Governor Cuomo's State of the State speech was chock-full of curious incursions into New Yorker's privacy. And we aren't just talking about the whole fingerprinting folks who want food stamps debate. Oh, no. Slipped in there amidst all that gambling talk was also a plan to make New York the first state in the country to collect DNA from anyone convicted of a crime here. And that includes misdemeanors like jumping turnstiles. more ›

If you've gotten away with murder, you should probably go ahead and keep your DNA to yourself. That seems to be the moral of the story of one Francisco Acevedo, who for years eluded investigators searching for the killer of three New York women. The murders occurred in Yonkers in 1989, 1991 and 1996, and the case went cold until 2009, when Acevedo voluntarily provided DNA as a condition of a parole application after a drunk driving rap. more ›

Yesterday, the NYC Medical Examiner's Office announced that it had identified the 1,629th victim from the September 11, 2001 attacks at the World Trade Center. Using a DNA sample, the ME's office confirmed remains belonged to Ernest James, a 40-year-old Harlem resident, had been an IT employee at Marsh & McClennan. more ›

Yesterday, a convicted Virginia drug dealer was sentenced for 20 years for raping a 16-year-old girl on the Lower East Side in 1993. It took nine years for DNA evidence at the crime scene to be analyzed and then last year, the DNA was entered into a national database—bringing up Alberto Barriera. more ›

The Manhattan DA's Office announced that a man who allegedly pleasured himself on female subway passengers in crowded trains has been indicted. And he was caught because of the DNA left behind. more ›

If your dog poops, you must scoop. Most people understand that. But for those that don't, DNA testing is about to make it a lot more difficult to leave behind Fido's filth. The Freakonomics guys proposed dog DNA testing as a solution for NYC's streets being riddled with poop back in 2005, and now it's becoming a reality. more ›

Police were able to arrest a man who broke into a Chelsea apartment in 2009 because he took a swig of orange juice. According to the Post, James Moorer, 20, "helped himself to a container of orange juice from his victims' fridge, gulped it down and helpfully left the carton, laden with his DNA, on the countertop for cops to find." more ›

A Staten Island man who was recently charged in a thirteen-year-old rape, after police matched his DNA from a discarded cigarette butt with that found at the crime scene, may still walk free on a technicality. Staten Island resident Lerio Guerrero has been connected to the rape and robbery of a woman in the Lower East Side in 1998; but because of a loophole in the statute of limitations, his lawyer is arguing that cops could have caught him years ago if they really wanted to. "They didn't use due diligence to try to find him," said lawyer James Palumbo. more ›

Thirteen years after the incident, a Staten Island man was charged with rape after police seized on his discarded cigarette butt and matched his DNA with that found at the crime scene. The Daily News reports that 32-year-old Lerio Guerrero allegedly attacked his victim, then 28, outside her Lower East Side apartment in November of 1998, "threatened her with a piece of broken glass, raped and sodomized her, then took her wallet." She escaped as Guerrero dragged her to another ATM so she could withdraw more money to give him. more ›

A forensic test has turned up Dominique Strauss-Kahn's DNA on the shirt worn by a hotel maid accusing him of rape, sources tell a French website and NBC New York. The NY Post, which is really in its element with this scandal, reports that Strauss-Kahn's "reputation may be stained for good." Guess you could say its unusual to see men as powerful as Strauss-Kahn in this much trouble! But the positive DNA match might also help explain why his lawyers were quick to claim that the encounter was consensual—if they knew there was a chance of DNA surfacing, that strategy makes a lot more sense. more ›

Remember the guy who cops picked up last March when they spotted a dagger popping out of his bag? The guy also had a loaded pistol, three more daggers, a stun gun, and a total of 305 additional rounds of ammo on his person? He made headlines earlier this month when the judge on his case called him "an ethereal figure" before refusing to drop his $4 million bail. Why was he ethereal? Because the cops couldn't confirm anything about him, not even the name and age he provided them (James Edward O'Donnell, 39) before he clammed up. That he refused to submit his DNA for testing only made him more mysterious. Sort of. Turns out his real name is, wait for it, James O’Donnell Jr. and he is 39. more ›

DNA, not a friend of criminals! As the Manhattan DA has its new cold case squad heating up old cases with new DNA evidence, the NYPD is off grabbing old criminals in new cases using the stuff. Just this week they busted a 72-year-old career criminal after his DNA was found on suede gloves left at the scene of a botched bank robbery. more ›

In March, cops picked up a guy on St. Mark's Place with a giant dagger poking out of his backpack. Upon further questioning, they learned he had a storage unit down at the South Street Seaport, where, the Post reports, police found a loaded pistol, three more daggers, a stun gun, and a total of 305 additional rounds of ammo. Hellooo, nurse. The bearded, bespectacled man identified himself as one James Edward O'Donnell, age 39, but then clammed up, and investigators have been unable to confirm that that's even his real name. In fact, they have no clue who this guy with the weapons cache really is. O'Donnell has no rap sheet, no drivers license, and no Social Security number. more ›

Did you commit a murder in New York City in the last forty years and never got caught? Might want to be careful where you leave your DNA. See, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office this year started a DNA-based cold case squad and is slowly working through the evidence from at least 95 of the city's roughly 3,000 unsolved murders. When they can find the evidence bags, at least. more ›

A Virginia drug dealer faces 25 years in prison after DNA evidence led to his indictment for the 1993 rape of a 16-year-old NYC girl. Alberto Barriera, 46, has been charged with first degree rape, robbery and burglary after he attacked the teenage victim when she was returning to her LES home, took her money and jewelry, choked her and sexually assaulted her. District Attorney Cyrus Vance said in a statement, “It is impossible to overstate the importance of expanding the New York State DNA databank to include DNA collection upon conviction for all Penal Law crimes — felonies and misdemeanors, as this case starkly shows." more ›

A Manhattan jury acquitted the 33-year-old man who confessed to yanking a gold chain off the neck of a developmentally delayed three-year-old girl last year on the roof of an UES project. Anthony Faison of upstate NY signed a written confession to the robbery, and an eensy weensy bit of his DNA was found on little Mariah Rodriguez's dress. 50.4 pictograms, to be precise, which was too little (we're talking 50.4 trillionths of a gram little) to convict Faison. According to the Post, the man also "testified, believably, that cops had threatened to charge him with sexually assaulting the girl unless he confessed to the chain snatch." Faisal would have faced up to 14 years in prison if convicted. more ›

In the pantheon of petty criminals, there are your granny-attackers, your "pint-sized punks," and of course your classic vampire robbers. But none of them compares to the man who assaulted a three-year old developmentally delayed girl last year—for her necklace. more ›

Prosecutors say that preliminary forensics tests found no traces of DNA on a seven-year-old who was allegedly gang raped by five males—two adults and three juveniles— in a Trenton, NJ housing complex. A lawyer for one suspect told the Times of Trenton, "Of course there's no semen because there was no rape. The whole story was fabricated." The case drew a lot of attention due to the depressing details (the victim was allegedly sold for sex by her stepsister) and outrage from local officials, but there have been concerns that confessions were coerced. Now, the prosecutor will no longer try the juveniles as adults and asked that the adult suspects' bails be reduced from $500,000 and $250,000 to $75,000. more ›

Police arrested a man suspected in two Brooklyn rapes. According to the Daily News, "Dupree Nicholson was charged with rape, assault and robbery after his DNA matched evidence taken from the March attacks near the border of Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant, police said." more ›

The woman whose false rape accusations sent an innocent man to prison for nearly four years claims she was so drunk that night that she started to believe her own lies. Lawyers representing Biurney Peguero Gonzalez—who is currently facing jail-time on perjury charges—say she was so inebriated when she falsely accused William McCaffrey of raping her in a van in Upper Manhattan in 2005 that she lost all memory of the incident and came to believe her own story. more ›

It gets crowded for a DNA strand up on a police baton! Today a DNA expert from the chief medical examiner's office testified that Michael Mineo's blood and DNA could not be definitively linked to the retractable police baton, or ASP, that Officer Richard Kern allegedly used to sodomize Mineo after he resisted arrested in a Brooklyn subway station in October 2008. Criminologist Sarah Philipps said that she found DNA from three sources on the ASP, and that Mineo was "included as a possible contributor to this sample." But because the other DNA was mixed with the sample, she could not confirm a match, NY1 reports. It was a different story with Mineo's boxers, however. more ›

Law enforcement agencies throughout the state will soon be allowed to use partial DNA matches to track down criminals—or people who are related to criminals, according to opponents of the new rules. Under the old rules, police could only pursue a suspect using DNA found at a crime scene if the recovered DNA is an exact match with one of the 343,000 genetic profiles contained in a state database of convicts. But starting this spring, police will be allowed to pursue suspects if DNA found at a crime scene is a partial match with someone already on file, meaning that innocent people whose relatives are in the database could come under investigation. more ›

Investigators have been able to put names to the remains of two women who were killed during the September 11 terrorist attacks, according to 1010WINS. Though the medical examiner's officer is withholding releasing the names of the victims at the families' request, the city says it used a new DNA technology developed in 2006 to determine the identity one of the victims. The city regularly retests unidentified remains, though many were "too badly compromised by heat and time" to study. There are still more than 1,100 victims whose remains have not been identified. more ›

Police arrested a 48-year-old man suspected of taking over a city-owned parking lot in Lower Manhattan when it was closed and charging drivers to park their cars. Brooklynite Steven Pappas is accused of breaking into the South Street parking facility on at least two weekend days in September, putting a sign outside, and asking motorists for $10 per day for a parking spot, according to the Post. more ›

The woman whose false rape allegations put an innocent man behind bars for four years lied because she wanted her friends to feel sorry for her, according to the Post. more ›

Escolar, a fish famous for causing diarrhea and anal leakage, has been found masquerading as tuna at sushi restaurants, according to a DNA research study recently published by a group of scientists. The escolar was found five times during the brief research project, which included visits to 31 sushi restaurants in NYC and beyond. The study also found that some restaurants are also selling endangered southern bluefin tuna. more ›

Raymond Clark, the Yale University lab tech accused of killing a graduate student in a research building, appeared in court today. The judge set a probable cause hearing for October 20, which "would allow both sides to introduce evidence and call witnesses." Clark still has not entered a plea, but the AP reports he'll plead not guilty. more ›

It's a story that Dick Wolf would approve of: A receptionist helped the cops catch a career criminal by setting aside a paper cup he used—all thanks to the armchair detective knowledge she acquired from watching crime dramas like Law & Order: SVU! Of course, the cops initially declined to take evidence—Detective Eliot Stabler would totally rage out about that. more ›

Back in the summer of 1991 a Florida college student, Lynne Ronning (pictured), was working as a counselor at a camp in the Poconos. On a day off, the 24-year-old walked to a waterfall, where she was shot in the head "at point-blank range" and raped "as she lay dying," the NY Post recalls. Police found her body the next morning, "posed in a degrading sexual position" with "numerous defensive wounds." It was long suspected that Jeffrey Plishka, son of Metropolitan Opera star Paul Plishka, was guilty (the family had a home nearby the Pennsylvania camp), but it wasn't until now that DNA evidence has connected him with the horrific crime. The paper reports that the 46-year-old has been getting around courtesy of his dad's help, moving to the various family homes around the country for 18 years—one friend says, "The family has done everything it can to keep him off the radar"—which made the investigation more difficult. Plishka, who maintains his innocence, is being held without bail in Pennsylvania, jailed "on multiple counts of murder, as well as attempted rape and deviate sexual intercourse." Prosecutors are considering whether to ask for the death penalty. more ›