Virginia is latest state to mull taking more DNA samples

Associated Press

RICHMOND, VA.

After Morgan Harrington’s body turned up in an Albemarle County hayfield in 2009, authorities were able to obtain crime-scene DNA evidence. What they didn’t have yet was a forensic match to a suspect in Virginia’s groundbreaking databank of felons’ DNA.

As it turns out, there were some missed opportunities to obtain that match — commonly referred to as a “hit” — years earlier. Jesse Matthew Jr., who has been forensically linked but not charged in the Harrington case, had been accused of sexually assaulting two women at separate Virginia universities in 2002 and 2003. Had he been charged, police would have collected Matthew’s DNA. But the cases were dropped after the women declined to press charges.

Matthew was convicted of trespassing in 2010, but that offense was not on the list of misdemeanors that would require him to submit a DNA sample — a limitation that could be erased in future cases if legislation pending in the General Assembly is approved. Authorities finally obtained Matthew’s DNA from a cheek swab after he was charged in last September’s disappearance of University of Virginia student Hannah Graham, whose body was found a few miles from where Harrington’s had been discovered five years earlier. That evidence linked Matthew to a 2005 sexual assault in Fairfax County and to the death of Harrington.

Graham’s slaying illustrates why expansion of Virginia’s DNA collection effort is a good idea, proponents say. Supporters include Hannah Graham’s father, John Graham, and Harrington’s mother, Gil Harrington, who formed the nonprofit Save the Next Girl organization after her daughter’s killing.

“We have the technology, and it should be utilized,” Harrington said. “There have been so many high-profile crimes. The time to get this done is now.”