IPP never gave up. It took 18 years for lawyers to free Charles Fain from wrongful imprisonment, then another 20 years and a Neanderthal DNA technique to find a suspect in the 1982 Nampa, Idaho murder of 9-year-old Daralyn Johnson. On January 13, 2022, Canyon County charged David Dalrymple, 64, with first-degree murder and rape.
Executive Director Dr. Greg Hampikian has worked with local police since 2010 to find a DNA match to the evidence. In 2018 he devised a genealogy strategy, using a method developed for Neanderthal DNA by Ed Green of the University of California at Santa Cruz, to identify the true murderer. With the data from this revolutionary technique, Canyon County officials were able to narrow their suspect search to Dalrymple, who was serving a 20-year-to-life sentence in Idaho for lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor under 16. Although a criminal complaint was filed in 2020, Canyon County held off proceeding with the case until January 2022 due to COVID-19 restrictions.
A preliminary hearing for Dalrymple was scheduled for Jan. 25.
“What we bring to a case like this is hope,” Greg says. “A hope born of scientific patience. Because scientific knowledge always gets better.”