LANSING, MI (WTVB) – The Michigan Attorney General’s office says it will spend $1.7 million testing rape kits that were never submitted to State Police labs for processing. Authorities in Branch County say they are not aware of any rape kits locally that have failed to be tested.
Attorney General Bill Schuette ordered the probe last September after thousands of untested kits were discovered in an abandoned lab in Detroit. There are 184 lab kits in storage in Kalamazoo and 307 in Calhoun County that were never submitted, but Kalamazoo Undersheriff Pauli Matyas says it’s not because of lazy investigators or neglect. He says State labs refused kits unless there was a cooperative victim. In other cases the suspect confessed eliminating the need for test results.
Matyas says the state changed those rules last year and the Sheriff’s Department submitted the few they had on hand. The AG’s office says there is still a chance that those kits could reveal evidence of a serial rapist or unsolved cases even if the victim would rather not pursue the matter, so they will pick up the cost.
