DNA AND CVSA^® COMBINATION SOLVES ‘COLD CASE’ 

7 YEAR-OLD MURDER SOLVED, DAYTONA BEACH, FL, Dec. 7, 2007 – In April, 2001, 36 year-old Angela Coleman was found strangled to death in an abandoned house in Columbia, SC.  Her body had been set on fire in an apparent attempt to hide evidence of the crime.  Her killer was never caught.  This year a DNA profile was developed and pointed to Clarence Terrelle Myers.  Police began looking for him and discovered that he was being held in a Volusia County (FL) jail.  When detectives interviewed him, he admitted that he had found the victim already dead and had sex with the body.  However, he denied killing her or setting her body on fire.  At an impasse, Daytona Beach Detective James Brodick offered Myers a Computer Voice Stress Analysis (CVSA) examination to help verify his story.  Myers showed deception on all of the relevant questions and after being shown the voice graphs that clearly indicated deception, Myers confessed that he was mad at Coleman for ripping him off and that he strangled her in an abandoned house.  He said that he left and came back after an hour and a half and had sex with her to prove something to her.  He then went on to give detectives details of the crime known only to investigators.  “The use of the CVSA in this case and others like it provide a unique investigative tool for law enforcement officers and our use of this technology in Daytona Beach will only insure that our city is a safer place to live, work and visit” stated Daytona Police Chief Michael Chitwood.     

This scenario is quietly being repeated day-after-day throughout the US in law enforcement agencies as small agencies as the Bay Harbor Island P.D. (FL) and as large as the Atlanta P.D., Nashville P.D., California Highway Patrol and the FBI in cases involving murder, rape, child molestation, thefts and employment screening.  The Computer Voice Stress Analyzer™ (CVSA®) is a voice-based investigative truth verification tool that is now used by more than 1,700 law enforcement agencies.