Punky Gustafson Updates:

Mathew Sleigh confessed to the murder of Punky Gustafson in an "apparent" attempt to plea bargain the charge and was convicted as a result. However, the one troubling detail still remained. Sleigh's shoe size was never disclosed, knowledge that this size evidence was available for comparison has been with-held from the jury. The importance of this type of confirming evidence is that a suspect's foot size can not be falsified, altered or destroyed.
from- tracking the size six

It was disclosed after the trial that Sleigh's shoe size had been compared with the evidence back in 1994 and that it did not match. 
Quote: Rockwood and Wilks took Sleigh's cleats to Const. Brent Ball of the EPS identification section. Ball had looked at hundreds of cleats in the case and had found few, if any, matches. Now he ruled out Sleigh's cleats as being similar to the killer's cleats.
see- story (pg/10) 

This is inconsistent with the news story now being told in 2005. The police now claim that the footprints matched Sleigh's.
quote: Police had considered him a suspect early in the investigation, and said his baseball cleats matched prints where Punky's body had been found.
How do shoes that did not match the evidence in 1994, now match in 2005? 
see- news story

Additional information discloses another peculiar aspect. The police went to the trouble to obtain Sleigh's DNA back in 1993, but did not bother to test or compare with the DNA found on Punky's body.
 quote: Pg/10
Sleigh had also provided DNA standards, the supposed mark of a man with nothing to hide. There was also the fact that while Sleigh appeared to be a rapist, he had attacked the teenaged daughter of someone he knew, and had also left his victim alive. This was different than a stranger who abducted, raped and murdered a six-year-old child.

The police claim that they did not have a DNA profile of the killer to compare Sleigh's DNA with at the time and go on to provide an explanation for why Sleigh willingly gave his for testing.
quote:
Sleigh coolly denied any involvement in Punky's death. When Rockwood asked for DNA standards for the Punky investigation, Sleigh readily complied. If the police had had the DNA profile of Punky's killer at that time, the move would have been disastrous for Sleigh. Handing over his DNA was a tremendous risk, but it is also the kind of action that fits with Sleigh's profile as a psychopath, says Det. Paul Link, who would later help conduct a key interview with the killer. Psychopaths are known to be impulsive. They take action to dominate a particular situation, with little thought to consequences. Sleigh must have realized that alarm bells would ring if he refused to hand over DNA standards, Link says, so he complied with the request. "He's thinking, 'I'll deal with this later, and I'll roll the dice later, but right now, let's eliminate this threat.' "
see- pg/ 9-10

New information shows that the Police had a DNA profile for Punky's killer and had supposedly compared it with the DNA from the Mindy Tran case following a 1995 interview with Shannon Murrin. Murrin denied any involvement in the murder.
quote: Pg/12
Despite the strong denial, Alm continued to pursue Murrin for a number of years. Alm went so far as to send the MA-7 pubic hair to a forensic lab in Britain to see if its mitochondrial DNA matched the hairs found at the Tran crime scene, but they did not.

The priority for DNA testing was of more importance in regard to exonerating Murrin than for testing other suspects. Here is where things get really strange. Police reports released later contradicted the earlier DNA test results which the Police claimed had exonerated Murrin.
Quote from page 5-  http://websrv.ewu.edu/groups/chemistry/Sleigh_Part1.pdf

So why was Sleigh's DNA not compared and he not arrested until 2002? 
The following story appears to be the latest Police explanation for that. 
 see- story
quote from page 7-

In the previous story is the explanation for what became of the earlier DNA sample given by Sleigh. The RCMP claim that it was all used up in earlier testing with nothing left to be compared to??? A DNA profile can be preserved in numerous ways, including as a digitized computer profile. You do not need the actual DNA every time you do a comparison, a persons DNA doesn't change. You do not have to give a new blood sample every time in order to determine your blood type! The earlier testing results were supposedly used in a separate court case in which Sleigh was convicted. The results would have to have been preserved in order to presented there. 

Note: This case was only followed to the end and these strange results found due to the connection to the original prime suspect, Shannon Murrin, an RCMP agent. In the end, the DNA from the hair which had supposedly exonerated Murrin has either disappeared or never did exist. No one else but Murrin was ever tested against this sample. The DNA which supposedly matched Sleigh came from a completely separate DNA sample apparently only discovered in later testing. Every time Murrin pops up as a suspect, you find these strange investigation procedures and results. Playing with DNA results needs to be outlawed immediately with severe criminal penalties for anyone caught doing so. The evidence becomes too tainted to ever be relied on but the evidence of who ordered and did this is still available. An inquiry into Canada's DNA handling procedure is an absolute necessity!

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