Murder Victim’s Family Frustrated With State Crime Lab Backup

No arrests yet in Richmond after two murders, more than two months ago.

It was June 27th when police said family members found 46-year-old Karen Simpson and 42-year-old Avery Evans dead at a home on Valley Street.

The investigation is still going on and family members said their questions haven’t been answered, leaving them hurt and frightened, since the case hasn’t been solved.

If this were an episode of a hit TV crime series, or a Hollywood movie, a few clicks of the mouse, a stroll on the keyboard would bring up a database where suspects pop up in seconds

That’s not real life but to the other extreme, in Frankfort, it’s taking the central crime lab between six and nine months to process evidence. One lab leader said, there’s a cause for the wait.

Since the end of June, the house on Valley Street in Richmond has been empty. The only exception was a break-in and robbery.

Police called it murder, now family members have said they’re scared for their own lives.

"Well we feel we’re in danger because we don’t know who did it number one. We don’t know if they knew her, if they know us,” said Kelly Sproles, sister to Karen Simpson, one of the victims.

Without arrests made, family members are left to assume Simpson and Avery Evans’ killer or killers are out there. They believe DNA evidence, now in Frankfort, once processed, could settle those fears.

"We don’t know who did it, so we’re waiting for the DNA,” said Sproles.

Sproles’ frustrations don’t come without an explanation though. While six to nine months is longer than the state crime lab would like to take, that amount of time is better than previous years when it might take 12 months and it’s circumstantial.

"You can have a case that’s, point blank, somebody shot somebody. You’ve got a gun comparison, you’ve got a gun and bullet comparison, you’ve got blood,” said Laura Sudkamp, Central Lab Director.

Inconvenienced by staff turnover in recent years, Sudkamp said government funding cuts, to the tune of nearly $1 million per year, slow down the process as well.

Stack on equipment failures and the 18-month training period before new staff can work cases; you’ll understand why the lab considers six to nine months an improvement.

"There were times when we didn’t… we were unable to work any cases for like two months, so that put us way behind and we have slowly been surely been catching up,” said Sudkamp.

Currently, the central lab reports between six and eight hundred backlogged DNA evidence cases.