A sexual assault occurs every two minutes in the United States, and if it’s reported to a law enforcement officer in this state, it’s likely forensic scientist Laura Dolezal and her colleagues at the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab in Vancouver will test any evidence collected.
That’s because the Vancouver crime lab is the clearinghouse for testing DNA in sexual assault kits collected by law enforcement officers throughout the state to identify perpetrators, exonerate the innocent and help survivors seeking justice.
In 2019, with nearly 10,000 sexual assault kits awaiting testing in Washington, state lawmakers and federal grants provided money to construct a new lab and hire more scientists and lab technicians.
“DNA testing was a problem for a while,” said Dolezal, a 2003 Centralia High School graduate. “We were very backed up, and it would take us nine months before we could even get to starting a case. At times, we have added a lot more personnel. … So, it has gotten a whole lot better.”
Now that backlog has been cleared, and a new regulation prohibits delays in testing.
“It needs to be tested within 45 days of commission to the laboratory,” said Dolezal, daughter of Dr. Joe and Patty Dolezal, of Centralia. “We are now working cases as they come in.”
This month Dolezal presented an overview of her work at the WSP Crime Lab in Vancouver at a meeting of the Lewis County chapter of the American Association of University Women in Chehalis. She discussed the field of forensic science, scientific methods used to collect information from crime scenes, and analysis of DNA tests by workers in one of the state’s six Washington State Patrol Crime Lab locations.
“I do not work for the prosecution,” she said. “I do not work for the defense. I work for the science, and I have no interest in whether a person is found guilty or innocent. I am there to present the science.”
Dolezal earned an associate degree in biology from Centralia College in 2005, a bachelor’s in cellular and molecular biology at Western Washington University in Bellingham in 2007, and a master’s in forensic molecular biology from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., in 2009. She then worked at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware testing remains recovered from past conflicts to help identify them.
“That was a very rewarding job,” she said. “I really enjoyed that but eventually decided I missed Washington too much and wanted to come back. I ended up getting the job with the State Patrol Crime Lab, and I’ve been there now for 12½ years.”
Some forensic scientists assist at crime scenes, dispatched in teams of two or three, searching for fingerprints, taking photos, transferring prints, and hauling evidence back to the lab for analysis. However, Dolezal said she works entirely in the lab, examining evidence collected from homicides, burglaries, assaults, and other crimes.
“I am not as great with the chaos of a crime scene,” Dolezal said. “I like the laboratory setup, so I stick to the lab, but that is a possibility if I ever decided I wanted to take that on part time.”
Because of its emphasis on quality control, she said, every case is reviewed by at least two additional people before the report is released “to make sure that we’re releasing top-notch work and reports.” As part of her job, she tests bodily fluids, develops DNA profiles, and trains other DNA scientists.
“We testify in court — not my favorite thing to do, but that is required as a job, so I do it — and then you actually participate in quite a bit of education and outreach, so it’s one of the reasons I’m here today. We don’t want it to be a secret what we’re doing. We want people to understand our work and what it means.”
All WSP employees also must pass a polygraph and extensive background check. The WSP crime labs are located in Marysville, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Vancouver, and Spokane to serve the state better. Spokane handles most Eastern Washington cases, and it’s one lab with workers in every discipline.
In addition to testing sexual assault kits, the Vancouver lab analyzes firearms, ballistics, tool marks, and chemical materials in evidence collected from seven Southwest Washington counties, including Lewis County. They look at plants, hair, fibers, glass, and other materials. They identify blood stains invisible to the naked eye and examine it for patterns. They review bullet trajectories and impressions of shoe prints, tires, and other evidence for unique characteristics. They use fancy 3-D laser scanners for crime scene reconstruction.
And they run their findings through the U.S.-based Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) to look for matches among the millions of profiles stored there.
“We do not have the latent prints, and we actually do not have any materials analysis scientists that do the micro analysis,” she said. Those are sent to Tacoma or Olympia.
They also review population genetics — how populations evolve genetically across the world, regions, countries, and states.
“We know which populations are present in higher amounts in the state of Washington, so we can issue statistics that are more related to this area,” Dolezal said.
She tests bodily fluids such as blood, saliva, and semen, which are a great source of DNA. Skin cells also transfer easily and leave DNA. She said they test a lot of underwear from sexual assault kits, looking for semen, adding, “Sperm cells are a great source of DNA.”
“We used to actually do tests for feces and urine as well,” she said. “We have actually stopped offering that. I don’t think any of us scientists are too upset about that, but the main thing is the DNA analysis. It’s trying to determine who may have left DNA behind at a crime scene.”
She said DNA — deoxyribonucleic acid — can last on surfaces for decades.
“Thankfully, they don’t ask us to spell it,” she said.
The crime lab scientists focus on the nucleus of the cell, which is inherited half from the mother and half from the father, rather than mitochondrial DNA, which is outside the nucleus in much smaller fragments made up of circles of DNA.
“At my previous job with the Armed Forces DNA identification lab, we were actually interested in DNA located outside of the nucleus for really old, ancient remains,” she said. “There’s actually more copies of that DNA, so it lasts a lot longer across decades for remains that have been buried or under poor conditions.”
But at the crime lab, the focus is more on nuclear DNA for identification purposes, she said.
“When talking about DNA, and specifically the nuclear DNA, over 99 percent of DNA is the same from person to person,” Dolezal said. “That’s what makes us human, but less than 1 percent of our DNA is different and sets us apart as unique individuals. So this is the part of DNA that we focus on.”
They look for individual profiles.
“We operate under the assumption that everyone has unique DNA profiles, with the exception of identical siblings,” she said.
But since they haven’t tested everyone in the world, they can’t say for certain that no two people share the same DNA profile. Instead, they offer statistics saying how likely it is the DNA belongs to a specific individual.
“We used to go with the assumption that everybody’s DNA is absolutely unique and different. If this DNA profile matches this individual, it’s from that individual,” she said. “And we’ve actually backed off of that lately. We scientists, we like to be as accurate and honest as possible. Without testing absolutely every single individual out there, we can’t say for sure, but we’re going to tell you how strong this inclusion or match is to an individual.”
She described DNA as one piece of the puzzle in solving crimes.
The lab’s DNA tests focus on 27 regions out of the entire genome, or genetic makeup.
“We don’t want to dig into somebody’s private information if we don’t have to,” she said. “We just want to develop a profile that should be kind of unique to an individual.”
When testing DNA regions, green lines with peaks and valleys on graphs show similarities that can pinpoint to possible people as suspects or people of interest.
“I mentioned we test 27 DNA regions,” she said. “One of them is a sex determining region. … As the DNA happens to be different between your mother and father, you’ll have two peaks. So, a DNA profile from one individual will have either one or two peaks at each DNA region tested.”
They also test DNA profiles from known individuals, which helps eliminate people such as the victim.
“So really, it kind of comes down to pattern matching,” Dolezal said.
Often DNA profiles come from several individuals or mixed DNA profiles. While DNA profiles should contain only one or two pieces of information, if it contains three, it’s likely from more than one person, she said.
“If we determine that a profile looks like it’s from five or more individuals, we say we can’t make comparisons to it,” she said. “It’s too complex. So again, we like to be upfront and honest about the limitations of our testing.”
Forensic science is a female-dominated profession, she said, with women making up about 70 percent of the workers at her lab.
Unlike on TV shows, she said, “we do not get DNA results within 24 hours. DNA testing can take weeks. It can take months.”
In a public emergency, she said, they can drop everything else and turn things around in 24 to 48 hours, but even then, each case must be reviewed by two other people.
“Most of the time it’s going to take a couple of weeks to a couple of months DNA testing,” she said.
Dolezal usually works on five or six cases at a time. When she tests DNA, she receives a brief synopsis of the alleged offenses.
“We don’t want too much, because we definitely are trying to limit the bias in our in our work, which is very important,” she said. “But we do ask for a little bit of information, so we know how to focus our testing.”
When she’s not working, Laura enjoys hiking, gardening, baking, traveling and photography.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
