Carolyn Warmus’s DNA Results: The Glove and Why Nothing Has Surfaced

No results from the Carolyn Warmus DNA testing have been made public. In 2021, Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah consented to DNA analysis on three pieces of evidence from the 1989 murder of Betty Jeanne Solomon, but no news outlet, court filing, or statement from the DA’s office or Warmus’s advocates has disclosed what the testing found — or whether it has been completed at all.¹

That silence is the story right now. Warmus was convicted in 1992 on largely circumstantial evidence, served 27 years, and was paroled in 2019 still maintaining her innocence. The testing was supposed to answer the question her defense has pressed for decades: whose DNA is on the glove.

What Was Sent for Testing

Three items from the original case were never subjected to DNA analysis because the technology of the early 1990s could not handle them — the trace of blood on the key piece of evidence was too small to test with the methods then available.¹ The three items:

A black cashmere glove containing a microscopic trace of blood. Paul Solomon said he found it in a closet after the first trial, and prosecutors introduced it at the second trial as belonging to Warmus.¹
Semen recovered from the victim.
Blood found in a tote bag belonging to Paul Solomon.¹

Defense attorney Dennis Kelly argued that whoever wore the glove was likely the killer, so identifying that person’s DNA would be critical. He also argued that because Betty Jeanne Solomon was known to have had affairs, testing the semen could point to a different suspect and would have “tipped the balance” in Warmus’s favor at trial.¹

There is a separate wrinkle around the glove itself. When police first processed the crime scene in 1989, they observed a black leather glove near the victim’s body but did not collect it because a field test for blood came back negative. The defense has argued the cashmere glove introduced at the second trial was not the same one — and that a lack of leucomalachite residue on the cashmere glove would prove it.¹

How the Testing Agreement Happened

The path to testing took roughly four years and reversed direction more than once.

In 2017, then-Acting Westchester District Attorney James McCarty initially consented to DNA testing. The office then reversed itself after lab officials suggested that testing the glove was “neither feasible nor practical.”¹

Warmus then moved for a court order compelling testing. In 2020, Westchester County Judge Helen Blackwood denied the motion, ruling that “regardless of whose DNA is found on that glove, there is no reasonable probability that the answer would have resulted in a more favorable outcome for the defendant.”¹

Kelly appealed. On the evening before oral arguments were scheduled at the Appellate Division in May 2021, District Attorney Mimi Rocah consented to testing all three items.² Her office cited two reasons: the prior administration’s initial agreement, and the recent establishment of the office’s first independent Conviction Review Bureau. Rocah characterized the consent as an “exception” because the Bureau was not yet fully operational and its intake protocols had not been finalized.¹

Why No Results Have Surfaced

The available reporting does not explain the silence. Whether the testing has been completed, is still in progress, or has run into the same technical limits that stalled it in 2017 is not documented in the public record. Neither the Westchester DA’s office nor the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation, which has advocated for Warmus, has issued a public statement disclosing what the tests revealed. No news outlet that covered the 2021 consent has published a follow-up.

A few things can be said with confidence about the legal posture. Warmus’s conviction has not been overturned. No motion to vacate the conviction based on DNA results appears in the public record. If the testing had produced a clear exculpatory result, some legal filing or public statement would ordinarily follow; none has been reported. If the testing had inculpated her, that would ordinarily surface as well. The absence of either outcome from the record is what it is — an absence — and any inference beyond that goes past what the record supports.

The Oxygen documentary “The Fatal Attraction Murder,” which aired in March 2022 and included Warmus’s first post-release interviews, noted only that prosecutors had agreed to DNA testing and that no results had been publicly disclosed at the time.³

What the Glove Would Need to Show

Judge Blackwood’s 2020 ruling framed the stakes in a specific way: she held that even if someone else’s DNA were on the glove, it would not create a reasonable probability of a different verdict.¹ Rocah’s later consent bypassed that ruling rather than overturning it, so the legal standard for any post-conviction relief remains what Blackwood described.

The appellate record from the second trial noted that fibers on the glove were consistent with fibers found on the victim’s hands, and that the Solomons’ daughter testified she had previously tried on a similar pair of gloves while with Warmus.⁴¹ Even a foreign DNA profile on the glove would have to overcome that fiber evidence and the broader circumstantial case involving the gun purchase and matching ammunition traced through phone records to Warmus’s apartment.

Where Warmus Stands Now

Warmus was released on parole on June 17, 2019, after serving 27 years at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. She is on lifetime parole in New York County, subject to a curfew set by her parole officer and a requirement to maintain employment or academic enrollment.⁵

The Deskovic Foundation continues to list her among its wrongful-conviction cases and has advocated for a full review of the circumstantial evidence by the Westchester DA’s Conviction Review Bureau.⁶ Until the DNA results are released or a formal legal proceeding follows, the question the defense has been asking since the second trial remains open.

1
The Journal News (lohud.com). Carolyn Warmus Gets DNA Testing in Fatal Attraction Case
2
New York Post. Evidence in Fatal Attraction Trial to Be DNA Tested
3
E! Online. Fatal Attraction Killer Carolyn Warmus Has Nothing to Hide in Oxygen’s Shocking New Special
4
Justia. People v. Carolyn Warmus, 31 AD3d 676
5
CNN. Fatal Attraction Murder Release Carolyn Warmus
6
Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation. Wrongful Conviction Parole Efforts