Gearen killing highlights DPS lab problems

Everything about the case of Bridgette Gearen is awful, disturbing and outrageous.

Some aspects of it are more so than need be, however, because of a long-running political failure among state officials.

Gearen was raped and murdered near Crystal Beach three years ago. She had been spending a weekend at a rented beach house with her daughter, who was 2 at the time, and friends from a Beaumont law firm where she worked as a legal secretary.

She vanished just before midnight July 14, 2007, after stepping outside ahead of some friends who planned to take a ride along the beach. She disappeared in the 90 seconds it took her friends to follow her outside.

Campers found her body in the water near Monkhouse Drive early the next morning.

Galveston County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Tommy Hansen, who heads the investigation, said hers was one of the most brutal killings he’d seen in his long career.

Most of the people who end up murdered play some role in their own demise. They are into crime or live otherwise high-risk lives.

Gearen was just a normal, law-abiding citizen who stepped through a door at the wrong time; awful, disturbing and outrageous.

Compounding all that are these facts:

Hansen thinks the case can be solved. He thinks he knows who did it. He’s not saying much, but from what he will say, we know he suspects at least three men were involved — a local and at least two from out of state.

What’s more, Hansen might have the evidence to prove it. He turned it up 10 months ago.

For 10 months that evidence has been sitting at a Department of Public Safety laboratory waiting to be tested; awful, disturbing and outrageous.

For that 10 months, the men who might have committed this brutal crime have been at large.

What might they have been up to?

Two things come to mind. First, there should be some way to prioritize testing at the labs. Each case is important, but cases in which the suspects may have killed a normal, law-abiding citizen for kicks and are at large should be processed before dope-dealer-kills-dope-dealer cases and cases in which the suspects are locked up.

Second, it’s time for lawmakers to free the logjam at DPS laboratories.

We first wrote about the backlogs in 2003 when Kemah police had been waiting more than a year for murder evidence to be tested.

Newspapers all across the state also have written about similar cases of justice delayed. They apparently are not hard to find.

At one level, the problem is money. The laboratories are underfunded.

But the deeper problem is misplaced political priorities.

If lawmakers and elected officials wanted to find the money to correct the backlog at the labs, they could find the money.

They might start by looking among their own perks and pet projects.