AUBURN, N.Y., Dec. 20  The day before Christmas three years ago, Inmate No. 92B-0448 sat in front of a computer at the Elmira Correctional Facility and typed a harsh letter to the man he thought should have been in prison in his place.  Tyler Hicks/The New York Times  Ever since Roy Brown was convicted in 1992 of murdering a social worker, he has insisted he is innocent. A breakthrough came several weeks ago, when DNA testing pointed to another man. Now a judge may consider vacating his conviction.  Tyler Hicks/The New York Times  Mr. Brown, at the Elmira Correctional Facility, hopes to be freed based on new DNA evidence in the 1991 murder of Sabina Kulakowski.  Witnesses can commit perjury, judges can be fooled and juries can make mistakes, the letter read. When it comes to DNA testing, theres no mistakes. DNA is GODs creation and GOD makes no mistakes.  The inmate, Roy Brown, was serving 25 years to life for the 1991 murder of a social worker, Sabina Kulakowski, who was found naked, beaten, bitten and strangled outside the farmhouse where she lived in Aurelius, a town of 3,000 on the northern tip of Cayuga Lake.  Mr. Brown, a self-professed hard drinker who made a living at the time selling magazine subscriptions in Syracuse, 30 miles to the east, did not know Ms. Kulakowski. Just six days before her killing, though, he had been released from jail, where he spent eight months for making threatening phone calls to another social worker at the agency where she worked.  Nor did Mr. Brown know the man to whom he was writing, Barry Bench. It was only that year, 2003, that Mr. Brown had uncovered witness statements that pointed toward Mr. Bench, whose brother had been the victims boyfriend.  Five days after receiving Mr. Browns accusatory letter, Mr. Bench committed suicide by jumping in front of an Amtrak train.  Two weeks ago, DNA tests matched a sample provided by Mr. Benchs daughter to saliva stains on a bloodied nightshirt found at the crime scene, and now Mr. Brown is scheduled to appear in court on Thursday to ask the judge who presided over his original trial to vacate the conviction.  I used the old hunting technique here: if theres a killer in the bush, Im going to flush him out, Mr. Brown, 46, said in a telephone interview from prison. I know that they can keep me in jail after I show up in court. But the world will know that Im innocent, and that was my main goal.  Mr. Browns lawyers at the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal clinic that has helped exonerate 188 people since 1989, said his case stood out because it was the first in which the convicted man essentially investigated and solved the crime himself.  The lawyers, Peter Neufeld and Nina Morrison, have also questioned the reliability of forensic evidence in the case, since the conviction rested largely on expert testimony linking bite marks found on Ms. Kulakowskis body to Mr. Brown even though they showed indentations from six upper teeth and he had four.  The Cayuga County district attorney, James B. Vargason, did not respond to numerous requests for comment on Wednesday, but Mr. Browns lawyers said they expected him to oppose their motion. Mr. Vargason took office two weeks before Mr. Browns trial and tried the case personally; he has since used it to build a reputation as a get-tough prosecutor.  Help came to Mr. Brown from an unlikely source: Mr. Benchs 19-year-old daughter, Katherine Eckstadt, who volunteered a sample of her DNA. A private investigator had tracked her down through her mother, who had told sheriffs deputies in 1991 that Mr. Bench acted suspiciously the night of the murder.  The recent DNA tests have excluded Mr. Brown as the source of the saliva on Ms. Kulakowskis nightshirt and showed half of the DNA profile matched Ms. Eckstadts, suggesting the saliva could have come from her father.  I had to know the truth, Ms. Eckstadt said last week in an interview in the basement of a Baptist church in suburban Syracuse where her mother works as a secretary. How was I supposed to live knowing that I could have helped Roy Brown, yet I let him rot in prison?  Mr. Brown was arrested on May 26, 1991, three days after Ms. Kulakowskis battered body was found on a dirt road about 300 yards from the farmhouse, which had been set afire, investigators said, possibly by the killer in an attempt to cover his tracks. Mr. Brown had just been released from jail for making threatening calls to a county Social Services Department worker who had ordered his 7-year-old daughter removed from his home. Though Ms. Kulakowski also worked for the agency, she had no involvement in the case.
An inmate who is serving time for a 1991 upstate New York murder is seeking to clear the conviction after a DNA test that he arranged.