It’s a trifle exotic; but in retrospect is seems perfectly sensible to at least take a stab at genetic fingerprinting for any crime that has a biological victim and some remains in adequate condition to get some DNA from.
Also, thanks to its novelty, it wouldn’t be entirely surprising if this guy got the benefit of better-than-usual DNA testing; If it’s something common and mature enough to go off to the crime lab that’s a relatively high-throughput environment that commonly answers(in org chart or operational terms) to the same team as the police and the DA; but if it’s something a little too exotic for that they probably farmed it out to either an academic lab(plenty of land grant schools or ones with agricultural extension programs that know about plants specifically, a well as plenty more that know about DNA sequencing and fingerprinting in general) or a private sector sequencing shop.
