40-Year-Old Cold Case of South Dakota Baby Ends With Conviction

Spencer Blumenreich

10/21/21

Forensics

Current Event 5

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/us/theresa-bentaas-conviction-manslaughter.html

 

40-Year-Old Cold Case of South Dakota Baby Ends With Conviction by Johnny Diaz

 

 

            This was an article about a 40-year old case of a woman, Ms. Theresa Bentaas, who abandoned her newborn child on the side of the road near Sioux Falls, South Dakota, back in 1981.  However, this was only discovered very recently.  In fact, since Bentaas hid her pregnancy from her friends and family and gave birth on her own, without forensic technology, it was nearly impossible to track the crime to her.  The baby’s autopsy revealed that he died from exposure to weather conditions that day- a tragic ending to a short life.  The baby was later found by a local driver who was unfortunate enough to see the dead baby, and report it to the authorities.  Since the baby had no identity, the case became known as Andrew John Doe, and to the local communities of the South Dakota area, the case was infamously known, yet slowly dropped because of lack of forensic technology.  This all changed in 2009 when advanced DNA testing became available widely in criminal investigations, and the authorities were able to track a family tree to the baby- leading to Ms. Bentaas being found as the mother ten years later.  Ms. Bentaas entered an Alfred deal, which means that she’s pleading guilty without admitting to the crime.  However, she is likely to be sentenced on December 2.

            The article is a great example of DNA testing and how much it can have an effect on forensic science.  However, if you look at it from a more broad perspective, you can examine the impact of technology on the forensic sector in general.  This field was founded only 100 years ago, and with the advancement of technology it has been increasingly more successful. With this article being published, it’s a perfect example of the ways that technology increases success in forensics.  It also shows how people who make terrible mistakes can be held accountable for their mistakes many years later.  In this article, Ms. Bentaas admits she murdered her child as a 21 year old woman, but now she is dealing with the consequences of her actions as a 60 year old.  She calls herself “young and stupid” back then.  Whatever the case may be, the increase of technology doesn’t just have the capability to solve current crimes, but it can solve the crimes of closed cases from years ago.

            The best points in this article were felt when they spoke about Ms. Bentaas and the mistakes she made.  Having the primary source of an affidavit made the article much more enticing because we got to hear the defendant speak about the crime she committed.  Including details from this part made the article more interesting.  The article also summed up the case efficiently which made for easy reading, but they could have gone into more detail about the implications of the DNA testing.  The article did detail when DNA testing became widespread into the field of forensics, but hearing why this is important may have made this more compelling than it already is.  Next time, this author should focus more on the effects of what they are talking about rather than the case itself.  It would also be interesting to hear an opinion from the author about how justified it is that people are convicted on laws that may be outdated- laws unlike this case, of course, but if technology can convict people on old cases, it would be interesting to know if the author thought that this could become a potential issue.  Otherwise, I had few complaints with this article and I am happy that old crimes are being solved.