DNA tests point to killer’s guilt

Inmate Scott Sloane has claimed his innocence for years.

He has said he never raped and murdered a cosmetic saleswoman in 1984 and even wanted his DNA tested to prove his innocence.

In 2008, a Las Vegas judge approved Sloane's request to test his DNA after the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Innocence Center helped push his case through the legal system.

The DNA results are back and authorities say it's bad news for Sloane: His semen was found inside the victim.

But the innocence center is still disputing that claim.

Last week, the Metropolitan Police Department's forensic lab returned the results of its DNA testing on Sloane's case. It tested semen samples recovered from the victim, 41-year-old Nancy Menke.

The report shows that Sloane's involvement in the slaying is now certain, said Chief Deputy District Attorney David Stanton, who handled the post-conviction testing for the Clark County district attorney's office.

"I would have been surprised if the results were any other way than that," he said. "The vast majority of the evidence, from a DNA perspective and non-DNA perspective, pointed to an overwhelming case against Scott Sloane."

A jury in 1985 convicted Sloane of sexually assaulting and killing Menke. He was sentenced to five back-to-back life sentences. He has been held at Ely State Prison.

Sloane was 16 years old at the time of the slaying. He is now 42 and has spent more than 20 years behind bars.

The Rocky Mountain Innocence Center, however, disputes the prosecutor's reading of the DNA report.

Director Katie Monroe said the report isn't conclusive. "It's not a match to Scott and (the report) doesn't identify the perpetrator," she said.

Monroe said an expert for the center will review the data in the report. After that, the center will decide if more testing needs to be done.

Two semen samples were found inside the victim. One of the samples is from Menke's husband.

Authorities said the husband was never a suspect; he had consensual sex with his wife prior to the slaying.

The other sample is believed to be Sloane's.

The report states that Sloane "cannot be excluded" as a DNA contributor. However, more than 99.97 percent of the population can be excluded, the report states. This means that Sloane is part of the less than three one-hundredths of 1 percent of the population that cannot be excluded.

"To say that the results in this case are 'not conclusive' defies logic, science and common sense," Stanton said.

Menke was found dead inside her vehicle in 1984. She had been raped, handcuffed, strangled and beaten over the head with a large rock near Harmon Avenue near Tropicana Avenue. Her assailant shot her in the head six times with a .25-caliber gun.

At Sloane's trial, a jury learned that the handgun used to kill Menke belonged to Sloane's mother.

Police believed the handcuffs used to bind Menke were stolen from a Smith's grocery store where Sloane worked; Sloane told a friend he stole the cuffs from the store, a friend told the jury.

And on the night Menke disappeared, Sloane arrived at a neighbor's house covered in sweat, the neighbor later testified. His arms and face were covered in blood. Sloane told the neighbor that he had been robbed and kidnapped from the same mall from which Menke was missing.

Police long suspected that two people were involved in her killing because more than one blood type was found inside her.

According to authorities during the initial investigation and the trial, one of the blood types matched Sloane's while the second remained unidentified. No other suspect was ever identified in the crime.

Blood testing isn't as accurate as DNA testing. In 1984, however, DNA testing wasn't widely practiced in criminal investigations. It now is common in many crime cases, both for the police trying to prove a suspect's guilt and a defendant trying to gain freedom.

The New York-based Innocence Project reports that 241 people have been exonerated of crimes through DNA testing nationwide.

"I would have loved for this to have given us an answer," Monroe said. "This hasn't given us an answer."