemieux, Monmouth County’s assigning judge, must determine that the new computer software program known as STRmix produces reliable results and that the method used to calculate them is generally accepted in the scientific world. community.
STRmix uses a method known as probabilistic genotyping, which is designed to analyze small amounts and complex mixtures of DNA that often cannot be analyzed using traditional methods.
Probabilistic genotyping differs from the traditional DNA analysis method of random match probability, which generates a statistic about the probability that a match to a DNA profile can be found in the general population.
Probabilistic genotyping instead analyzes mixtures to which more than one person has contributed to generate a ‘likelihood ratio’ that a person of interest can be included or excluded as a contributor to the mixture
Schlenker testified that the DNA from the stain on the inside of the jeans found in Paul Caneiro’s basement was a mixture of DNA from two people. The STRmix program found that it was 2.73 septillion times more likely than not that Jesse Caneiro had contributed DNA to that two-person mixture, she said.
STRmix also concluded that it was 53 billion times more likely than not that Paul Caneiro did not contribute to the mixture, Schlenker said.
The jeans and other items were seized from Paul Caneiro’s home after authorities alleged he set the home on fire to deter investigators and make it appear as if the entire Caneiro family was being targeted by violent criminals. .
Authorities allege that Paul Caneiro first started a slow-burning fire in his brother’s home in an attempt to mask the murder of Keith, who was shot four times in the head and once in the back, as well as Jennifer and the two children , who were shot repeatedly. stabbed and badly burned. Jennifer Caneiro was also shot in the head.
The profile of the DNA mixture on the inside of the jeans was also compared to the DNA of Jennifer, Keith and Sophia Caneiro and Sean Edson, a firefighter who cut himself while battling the fire at Paul Caneiro’s home. Jennifer and Keith Caneiro and Edson were ruled out as possible donors for the sample, while the comparison to Sophia’s DNA was “non-informative,” Schlenker said.
Schlenker said she used STRmix to analyze DNA from the inside of the collar of a long-sleeved shirt found in the defendant’s home and concluded that the DNA came from a mixture of two people and that Paul Caneiro was 110 million times more likely may or may not have been the contributor of most of that mixture.
When the two items were analyzed in 2018 before the state police lab began using STRmix, it was determined that the DNA “was not of good quantity and quality to compare, so no comparisons could be made,” Schlenker said.
Schlenker said she analyzed a third item in the Caneiro case, a tag on jeans from the defendant’s home, but found no DNA on it, so no further analysis was performed.
Last week, the judge heard testimony from a DNA analyst from Bode Technology, a private forensic laboratory in Lorton, Virginia, to which the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office sent items in the Caneiro case to be tested before state police began using STRmix. The analyst, Danielle Reed, testified that DNA from another area on the jeans was a mixture of DNA from three people. The STRmix analysis of the mixture showed very strong support for Paul and Sophia Caneiro’s contribution to the mixture, Reed testified.
Before Schlenker took the stand Monday, Jennifer Thayer, director of the state police DNA laboratory, testified about the process undertaken to validate the reliability of the STRmix software before state police began using it.
The process involved creating mixtures of DNA from known individuals and running them through the program to verify that the results were correct.
“STRmix can do more with these mixtures than before, and everything correlated as expected,” Thayer testified.
But, questioned by Christopher Godin of the State Attorney’s Office, Thayer admitted that the lab’s validation studies had paid “very minimal” attention to how the software handled DNA from related individuals and only included samples from a few descendants in the studies .
“We have since decided to conduct some relative investigations, but they are ongoing,” Thayer testified.
In the context of the STRmix challenge, the Public Prosecution Service pointed out limitations in the software’s ability to analyze mixtures of related individuals, because family members share so-called alleles, which are DNA sequences that a person inherits from each parent.
The outcome of the hearing will have statewide implications for STRmix because the state police are now using it and because it has never before been challenged or deemed reliable in a New Jersey court.
A reporter in New Jersey since 1985, Kathleen Hopkins covers crime, trials, legal issues and virtually every major murder case affecting Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: New technology found murdered cousin’s DNA on Caneiro’s pants: expert
