Killer's DNA hard to get while alive

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - The Kent Metro Cold Case Team suspect Nicholas Brasic killed four or five women across the country decades ago -- not a stretch for a man sentenced to life in prison for raping and murdering a woman in Kent County.

But, while investigating the case, detectives ran into an unexpected roadblock.

The Michigan prison system, holding Brasic at a prison in Adrian, turned down their request for Brasic's DNA.

Recently released court documents obtained by Target 8 show the team finally got his DNA -- from his grave.

Police tell Target 8 that while this case is extreme, such rejection from the prison system is not unusual.

"There are a lot of people slipping through the cracks," said a law enforcement official who didn't want to be identified. "This is the most extreme case we've had to go through."

State law requires that all felons give DNA samples once they're convicted, but it doesn't cover inmates who were already in the system before the law went into effect.

There are 6,000 inmates whose DNA has not been taken.

"There's a glitch in the statute that says we can't take it until they're ready to be discharged," or after they die in prison, state prison spokesman Russ Marlan said. "I know that law enforcement are frustrated. We're equally frustrated."

Brasic got life in prison without parole in 1986 for raping and murdering Christine Honson in a van in northern Kent County in 1974. Her body was never found, though a witness testified that Brasic said he'd buried her near South Bend.

He later was sentenced to prison for raping a teen-aged girl in Kent County.

Police said they found potential evidence of other crimes in 1982 in a South Bend storage locker, including audio tapes of some of his sexual assaults, according to a search warrant obtained by Target 8.

Members of the cold case team were investigating several unsolved homicides from years ago in Kent County when they discovered Brasic had been interviewed in more than one case and was considered back then a "person of interest," team leader Sgt. Sally Wolter wrote in the search warrant affidavit.

Police said they had evidence that Brasic "had committed violent offenses, including rape and/or murder, against young women in Kent County, as well as in other Michigan counties and possibly other states," police wrote in a search warrant.

"In some of these unsolved cases, evidence still exists that is suitable for DNA testing," police wrote.

In other cases, they wrote, "DNA profiles of suspects have been developed but no DNA profile for Brasic has ever been obtained for comparison purposes to either include or exclude him as a suspect."

But, prison officials had told the team that, based on law and its policy, it doesn't take DNA samples from inmates such as Brasic who were convicted before the law went into effect. Those aren't taken "until they are released or die while incarcerated at an MDOC facility," the search warrant states.

Brasic was 74 when he died -- of natural causes -- in January 2009. Since he died in a Lansing hospital, not in a prison, the state Department of Corrections did not get his DNA.

Sgt. Wolter obtained the search warrant in July to exhume Brasic's body from a prison cemetery in Jackson. Kent County Medical Examminer Dr. Stephen Cohle took samples from his body, including his spleen, bone marrow and hair, court records show.

So far, the DNA has not connected him to any crimes, police say.

State prison officials say they are pushing a new state law to allow them to take DNA of all prisoners.

"We're hoping to get that legislation passed and then we would go in and we'd take everybody; we'd clean them up," Marlan said.

Marlan said he hoped the state Legislature would pass the law this week, but that didn't happen, so prison officials say they will push it next year.