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Toni Cassano’s 22-year old daughter, Holly Cassano, was killed in a November 2009 attack. Michael Henslick, the killer, had been arrested several times since the crime, and had been ordered, twice, by a judge to provide a DNA sample for evidence. When the investigators finally caught Henslick in August 2018, his repeated attempts to dodge DNA collection was discovered.

Champaign County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Dwayne Roelfs, who has worked on the case since day 1, claims that if he had just given his DNA, the case would have been solved much more quickly. They were only able to arrest the killer after turning to genetic genealogy, which allowed them to expand their search to consumer DNA service websites.

The case of Henslick also exposed a weakness in the government’s national system of criminal DNA database, as similar cases of missed opportunities of unsolved crimes surfaced.

According to the FBI, the US national database, known as CODIS, holds profiles of more than 18 million people and has produced more than 500,000 hits since 1998. Aside from convicting criminals, the database has also helped exonerate wrongfully convicted people.

However, no matter how powerful, the CODIS still lacks thousands of profiles from suspects and convicted offenders. This hold in the database reveals the lack of information that could solve many unsolved crimes.

Authorities in several states are now trying to fill this hole and collect the missing DNA from the database, which has led to arrests in a number of cold cases. But expanding the DNA database also comes with its own risks.

For example, racial discrimination plays a role in the disproportionate collection of DNA samples. Black people are more likely to have their DNA profiles collected and stored. Because of this, some advocate against the expansion of DNA databases.

Toni Cassano, the mother of Holly Cassano, does not blame anyone in particular for not being able to collect Henslick’s DNA earlier. However, she wants the federal law to be changed to keep convicted offenders from dodging legal orders for DNA collection.

The Case of Michael Henslick

On November 2, 2009, Toni Cassano went to her daughter Holly’s home when she found her stabbed to death on her bedroom floor.

There was blood all over, some of which belonged to the killer. The investigators were able to obtain a DNA profile of the perpetrator, which went into the criminal database. Unfortunately, no matches were found. The leads soon stopped and the case went cold.

Michael Henslick lived in the same area and had gone to the same school as Holly. In 2015, he was caught with pot and cocaine, and if convicted, he would have to provide a DNA sample, but he did not show up for court hearings. He pleaded guilty eventually and was put on probation and was required to give a DNA sample. But he never went to the probation office and never provided a DNA sample. He was arrested again, was put on more probation, and was ordered again to give his DNA. Henslick continued to ignore the order.

The police decided to turn to the Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia company, which specialized in a new investigative technique that was used to solve the Golden State Killer case in early 2018. The technique, which combined traditional genealogy research and consumer DNA databases, allows investigators to find the suspect’s relatives and build families to identify the culprit.

CeCe Moore, Parabon’s chief genetic genealogist, tried this technique in Cassano’s case and was able to identify Henslick as a potential suspect. Investigators followed Henslick and picked up his discarded cigarette to have it tested. The DNA profile from the cigarette matched the profile from the murder scene. He was taken in for questioning and he confessed to the crime. He was later on sentenced to life without parole.

Champaign County State Attorney Julia Rietz says that the case shows just how easy it is for offenders to dodge giving their DNA. Now, in Champaign County, when people are sentenced to probation, they are ordered to go straight to the office to provide their DNA.

The Case of the Pillowcase Rapist

The case of Michael Henslick is not an isolated one. Because of miscommunication among agencies, lack of resources, errors in paperwork, and even flaws in protocols, more cases of unsolved crimes due to dodged DNA collection are coming to the surface.

Robert E. Koegler was an electrician from South Florida who pleaded guilty to a sex attact in 1991. He was put on the state’s sex offender registry, but his DNA was never collected.

Last year, Koehler’s son was arrested on a domestic violence charge and was required to provide his DNA. After his profile was uploaded into the CODIS, it matched with a series of sexual assaults in South Florida which occurred in the 1980s. The then unknown attacker was dubbed the “pillowcase rapist.”

The investigators examined the younger Koehler’s family tree and focused on his father. They were able to secretly obtained his DNA from a grocery store, which matched with a 1983 rape. It also linked him to more than two dozen other cases previously attributed to the pillowcase rapist. He was charged in the 1983 case and pleaded not guilty.

DNA Database Loopholes

Several other similar cases, including those of Richard Knapp and James Otto Earheart, point to a systemic failure that keeps the victims’ families from attaining justice and allows criminals to roam freely and commit more crimes.

Rockne Harmon, a retired California prosecutor, claims that the successes of genetic genealogy and familial searching in solving cold cases prove that criminal cases could have been solved earlier.

Lindsey Wade, a homicide detective in Tacoma, Washington, started working on a 50-year old cold case in 2010. It was the 1961 abduction of 8-year old Ann Marie Burr. Investigators earlier speculated that the girl could have been an early target of serial killer Ted Bundy, but he denied responsibility before he was executed in 1989.

In an attempt to solve the case, Wade called around to see if Bundy’s DNA was in the national criminal database. She discovered that the DNA of one of the most notorious serial killers in the country was not in the national database.

In 2011, after pressing from Wade, Florida authorities were able to find a sample of Bundy’s DNA and uploaded it into CODIS. While it did not match with Ann Marie’s case, it may provide answers to numerous other cold cases.

Ted Bundy’s missing DNA was not the only database loophole that Wade uncovered. She also discovered a state policy wherein sex offenders’ DNA profiles were collected only upon release. She lobbied for the immediate collection of the offenders’ DNA and got a hit matching Michael Allan Halgren with the DNA found in the rape and murder case of 19-year old Susan Low in 1980. Halgren pleaded guilty to the crime in 2014.

Wade, who now works for the Washington Attorney General’s Office, continues to guide the state’s collection of DNA from offenders.

The Risk of DNA Database Expansion

While the expansion of the CODIS would lead to more hits and more crimes solved, critics point out the ethical issues concerning DNA testing, including racial disparity, saying that the police are more likely to come after black suspects than white suspects for DNA collection.

Critics also point to the possibility that a match in CODIS is not sufficient proof that someone has committed the crime as there are many reasons why the person could have left their DNA in the crime scene.

Some scholars, such as NYU law professor Erin Murphy, say that the resources used for DNA database expansion, which would solve a relatively small number of cold cases, would be better spent for the improvement of services for crime victims.

As for Toni Cassano, after nine years of searching for her daughter’s killer, the arrest of Henslick took a heavy weight off her shoulders. She felt grateful for the technology that allowed her to find justice for her daughter but the knowledge that the perpetrator has lived so close to her but had eluded capture multiple times has made her an advocate for the expansion of DNA database collection.

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