Hudson County’s top law enforcement agency gets new tool in fighting crime — it’s own DNA lab

The Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office is shaving weeks, maybe even months, off criminal investigations.
A plan that was four years in the making became reality Friday when the county’s top law enforcement agency opened its own DNA lab, only the second county in the state to do so.
“This is a game changer for us,” said Prosecutor Esther Suarez, who envisioned the lab when she found out the county would be building the prosecutor’s office a new facility in Secaucus.
Instead of sending DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) samples ― biological materials from items retrieved from crime scenes ― to the New Jersey State Police lab in Hamilton, a Prosecutor’s Office team of three people will test and analyze it.
“It would take months, even in most egregious, violent cases,” said Suarez, who was quick to note this wasn’t a criticism of the lab that had handled DNA testing for 20 counties. “Even if we asked to put one on an emergency basis and try to get it done quickly, it still took a very long time.”
The new HCPO office opened in late 2022. The DNA lab took a little longer.
It wasn’t because DNA Laboratory Director Jonathan Kui was watching every episode of the TV series CSI. In fact, he’s not a fan ― “Of the few CSI shows I watched … they’re a little absurd,” he said.
Rather, the lab was built from scratch, with plenty of assistance and advice from the New Jersey State Police and the Union County Prosecutor’s Office, the first in the state to create its own DNA testing center.
“None of us had any experience in building a DNA lab,” said Suarez, who was first appointed to the Hudson County post in 2015. “The state police were very helpful. The Union County Prosecutor’s Office … was tremendous … letting us know what we needed to do. And we started hiring people who were extremely knowledgeable.”
The DNA lab is the third item on the expansion checklist Suarez created when the new facility was being built, along with child advocacy center and a cybercrime unit.
Kui is joined in the lab by senior DNA analysts Kaylee Klose and Meredith Napor. They worked together at the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, where Kui worked 14 years.
Suarez and Kui both emphasized the improved speed in which the prosecutor’s office will attain results and the positive trickle-down effects. Whereas it could take months to receive answers from the state, it will now take only days.
“It’s tremendous when you think of some of the violent crimes that we are dealing with that you may be able to identity a suspect within days as opposed to having to wait months to get the DNA back,“ Suarez said. ”It doesn’t always lead you to a suspect, but it leads you to a lot of clues and that is very, very helpful and it pushes any investigation along.”
Kui noted that it’s also vitally important in ruling out people as suspects as well.
“Public perception is that DNA labs are there to find someone who committed a crime, but the lab uses DNA to help eliminate people as being responsible for a crime as well,” said Kui, who has testified about DNA results as more than 130 trials during his career. “Being able to rule out people’s profiles as not being attributable to the crime is so important in helping us find profiles that are attributable to a crime.”
For Kui, this is a job he’s worked toward since his undergrad days. A few years at Weil Cornell Medical College as a licensed clinical molecular technologist performing tests for blood borne cancers was a way to gain experience for his ultimate goal.
“I had gone to a talk about forensic DNA analysis and its use in crime solving when I was an undergrad at Cornell and I was totally blown away,” he said. “… I thought this is what I want to do. I want to be able to take DNA and say ‘here is a problem, here is a mystery.’ Let’s use DNA to solve this mystery and move onto the next mystery.”
Kui says the process starts at the crime scene, where investigators retrieve biological stainings (blood, semen or saliva), as well as objects that an assailant may have come into contact through touch ― for instance, a weapon or an article of clothing.
Each person’s DNA (molecules found inside cells that holds genetic information) is unique, except for identical twins.
The lab takes small samples and subject them to a series of tests that release DNA into a liquid. The end result is graph and analysts then create a DNA profile that can be compared against other individuals and against databases, the national CODIS (combined DNA Index system) system, run and at state and national levels.