scientific value of forensic touch DNA in solving real crimes Denise Marie Stafford, 28 case study and JonBenet Ramsey

tricia griffith wrote:
Anti-K, this whole forum has example after example after example that an intruder did not commit this crime.

No one can show one scintilla of evidence of an intruder.

As owner, I do my best to stay out of actual discussions about a crime.

The JBR case is the one expection.

Websleuths is a leader in true crime information as well as discussion. People come here to get information. It is imperative we deal with the facts. Not fantasy.

All I ask for are facts and a logical connecting of the dots. Logic and facts.

When I get time I will be going through the forum to make sure the JonBenet Ramsey forum is being held up to the high standards just like all our other forums on Websleuths.

The days of allowing anyone to post anything because it's part of their "theory" are gone. Facts and logic. Very simple.

Host Tricia Griffith is a veteran radio disc jockey and owner of Websleuths.com and owner of Forums for Justice.org.

tricia griffith wrote:
Anti-K, this whole forum has example after example after example that an intruder did not commit this crime.

No one can show one scintilla of evidence of an intruder.

delmar england wrote:
Letter to Boulder Colorado District Attorney, Mary Keenan

The crime scene consisted of an obviously bogus multi-page "ransom note" utilizing local materials. JonBenet's body was left in the basement of the Ramsey home with crude trappings falling woefully short of presenting a convincing kidnap\murder scene as it was intended to do. Even without pointing out more of a very long list of corroborating facts, the bogus note and inept staging is more than sufficient to isolate the perpetrators to the Ramsey household. Only a few minutes in examining and evaluating the evidence is required to reach this conclusion. It is impossible to reach any other conclusion on the facts. There was and is no evidentiary reason to look anywhere else. The only mystery to be solved was and is which Ramsey did what in relation to JonBenet's death.

Although it is not possible to reach any other conclusion from the evidence, it is possible to ignore the evidence and mentally invent "evidence" to take the place of truth and keep it hidden. Prompted by preconceived notions set in a context of money and political influence in conjunction with investigative cowardice and incompetence, this is precisely what has been going on for over six years.

delmar wrote:
Handwriting? Patsy has not been ruled out by several examiners. By my own analysis, not of the writing, but of the mind match between the note and Patsy is clear. This is explained in my analysis of the "ransom note." So far, neither you nor anyone else has quoted and challenged it. So, to say the handwriting does not match the Ramseys, thus all Ramseys are excluded as author, is just another arbitrary declaration without substance. Note the exclusion of Ramseys necessarily depends on the intruder idea of no factual substance.

DNA? So, it does not match the family. So what? Who does it match? Unknown? If unknown, how can it be known to connect to the crime and be "evidence?" If the source of this DNA were known, then factually connected to the crime scene, then it is evidence. Absence this, it is just more speculation that caters to intruder mental creation.

Does the DNA have to be connected to the crime? Could it not be from a benign source totally removed from the crime scene? Again, the alleged evidence evidences nothing except itself with no known connection to the crime. No outsider as perpetrator is required to explain the DNA since no connection is known as crime related.

The same is true for boot print, hairs, fibers, etc.. A close look into anyone's house would most likely turn up all sorts of things whose source were unknown whether there is a crime or not. To call something whose source and cause is unknown as evidence is to say it causal related while simultaneously saying cause is unknown, thus relationship unknown; more "negative evidence." If my recollection of high school Latin is correct, this could be called "ignotium per ignotius", the unknown by the more unknown.

This "Ramsey defense" "thinking" is a direct and absurd contradiction that is without limit. With this kind of "investigative latitude", I dare say that one could "prove" anything; or at least, convince the deluded self that he or she has done so. "negative evidence?" Surely, thou jest. I repeat: All known evidence is local.

delmar england wrote:
For every "could be", there is a "could be not", therefore, inconclusive until cause is known. Right? No thing is evidence until evidentiary cause is known. Right? Are we in agreement so far? If not, please point out what you think is my error in thinking, and why you think it is error.

A shoe print is found in the basement whose cause is unknown. It "could be" evidence of an intruder. "Could be not" is forgotten and "evidence" of an intruder is declared to be fact. There is a palm print with cause unknown; a rope with source unknown that "could be" something brought in by an intruder; an unidentified fiber, a baseball bat that "could have" been used by the intruder; a bit of dirt or leaves at a window well which "could have" been disturbed by an intruder. The list goes on and on and on.

This massive "evidence" stated to be more consistent with a theory of intruder than Ramsey guilt is hot air, nothing more than a string of unknowns verbally laced together on "could be", simultaneously divorced from the known, and declared to be much evidence of an intruder. Ridiculous to the max. No wonder no one will step forward and answer questions about alleged evidence of an alleged intruder. Its indefensible.

The beauty of truth is that it is consistent. Every fact is a complement of and blends with every other fact without contradiction. The presence of a contradiction is also the presence of error. Are we in agreement up to this point?

DNA? So, it does not match the family. So what? Who does it match? Unknown? If unknown, how can it be known to connect to the crime and be "evidence?" If the source of this DNA were known, then factually connected to the crime scene, then it is evidence. Absence this, it is just more speculation that caters to intruder mental creation.

Does the DNA have to be connected to the crime? Could it not be from a benign source totally removed from the crime scene? Again, the alleged evidence evidences nothing except itself with no known connection to the crime. No outsider as perpetrator is required to explain the DNA since no connection is known as crime related


The same is true for boot print, hairs, fibers, etc.. A close look into anyone's house would most likely turn up all sorts of things whose source were unknown whether there is a crime or not. To call something whose source and cause is unknown as evidence is to say it causal related while simultaneously saying cause is unknown, thus relationship unknown; more "negative evidence." If my recollection of high school Latin is correct, this could be called "ignotium per ignotius", the unknown by the more unknown.

This "Ramsey defense" "thinking" is a direct and absurd contradiction that is without limit. With this kind of "investigative latitude", I dare say that one could "prove" anything; or at least, convince the deluded self that he or she has done so. "negative evidence?" Surely, thou jest. I repeat: All known evidence is local.

A 1985 murder case that had stymied police has been solved, thanks to DNA evidence and persistent detective work, the Sarasota Police Department announced Wednesday.

Denise Marie Stafford, 28, was found dead Oct. 13, 1985, at her home on Tarpon Avenue. At the time, the police believed Stafford was home with her child when she was murdered.

In March 2020, retired detective Jeff Birdwell, in cooperation with Sarasota police, began to look at old evidence to see what could be retested, given advances in technology since the crime was committed. Evidence collected in 1985, included the pants Stafford was wearing, was sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab and other labs for analysis.

The new DNA technology, Birdwell said, allowed technicians to collect DNA from locations on the victim’s clothing.

Last month, FDLE notified Birdwell about a DNA match to Joseph Magaletti, who died in prison in 2015 while serving a life sentence for the murder of Sarasota nurse Kathleen Leonard in 1995, court records show. Magaletti was a person on interest in the Stafford’s murder, but was never developed as a suspect, Sarasota police say. Magaletti worked at the same lounge as Stafford’s husband, Bidwell said.

Police in Sarasota, Fla. on Wednesday named a suspect in the 1985 cold case killing of Denise Marie Stafford, 28.

“We have identified the individual who perpetrated this horrendous crime,” Criminal Investigations Division Capt. Johnathan Todd said in a news conference.

According to the police, Stafford died sometime between 11:00 p.m. on October 12, 1985, and 3:10 a.m. on October 13, 1985, in the 300 block of Tarpon Avenue. The suspect, Joseph Magaletti, Jr., 64, was a convicted murderer who died in prison in Feb. 2015 while serving a life sentence for another unrelated killing which occurred some ten years after Stafford’s death.

Magaletti was a bouncer at a local bar called the Playground Lounge where Frank Stafford, the victim’s husband, also worked, said Civilian Investigator Jeff Birdwell of the Sarasota P.D. at the news conference. Birdwell said Frank Stafford was working an overnight shift when Magaletti killed Denise Stafford. He said Stafford was a “new mom” who was home with her daughter when the slaying occurred.

Hundreds of interviews and hundreds of pages of data dating back to the 1985 killing provided the “foundation” for the link which tied Magaletti to the killing, the authorities said.

Magaletti knew Frank Stafford’s schedule and had visited the Stafford’s home through some type of “out of employment association actually at the home itself,” Birdwell said. “So now we put Magaletti knowing the husband, and knowing the house, and knowing the occupants of the house,” he explained.

“There’s also documentation there where Denise actually got a pair of seat covers from Magaletti for her car,” Birdwell continued. “So, now we can put the nexus even further that Denise and Magaletti knew each other.”

“There was evidence that Denise was attacked while standing up,” Birdwell said while describing the 1985 killing. “That evidence told us that, somehow, from the initial attack, that she ended up in her final resting place, which was on a bed and on her back. She was also spun around on the bed — other words, her head was at the foot of the bed, which is totally uncommon for any of us. So, she had to be placed there.”

DNA technology only became available to investigators 10 years later in approximately 1995; a process to examine so-called “touch DNA” was not recognized until the late 2000s, Birdwell said. But that process is what authorities say led to the link between Magaletti and Denise Stafford.

“Looking at the crime scene, we decided to send garments off to where an individual would have had to touch her to place her on the bed,” Birdwell said — again referencing And on those garments, underneath her knees and around her ankles from her pants, we got a DNA hit, and that came back to Joseph Magaletti.”

“Whoever placed her on the bed — her final resting place — that person was Joseph Magaletti,” Birdwell later concluded.

The DNA initially came back suggesting an unknown “stranger” had touched the garments, Birdwell said. The link to Magaletti came once that unknown sample was checked against law enforcement databases.

Todd noted that that he personally called several retired detectives who worked the case of the the years to tell them that a suspect was identified through DNA. They had considered Magaletti a person of interest since the early days of the investigation.

“They were beyond excited and happy to hear that news,” Todd said.

DNA? So, it does not match the family. So what? Who does it match? Unknown? If unknown, how can it be known to connect to the crime and be "evidence?" If the source of this DNA were known, then factually connected to the crime scene, then it is evidence. Absence this, it is just more speculation that caters to intruder mental creation.

Does the DNA have to be connected to the crime? Could it not be from a benign source totally removed from the crime scene? Again, the alleged evidence evidences nothing except itself with no known connection to the crime. No outsider as perpetrator is required to explain the DNA since no connection is known as crime related


The same is true for boot print, hairs, fibers, etc.. A close look into anyone's house would most likely turn up all sorts of things whose source were unknown whether there is a crime or not. To call something whose source and cause is unknown as evidence is to say it causal related while simultaneously saying cause is unknown, thus relationship unknown; more "negative evidence." If my recollection of high school Latin is correct, this could be called "ignotium per ignotius", the unknown by the more unknown.

This "Ramsey defense" "thinking" is a direct and absurd contradiction that is without limit. With this kind of "investigative latitude", I dare say that one could "prove" anything; or at least, convince the deluded self that he or she has done so. "negative evidence?" Surely, thou jest. I repeat: All known evidence is local.

delmar england wrote:
For every "could be", there is a "could be not", therefore, inconclusive until cause is known. Right? No thing is evidence until evidentiary cause is known. Right? Are we in agreement so far? If not, please point out what you think is my error in thinking, and why you think it is error.

A shoe print is found in the basement whose cause is unknown. It "could be" evidence of an intruder. "Could be not" is forgotten and "evidence" of an intruder is declared to be fact. There is a palm print with cause unknown; a rope with source unknown that "could be" something brought in by an intruder; an unidentified fiber, a baseball bat that "could have" been used by the intruder; a bit of dirt or leaves at a window well which "could have" been disturbed by an intruder. The list goes on and on and on.

This massive "evidence" stated to be more consistent with a theory of intruder than Ramsey guilt is hot air, nothing more than a string of unknowns verbally laced together on "could be", simultaneously divorced from the known, and declared to be much evidence of an intruder. Ridiculous to the max. No wonder no one will step forward and answer questions about alleged evidence of an alleged intruder. Its indefensible.

The beauty of truth is that it is consistent. Every fact is a complement of and blends with every other fact without contradiction. The presence of a contradiction is also the presence of error. Are we in agreement up to this point?

“There was evidence that Denise was attacked while standing up,” Birdwell said while describing the 1985 killing. “That evidence told us that, somehow, from the initial attack, that she ended up in her final resting place, which was on a bed and on her back. She was also spun around on the bed — other words, her head was at the foot of the bed, which is totally uncommon for any of us. So, she had to be placed there.”

DNA technology only became available to investigators 10 years later in approximately 1995; a process to examine so-called “touch DNA” was not recognized until the late 2000s, Birdwell said. But that process is what authorities say led to the link between Magaletti and Denise Stafford.

“Looking at the crime scene, we decided to send garments off to where an individual would have had to touch her to place her on the bed,” Birdwell said — again referencing And on those garments, underneath her knees and around her ankles from her pants, we got a DNA hit, and that came back to Joseph Magaletti.”

“Whoever placed her on the bed — her final resting place — that person was Joseph Magaletti,” Birdwell later concluded.

The DNA initially came back suggesting an unknown “stranger” had touched the garments, Birdwell said. The link to Magaletti came once that unknown sample was checked against law enforcement databases.