Published in The Toledo Blade on November 22, 1992.
By Michael D. Sallah, Blade Staff Writer.


Human skin found on the handcuffs of former University ot Toledo police officer Jeffery Hodge appears to have come from the body of murder victim Melissa Anne Herstrum, according to results of a DNA analysis.

The tests show that bits of tissue found on the ex-officer's handcuffs have a strikingly similar genetic make-up to those of the victim, according to several informed sources.

Police say Miss Herstrum, a UT nursing major from Rocky River Ohio, was bound in handcuffs and shot at least 13 times as she lay face down in the snow Jan. 26 at UT's Scott Park campus.

An autopsy showed her wrists had been tied or bound during the crime.

Police later confiscated a pair of handcuffs from Mr. Hodge's police locker.

Mr. Hodge, 23, a rookie police officer at the time, has been charged with first-degree murder in the student's death.

He has pleaded not guilty, and is scheduled for trial March 1.

The handcuffs and a coat belonging to the ex-officer were sent to Forensic Science Associates of Richmond, Calif. earlier this year. where experts compared the genetic make-up or "DNA fingerprint" of the skin fragments found on the handcuff with the genetic traits of Miss Herstrum that were taken from her blood.

Results showed less than a 1 percent chance that anyone other than Miss Herstrum would have a similar genetic make-up as that found on the tissue traces, informed sources said.

Prosecutors are preparing to use the results from the test in the ex-officer’s trial – a move that may be challenged by Mr. Hodge’s attorney, Alan Konop.

The defense attorney said yesterday that any such test results are “open to interpretation,” and that he expects to have an independent analysis of the tissue and test results done by another company.

“There are some serious questions that we have regarding the tests,” said Mr. Konop, who refused to talk about the results.

“We’re dealing with a whole new area of the law. It’s not like getting fingerprints, or bold types. It’s much more scientific, and it can be open to interpretation.” The defense attorney said he has yet to hire an independent lab to test the tissue sample, or evaluate the initial results.

But he says he may raise one critical issue: the validity of the test itself.

Experts at the Richmond, California lab performed a less common type of DNA fingerprinting analysis on the handcuffs known as polymerase chain reaction, or PCR. That’s a procedure that’s used when there is only a trace of tissue or blood, and experts need to reproduce, or “grow” a culture from the original tissue bits. Once the culture from the original tissue bits. Once the culture from grows, experts then can apply a series of DNA tests.

The procedure, which differs from the more common method known as restriction fragment length polymorphism, so far has been used in 90 cases around the country, according to Dr. Ming You, an associate professor at Medical College of Ohio, who teaches the technique. It is the first time it has been used in a local criminal investigation.

Dr. Ming, who has been consulted in the Hodge case, refused to talk about what was found. But he said the PCR test is becoming widely used in forensic circles, and has been accepted in both state and federal courts.

Mr. Hodge’s attorney said the test is still open to interpretation. “There is the whole issue that this sample was grown. It’s cloned. There’s a built-in margin of error.”

He also said the way experts computed the probability of the tissue coming from Miss Herstrum is also open to challenge.

Prosecutors charge that Miss Herstrum, 19, was stopped in her care on the night of January 26 by then Officer Hodge as she drove on Westwood Avenue. She was ordered to get out of her car, and was hand-cuffed and taken in the officer’s patrol car to University of Toledo Scott Park campus, about a mile away.

There, she was shot at least 13 times.

The next day, her body was found by Officer Hodge and another campus police officer, after someone called a local cab company and reported a bogus robbery at the campus.

Investigators later learned that the calls to the cab company came from a telephone on University of Toledo campus for which only Mr. Hodge and a few others had access. Four days after the body was found, police searched Mr. Hodge’s locker at University of Toledo campus public safety department, and found the handcuffs, gloves, and a coat.

Police found an empty box for a 9mm handgun in Mr. Hodge’s home, but could not find the gun.

Coroner’s reports say Miss Herstrum was shot with a 9mm handgun.

A larger issue is the amount of pre-trial publicity surrounding the case, said Mr. Konop. The murder has been reported in newspapers and television reports around the state, and was profiled on the television show A Current Affair . “The question is: can my client get a fair trial in light of all the publicity,” he said. “I have some very real concerns, especially if you put yourself in the defendant’s position.”

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