Free Entombed by Linda Fairstein

victims resist their attackers to the
utmost, even when confronted with deadly physical force. Too many women
were injured and killed resisting assailants who were armed and
stronger than their prey.
    "After the testimony
is completed, I'm going to charge you on the specific elements of each
of the crimes. I'll give you the definitions of every term used in the
indictment." I would be telling this nitwit that the crime was
accomplished if the sexual act was compelled by physical force, present
here, or by the threat that placed either of the witnesses in fear of
immediate death or serious physical injury. How much worse could it get
than having a blade held against your eyelid, accompanied by threats to
kill? "I expect it will be clearer to you then."
    "Thank you, Ms.
Goldswit. You may step out now."
    The warden held open
the door and she walked out. Mercer was waiting for Darra in the
witness room. Like he had done dozens of other times over the years, he
would take her back to my office and close the door, calming and
reassuring her that those twelve minutes of discomfort would be worth
the price of nailing the miserable bastard once we had him in our
sights.
    My next witness was
Marie Travis, the serologist who had done the laboratory examination on
the seminal fluid recovered from the body and bed linens of Darra
Goldswit.
    I took her through her
training and credentials, and the duties she had performed for eight
years at the forensic biology lab of the medical examiner's office.
    "Four years ago were
you assigned to the matter designated as the Manhattan Special Victims
Squad pattern number five?"
    "Yes, I was."
    "And included in that
group of investigations, is there the matter of Darra Goldswit, known
by a particular forensic biology number?"
    "Yes. That case was FB
number 1334."
    "Did you personally
conduct the testing in this case?"
    "Yes."
    "Did you receive a
rape evidence collection kit to examine in this matter?"
    "Yes, that kit
contained vaginal swabs and slides prepared with samples taken from
sheets at the crime scene. Both items tested positive for the presence
of semen, from which I was able to extract a sperm cell fraction."
    "Were you able to
determine a genetic profile from either of those samples?"
    "Yes, from both of
them, actually."
    "What determinations
did you make?"
    "The DNA profile from
the victim's vaginal vault was identical to that from the sample on her
sheets."
    "Did you compare that
profile to others then entered in your data bank?"
    "Our data bank was
very small at that time, Ms. Cooper. We had just gone online several
months earlier. I entered the profile but got no matches at that
moment."
    Darra's case was the
earliest strike, to our knowledge, of the Silk Stocking Rapist, just
weeks away from being lost to the statute of limitations.
    "Did you undertake a
statistical analysis to determine the probability of that profile
appearing in the African-American population?"
    "Yes, we knew from the
victim's physical description of the assailant that he was a black man.
We used the probability guidelines established by the National Research
Council."
    "In the
African-American population, what are the odds of finding the exact
profile that you identified and matched on the two samples in Ms.
Goldswit's case?"
    "We would find this,
Ms. Cooper, only once-one time-in ninety-five billion
African-Americans. We could put ninety-five billion men in one place,
if we had a big enough room, and only one of them will fit this genetic
profile."
    Finding John Doe and
pulling him out of that enormous haystack was the only major obstacle
left in this operation.
    I finished the
questions I needed to prove the scientific aspect of the case, linking
this crime scene evidence to the human phantom we were about to indict,
and followed Marie from the jury room. She knew her way out of the
courthouse, and I returned to read the definitions of the various crime
categories charged and ask the grand jurors to vote.
    When I