A break-in at an empty house lead to an investigation and DNA testing of students who were former residents.

During the early morning hours of Sept. 23, an unknown person broke into a house at 335 Division St. and shattered several windows from the inside.  The house is one of 19 empty houses owned by Darrel Kallembach.

A caller notified Platteville police of the damage and officers arrived at 9:53 a.m.  The investigation of the crime scene revealed blood on the broken glass but nothing missing from the house.  Platteville police sent the blood sample to the Madison Crime Lab for DNA analysis.

The extensive damage and the way the scene was presented led to calling in several UW-Platteville students for voluntary questioning and DNA testing, said Platteville Police Chief Doug McKinley.

“The samples were used for elimination purposes,” McKinley said.  “(It’s) the same procedure we would use for a home invasion or burglary.  We would take the fingerprints of the residents for comparison.”

Senior civil engineer major Josh Vollmer was one of the students called in for questioning and DNA testing.  Vollmer lived in the house until last May.

“The police asked questions about the other residents and asked if anyone was angry about failing to receive their security deposit refund,” Vollmer said.  “We knew we were not getting it back; no one was upset.”

Vollmer took the DNA testing in stride.

“I was not surprised; the police did a really good job explaining it,” Vollmer said.

Once used primarily for murder and sexual assault cases, DNA testing has become more prevalent in the investigation of non-violent crimes.

While not every sample the Madison Crime Lab receives is associated with a crime, the lab received an estimated 1,700 DNA items per month last year, said Wisconsin Department of Justice Communications Officer Dana Brueck in an email.

“(DNA samples from eliminated suspects)  are kept in an in-house database for approximately 60 days after the completion of a case and then deleted,” Brueck said.

The DNA samples from crime scenes are stored for future identification of perpetrators.  The FBI stores the DNA in the Combined DNA Index System, where it can be compared to DNA from other crimes all over the country, McKinley said.