A primer on how DNA is used in a criminal investigation was given Monday during the trial for Cody Alan Legebokoff.
Jason Solinski, qualified as an expert witness in interpreting such evidence and applying statistical significance to those findings, spent the day taking the court through a presentation outlining the science.
Solinski, who works at an RCMP forensics laboratory in Edmonton, described DNA as a molecule that holds the "blueprint for life" and "codifies or spells out everything physically that happens within your body."
Most of the molecule found in humans is identical but there is a small amount, just 0.3 per cent, that differs and "those small differences from one person's DNA to another is what differentiates us and makes us different from everybody else."
Solinski went on to show various techniques used to collect DNA from crime scenes and other types of evidence and how they're treated once in the lab.
Other than to say he analyzed over a dozen samples related to the case, Solinski did not get into specifics on what he found from the samples RCMP investigators had provided to him.
Forensic evidence, particularly blood samples and most of them collected from the apartment where Legebokoff lived at the time of his arrest in late November 2010, is playing a key role in the Crown's case.
During his opening statement, prosecutor Joseph Temple repeatedly referred to the findings from samples collected in tying Legebokoff to the teenage girl and three women he is alleged to have murdered.
Oleh Kuzma is leading the Crown's evidence on DNA while Temple and Lara Vizsolyi are handling the rest of the prosecution's case.
Legebokoff, now 24, is accused of first degree murder in the deaths of Loren Donn Leslie, 15, Jill Stacey Stuchenko, 35, Cynthia Frances Maas, 35, and Natasha Lynn Montgomery, 23. Montgomery's body has never been found but the Crown is alleging her DNA was found on items of Legebokoff's clothing, 32 samples of blood taken from his apartment and an ax also found in his apartment.
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