Queensland DNA lab chief Linzi Wilson-Wilde grilled: ‘Why didn’t you act?’

Qld’s new forensic lab boss admits she only ordered retesting of thousands of crime samples potentially affected by flawed DNA extraction after being questioned by The Australian.

Scientist in charge of Queensland's DNA lab, Linzi Wilson-Wilde, is giving evidence on Project 13 at the DNA inquiry.

The new chief of Queensland’s DNA lab has confirmed at a new commission of inquiry that she only ordered retesting of thousands of crime-scene samples ­potentially affected by a flawed DNA extraction method as a ­result of questioning by The ­Australian.

Linzi Wilson-Wilde was grilled at the inquiry on Wednesday about why she had not acted sooner, given her claims that ­during last year’s Sofronoff inquiry she saw the automated extraction method was having serious problems with “yield” or the recovery of DNA.

In a tense morning of questioning, Dr Wilson-Wilde also blamed the “fog of memory” for being unsure about details of her claim that she briefed a lawyer at the Sofronoff inquiry about the problems.

The senior lawyer assisting the inquiry, Andrew Fox SC, presented Dr Wilson-Wilde with minutes of a meeting on September 7 this year, which recorded that the lab would look at retesting in “all serious cases” dating back to October 2007 when the automated extraction method was launched. It was a week after The Australian first interviewed Dr Wilson-Wilde about a Project 13 report that showed the method was recovering up to 92 per cent less DNA than a manual method.

Mr Fox asked: “Is it the case that, prior to this interview or discussion with the journalists, you hadn’t actually prepared any paper or other documentation which might provide a recommendation to go back and do testing to October 2007 because of what you’d seen in the Project 13 report?”

Dr Wilson-Wilde replied: “That’s ­correct.”

Mr Fox asked whether the only reason she prepared a paper of this kind making this recommendation was “because you’ve been prompted by reason of the interview that you’ve held with The Australian journalists”.

Dr Wilson-Wilde agreed.

Mr Fox asked whether she could offer the commission an explanation as to why she waited until being prompted by two journalists to prepare such a paper.

Dr Wilson-Wilde replied: “The focus … since I’ve been at the laboratory has been the current methods, ensuring the current methods are fit for purpose, etc, and setting up the infrastructure that we can deal with these sorts of things. We want to provide some confidence to the public that this is definitely being looked at because it has been raised and it is in the public domain.”

Commissioner Annabelle Bennett SC asked Dr Wilson-Wilde why the lab was only retesting from October 2007 until the automated extraction method was temporarily taken off line in July 2008 after causing mass cross-contamination of samples.

The method, using robots to extract DNA rather than relying on scientists doing it by hand, was modified and relaunched in 2009 and then used on Queensland crime scene samples until 2016.

“Given the work and the ­discussions that we’ve had, I’d be advocating that we go back from essentially the beginning of this year to October 2007 and all cases encompassing,” Dr Wilson-Wilde replied.

The Australian revealed in September that Dr Wilson-Wilde reviewed the Project 13 report for the Sofronoff Inquiry, but in her expert report did not mention any of the glaring “yield” issues. Nor did she include that the Project 13 report was in draft format, nor that its abstract falsely claimed the automated and manual methods were comparable.

At least 7000 extra criminal cases are being reviewed, but that number is expected to balloon.

Dr Wilson-Wilde says she saw the issues but did not include them in her report because she was asked to look at the separate contamination scandal.

She faced a barrage of questions from Mr Fox on Wednesday about why she did not call out the yield issues in her expert report to the Sofronoff inquiry, and backtracked on her claims that she fully briefed counsel assisting the Sofronoff inquiry. Dr Bennett took Dr Wilson-Wilde to a recorded interview with The Australian in which she claimed she had a specific discussion, in detail, with counsel assisting the Sofronoff inquiry, Susan Hedge, about the yield issues. Dr Bennett: “Is that still your recollection?”

Dr Wilson-Wilde: “I would suggest I probably overstepped on that point.”

Dr Wilson-Wilde has said she briefed Ms Hedge but in the “fog of memory” she could not be sure about the details.

In a statement published by the inquiry late on Wednesday, Ms Hedge said she had no recollection of Dr Wilson-Wilde informing her of the matters.

“If I had understood (Dr) Wilson-Wilde was telling me about a significant or systemic issue which might have called into question the reliability of results, I would have taken steps to investigate it,” Ms Hedge said.

Mr Fox took Dr Wilson-Wilde through comments in interviews with The Australian in which she claimed her expert report to the Sofronoff inquiry dealt with “the whole” of Project 13 and said she “thought the whole thing was rubbish”. He asked if she accepted she should have expressed her views more clearly and in more direct terms in her expert report.

She insisted her report was about contamination and she never used “emotive language” in her reports. But she said in hindsight and with more time and information she would have done more to highlight the extent of problems with Project 13.

Forensic scientist Kirsty Wright gave evidence that she still held concerns about the way a new advisory board overseeing the lab was managing members’ perceived conflicts of interest.