Detective off cold case after fundraising for DNA tests

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - An Indianapolis police detective who launched a crowdfunding campaign to cover the costs of DNA testing in an unsolved rape and murder has been removed from the case, and the status of the DNA test is now in limbo.

Detective Sgt. William Carter had hoped the tests would narrow the list of suspects in the 1993 death of Carmen Hope Van Huss. He asked the city's crime lab to send DNA to a Utah facility for testing last fall, but the lab sent the wrong sample. The city paid for the first $1,600 test but not a second one using the correct DNA, so Carter set up a crowdfunding page Tuesday to seek donations to cover the costs.

He's since been pulled off the case after the department reviewed assignments and procedures, Maj. Chris Bailey, the department's assistant commander for criminal investigations, told The Indianapolis Star (http://indy.st/1vG4UFe ). Carter is not a member of the cold case squad but had worked on the case periodically since 2013 on his own.

"We just want to make sure that people stay in their lanes," Bailey said. "We have cold case investigators, and we want to let them do their job."

Bailey said the city doesn't typically pay for the DNA test Carter requested and that the payment for the initial test was the result of a miscommunication. He wasn't sure whether officials would authorize the second test in the Van Huss case.

Jimmy Van Huss called the situation "ridiculous" and said he fears the decision to remove Carter will end efforts to solve his sister's killing.

"If Carter's off the case, the case is over," Van Huss said. "She's been dead for 22 years."

Carter has previous success with cold cases. He helped solve the 1989 slaying of a 16-year-old girl in 2011 when he matched a bloody palm print at the crime scene to prints from an old misdemeanor arrest.

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Information from: The Indianapolis Star, http://www.indystar.com