All efforts to try to put a face to DNA samples found on the clothes Helena Jubany was wearing the day she was murdered have been unsuccessful. The latest tests carried out by the University of Santiago de Compostela, in which the victim’s family had high hopes, have also failed to determine whether the DNA samples found on a sweater worn by the victim could be a genetic mixture of the two investigated. in the case, Santiago Laiglesia and Xavier Jiménez.
“Currently there are no validated tools in the forensic field that allow giving statistical values ??in DNA samples that present degradation and mixture of various male profiles,” says the Forensic Genetics Unit of the Institute of Forensic Sciences of the University of Santiago de Compostela. (Incifor). Now, after the failure in the last DNA comparison, the magistrate on instructions from the National Police has decided to entrust himself to a new technique used by the FBI to try to identify who the DNA samples found correspond to, as explained by the family in a statement.
This is one more of the obstacles that the Jubany family has to overcome to clarify who killed the young 27-year-old librarian in December 2001. In July 2022, after the relatives of the deceased requested it, the Scientific Police found DNA remains on a sweater. It was an “inconclusive” sample of at least two people. From there, the investigation focused on trying to determine if the samples could match that of the two suspects. Individual comparisons were made that did not give results and finally the family asked if perhaps the samples obtained could be a mixture of both investigated and demanded that the University of Santiago de Compostela, which has greater prestige, be in charge of an analysis that It has finally ended in nothing.
At this point in the investigation, the Police presented the judge with the possibility of carrying out new DNA studies applying new genome analysis techniques used by the FBI, a request that was accepted. These studies would allow the scope of the investigation to be expanded to other items of clothing recovered from the victim, which have already been analyzed and whose DNA findings were classified as “inconclusive.”
