police would ve had that information. through the trial, through the first appeal, through the attempts to get it to the referral commission itself. that is where the gravity of this situation comes back to nondisclosure and in fact they must ve known they were the only people who would ve known the only people who would ve known the full picture. the full picture. we re on the clock and have two the full picture. we re on the clock and have two minutes the full picture. we re on the clock and have two minutes left. - the full picture. we re on the clock and have two minutes left. i- the full picture. we re on the clock and have two minutes left. i wantl the full picture. we re on the clock i and have two minutes left. i want to get through some things quickly. do you think there are broader concerns that even if they have access to the dna data that could only two overturned enunciate verdict they don t necessarily use a? tile. overturned enunciate verdict they don t necessarily
see you this morning. this has been a moment that has been a long time coming. do you think they got the right guy? i think so. those of us on long island are overjoyed to have finally caught this serial killer, and i think the evidence is going to prove that. will: let s talk about some of the evidence that led them to rex sureman . it seemed to be a rex heuermann. it seemed to be a narrowing a pool of potential suspects down to where they could use anecdotal data. a truck he drove, a physical description until, ultimately, they picked rex heuermann and found a way to run dna. right. this started ten years ago, it was a disastrous investigation at the beginning. ten years later we have a superstar new d.a. with a new police commissioner, rodney harrison. they joined a task force, put together the top people and suddenly you have more dna data, more telephone the data to bring it all together. will: and this, the reason this took a decade, from what i ve
and we just hit it off. she was so supportive and so positive. and just volunteered for anything she could do to help us make our jobs easier. around then, detective wade decided to try something new. with the crime-scene dna. she consulted this woman. dr. colleen fitzpatrick. an expert in something called forensic genealogy. an informal sense, it s been referred as csi meets roots. maybe you have taken a home dna test. a lot of people have. you can sometimes track down distant relatives by uploading your dna profile to public genealogy websites. dr. fitzpatrick searches all that dna data, to find, not necessarily matches, but telling similarities. it s really the first big development in human identification, i think, in years, in 20 years. her method can link an