PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Dear Reader: Before reading this rather technical - but extremely valuable - commentary, I recommend that you read the recent National Registry of Exonerations entry by Maurice Possley, which certainly helped me understand the technical issues involved. Kudos to the co-authors David Gurney and James Mayer for bringing this important investigative genetic genealogical technique to our attention - and to Scientific American for publishing it - and to the Great North Innocence Project, for its outstanding work on this challenging case.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
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PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: ""Since 1989, 3,615 individuals convicted of crimes have been exonerated in the U.S., freed after their conviction was reversed. Post-conviction DNA testing played a part in 606 of these exonerations. Brothers Robert and David Bintz became the latest additions to this disturbing list on September 25, after investigative genetic genealogy (IGG)—which relies on genealogical and genetic data to reverse engineer family trees—helped reveal the true perpetrator of the crime. "
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "There are many similar cases that IGG could help resolve. Yet concerns about the technique may be slowing its use to help free the innocent. Skepticism of any new investigative or forensic method is justified, but the concerns raised about IGG have largely been answered. Today, there are a host of IGG practitioners and teams who have developed robust policies and procedures around use of the technique. The Investigative Genetic Genealogy Accreditation Board has promulgated standards and a code of ethics for the field and will soon offer an accreditation exam and database of those who have passed the exam and met other requirements."
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COMMENTARY: Genetic Genealogy Can Stop Violent Criminals and Free the Wrongly Convicted," by David Gurney and James R. Mayer, published by Scientific American. (David Gurney is an assistant professor of Law & Society and director of the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center at Ramapo College. James R. Mayer is legal director of the Great North Innocence Project.)
SUB-HEADING: "Despite investigative genetic genealogy revolutionizing cold case investigations, it has been underused to free the wrongly convicted."
GIST: "Since 1989, 3,615 individuals convicted of crimes have been exonerated in the U.S., freed after their conviction was reversed.
Post-conviction DNA testing played a part in 606 of these exonerations.
Brothers Robert and David Bintz became the latest additions to this disturbing list on September 25, after investigative genetic genealogy (IGG)—which relies on genealogical and genetic data to reverse engineer family trees—helped reveal the true perpetrator of the crime.
In many ways, their cases are typical of other wrongful convictions: false confessions and jailhouse informants provided the primary evidence against them at trial.
Yet their stories are unusual because of the underlying investigative method essential to their exonerations.
The Bintz brothers are only the third and fourth individuals exonerated with the help of IGG.
While the revolutionary investigative technique has, since its inception in 2018, primarily helped identify human remains and perpetrators of violent crimes, the dual exonerations of the Bintz brothers demonstrate its power as a tool of justice generally.
It’s one that more wrongful conviction organizations should pursue.
The case is also a testament to the need for legislative reform to address injustices in Wisconsin’s criminal legal system, particularly for those who are found innocent after serving time in prison.
On August 3, 1987, Sandra Lison—a mother of two—disappeared from the Good Times Tavern in Green Bay, Wis., where she worked as a bartender.
The following morning, hikers discovered Lison’s body in a nearby forest
. She had been strangled, and police noted the presence of semen, which was later found to match a blood spot found on Lison’s dress.
For 11 years, law enforcement was unable to identify a viable suspect in the case.
Then, in 1998, while serving time for an unrelated crime, David Bintz’s cellmate claimed that David had made incriminating statements about Lison in his sleep.
The cellmate (and others) claimed that David also implicated his brother, Robert, in the crime.
Under interrogation, David confirmed the statements, even as he also denied involvement in the crime.
Reviewing their notes from the initial investigation, law enforcement discovered that David and Robert had bought beer from Lison on the night of her disappearance and had been upset about the price difference between a case of beer and four six-packs.
With this confession and motive evidence, the two brothers were each tried for Lison’s murder.
At trial, the prosecution knew that the only DNA evidence in the case, which came from semen and blood on the victim, excluded the Bintz brothers.
Thus they argued that both substances were unrelated to Lison’s death. Despite no physical evidence tying them to the scene, the brothers were each convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
In 2019 the Great North Innocence Project (GNIP) took on the case of Robert Bintz, convinced that the DNA evidence from the crime scene was the key to his exoneration—and to the identification of the true perpetrator.
Just a year before, IGG had made headlines for helping to identify Joseph James DeAngelo as the Golden State Killer and Marcia King as the Jane Doe previously known as Buckskin Girl. GNIP had followed the development of IGG as it played a role in the 2019 exoneration of Christopher Tapp, and the group recognized its potential to help exonerate the Bintz brothers.
Working with the forensic technology firm Bode Technology, GNIP developed an advanced genetic profile from the crime scene evidence. That profile was uploaded to two consumer genetic genealogy databases, FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch, where members of the public can upload their genetic profiles for personal research. A subset of those individuals have opted to allow their profiles to be compared with crime-scene profiles and those developed from unidentified human remains.
In the summer of 2023, the IGG work was turned over to the Ramapo College Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center (IGG Center), which was founded in 2022 partly to bring this powerful investigative tool to more cases of wrongful conviction. In just two days, a small group of staff and students in the inaugural “IGG Bootcamp” reverse engineered the family tree of the individual who had left the DNA at the crime scene in Green Bay 36 years earlier. Descending the family tree, the team landed on three brothers who fit all the genetic and genealogical evidence. One brother stood out: William Hendricks, who had been convicted of rape and had been released from prison just seven months before Lison’s murder.
Hendricks died in a mental hospital in 2000. In the summer of 2024, his body was exhumed, and ultimately Bode Technology developed a genetic profile from his remains. When compared with the crime scene evidence, the result was unequivocal: William Hendricks had left the blood and semen on Lison. Investigators in Wisconsin went back to the evidence in the case and discovered that fingerprints on an empty cigar box found behind the counter at Good Times Tavern matched Hendricks as well.
There could no longer be any doubt who raped and murdered Lison. In September Wisconsin prosecutors joined the Great North Innocence Project and the Wisconsin Innocence Project (which represented David) in seeking the release and exoneration of the Bintz brothers. Within days, they walked out of prison.
There are many similar cases that IGG could help resolve. Yet concerns about the technique may be slowing its use to help free the innocent. Skepticism of any new investigative or forensic method is justified, but the concerns raised about IGG have largely been answered. Today, there are a host of IGG practitioners and teams who have developed robust policies and procedures around use of the technique. The Investigative Genetic Genealogy Accreditation Board has promulgated standards and a code of ethics for the field and will soon offer an accreditation exam and database of those who have passed the exam and met other requirements.
For the Bintz brothers, their path forward will not be easy. Unlike guilty prisoners who are released after serving their time, no reentry services are available to those suddenly exonerated. And for their quarter century in prison, Wisconsin law limits their compensation to $25,000 each.
By contrast, the Innocence Project recommends, and many states provide, a minimum of $70,000 per year served.
We urge attorneys fighting to free the innocent to embrace IGG, and we urge the Wisconsin legislature to use the lesson of these cases to align their compensation statute with the amount recommended by the Innocence Project."
The entire commentary can be read at:
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NATIONAL REGISTRY OF EXONERATIONS RECENT ENTRY: BY MAURICE POSSLEY: Entered on November 10, 2024. Contributing factors: Perjury or false acccusation. (DNA evidence contributed to the exoneration);
Shortly before 5 a.m. on August 3, 1987, Robert Miller arrived at the Good Times tavern in Green Bay, Wisconsin, to clean up and open the bar for morning customers. He found the lights still on and the safe open and empty. The car belonging to 44-year-old Sandra Lison, who was the last bartender on duty when the bar closed at 2 a.m., was still in the parking lot. About $2,700 was missing.
The following afternoon, Lison’s body was found in the Machickanee Forest, about 30 miles north of Green Bay. A couple riding horses found her body more than 50 feet off the horse trail. There were no drag marks on the ground. Leaves and debris were found inside her underclothing, suggesting she was killed elsewhere and dropped there. An autopsy showed she had died of manual strangulation. A rape kit was prepared.
The police interviewed dozens of people. Among them were customers who left just before 2 a.m. closing. They reported that a man they did not know was the last customer there and had drawn their attention because he was wearing a flannel shirt despite temperatures above 90 degrees that afternoon.
Also interviewed were 32-year-old David Bintz and his 31-year-old brother, Robert Bintz, as well as a friend, Vincent Andrus. David reported that Robert and Andrus had gone to the bar from David’s house during the evening to buy a case of beer. Lison had sold them four six-packs for $3.50 each. When Robert and Andrus got back to David’s home, David, who was intellectually disabled, became angry because he thought Lison should have charged them for the price of a case, which was cheaper. He had called the bar at one point and chewed out Lison. Some would later say he threatened to come over and blow up the tavern.
There was no evidence any of them were involved in the crime. And no arrests were made.
Four years later, in 1991, Lison’s purse was found in a rural wooded lot in the town of Glenmore, Wisconsin, 40 miles south of where Lison’s body had been found and 10 miles south of Green Bay. The purse was too far back into the woods to have been thrown there from the road. Police said the location of Lison’s body and the purse required some knowledge of the area.
In 1996, David Bintz pled no contest to a charge of sexual assault of a child under the age of 16 and he was sentenced to prison.
Lison’s murder was still unsolved in the spring of 1998 when Gary Swendby, an inmate in the Oshkosh Correctional Institute, reported that David Bintz, who was Swendby’s cellmate, was talking in his sleep about killing Lison with his brother, Robert. According to Swendby, David said, “Kill the bitch. Kill the bitch, Bob. Kill her. Make sure she’s dead.”
Swendby eventually said that he had more than two dozen conversations with David during which David said that he and his brother had gone back to the bar after being overcharged for a case of beer with the intention of robbing the bar. However, when they realized that the bartender would recognize them, Bob killed her, according to Swendby’s account.
When detectives interviewed David, he eventually agreed to a statement that admitted that he and Robert were involved and that Robert had strangled Lison. At the same time, though, David said he was home at the time of the crime and was not involved.
On July 30, 1999, David and Robert were charged with Lison’s murder. They were tried separately in Brown County Circuit Court. By the time David’s trial began in May 2000, DNA testing had excluded both brothers from the semen found in the rape kit. Blood found under Lison’s body was not their blood, according to testing.
Prior to the trial, David’s defense lawyer had filed a motion to bar testimony about David’s sleep talking and also filed a motion to introduce expert testimony about David’s intellectual disability to disprove the voluntariness of his statements. Both motions were denied.
When the trial began on May 8, 2000, the prosecution’s theory changed from the way the case had been investigated at the outset. It was no longer that Lison had been robbed, raped, and killed. Now, the prosecution contended that the Bintz brothers went to the bar to rob it because they felt Lison had overcharged them for a case of beer and ended up killing her because she could recognize them.
The prosecution’s evidence against David was largely based on his statement to police as well as testimony from Swendby and other prison inmates who said that David had been heard screaming in his sleep: “Kill the bitch!”
According to Swendby, David told him that he and Robert “killed her and put her in the trunk of a car. ... [T]hey took her body up in a woods somewhere up north and dumped her.” Swendby also testified that David said they took the car to Illinois, and it was crushed. According to Swendby, David kept “Telling Bob to make sure she was dead.”
Detective Robert Haglund testified that he took a statement from David, during which David confirmed to Haglund that his statements to Swendby were true. Detective Haglund said he and David went through Swendby’s statement line by line, and David said he did not need to give the officers a statement because everything was in Swendby’s statement “in black and white.” The detective testified that David said Swendby’s statement correctly described the events that took place on the night Lison was killed at the Good Times tavern.
Several other prison inmates testified that David had made various admissions to the crime. Two of them claimed to also have heard David talking in his sleep about the crime.
Dr. Darrell Skarpohl, who performed the autopsy, testified that Lison died of manual strangulation. He said there was no sign of injury to her genitals. He estimated there was a 90 percent probability that Lison had sex within 48 hours of her death and a 75 percent probability that she had sex within 24 hours of her death.
Curtis Knox, a DNA analyst at the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory testified that he conducted DNA analysis on the vaginal swabs as well as some of Lison’s clothing. He found semen on Lison’s dress and obtained a male DNA profile that excluded David and Robert Bintz.
He said he identified the same profile based on sperm on the vaginal swab. Asked what would be the longest period of time that sperm would be found in a vagina after intercourse, Knox said, “The rule of thumb that is put out in literature as well as what we've seen in the lab is the outside window that we would expect to find semen still in the vaginal vault is approximately 72 hours.”
Asked if it was possible that Lison had sexual intercourse 24 hours or longer prior to her death, Knox said, “That is a possibility, yes.”
The defense called several other inmates who had been housed near David at various times. They testified they never heard him yelling or screaming about committing murder.
Dr. Steven Kaplan, a psychologist, testified that he administered numerous tests to David and concluded that he was mentally disabled. He said David’s IQ was less than 70, he was in the bottom two percent of the population, he read at a 4th grade level, and he was highly susceptible to manipulation.
David’s defense attorney, Nila Robinson, asked, “When, for example, someone has a nightmare, is there any basis for the notion that that is either a reliving of a bad experience that occurred in waking life?”
“No,” Dr. Kaplan replied.
“Based on your knowledge of research and literature, can you tell me whether there is any basis for the notion that dreams bear some kind of symbolic representation of waking life?” Robinson asked.
“No, there is no consistent evidence of that,” Dr. Kaplan said.
On May 12, 2000, the jury convicted David of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Robert went to trial in July 2000. He chose to have the case decided by the trial judge instead of a jury. Just days earlier, Swendby had been killed in a head-on car collision. His testimony from David’s trial was read to the jury. The witnesses for the prosecution who testified in David’s trial provided similar testimony in Robert’s trial.
In addition, the prosecution called Joan Andrews who testified that in the summer of 1999, before Robert was arrested, she drove him to visit his mother in the upper peninsula of Michigan, north of Green Bay. Andrews testified that during the drive home, the subject of Lison’s murder came up. “I was kind of asking him because I wanted to know,” Andrews said. “He said he felt her move in the back and that when they brought her to the forest…and dumped her off, he didn’t think she was dead, so he strangled her.”
Andrews was asked if Robert said who was in the car with him. “Him and his brother, Dave,” she said.
The defense called Thomas Bintz, a brother of David and Robert. He testified that their mother lived in Bancroft, Wisconsin, which was about 90 miles south and west of Green Bay, not in Michigan’s upper peninsula.
Robert testified and denied involvement in the crime. He said that Andrews had driven him to see his mother in Bancroft, not Michigan. He denied that he ever made an incriminating statement to Andrews.
He recounted the night Dave gave him money to buy more beer. Robert said he and Andrus walked to the bar and bought the case of beer for $14 and walked back to Dave’s. Dave “got a little wild” over the amount they were charged for the beer.
“[H]e said, ‘What the hell is this beer, freaking 14 bucks a case?’” Robert testified. “I said, ‘You got to realize you’re going to pay more at a bar than at a liquor store….He got upset and called the bar up, said he was going to blow it up.”
Robert said that he and Andrus drank some more beer and then walked home. His attorney, Daniel Fay, asked, “What if any involvement did you have in the death of Sandra Lison?”
“I didn’t have nothing to do with it,” Robert testified.
During closing argument, the prosecution argued that it was “clear that this was not a sexual assault, and whoever the donor of those spermatozoa is, [he] was not involved in this murder.”
On July 26, 2000, Brown County Circuit Court Judge Donald Zuidmulder convicted Robert of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison without parole.
Their convictions were upheld on appeal.
In 2006, the Wisconsin Innocence Project, representing David Bintz, obtained additional DNA testing. The testing confirmed that blood found on Lison’s dress came from the same male whose sperm was found in the rape kit. A motion for new trial based on the testing was denied after the prosecution argued: “There is no evidence of sexual assault. There has never been any evidence of sexual assault.”
That ruling was upheld by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals in 2009.
In 2018, the Great North Innocence Project (GNIP) began representing Robert Bintz. During further testing of other evidence, Bode Cellmark Laboratories developed a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) which can be used to trace ancestry.
In 2023, GNIP contacted the Ramapo College Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center (IGG) to take a new look at the evidence. Within two days, a team of six students led by IGG Center staff produced a lead: the person who was the source of the blood and semen was among three male children of a Green Bay area couple.
Of the three, William Joseph Hendricks stood out. He had a history of violent sexual attacks. In 1981, he broke into the home of a Green Bay woman and sexually assaulted her. He returned a month later and did it again. He threatened to kill the victim by choking her to death.
Hendricks had been convicted of the assaults and sentenced to prison. He had been released on December 30, 1986, seven months before Lison was abducted and murdered.
At the time of Lison’s murder, her body was found half-way between the tavern and where Hendricks lived before he went to prison. Hendricks had died on April 18, 2000, just weeks before David and Robert were convicted.
In August 2023, the prosecution was informed of the findings. On August 21, 2024, attorney Rachel Burg of the Wisconsin Innocence project filed a motion for a new trial on David's behalf.
Between September and November 2023, the Green Bay police collected DNA samples from Hendricks’s surviving brother and from the son of Hendricks’s other brother, who had died. DNA testing excluded them from the DNA samples from the crime, leaving William Hendricks as the likely source.
On May 30, 2024, Hendricks’s body was exhumed from the Fort Howard Memorial Park Cemetery in Green Bay. DNA samples were obtained and taken to the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory. On August 15, 2024, the crime laboratory reported that after comparing Hendricks’s DNA profile with the DNA profile from the crime, the chances were one in 329 trillion that the source of the crime scene DNA was someone other than Hendricks.
On September 19, GNIP filed a motion to vacate Robert Bintz’s conviction. Citing the work of the police, prosecution and crime lab, the motion said, “Through these joint efforts, a nearly four decades old murder case has finally been solved.”
The motion noted that there was “no conceivable innocent explanation” for the presence of Hendricks’s DNA. “The notion that Ms. Lison was having a secret sexual relationship with a recently-released convicted rapist is utterly implausible,” the motion said.
The motion noted that in September 2024, the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory concluded that three fingerprints found on a cigar box at the back of the bar had been left by Hendricks.
On September 25, 2024, David Bintz, along his attorney Rachel Burg, and Robert Bintz, with his attorneys, James Mayer of the GNIP and Christopher Renz and Jennifer Crancer of the law firm of Chestnut Cambronne, appeared in Brown County Circuit Court where the prosecution agreed that the convictions should be vacated and the charges were dismissed. The brothers were released more than 24 years after they were convicted."
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=6882
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
- SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
