DNA ‘match to barracks killers’
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 – 04:57 PM
DNA found in a getaway car used in the shooting of two British soldiers is almost six trillion times more likely to belong to one of the alleged murderers than someone else, a court heard.
A match between another genetic sample discovered in the vehicle and the second man accused of the killings of Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar is around six billion times more probable than it matching another person, a DNA expert told Antrim Crown Court.
Sappers Quinsey, 23, and Azimkar, 21, were shot dead by the Real IRA as they collected pizzas with comrades outside Massereene Army base in Antrim town in March 2009.
High-profile republican Colin Duffy, 43, from Forest Glade in Lurgan, Co Armagh, and Brian Shivers, 46, from Sperrin Mews in Magherafelt, Co Derry, deny two charges of murder and the attempted murder of six others – three soldiers, two pizza delivery drivers and a security guard.
On the sixth day of their trial, American DNA specialist Dr Mark Perlin revealed the results of tests he carried out on data from a seat belt buckle and a mobile phone found inside the Vauxhall Cavalier getaway car, which was abandoned partially burnt out on a country road just a few miles from the shootings.
Dr Perlin is renowned in the scientific world for developing a computer based statistical system – True Allele – which analyses forensic samples containing the DNA or two or more people.
The expert compared the results of swabs taken from the buckle and the phone along with samples of Duffy and Shivers’s DNA.
As the two defendants watched from the dock, Dr Perlin told judge Mr Justice Anthony Hart that a DNA sample found on the belt buckle was 5.91 trillion times more likely to be Duffy’s than someone else’s.
“A match between the buckle and Mr Duffy would be 5.9 trillion times more probable than a coincidental match,” he said.
He said a sample retrieved from inside the mobile phone was 6.01 billion times more likely to belong to Shivers than another person.
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