DNA lab receives worldwide attention

In early 2007, a masked man and his father burst down the door of a Folsom area pharmacy, likely high on prescription painkillers and salivating for more. Clutching the cold hard steel pistol his demeanor said it all: give me drugs and money or die.

In an instant, the duo swiped 33 bottles of prescription painkillers and other medications before stealing the pharmacist’s Nissan Maxima and fleeing.

At the time, investigators were left in a quandary. The motive was evident, but there were no suspects and only one clue, the black pullover ski mask, with eye and mouth cutouts, found at the scene.

It proved to be Timothy Williams Jr.’s crucial downfall.

Working at near lighting pace compared to other forensic crime labs, experts with the new St. Tammany Parish Coroner’s Office’s 10-month old DNA lab in Slidell swabbed the mask’s mouth for saliva and skin cells. It matched Williams and, facing the evidence, the now 20-year-old pleaded guilty in August 2007, receiving 10 years in jail. The plea eventually led his father, Timothy Williams Sr., the alleged crime’s mastermind, to also plead guilty and receive 15 years for the crime, according to court records.

It’s this kind of speedy turnaround in processing DNA evidence — sometimes up to a year and a half faster than the State Police Crime Lab in Baton Rouge — that St. Tammany Parish Coroner Peter Galvin promised when he asked voters in 2004 to approve a 4-mill property tax to build the facility.

“Time is critical in prosecutions because witnesses and victims change their minds or evidence is lost or failed to maintain,” Galvin said. “It’s crucial. In (Baton Rouge-based serial killer) Derrick Todd Lee’s case the DNA was there, but it took years to process. In the meantime, he killed, killed and raped some more.”

William’s case is just one of several, including 18 homicides and 27 burglaries and robberies, under investigation locally. Galvin’s new DNA lab examines only St. Tammany Parish cases. Six experts, including Natasha Poe who broke DNA evidence that helped convict Lee, work at the facility.

“By intervening early we prevent violent crime in St. Tammany,” Galvin said. “We are doing something that distinguishes us from other communities.”

For example, it’s estimated the top 10 percent of burglars commit more than 232 burglaries per year before they are caught.

Taking only local cases, the crime lab is shaving up to two years off results, meaning faster conviction times and less tax money spent on jailing those without bonds. And while most would applaud that effort alone, Galvin, a three-term coroner, most recently notched another niche in his crime fighting belt. The DNA lab, only in its 10th month of operation, has become accredited, a process that often takes years.

“It’s beyond most people’s comprehension to understand what it means to be accredited,” Galvin said.

The accreditation from the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors ranks St. Tammany Parish’s DNA lab among the top in the world, Galvin said. Only five other labs in the state, including three under one umbrella organization, have reached basic accreditation.

Galvin’s DNA lab, however, is accredited internationally, ranking among the top 20 percent of accredited DNA crime labs nationwide, according to the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors.

“This should give the people of St. Tammany confidence to know the lab has suggested to be reviewed by a third party,” said John Neuner, international program manager for ASCDL. “St. Tammany was the first in the state to go down this road.”

International accreditation opens up another crime fighting tool. St. Tammany’s lab is now linked to Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, a national DNA database of all criminals in the world.

“The saliva on the stamp of a stalker’s threatening letter, the perspiration on a rapist’s mask or the skin cells shed on the ligature of a strangled child may hold the key to solving the crime,” Galvin said.

Rick Wood, spokesman for District Attorney Walter Reed, agrees.

“In the past a ski mask was enough to keep you from being identified,” he said. “Now it’s just not.”