6-Mar-2014

Investigators use Pittsburgh company to examine DNA in Wolfe sisters' deaths

Pittsburgh, PA

After using video cameras to track the movements of Allen D. Wade Jr. in the hours after police believe he killed two sisters in East Liberty, investigators are now working on a number of fronts to bolster their case on the microscopic level.

In an affidavit supporting the arrest Wednesday of Wade, 43, for the killings of Sarah and Susan Wolfe, his next-door neighbors on Chislett Street, police wrote that there was a mixture of DNA from a male and female under Susan Wolfe's fingernails.

Wade, the affidavit said, "cannot be excluded as contributor to this mixture," according to the Allegheny County medical examiner's forensic laboratory division.

Neither the county crime lab nor the district attorney's office would expand on that statement.

Wade said he is innocent.

It could be telling that Pittsburgh police have retained a local company, Cybergenetics, that specializes in analyzing DNA mixtures from more than one person, to run the evidence through its TrueAllele® computer analysis.

The analysis, pioneered by Cybergenetics in Oakland, has been used in various hard-to-solve cases. It can take mixtures of DNA and conclusively identify -- or exclude -- a suspect, and do so more reliably than older DNA technology.

• Investigators use Pittsburgh company to examine DNA in Wolfe sisters' deaths - Newspaper