TACOMA, Wash., Aug. 1 (UPI) -- Officials in Florida are working to get executed serial killer Ted Bundy's DNA added to the FBI's national database in hopes of solving cold cases.
The effort has spanned several years. David Coffman, regional crime lab director for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and other officials are working to have it added by mid-August, The Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune reported.
Lindsay Wade sparked the latest effort after she became the most recent Tacoma homicide detective to look into the Ann Marie Burr case. Bundy has long been a suspect in the 5-decade-old case as he had ties to the missing girl's neighborhood.
Wade contacted Coffman in January after discovering Bundy's profile was not in the FBI database to make a comparison. Coffman had a partial DNA sample, which is not enough to link Bundy in any unsolved murders, or upload to the database, the newspaper said.
The two contacted various institutions for blood samples or other evidence to test to no avail until Coffman reached the clerk's office in the Florida county where Bundy killed a 12-year-old girl. Investigators still had a vial of Bundy's blood from that 1978 case.
"We were shocked how we got a complete profile," Coffman said. "It was a beautiful profile."
To get the blood uploaded to the database was another set of hurdles, because the sample was taken before Bundy's convictions.
Coffman worked with a legal team to get Bundy's profile into a special "legal" category.
"This is sort of an unusual situation," Coffman said. "He's a suspect but a dead suspect."
Last week in Tacoma, Wade went through evidence from the Burr case to have it ready to send to the state crime lab, with Bundy's DNA profile on its way to the FBI database for comparison.
Bundy, executed in 1989 at age 42, admitted to killing 30 young women and girls, however investigators have not been able to identify all of his victims, and suspect he killed many more.
