Evidence On Toilet Paper Roll Puts Murderer Away For Life

A one in 70 million chance helped put a man accused in a double murder behind bars for life.
 
In July 2009, two bodies were found inside an Akron home.  Alan Grna was found bludgeoned to death.  His 85-year-old mother, Julianna Grna, was found on the bedroom floor.  Police said they both suffered multiple blows to the  head with a blunt object, most likely a hammer.
 
Police developed a potential suspect a week after the slayings.  The man, Johnnie Cook, denied being in the home.
 
Investigators from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation were called in, CrimeTracker 10's Angela An reported.
 
"One of our specialties is blood stain pattern analysis and it requires a lot of training and experience," said Dan Winterich, a BCI special agent.  "Some agencies can't do that."
 
Winterich said that they searched for items that Cook might have touched if he cleaned up in the Grna's bathroom.
 
"What would he touch?  Where would he go?  Where would he step?" Winterich said.

In the bathroom, trained investigators quickly spotted the diluted blood stain on the sink along with blood droplets on the toilet and soap dispenser.  Small pieces of tissue with blood on the ground and in the garbage were also found.   According to Winterich, an everyday bathroom item broke the case.   A toilet paper roll became their best clue to solving the case.
 
"(We) saw the tissue and knew he had used the sink and mostly used that toilet paper roll to wash off (and) dry off his hands," Winterich said.
 
Agents took the roll of toilet paper in hopes of finding something with Touch DNA, a forensic method of analyzing DNA but requires very small samples, like skin cells left on an object after someone touches it.
 
Stacy Violi, a BCI forensic scientist, said that testing the inside of a toilet paper roll was a first.
 
"We were a little surprised," Violi said.  "It's an odd item to test.  We just simply (swabbed) the inside and we would (go) all the way through the interior of the item, trying to pick up as much DNA as possible."
 
Touch DNA returned three matches.  Two of them belonged to the victims.  The third came back to Cook.   BCI agents said that chances of that were one in 70 million, An reported.
 
"It was one of the strongest pieces of evidence in the case and it was an item that placed John Cook inside the homicide victim's house," Violi said.
 
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said that thanks to Touch DNA and advanced forensics, more violent crimes in Ohio are getting solved.
 
"Someone touches something, I touch you, I may have left my DNA on you and we may be able to retrieve that," DeWine said.  "We had one case for example where someone was being strangled and DNA was right there."
 
Looking back, Winterich said that it did not take much to go from one point to another in their investigation.
 
"We have these hunches all the time," Winterich said.  "A lot of time, they don't work out and it just did in this case."
 
DeWine said that BCI only has the capacity to use Touch DNA for violent crimes because of cost issues.
 
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