State says DNA sample was obtained legally in 1976 Marinette Co. campground murders case
(WLUK) -- Police acted legally when using a ruse about a police survey to get a DNA sample from Raymand Vannieuwenhoven – genetic material used to convict him for two murders decades earlier, according to brief filed by the Wisconsin Attorney General’s Office.
Ellen Mathys and David Schuldes were murdered at McClintock County Park in Marinette County in 1976. The case unsolved more than four decades. In 2019, a DNA sample from evidence at the crime scene was determined to be from a particular family. After samples tested from Raymand Vannieuwenhoven’s brothers weren’t a match, a sample from him -- obtained from a licked envelope for a phony survey on a police performance filled out by Raymand -- was a match, according to the complaint.
Vannieuwenhoven went to trial, was convicted, was sentenced to consecutive life prison terms in the case. He died June 17 while a resident at the long-term care unit at Oshkosh Correctional Institution – but the appeal continues.
Vannieuwenhoven’s lawyers challenge of the deception used to get the DNA sample was denied by the circuit court. But in appeal filed in September, attorneys again argued the “trickery” used to get Vannieuwenhoven to lick the envelope for a police survey couldn’t reasonably be construed as permission to generate a DNA profile in a murder case.
But in its 39-page reply brief filed Friday, the state argues Vannieuwenhoven lost all expectation of privacy when he handed over the envelope.
“Vannieuwenhoven not only voluntarily abandoned his saliva, but he voluntarily abandoned it directly to someone he knew was law enforcement. He had no legitimate expectation of privacy in his genetic identity once he voluntarily abandoned the envelope containing his saliva to the police, therefore no warrant was required to develop his genetic identity from it,” the state argues.
“Deputy Laskowski did not have to inform Vannieuwenhoven about law enforcement’s true objective in conducting the survey for Vannieuwenhoven’s surrender of his saliva sample to be voluntary. Vannieuwenhoven simply had to make the choice to participate in the survey and hand it to Deputy Laskowski of his own free will without any implicit or explicit threat by police. And he clearly did so,” the state adds. “In light of the compelling interest society generally— not to mention victims—has in identifying and punishing wrongdoers, society would certainly not recognize as reasonable an expectation that a person’s genetic identity would remain private after he voluntarily hands it to law enforcement. Even if Vannieuwenhoven maintained some expectation of privacy in his genetic identity, it was not a reasonable one. The Fourth Amendment simply was not implicated by the extraction and processing of his genetic identity from the envelope.”
No hearings have been scheduled before the appeals court, and there is no timeline for it to make a decision.
