County Cold Case Investigation Hindered by DNA Backlog

COURT HOUSE — Susan Negersmith’s killer may still be at large or in prison or dead; detectives just don’t know.
A huge backlog for inputting new samples into the federal DNA database has hampered the Negersmith investigation and thousands like it.
“It’s sad and frustrating that there are so many untested DNA samples out there when one of them could be linked to the death of Susan Negersmith,” Cape May County Prosecutor Robert Taylor told the Herald.
Negersmith, of Carmel, N.Y., was visiting Wildwood for vacation Memorial Day weekend 1990 when she left her room in the Sonata Motel on Atlantic Avenue at approximately 8 p.m. The 20-year-old young woman’s battered, partially clothed body was found in an alley behind Schellengers Restaurant at 10 a.m. the next day.
The N.J. State Police Crime Scene Unit processed the scene where Negersmith was found and an extensive investigation followed.
According to the county Prosecutor’s Office, 22 detectives from six municipal and county agencies conducted over 100 field interviews in the first month of the investigation. Investigators also conducted 21 taped interviews and approximately 50 informal interviews in the months following the incident.
The initial medical examiner’s report declared Negersmith’s death an accident and brought the investigation to a close, but in October 1993 a task force was formed to reexamine the case as a homicide based on new evidence that indicated she had been murdered.
A new county medical examiner changed her cause of death to “homicide by manual strangulation” in October 1995. The case has since remained an open investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office and the State Police.
Investigators have DNA evidence linking someone to Negersmith’s murder, but have yet to get a hit from the Combined DNA Index System or CODIS, a database administered by the FBI of DNA profiles from convicted offenders, unsolved crime scene evidence and missing persons.
Begun as a small pilot program in 1990, CODIS now contains over 6 million offender profiles and 225,400 forensic profiles as of June 2008, according to the FBI. The CODIS database has assisted in over 71,000 criminal investigations.
Because DNA laboratories throughout the country cannot process database samples quickly enough, however, criminals who should be identifiable through CODIS remain free to commit more crimes.
As of August 2008, 40 individuals have been DNA tested in connection with the Negersmith’s case with no matches.
Because of the backlog, Negersmith’s murderer could have been in and out of prison on different charges without being linked to the crime. If the backlog were reduced, other crimes could also be prevented.
In 2003, a report funded by the U.S. Justice Department estimated the CODIS backlog at between 200,000 and 300,000 samples. Despite increased federal funding since then to reduce the backlog, there are still hundreds of thousands of unregistered samples waiting in evidence lockers to be processed.
According to the FBI, all of the DNA work in this state is done at the New Jersey Forensic Science Technology Center in Hamilton. As of June 2008, the state DNA crime lab has compiled 168,646 offender profiles and 5,785 forensic samples aiding in 2,094 investigations. As of January 2007, there were 700 confirmed hits to the state database.
Taylor told the Herald that everyone convicted of a crime in New Jersey has DNA entered into the CODIS database. Investigators also collect DNA evidence from not only murder and rape cases, but from other investigations, such as robberies.
While the state and country work on their CODIS backlogs, investigators in Cape May County continue to look for Negersmith’s killer.
Detective Sgt. Michael Emmer, of the Prosecutor’s Office, presented the Negersmith case during a cold case review at the 15th annual Advanced Homicide Investigation Seminar hosted by the N.J. State Police in June.
Although he could not make specific comments on the ongoing investigation, Emmer said he received “insight from detectives and from medical examiners throughout the country that gave me some leads and new hope.”
The case will again be presented next week at a conference for the Mid-Atlantic Cold Case Homicide Investigator’s Association, where Emmer hopes to get additional leads and information that will someday soon lead to the arrest of Negersmith’s killer.
Contact Hart at (609) 886-8600 Ext 35 or at: jhart@cmcherald.com