The DNA Dragnet

By Amanda Ripley Theunis Bates; Marc Hequet; Ruth Laney

In the summer of 1847, a panicked mother in a small village in Barnstable, Mass., on Cape Cod, reported her 10-week-old son missing. The townsfolk fanned out to search for him. Within hours, his body was found floating in the harbor. Because no strangers were visiting that day, the villagers knew the killer was one of them. At the funeral the next day, each resident was asked to approach the tiny open coffin, lay hands on the body and declare his or her innocence, a scene described by Evan J. Albright in his book Cape Cod Confidential. The villagers were looking for signs of guilt. They had found none, and only the boy's family remained. His mother at first recoiled at the idea of touching her dead son. Then, as she did so, she yanked her hands away from the corpse as if they had been scalded. "I didn't do it! I didn't do it!" she blurted out. The village had found the murderer.

A small seaside town about an hour north of Barnstable began another unsparing manhunt this month in hopes of solving a three-year-old murder. Police in Truro, Mass., intend to collect the DNA of every one of the town's 790 males. After that, the cops may cast a wider net, reaching neighboring towns. They started by approaching men at Truro's few outposts--the post office, the pizza place, the grocery store--and politely asking each if they could swipe a lollipop-size swab inside his cheek. It's strictly voluntary, and the Truro men can say no. Then again, the police are taking the license-plate numbers of all the men they approach, and will be noting those who refuse the test.

Fifteen years ago, it was believed that such mass DNA collections--which began in Europe--would never catch on in the U.S., with its stalwart protections against invasive search and seizure. But the temptation to solve unspeakable crimes, particularly ones involving children, has proved powerful. Truro's is at least the 19th DNA dragnet in the U.S. As testing becomes faster and cheaper, such collections are becoming more frequent. And the debate about whether they are right sliced this seaside town in two last week, just it has Baton Rouge, La.; Charlottesville, Va.; and Miami.

On Jan. 6, 2002, Christa Worthington, 46, a former fashion writer, was found dead, stabbed through the heart in a doorway of her bungalow. Alive and clinging to her was Ava, 21/2, her daughter, who had spent 36 hours alone with the body. The killer had stabbed Worthington so powerfully that the blade had left a mark in the floorboards beneath her. It appeared that Ava had tried to tend to her mother, dabbing her face with a washcloth. "Mommy fell down," she sobbingly told the person who found her.

Worthingtons had lived in Truro for generations. In fact, one of the first rescue workers at the scene was Christa's cousin. Christa had moved there from New York City to care for her sick mother. She had had an affair with a local fisherman, which produced Ava. After her mother died, Christa decided to stay. In her shingled house on a hill, surrounded by a tangle of spindly trees, she had started a new life, although not necessarily a frictionless one. What with family strains and frustrated romances, there were plenty of obvious suspects. Semen was found on Worthington's body, but it did not match any of them.

Truro has no main street, no stoplights, no trash pickup. Though the area bustles with writers and artists in the summertime, it is quiet, even suffocating, in the off-season. "In the winter, we pay too much attention to each other," a local told the Boston Globe after the murder. None of that attention had turned lethal since 1969, the year of the last homicide. "When you have an unsolved murder in your town, there's this free-floating anxiety," says Truro resident Maria Flook, who wrote a book about the killing.

On the third anniversary of Worthington's death, local and state police, advised by FBI profilers, began swabbing for DNA--hoping to finally find a match to the person with whom Worthington last had sex, even if he was not the murderer. The year-rounders, as they are called, were not shy in responding. About 10 locals called the state A.C.L.U. chapter, which quickly sent a letter of protest to law-enforcement officials and is considering litigation. Some men have refused to give a sample, though Cape and Islands district attorney Michael O'Keefe declines to say how many. "I have a tirade ready," says Michael Jerace, who intends to turn the police down. "It's very frightening. It's all part of the ambiance of the country right now." Others have gone to the cops, regarding it as a civic duty. Police chief John Thomas says at least 80% of his e-mail has been supportive. Fred Simonin, owner of the Highland Grill, where residents go to get Krispy Kreme doughnuts and pizza, readily complied, accepting a swab as he stood behind his counter. "Does it bother me? No. I don't plan on raping or killing anyone," says Simonin, in his orange Truro baseball cap.

When Michael Kaelberer made his regular trip to the dump on a recent Sunday, a friend going the other way tried to wave him off. "They're down there!" he warned. "Aw, man," Kaelberer said. He had heard about the DNA sweep, and he didn't like it. He had lived in Truro for 33 years precisely because this kind of nonsense didn't happen here. Still, he had decided to surrender. "What are you going to do? You got a truck full of garbage," he says. "This is a small town. It's not worth getting on a list if you're not guilty."

O'Keefe and the police have promised that the samples will be destroyed if they do not match the evidence. But state law does not require them to keep their promise, says the A.C.L.U. In Baton Rouge, police swabbed 1,200 men, most of them white, in 2002 and 2003, following tips. Although the early focus was on white men, it turned out the killer was black. Some of the samples ended up in the state crime database anyway. More than a dozen of the men are suing to have their samples removed. Corporal Don Kelly, a spokesman for the Baton Rouge police, defends the investigation but acknowledges the long-term dilemma: "Let's face it. If we took a DNA sample from every male child at birth, we could solve a lot of crimes. But is that a price we're willing to pay?"

Probably not. A better question might be, Do DNA dragnets work? The answer so far is, rarely. The largest sweep in the U.S. took place in Miami, where in 1994 cops sampled 2,300 men in search of a serial killer. The dragnet did not catch the killer. Of the 18 publicized U.S. sweeps, only one--a narrow sampling of 25 workers at a nursing home--has been successful, according to a 2004 study by criminologist Samuel Walker of the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Walker called the sweeps "unproductive" and said that if they are to continue, national guidelines are urgently needed.

In Britain, where the first ever mass DNA sweep took place in 1987 (indirectly leading to the conviction of a rapist and murderer who tried to escape detection by asking a co-worker to take the DNA test for him), the results have been more impressive--and the public far less resistant. The Forensic Science Service of England and Wales has carried out 292 DNA dragnets since it began counting in 1995. So far, 61--about 20% of all sweeps--have produced significant matches, helping push an investigation toward a suspect and, on numerous occasions, a conviction. In 1998 Str??cklingen, Germany, undertook the largest collection to date. More than 16,000 men in a rural town were sampled after a girl, 11, was raped and strangled. In a quest to restore the town's innocence, entire soccer teams took the test together. The killer, pressured to participate by friends, also complied, sealing his fate.

Given the history of Massachusetts' crime lab, it's hard to imagine Truro's DNA samples getting processed anytime soon. It took several months just to get the DNA from the initial suspects processed in the Worthington case. But D.A. O'Keefe insists, without elaborating, that the effort will have "ancillary benefits." The rush of attention has clearly got the town talking again.

And maybe, somewhere, it has got someone nervous, says Chief Thomas. "I hope that whoever did this cannot sleep at night. And if they do sleep, I hope they have nightmares. I hope they wake up in a cold sweat. And I hope the person next to them realizes what's going on and says something." --With reporting by Theunis Bates/ London, Marc Hequet/St. Paul and Ruth Laney/ Baton Rouge