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Gene Kennedy reportingIt took almost four months to make an arrest in the Village Inn murder case in Sandy. Police say it would have taken a lot longer if they solely relied on the state's crime lab to analyze DNA evidence.
Instead, investigators sent key evidence to a private lab. More and more police agencies are using this lab for quicker turnarounds.
Ken Dolezsar was murdered in the parking lot of the Sandy Village Inn last November. Investigators say Eugene Christopher Wright pulled the trigger. He was arrested yesterday. Detectives say they had their radar on Wright back in mid-December but to put him behind bars they had to wait for evidence to come in.
The state's crime lab analyzed some of that evidence. But critical DNA samples that led to Wright's arrest came from Sorensen Forensics--the state's only private lab.
Sandy Police Lt. Kevin Thacker says the turnaround time is obviously a big benefit for the agencies.
But unlike the state's lab, Sorenson comes with a price. "It comes out of the police department's budget, and that's one reason why you have to be selective about what cases you send because it's not cheap," Lt. Thacker says. He says it's usually the higher-profile cases that go to Sorenson.
"We have more advanced technologies than a lot of public crime labs have," Kupferschmid says. The lab has more sophisticated testing and an ability to analyze more samples of evidence.
Utah has four state crime labs, but only one DNA unit, and not as many lab technicians as Sorenson.
So when mass amounts of evidence come pouring in, getting results can take longer--on average 3 months.
The crime lab's director told KSL the state needs to fund the hiring of more forensics scientists or police departments may continue spending more of their own money at places like Sorenson Forensics.
The average wait for DNA results from the state's crime lab is three months, according to the lab's director.
He hopes to get that wait time down to three weeks, but he needs the staff to do it.
