INDIANAPOLIS -- From matching a tiny bullet to a gun to DNA from touching a piece of paper – the State Police Crime Lab handles thousands of cases a year.
Solving crimes is their mission, but most of the men and women in the lab aren’t police officers or detectives. Yet they helped investigate more than 18,000 cases just last year alone.
The most recent of those cases was ID’ing Damione Wilcoxon – the man accused of shooting at two police district headquarters and murdering a man in Zionsville.
They matched shell casings shot into the district headquarters to the murder in Zionsville – tying together several cases to help find a suspect in the crimes.
“We can link cartridge cases found at multiple scenes, we can link bullets that are found in multiple bodies. We can match the bullets back to firearms if they are submitted,” said Major Steve Holland with the Indiana State Police Crime Lab. “A single profile case of interest can be searched immediately and that search takes just 30 seconds. Then we can determine who contributed DNA to that crime sample.”
By taking a sample of the DNA from the crimes here and putting it into that database, they were able to match it to a DNA sample taken in Ohio where Wilcoxson was arrested for robbery.
Without that evidence, and the connections found within the State Police lab, police say the case wouldn’t have been solved as quickly.
The crime lab isn’t just about finding suspects, it’s also about proving people’s innocence.
“We’re not a side, we’re about finding facts,” said Major Holland.
