After her sister was raped and killed in the early hours on a Montclair street in 1981, she still feels uneasy going to her car at night.

"People say, ‘Oh, it’s been 20 years,’ but it’s something you just don’t forget," said the 37-year-old woman, now an Antelope Valley resident.

Thanks to advances in DNA analysis technology and Montclair detectives who haven’t given up on the case, Plourde might get some of the closure she’s sought over the years. Montclair police are teaming with the FBI to test 20-year-old DNA evidence collected from the crime scene to try and identify Plourde’s assailant.

Forensic investigation has come a long way in 20 years – from the days when nearly every beat officer carried fingerprint brushes in their squad cars to recent years, when DNA is bringing new life to criminal cases, some decades old.

Technology has allowed forensic officials to not only test different types of DNA and compare it with samples in databases, but they can now replicate DNA to creat larger samples.

Gov. Gray Davis last year approved the allocation of $50 million to crime labs statewide to process DNA evidence from more than 20,000 unsolved rape and homicide cases, said Jan Bashinki, chief of the Bureau of Forensic Services for the California Department of Justice.

It’s a three-year project, but DNA and law enforcement officials alike anticipate big breaks in a number of unsolved crimes.

In addition to advances in DNA technology, police have found more effective ways to investigate crime scenes, so the evidence stays as true to the crime scene as possible.

Up until the 1980's, an Ontario police officer who arrived on a murder scene would become both the detective and forensic specialist.

"If you showed up in a police car, whether you’re a detective or a police officer, they’d let you in," to the crime scene, said Ann Punter, evidence property supervisor for the Ontario Police Department. "Prior to the early 80s, you’d see that."

That had several drawbacks. The responding officer didn’t have as much time to investigate a crime scene, because the officer’s regular calls for service would stack up in the meantime.

And because so many people had access to crime scenes, evidence had a greater chance of getting fouled or disappearing, Punter said.

"It’s a scientific fact that every person who enters anywhere–whether it be a crime scene or somewhere else–takes something with them when they go in," she said. "Every time they go out, they leave with something."

Ontario police formed an official forensic team in the early 1980s to help cut down on the problem. They are a group on non-sworn personnel with training in handling evidence, examining blood spatters, fingerprinting and photography, Punter said.

Matt Gonzalez, a forensic specialist on the team, spent last Monday examining evidence collected after a man fleeing from police crashed his car and escaped earlier that morning.

The man, a suspected prowler, left behind a pack of cigarettes, a Lotto scratcher and a .38 Special caked with dirt and grass. But it was the three latent fingerprints forensic specialists found on the car itself that interested the forensic team most.

And after a robbery of a Bank of America branch inside an Albertson’s grocery store last month, Gonzalez found another fingerprint in an abandoned car.

This time, he had to use some of the newer forensic gadgets to spot it.

He used what police call an Alternate Light Source: a device which can be used to shine different laser wavelengths on fingerprints or other hard-to-see items. A fluorescent powdersubstance called Redwop – powder spelled backward– is used along with the ALS to show invisible fingerprints.

"Without the ALS, we probably wouldn’t have found it. We probably would have overlooked it," he said.

The state’s DNA database now contains more than 100,000 DNA profiles from people convicted and sent to state prison, Bashinki said. Prior to the 1980s, blood and semen were the only items that could be examined to identify potential suspects.

Now, officials at the state Department of Justice’s Berkely DNA Lab can compare a hair strand or even saliva from a ski mask with blood samples they have in their database. Since the lab was opened under Bashinki’s direction in 1989, more and more DNA samples keep rolling in from law enforcement agencies throughout the state.

"It continues to just grow and we always knew it was very valuable technology, but nationally and internationally, it’s surpassing what we expected back then," she said.

One local case brought back into the headlines as the result of DNA analysis is that of Kevin Cooper.

Cooper is on Death Row for a 1983 quadruple murder in Chino Hills. Peggy and Doug Ryen, both 41, were killed in their home on English Road, near Peyton Drive. Their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and a neighbor, 11-year-old Christopher Hughes, were also slain.

Earlier this year, Cooper requested DNA testing because he believed it would help him land a new trial and acquittal. Attorneys last month, after more than four months of negotiations, agreed to test several items seized from the crime scene and other locations.

Those items include a blood-stained T-shirt found several miles form the scene, a hatchet used in the murders and a blonde hair found in the hands of one of the victims. Punter, who did forensic work on the Cooper investigation and photographed the autopsies of the victims, said she analyzed some 200 fingerprints lifted from the residence known as the "hideout" and from the Ryen home.

Cooper admitted to hiding out in a residence nearby the Ryen house after escaping from the California Institute for Men in Chino. Punter said she was able to find evidence that Cooper was at the hideout because of a bare footprint found on the floor of the bathroom. Cooper submitted a footprint to Punter and it matched.

Though the Ontario Police Department doesn’t have a DNA analysis lab, Punter said she believes that DNA testing won’t change the outcome of the Cooper case.

"DNA is a very good tool and none of us want to see innocent people go to jail. Yes, their have been some people who were wrongly accused. But statistically, if we looked at all the cases in the country or in San Bernardino County, DNA will not change the results on a whole lot of cases," Punter said.

But even if DNA doesn’t change the results in already tried cases, detectives hope that it might shed new light on unsolved crimes.

James Emmett Farr walked out of jail in San Bernardino County a free man in August 1979. Prosecutors at that time failed to present enough evidence to link Farr to the fatal stabbing of 32-year-old Bobbie Givens at the Beverly Hotel in Ontario.

But DNA evidence and a confession by Farr, 47, have brought him back to a jail in California where he will stand trial, a judge decided last month. Police testified that recently completed DNA testing confirms that blood on Givens’ shirt is a genetic match with blood found on clothes Farr wore when arrested in 1979.

In another case, Dean Eric Dunlap, a former Victorville resident, faces charges stemming from the 1992 kidnap, rape and murder of a 9-year-old San Bernardino girl after a DNA sample tied him to the crime.

Dunlap is suspected of kidnapping Sandra Astorga from San Bernardino on Jan. 10, 1992. Her body was found Jan. 30. Eight months after Sandra disappeared, Dunlap pleaded guilty to molesting his girlfriend’s 12-year-old daughter. Upon his release from prison four years later, he submitted a DNA sample, which was entered into a statewide database.

That sample matched semen samples taken from a green T-shirt found near Sandra’s body and a pair of panties found near her book bags, sheriff’s officials testified.

Dunlap could face the death penalty if convicted on all charges, including special circumstances of kidnapping with intent to rape.

In Montclair, police detectives haven’t forgotten Selena Keough, the 21-year-old woman raped and killed in 1981 while walking home from the Club Unicorn, then located at 5074 Holt Blvd. in Montclair.

Montclair police Detective Roger Price was a student at Montclair High School around the time of the Keough murder. He didn’t learn about the case until last year while preparing to attend an FBI seminar. It was a sergeant who originally worked on the case years ago who told him about it.

"The circumstances surrounding it were tragic and the effect that it had on people surrounding the victim...made it stick out in (the officer’s) minds," he said.

A DNA match would be good news for Sabrina Plourde, Keough’s younger sister. Plourde said that even 20 years later, the simplest things bring her back to that day when she lost her sister. She thinks about it when she goes to her car at night and won’t go for walks alone.

"It’s hard. It will always affect me," she said. "It will affect my children and probably their children."