The Hollow Thump of Justice
The Hollow Thump of Justice
"If he were alive today, the Toronto Police Service would arrest Calvin Hoover for the murder of Christine Jessop."
"There
are no winners in this announcement. There is no reason to celebrate.
It does, however, allow us to take a major step forward in our efforts
to bring justice to Christine's family."
"I'm
probably one of the few around that was still here when that murder was
being investigated. I can assure you that there is a great sense of
relief, and it's not just in the policing profession."
"I
mean, this has impacted the entire judiciary and the legal system ... I
think we are all genuinely relieved that the person actually
responsible for this has finally been identified."
Acting Chief of Police Jim Ramer, Toronto
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| Christine Jessop in an undated photo provided to police by her family. (Submitted by Toronto Police Service) |
"It's
not that we start with Calvin Hoover. What we do is we start with an
unidentified semen stain that has a DNA profile to it. This is submitted
to a lab and from that profile they build out a potential familial
lineage."
"And
It's from that lineage that the investigators then work downwards to be
able to try to identify potential persons of interest."
Superintendent Peter Code, Toronto Police Service
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| Morin tried twice, convicted, later acquitted. Moe Doiron/CP | |
"I
am relieved for Christine's mother, Janet, and her family, and hope
this will give them some peace of mind. They have been through a
dreadful ordeal since they lost Christine in 1984. I am grateful that
the Toronto police stayed on the case and have now finally solved it."
"When DNA exonerated me in January, 1995, I was sure that one day DNA would reveal the real killer and now it has."
Wrongly convicted, Guy Paul Morin
One
of the most infamous miscarriages of justice in Canadian history
occurred when Guy Paul Morin was found guilty of murder of nine-year-old
Christine Jessop. Long after the fact, a public inquiry into his two
trials discovered that both investigators and prosecutors relied on
specious science, fabricating jailhouse informants and a subpar police
investigation. In their determined zeal to name a suspect a murderer and
'solve' the horrendous murder, they sent an innocent man to prison for
18 months.
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Christine Jessop
|
On
an afternoon in early October of 1984, Christine Jessop returned home
from school, she left her backpack on the kitchen counter, and this is
what her mother and brother found when they arrived home from a dental
appointment, expecting to see an absent Christine. Photographs of the
child were posted everywhere in the province. Eventually her body was
discovered on New Year's Eve, 50 kilometres from her home. The little
girl had been stabbed to death. Traces of semen were discovered in her
underwear.
It
took many years, but finally DNA extracted from that semen proved that
Guy Paul Morin, languishing in prison was not the murderer, and he was
exonerated as having been wrongly convicted. He was compensated for the
loss of a year-and-a-half of his life and loss of dignity to the tune of
$1.2M.
This is as good an
example as any why Canada long ago abolished the death penalty. On
Thursday, that same DNA evidence taken from the semen sample from the
little girl's underwear, led the Toronto Police Service to the real
killer. And on Thursday, at an online press conference, the identity of
the man was revealed; Calvin Hoover of Toronto.
In
1984, Hoover was 28 years of age when he murdered the nine-year-old
Christine. A known linkage has not yet been revealed, but police
indicate that Hoover's wife may have worked alongside Christine's
father. Cold case homicide detectives identified him with the use of a
relatively new technique called genetic genealogy. He will never face
justice for abducting, raping and stabbing a child to death, due to the
fact that in 2015 he committed suicide.
The
DNA sample in the possession of Toronto police was sent to an American
laboratory and received results that gave investigators the opportunity
to build two genetic family trees of potential suspects. Eventually the
search was narrowed to a single name. And the murderer's identity was
revealed. A man with a previous criminal record not of relevance to the
investigation, but as it happened the province's Centre of Forensic
Sciences possessed a sample of Hoover's blood enabling detectives to
match the DNA sample to the blood, concluding the investigation.
Detectives
next met with Christine Jessop's mother to inform her of their
findings, and that information was also given to Guy Paul Morin whom DNA
evidence cleared in 1995 after he had spent 18 months in prison for a
crime he did not commit and for which he claimed innocence.
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Calvin Hoover
|
Labels: Canada, Christine Jessop, Cold Case, DNA, Guy Paul Morin
Is It Racism, Or Is It Science?
"[He was] inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa [because] all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says, not really."
"No. [prepared to recant on his views on the relationship between race and intelligence.] Not at all. I would like for them [his views] to have changed, that there be new knowledge that says that your nurture is much more important than nature. But I haven't seen any knowledge [that would support that hypothisis]."
"And there's a difference on the average between blacks and whites on I.Q. tests. I would say the difference is, it's genetic."
"If the difference exists, we have to ask ourselves, how can we try and make it better?"
James D. Watson, founder, modern genetics
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| James Watson has been stripped of several honorary titles over
‘reprehensible’ comments in which he said race and intelligence are
connected.
Photograph: Jose Mendez/EPA |
Society has, in fact, been attempting to 'make it better' for quite a long time. In Dr. Watson's own country where slavery was endemic and the horrendous belief that blacks were sub-human led to a nonchalant acceptance that they were born to be subordinate to the wishes of the 'white race', and that their place in society was clearly as slaves whose labour benefited their 'owners', enriching white slave-owning society by the degradation visited upon natives of far-off Africa who were 'captured' to be shipped overseas to fulfill their destiny, efforts were more latterly made toward equalization through affirmative action.
That was an effort meant as much to assuage a universal guilty conscience as it was to favour the future trajectory of black advantage. Individual blacks have distinguished themselves on occasion throughout history to the present in demonstrating intelligence equal to and surpassing many whites who have themselves been recognized for their rare intellectual genius. On the other end of the scale a vast aggregation of blacks have been noted for their rejection of education in favour of a vulgarized street life, gang membership, violence and criminal activity.
As for Africa, with its multitude of malfunctioning, warring, tribal, backward and criminal governance, where is the progress, where is the civilizing aspect so long delayed? Is it all the affect of nurture, not nature? There are scientists who believe, on the strength of reproducible science and logistics that the world's 'races' can be identified for their level of generalized population intelligence. Where Chinese, Japanese and Indians, as example are rated with higher gifts of natural intelligence. Admittedly, this is racism at play. But it is also verifiable science.
Dr. Watson, who with his colleague Francis Crick, co-discoverers of the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953, received the 1972 Nobel Prize in science, became persona non-grata in polite society and the global scientific arena despite his impeccable credentials as a scientist and a genius at deciphering the most basic and complex of nature's genetic endowments. His comments on race and intelligence reverberated internationally. Forced to retire as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York.
His public apology failed to silence his critics. His apology could not have been for his conclusion but rather his indiscretion in voicing an opinion that science demonstrated as reality but which was an absolute unmentionable. Now, 90, it is four years since he sold his Nobel medal, necessitated by poverty that resulted from having been designated a
"nonperson", in his words. The unfortunate fallout of his explication on race and intelligence has been joyfully coopted by ragingly triumphant white supremacists.
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| Dr. James D. Watson |
He takes no pleasure in any measure, in pointing out
"the difference between blacks and whites" and wishes that this did not in fact, reflect reality.
"It's awful", he says, with genuine regret. He was asked for the production of a new documentary,
"American Masters: Decoding Watson", if his views had changed, and they haven't. Some scientists feel that Dr. Watson's statements represent an ingrained racial bias in collision with genetics advances enabling researchers to increase understanding of behaviour and cognition in genetics.
Most experts on intelligence
"Consider any black-white differences in I.Q. testing to arise primarily from environmental, not genetic, differences", according to Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. He was personally not aware of any credible research which would validate Dr. Watson's statements. A geneticist at Harvard University, David Reich points out new techniques to study DNA show some human populations were separated geographically for prolonged periods so they plausibly might have evolved average genetic differences in cognition and behaviour.
In Dr. Reich's recently published
"Who We Are and How We Got Here", however, he denounces the presumption that such differences would
"correspond to longstanding popular stereotypes", as
"essentially guaranteed to be wrong". Since the Watson-Crick collaboration that resulted in deciphering the structure of DNA, molecular biology has been useful in tracing humanity's prehistory, to devise lifesaving therapies and to develop CRISPR, the gene-editing technology that holds out so much hope for the future of medicine.
Labels: Bioscience, DNA, Dr. James D. WatsonDr. James, Nobel Prize, Research
