San Diego Police Department dodged a potentially explosive public relations bullet when it was determined that John Gardner’s DNA was not found on the swab taken from a female “robbery” victim, Candice Moncayo, who was assaulted on December 27, 2009 in Rancho Bernardo Community Park following the homicide of Chelsea King last month.
Local law enforcement agencies failed to test the DNA swab taken from the jogger for more than two months between the December 27 incident and the weekend that Chelsea King went missing.
The SDPD brass must have breathed a collective sigh of relief when the DNA test came back negative.
“Had John Gardner’s DNA been found on the swab taken on December 27, it could have been matched to his profile in the National DNA database and Gardner may have been arrested for the “robbery” which could have prevented the murder of Chelsea King,” authorities said.
Several attempts have been made to determine the DNA backlog in San Diego County Crime Laboratory for this story, only to be denied by San Diego Sheriff’s officials. The Sheriff’s Department claims there are no records readily available to provide documents on the DNA backlog San Diego County.
However, a document recovered from the County of Supervisors office paints a different story. The Sheriff’s Department applied for a Federal Stimulus grant to alleviate the DNA backlog on December 5, 2009, according to the public records.