Genes will tell.

Byline: BILL BISHOP The Register-Guard

THE RAPIST GOT AWAY, leaving almost no clue for Eugene police. But Detective Pat Ryan still hoped for one last long shot to catch him. It was December, three months after the man broke into a 53-year-old woman's Eugene home, beat her and injected her with methamphetamine while sexually assaulting her repeatedly.

He hid from her by tying a sweater over her face. All she saw was his hooded jacket.

And he tried to hide from police by collecting everything that might hold his fingerprints and then washing the victim's body to remove his DNA. He took his time, even scraping under the woman's fingernails to take away skin cells she scratched from him.

"For this type of case, this is the most bizarre behavior by a suspect that I have seen," says Ryan, who has 26 years of police experience. "It was pretty unique to everyone else in the office as well."

Ryan knew the woman was terrified that the rapist might return. He dreaded having to tell her someday soon that police were giving up on ever finding him.

It was early on a Tuesday afternoon. Ryan was at his desk in City Hall.

"At that point, the case was closed unless we got a phone call," Ryan remembers. "And we got that phone call."

It came from the Oregon State Police Crime Lab in Portland.

Using the FBI's computerized Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, forensic scientists had matched a trace of the suspect's DNA taken from the rape victim's body to a DNA sample taken from convicted burglar Robert Jerome Byers, 29.

The odds of the DNA "fingerprint" being from anyone but Byers worked out to be one in 40 trillion.

"To me, how much better does it get?" Ryan asks.

Byers' was the first case for Eugene police where DNA alone caught a criminal who otherwise would have gotten away.

It wasn't the end of the trauma for the woman, but the beginning of a new stage in her recovery - not looking over her shoulder at every strange man, wondering and worrying if it was her attacker.

"It's spooky to think about him still being out there. Was he going to show up at my house? I was very anxious. I couldn't focus on anything at work," she says.

Formidable new weapon

More and more criminals are getting caught by DNA fingerprinting around the country and in Oregon, where a new law went into effect in January that requires all the state's convicted felons to submit DNA for the computer database.

Those who continue committing crimes are up against a formidable new law enforcement weapon, says Daniel Petersen, CODIS administrator at the state crime lab.

Byers was the 51st criminal nailed by the Portland lab through DNA analysis. By the time Byers was convicted on all charges May 30, the Portland lab had helped catch 41 more criminals - almost as many as in the previous two years combined.

The key to the growing success, Petersen says, is the expanding state database.

The bigger the database, the greater the odds of finding a match between a known criminal and a new crime.

Petersen, who holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Rice University, doesn't arrive at crime scenes with lights flashing and sirens screaming. He doesn't go at all. He doesn't interview witnesses, victims or suspects. He and his staff put chemistry and computer science on the trail of criminals.

Petersen says he nevertheless feels the thrill of tracking down and nabbing criminals.

"When we put new data in the system and I start up that auto-searcher, I have a rush. I expect some good things to happen," Petersen says. "This job is a lot of fun. We have had some great hits."

There was, for example, the 1999 case of the Forest Park serial killer in Portland who murdered three women. Petersen recalls watching the computer screen, one side holding the crime scene DNA profile, the other rolling up the profile of suspect Todd Reed, 32.

"I remember watching this profile come up. The spacing patterns had great potential. I said, `I think this could be it!' Sure enough. It was a match," Petersen says.

He recalls the relief and pleasure expressed by the 16-member task force investigating the case, which, coincidentally, was meeting a few floors above Petersen's lab when the DNA match turned up.

"There was a lot of pleasure, but it was all business. They were gearing up to go arrest him. They wanted to know how long it would take to confirm the results," Petersen recalls. All DNA matches are repeated to double-check the outcome, he says.

Nationwide, DNA testing advocates say that the improving technology and growing databases will make DNA the most significant advance in forensic science since fingerprinting emerged in the past century.

However, civil rights advocates voice fears that the temptation for society to misuse DNA information may grow along with the databases. They contend that the required sampling already intrudes on constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

But, so far at least, appeals courts in Oregon and around the nation have upheld DNA programs.

Meanwhile, legislators are so quickly expanding laws requiring criminals to donate DNA that public budgets are unable to cover the cost of analyzing all the new DNA data and getting it into computer systems.

Ballooning backlog of DNA

Oregon's forensic DNA program began in 1994, five years after Virginia became the first state to create a DNA database of previously convicted sex offenders for use by police in solving new sex crimes.

As more states started their programs, the FBI envisioned linking the states in a nationwide database compiled with uniform sampling criteria and standardized computer software.

With those goals in mind, the CODIS program started as a pilot project in 1990. With congressional approval, it began operating nationwide in 1998.

In its first 14 months, CODIS produced 600 "hits" between its database and active investigations, according to the FBI. So far, the national databank has aided in more than 4,200 investigations.

On June 12, the national database entered its 1-millionth DNA fingerprint - two years sooner than expected when the program began. Of that number, 30,000 came from Oregon.

Currently, all 50 states require a range of different criminals to submit DNA for the system. South Dakota, for example, requires people who are arrested for sex crimes to submit a DNA sample - even if charges are never filed. In Louisiana, anyone arrested for a felony crime must provide DNA for the database.

Like most states, Oregon began by requiring convicted sex offenders to submit DNA. Oregon then expanded the requirement to cover burglars. This year, with its all-felons bill, Oregon joins 21 other states in requiring all convicted felons to submit DNA for the state and CODIS systems.

Samples are swabbed from the mouths of offenders by police, corrections officials and parole officers using a standard collection kit to streamline the lab work.

At the Portland lab, one of 137 CODIS-certified crime laboratories nationwide, it costs $30 to analyze and enter each felon's sample.

But because of budget shortfalls, Oregon and the rest of the nation have backlogs of about 500,000 DNA samples not yet analyzed and entered into CODIS, according to FBI estimates.

Federal grants provide computer software and training for crime labs, while state lawmakers and police officials determine budgets for collecting and analyzing DNA samples. Congress is considering additional funding to reduce the backlog of untested samples.

In Oregon, the new all-felons bill brings 8,000 new DNA samples per month to the state crime lab, about twice as many as the lab can handle.

Further aggravating the Oregon backlog is the state budget crisis, which halved the $400,000 allocation for DNA sample analysis in the current biennium, Petersen says.

The first $200,000 of the biennial testing budget already has been spent for collection kits and lab work, which means the current backlog will balloon unless money is found elsewhere in the state police budget or the state general fund.

"It's all about money and priorities," Petersen says. "It's never enough."

Long wait for victim, police

Sometimes the hardest part for investigators is waiting. It typically takes the Portland lab two to three months to find, extract and process DNA from a crime scene to compare it with the database of DNA fingerprints.

After Petersen's office phoned Detective Ryan with the DNA match on Byers, Ryan phoned the rape victim to ask if he could visit her at work to talk to her again.

The woman recalls thinking that the conversation would start with Ryan once again saying, "We're sorry, but. ..." She had begun getting used to the idea that the rapist would never be caught, but she was finding it hard to live with that possibility.

It had been three weeks after the attack before the woman could even bear to go home again - to the memories, to the fear. Her daughters and friends had repainted her bedroom, gotten her a new mattress donated by a local store, rearranged the furniture, installed double locks on the doors and planned to build a fence and get her a dog.

Their support helped a great deal, but the woman says there were times she relived the attack "like a waking nightmare."

She agreed to an interview on condition of anonymity. The Register-Guard has a general policy to not name victims of sex crimes.

"I was becoming resolved, in some ways, that he was going to be out there forever," she says. "I tried not to jump out of my skin when somebody in a hooded jacket walked by."

Today she says she doesn't remember bursting into tears and hugging Ryan when he told her that police knew who did it and were out looking for him at that very moment.

"It was pretty amazing," Ryan says. "To have a case that is suspended, with no leads. Then, in a matter of hours, looking for a known suspect to arrest. We were going to be able to solve this case. You want to be able to tell all your victims that."

Two days later, a parole officer arrested Byers in Coos County, and Ryan set out to pick him up.

Ordinarily, Ryan says, he probably would have been more subtle in trying to talk to a suspect during a drive back to Lane County. But not this time. When Byers started playing the cat-and-mouse game to learn what police knew about the crime, Ryan says he cut him off sharply.

"I told him right up front as far as I'm concerned we've got all the evidence we need. I said if you don't talk to me, fine. If you're going to lie to me, don't talk to me," Ryan recalls. "I don't know, maybe I had too much confidence in the DNA. I don't think so."

DNA won't replace legwork 

While the Byers case was the first that Eugene police solved solely on DNA evidence, it wasn't the first in which DNA played a role. Ryan had another case, for example, in which a DNA test found a stabbing victim's blood on the knife of a suspect even after the suspect had washed the knife.

"We've had a number of cases like that," Ryan says.

Not every case has DNA evidence. Even when there is DNA and even as technology makes it faster and easier to use, investigators must still seek other proof to make solid cases, Ryan says.

"Some of the same old investigative techniques will never change. The legwork. Of all our investigative tools, people are the ones who help us solve the most crimes," Ryan says. "In a lot of cases, DNA evidence means there is a lot more effort on our part. You're still going to talk to the same number of people. What does change with DNA is we are able to identify an individual, positively link an individual to a crime scene."

In Byers' case, the DNA match was overpowering. When he goes back to court next month, he faces up to 84 years in prison.

The woman he attacked finds some comfort in knowing that he probably won't ever be free to attack another woman.

"After it's over, I'm going to try to let it go away as much as I can and take back some of my old life," she says.

Through the ordeal, the woman - a health care worker - says she was surprised to learn that she's now a member of a kind of sisterhood of sexual assault survivors who carry painful memories and sometimes share them among themselves.

"We always touch, and we always cry. We don't have to say anything else," she says. "I can't even think about it without crying. There is comfort in understanding the pain, not just the physical pain, knowing anybody else had the same experience."

One woman confided to the victim that she also was raped, more than 20 years ago. Her rapist never was caught, a fact that haunted the woman for years.

"It was a relief to her to know somebody was caught for me," the victim says. "She is really happy for me."

DNA FINGERPRINTING

Scientists can use DNA to identify remains, determine paternity and study human populations and genetic disease. Forensic scientists use DNA to produce computerized DNA profiles of criminals to compare with DNA found at crime scenes.

What: Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes with billions of pairs of DNA, the blueprint for every cell in the body. While the majority of DNA is the same in all humans, about 3 million pairs vary from person to person - accounting for traits that make each person unique.

Who gives samples: It varies from state to state. Most require convicted sex offenders to give samples. In 22 states, including Oregon, all convicted felons are required to submit DNA samples. Some states require samples from people who are arrested, even if charges aren't filed.

Cost: In Oregon, it costs $30 to process a DNA sample from a convict and enter it into the national FBI database called CODIS. On average, it costs $1,200 per investigation when forensic scientists must extract DNA from items of evidence for comparison to the database in search of a match. A backlog of unprocessed convict samples is growing because of a state funding shortfall.

More information: CODIS www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/codis/index1.htm; The Human Genome Project www.ornl.gov/hgmis/elsi/forensics.html; Forensics and the law www.law-forensic.com/dnalinks.htm

CAPTION(S):

"It was pretty amazing. To have a case that is suspended, with no leads. Then, in a matter of hours, looking for a known suspect to arrest. We were going to be able to solve this case. You want to be able to tell all your victims that." - PAT RYAN, Eugene police detective INSIDE How police agencies collect and use DNA tests / 16A Does DNA profiling trample on civil rights? / 17A