Dna

For years, Baltimore County police were convinced that 24-year-old Heidi Bernadzikowski was killed in 2000 by her boyfriend. Stephen M. Cooke Jr. had taken out a lucrative life-insurance policy on Bernadzikowski just a month before her death. The family sued four years later, alleging he was the killer and shouldn't profit from the death, and called a county homicide detective to testify that Cooke was the sole suspect. They were able to reclaim about $575,000 of the insurance policy through a settlement.

A convicted sex offender who was cleared by a jury of rape charges in September has been linked through DNA to two other rapes, including a November attack on a woman in her Reservoir Hill home, court records show. Nelson Bernard Clifford of the 800 block of Brooks Lane was charged Dec. 6 with raping a woman at knifepoint after breaking into her home while she was sleeping about 9 p.m. Nov. 12, according to charging documents. Police say he blindfolded her, bound her hands and threatened to slash her face.

A convicted sex offender who was cleared by a jury of rape charges in September has been linked through DNA to two additional rapes, including a November rape of a woman in her Reservoir Hill home, court records show. Nelson Bernard Clifford, of the 800 block of Brooks Lane, was charged on Dec. 6 with raping a woman at knifepoint after breaking into her home while she was sleeping at about 9 p.m. on Nov. 12, according to charging documents. Police say he blindfolded her and bound her hands, and threatened to slash her face.

A 48-year-old East Baltimore man has been charged with raping a teenage girl in a vacant building last month after police said DNA evidence linked him to the assault. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the suspect, Alvin Ray Wright, is accused of "viciously attacking and sexually assaulting" the 13-year-old girl in a vacant house in the 800 block of N. Caroline St. on Oct. 17. Wright, of the 1600 block of N. Milton Ave., is on probation for a 2009 drug conviction and does not have a prior record of sexual assaults, but police said they would compare the DNA evidence to other open cases.

James L. Owens Jr., who spent 20 years behind bars on burglary and murder charges only to be freed in 2008 by a DNA discovery, has filed a $15 million lawsuit claiming Baltimore police and prosecutors intentionally suppressed exculpatory information in his case. Owens, 46, says investigators pressured a key witness, who was later convicted as an accomplice in the case, into changing stories mid-trial in 1988 and that a jailhouse informant, who claimed Owens confessed, testified in exchange for special favors.

Jason Winer was directing Julie Bowen on first episode of "Modern Family" when inspiration struck. "In the initial draft, Julie's character was described as mildly controlling and neurotic," Winer says of the suburban sitcom mom. "But what she didn't have in that draft was this idea that she was formerly a bad girl who had kind of reformed herself. " Winer thought the extra history could add an important dimension to Bowen's Claire Dunphy — and make a difference to the story featuring her teenage daughter, Haley, who just starting dating.

A Crofton man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for beating and carjacking a woman outside a mall. Forty-one-year-old Andre Ennis was sentenced Tuesday in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court. He had entered an Alford plea. According to The Capital of Annapolis, Ennis beat a 61-year-old woman and stole her car outside Marley Station Mall on March 2. Police found the woman's car the next day in Baltimore, and used fingerprints and DNA found in the vehicle to identify Ennis as a suspect.

The Baltimore Police Department is taking part in a program to develop and test new technology that could significantly cut DNA analysis time. The National Institute of Justice is putting $1 million toward the project. Police will partner with researchers from Yale University and a North Carolina-based company to develop technology that would enable crime lab workers to identify and test smaller samples in a much shorter time. The technology is at least a year away from being usable and won't be implemented for cases during the pilot phase, but officials hope it will be cleared for use if successful.

A century ago, the Page family settled in Catonsville, founded a church and operated the neighborhood grocery out of the front rooms of a home on Winters Lane. Still, the family's 99-year-old matriarch, Eva Page Brooks - whose living room was once that family store - could not trace its history back more than a few generations. But thanks to the Internet and a DNA sample, the Catonsville clan has become the first black family - and the first Baltimoreans - to verify their descent from two 17th- and 18th-century settlers of Virginia and become members of a group dedicated to their legacy, the Page-Nelson Society.

For 35 years, Ron Ryba dreamed of a reunion with the infant son he and his high-school sweetheart had given up for adoption. Two days before Father's Day, that dream came true over burgers and beer at a Wilmington, Del., restaurant. The Timonium businessman said he and his newfound son, Kevin Callaghan of Philadelphia, were nervous at first. But that didn't last long. "He gave me a big hug, and told me he was happy to see me," Ryba said. "We had a couple of cheeseburgers, and shared our first beer together.