BY JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON -- Evidence in the killing eight months ago of an opera seamstress is now in the hands of state investigators, moved to them after the case lingered for months at a federal crime lab.
Doris Bertsch was found dead Nov. 25 in her Panorama Drive home in Covington's Kenton Hills neighborhood. Shortly after that, evidence taken from the crime scene was sent to Washington, D.C., for testing by FBI experts. Detectives hoped they would come up with something to lead them to a suspect.
They still hope for that, but the evidence has been moved to the state lab in Frankfort.
"The feds were so busy they didn't get to do some of the things we wanted," said Detective Brett Tate, who is investigating Mrs. Bertsch's killing. "They weren't as much help as we would've liked."
The FBI's lab spokesman was not available for comment Monday. But the organization's Website tells how the lab gets so busy -- it offers free analysis to all federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.
Last year alone, the lab performed more than 1.7 million examinations of fingerprints, processed more than 1.4 million photographs and conducted more than 540,000 examinations on almost 150,000 pieces of evidence.
Mrs. Bertsch, 70, a seamstress for the Cincinnati Opera, was discovered after a friend asked police to check her home. Officers found a rear door open and Mrs. Bertsch dead upstairs. Investigators have said they think she was killed by someone who sneaked into her house to rob her.
The case received new attention after the killing June 25 of Jean Williamson in her Crestview Hills house. Detective Tate thinks there is still a chance that the man arrested in Ms. Williamson's death, Freddie Scott Furnish, could have been involved in Mrs. Bertsch's killing.
The state lab will work first on the evidence in the Williamson case, then focus on the older killing, Commonwealth Attorney Don Buring said.
