The use of DNA has become a powerful tool to punish the guilty and protect the innocent.

The most recent example occurred right in our own backyard as the nearly 58-year-old cold case involving the brutal rape and murder of 9-year-old Marise Chiverella of Hazleton has been declared solved by the Pennsylvania State Police. At the same time, they named her perpetrator as James Paul Forte, who died of natural causes in 1980 at the age of 38 and who was 22 at the time of the crime.

Although he lived just five blocks from the Chiverellas, Forte was not suspected early in the investigation, police said. When his name surfaced in the genealogy investigation, his body was exhumed, revealing a match with the fluid sample police had retrieved from Marise’s jacket.

The 21st century has seen the perfection of this criminal justice tool that has been used in hundreds of cases to either point the way to the criminal or to exonerate a person wrongly accused of a crime.

(We use the term DNA routinely these days without realizing that it is an acronym for deoxyribonucleic acid.)

In 2002 in Philadelphia, police used DNA to solve a series of rapes and murders committed by the same person. There have been hundreds of other instances where authorities turned to DNA identification for help.

I was a big fan of the original CSI television series set in Las Vegas. It gave us a glimpse of the complexity in trying to track down criminals using scientific methods, including DNA testing.

A word of caution, however: Solving crimes using DNA technology is not as simple as A-B-C. The background involving the Chiverella case is proof of this.

You may have followed the press conference called by Pennsylvania State Police earlier this month to announce the solving of the case. DNA evidence is generally linked to DNA offender profiles through DNA databases. In some long-ago cold cases, however, there was no opportunity to match evidence to the perpetrator, but that changed in 2007 when police were able to develop a DNA profile of Marise’s killer based on the jacket fluid.

In the event you are unfamiliar with the case, here is the background: On March 18, 1964, Marise’s body was found in a mine stripping near the Hazleton Municipal Airport. “The investigation revealed that Marise was physically and sexually assaulted, murdered and left in the stripping hole with all her clothing and personal items,” police said in their news release.

Through meticulous and thorough checking of genealogical databases, a match occurred with a distant relative. The cold case took a significant turn in 2020 when after working on the genealogy of the then-unknown killer, 20-year-old Eric Schubert notified police that he had put together a family tree of the suspect whose members were located throughout the country. Police said most of these members voluntarily provided samples of their DNA.

Schubert of Medford Lakes, New Jersey, is a student at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County. When he was about 10 and home sick in bed on several occasions because of asthma attacks and bouts of pneumonia, he heard TV commercials for Ancestry.com and similar companies. This led to an interest in genealogy, which ultimately became more than a hobby and resulted in the creation of his own business. Along with his work on the Chiverella case, he has assisted police in solving cold cases in Philadelphia and Chicago.

To illustrate their gratitude to Schubert, police had him stand alongside them and Luzerne County officials at the press conference, which was attended by media from all over the country.

Schubert acknowledged that among the cases with which he has been involved, this was by far the most difficult and intense. Because of his sudden fame, it is likely that Schubert will be called into other cold cases.

The success of this case has prompted a crowdfunding effort to raise $5,000 to analyze DNA by experts from Texas to try to identify an infant found in 1980 in Larksville, also in Luzerne County.

The child known as “Baby Boy John Doe” was discovered about three days after his birth in the West Side Landfill in the Luzerne County borough.

While reliance on DNA evidence has resulted in spectacular successes in solving cold cases and exonerating people accused of crimes, officials warn that there are still pitfalls in the process that need addressing. These include major backlogs in laboratories processing DNA requests and more training required for those handling the samples.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.