Front Page  news  metro

Friday, April 25, 2008

Relatives, Police Thought Man Had Been Murdered

By T.J. Wilham
Copyright © 2008 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Staff Writer
    Donny Denman isn't dead, after all.
    True, he's had a funeral. True, a death certificate was issued in his name. And yes, police have been looking for his killer ever since they made a DNA match to some bones found on the West Mesa.
    But there was one problem.
    "I'm very much alive," he said Thursday. "It's a trip, isn't it?"
    Denman has been missing since 2003, when he walked away from his family's northeast Albuquerque home in a drug-fueled rage.
    His family started looking for him a year later after his mother died and he failed to show up for the funeral.
    They had few answers until 2006, when they read a story in the Journal about the remains of a man found on the West Mesa wrapped in a jacket. The jacket looked like one Denman often wore.
    So they contacted the police and gave DNA samples. More than a year later, the FBI reported that there was a mitochondrial DNA match on the bones to all three of Denman's siblings.
    The family had a funeral, an obituary appeared in the newspaper and a death certificate was issued.
    Another Journal article published March 6 reported that the bones found on the West Mesa matched Denman's. The story said police were offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to Denman's killer.
    On Monday, one of Denman's friends, a mechanic, was laying down old newspapers in his garage beneath a car he was working on. He saw Denman's photograph with the March 6 story and immediately called Denman.
    Not knowing what to do, Denman went to Immanuel Lutheran, the church his family belonged to, and sought the advice of the pastor who presided over his funeral.
    The Rev. Randy Walquist reacted by saying, "Donny, you're not dead."
    Walquist, who helped Denman reunite with his brothers and sisters, said in an interview, "It sends tingles down your spine. We thought he was dead. He was given up for dead, and now he is alive. It is truly a phenomenal series of events."
   
A 'coincidental match'
    Those events have investigators and forensic scientists scratching their heads.
    Because there was no sample of Denman's DNA and all they had were the bones found on the West Mesa, investigators had to use the mitochondrial process. That process isn't as effective distinguishing individuals as the more common nuclear DNA process.
    There have been about 13 mitochondrial matches in New Mexico.
    Denman's case was the first time the FBI lab has had a "coincidental match." Experts say there is no way to tell what the odds are for a coincidental match.
    Denman struggled with drugs for years.
    He had several arrests on minor charges in Texas and New Mexico. He also did some time in a Texas jail.
    He was living with his mother in 2003 when he got into an argument with her and his siblings. He walked away in a rage.
    Denman said he then spent two years living in drug houses.
    He left his family in such a rage, he always assumed they didn't want anything to do with him.
    He was wrong.
    His siblings started looking for him a year later. They searched homeless shelters, checked the faces of people walking down Central and occasionally stopped strangers who looked like him.
    "I didn't know anyone was looking for me," Denman said. "I was just living my life. I did some horrible things. I figured I ruined it with my family and they didn't want to have anything to do with me."
    Denman met a family that was remodeling a house in the North Valley through a friend more than three years ago. Looking for work, he made a deal with the family in which he was allowed to live in the home as long as he helped remodel it.
    The family also had some rules: He had to get clean and attend church.
    Denman did just that.
    He's been clean now for "three years, four months, but who's counting?" he said.
    He now lives in a small one-room trailer behind the family's home.
    Denman says he is happy to reunite with his family, but it has been hard.
    He didn't know his mother had died until he read it in the newspaper.
    "We are a family again, and that is the most important thing," he said.
    His siblings were shocked.
    His sister nearly fainted and almost had to be caught by Walquist and his brother Michael.
    "I swear I had a mild heart attack," Michael said. "I have never been more shocked in my life.
    "In my heart and in my soul, I knew my brother was dead," he said. "This is just one of those one-in-a-million things."
   
A strange reunion
    Police knew the science behind mitochondrial DNA wasn't a 100 percent guarantee.
    They even warned Denman's family of that when they notified them and handed over the remains they found in the West Mesa.
    Those remains were cremated and the family was planning to scatter them near Jemez Springs, one of Denman's favorite spots.
    They have now turned the remains back over to the authorities.
    "Based on everything we had, we were so confident that those remains were Donny Denman," said cold case investigator Rich Lewis. "We had so much that Donny even joked that we were convincing him that he was dead."
    The Denmans, meanwhile, are trying to figure out if there is a long-lost relative who could have the same mitochondrial DNA. So far, they say it's impossible.
    "In a strange way, the system actually worked in this case," Lewis said. "We reunited this family together that would have never been reunited had it not been for this."