DNA test leads to suspect in old homicide case

SEATTLE – DNA technology, like that used to link Gary Ridgway to the deaths of three Green River Killer victims, helped Seattle detectives make an arrest Monday in a homicide of more than two decades ago, a police spokesman said.

Police arrested Roger Gary Speer, 40, of Tacoma, for investigation in the 1980 slaying of Penny Hermans. Hermans was found stabbed in the living room of her Seattle home.

A year ago, investigators submitted evidence to the Washington State Crime Lab for testing. Police spokesman Duane Fish said a shortage of chemists at the lab kept investigators from solving the case sooner.

He said the Seattle Police Department has at least 10 cases awaiting results from the lab. The department has solved three cases this year using advanced DNA analysis.

Oops, wrong number: Elizabeth von Steinfort got married Saturday night, returned home Sunday and found eight calls on her answering machine – six hang-ups and two crime tips. By error, her number had been published in the combined Sunday edition of the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as that of a 24-hour tip line in the Green River serial murder case. After receiving four more calls, von Steinfort learned the correct number at the King County sheriff’s office and began directing tipsters there. She also notified the only caller who left a return number in a message on her machine the previous night. The correct number for the tip line is 206-296-7530.

Kent

Sentence in DUI death: A 20-year-old man has been sentenced to nine years in prison for a fatal car crash in which investigators said he was driving while intoxicated. Relatives of Aleksandr Medinskiy pleaded for leniency Friday as he was sentenced in King County Superior Court for the crash in which Tod Fujioka, 32, died and three people were critically injured. Four years of the sentence reflected two arrests in which Medinskiy was charged with drunken driving five months and three months before the fatal crash. Those arrests should have been adequate warning to Medinskiy, said Judge Jay V. White, who followed the sentencing recommendation of prosecutors. With time served and credit for good time behind bars, Medinskiy could be released in slightly more than six years.

Alaska

Whale discovery: Biologists have discovered a previously unknown population of northern Pacific right whales, which are the most endangered whales. Cynthia T. Tynan of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle and colleagues found at least five whales in relatively shallow waters in the southeastern Bering Sea, which is far from their traditional feeding grounds. The whales apparently are feeding on a species of crustacean that was not previously known to be their prey, which is also encouraging, the researchers reported in the Nov. 30 issue of Science. Despite the encouraging news, the numbers are still so low that the whales remain highly vulnerable to extinction, the researchers wrote.

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