By The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- An overzealous cleanout of the New Orleans police evidence room that tossed out items important to rape and murder investigations will not result in criminal charges, a grand jury has decided.
“We presented the information we received from the investigation and the grand jury did not return any indictments,” District Attorney Eddie Jordan said Tuesday.
The grand jury probe was announced in June.
Initially, the department kept its review of the situation in-house until the scope of the tossed evidence became known. Police Superintendent Eddie Compass put off possible disciplinary action because of the grand jury investigation. He was not available for comment Tuesday evening.
The police department had acknowledged that important DNA samples were destroyed in the murders of three women.
Lt. David Benelli, president of the Police Association of New Orleans, said old evidence was destroyed to provide storage space for new evidence and that any mistakes must have been inadvertent.
“It’s an extremely complex investigation where they literally have to go through hundreds and thousands of pieces of evidence and property to determine what was and what wasn’t destroyed,” Benelli said. “It’s an unbelievable task.”
Among the cases affected was a 14-year-old rape-murder. The department’s cold-case squad had come up with a suspect in the slaying of Vanessa Boden, 19, who was abducted from her home, taken to an abandoned church, raped and killed.
However, detectives found that nearly all of the evidence had been destroyed, including the murder knife, burned clothes and other items that may have contained critical samples of DNA.
When news of the evidence cleanout first broke, police said officers had “incorrectly tossed evidence” in a pending arson case and two unsolved homicides. But at least nine more cases, including Boden’s killing, were affected by missing evidence, The Times-Picayune reported last summer, citing unidentified sources in the police department and the district attorney’s office.