Karma takes its time

Reading the newspaper today, which is what I call looking at a news site on my laptop, a story caught my eye. A sixty-seven year old man pleaded guilty to the sexual assault and murder of a seventeen year old girl.

Luckily, this was in the UK so I didn’t need to triple check my door. And the lock on it couldn’t keep out a determined child, let alone a full grown adult.

I double checked the pictures again. Yes, he was a fully grown adult.

Reading on further, I discovered this crime occurred in 1984. When I was in standard four. Which is now year 6, or something equally confusing (why can’t things just stay as they are forever?)

Apparently, there was a teenager brutally murdered 32 years ago and no culprit was ever found. No leads, no evidence. Samples were taken from the body and kept on file and when DNA started to be routinely tested, her presumed assailants DNA was typed and entered into the database. No match. Still no leads.

Then a forty-four year old woman had an argument with her boyfriend and broke his necklace.

You did read that correctly.

She was hauled into the police cells (because you can’t have dangerous necklace-breakers just wandering the streets) and so her DNA was routinely checked against the database, and it found a familial match.

When her father was tracked down and tested, bingo. There was the murderer. He pleaded guilty and will serve at least twenty-two years, which for the US among you is a very long time indeed in a Commonwealth country.

I often think that every citizen of every country with access to DNA testing should be routinely DNA tested at birth. Horrible invasions of privacy aside, I think this would go a long way towards making sure that criminals have a much harder time staying uncaught. And if everyone had to do it, then it shouldn’t grate too much against the national or international conscience, should it?

If we started with the people already incarcerated for crimes they possible didn’t commit and worked our way backwards, the system may even start to pay for itself.

Then I think, how would a murderer get away with their crime? How would they evade capture? Would a crime writer even be a thing any longer?

So, ignore my theory above. Terrible invasion of privacy that we shouldn’t, as a society, allow.