DNA Solves Cold Cases/Parabon Nanolabs & GED/Match.

DNA evidence crucial in two recently solved Sarasota cold cases
Deputies, police solve murders of Deborah Dalzell, Judith Doherty
December 17, 2018

“Luke Fleming was arrested using brand new DNA technologies: phenotyping and genetic genealogy. DNA found on the scene of the crime was used to create a phenotype or a picture of what the killer could possibly look like. Then genetic genealogy linked that same DNA from the scene to Fleming’s family tree, ultimately connecting him to the murder. The technology was developed just six months prior to that by Parabon NanoLabs.

“It is becoming more and more popular," Dr. Ellen Greytak, director of bioinformatics for Parabon NanoLabs said. "Of course every time we solve a case and someone announces, ‘I’m not sure we could have solved this without these new tools,’ then other agencies start thinking, ‘are there cases that we have that have DNA?’””

FL - Deborah Dalzell, 47, found raped and murdered, Sarasota, 28 March 1999 *Arrest*
 
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Two Texas Killing Fields Jane Does has been identified thanks to Parabon Nanolabs! Their names are going to be released when LE holds a press conference on Monday.

Their respective WS threads:
Identified! - TX - League City, WhtFem Skeletal 35UFTX, 21-29, gapped teeth, Feb'86

Identified! - TX - League City, WhtFem Skeletal 52UFTX, 24-34, "Janet Doe" - Upper Denture, Sep'91

“League City Police detectives say they have now identified Jane and Janet Doe and are actively investigating the circumstances surrounding their deaths. The women's names have not yet been publicly released.

RELATED: Inside look at process of identifying human remains

Earlier, police told ABC13 that the 1986 victim likely has ties to Tennessee. She was about 22-30 years old, 5'5" to 5'8" in height, and she may have died six weeks to six months before the remains were found. She also may have had fair to very fair skin, blue or green eyes, blond/brown hair, and no or few freckles.
The 1991 victim was believed to have ties to Louisiana. Analysis shows she was 24-34 years old, 5' to 5'3" in height, and weighed 100-130 pounds. Police believe she died six weeks before being found. She also appeared to have injuries to her upper spine that may have led to her death.

"Boy, that's the best thing we've had yet," Tim Miller told ABC13 Eyewitness News. "I think what's developed now is something very, very positive. Technology has come a long way. I can't wait until phone calls start coming in."”

2 women found dead in League City 'Killing Fields' identified

TX- League City - Jane (35UFTX) and Janet (52UFTX) Doe, in "killing field", 1986/1991
 
New arrests are coming out so fast now that it's hard to keep up.
It has been a real boost for LE in that they are able to finally solve these old cases with the help of this new advancement in DNA technology.
 
Snohomish County Sheriff's Office arrested 77-year-old Terrence Miller for the 1972 murder of Jody Loomis. Link was made w/ GED Match.

Arrest made in 1972 murder of Mill Creek woman Jody Loomis

Given the following details in the article, sexual assault and what seems to be a stranger killing, this guy probably has more than one victim.
Exactly, which is why this type of work is so important, even if the suspect is old...how many killers/rapist do this just once?
 

Thanks for posting this. Here is another link. Martinez died back in 2014.

Police say they have solved a pair of 41-year-old San Luis Obispo County cold cases by identifying a suspect in two Atascadero murders with the assistance of DNA evidence. The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office announced Wednesday they consider the now-deceased Arthur Rudy Martinez as the killer of 30-year-old Jane Morton Antunez and 28-year-old Patricia Dwyer in the late 1970s.

Antunez was found in the backseat of her car on a dirt road with her throat cut and sexually assaulted in November of 1977. In January of 1978, Dwyer was found stabbed to death and sexually assaulted in her home. Both women were found with their arms bound behind them. At the time, the county sheriff’s office believed both women had been killed by the same person.

DNA evidence spots suspect in 1970s San Luis Obispo County murder cases
 
Thanks for posting this. Here is another link. Martinez died back in 2014.

Police say they have solved a pair of 41-year-old San Luis Obispo County cold cases by identifying a suspect in two Atascadero murders with the assistance of DNA evidence. The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office announced Wednesday they consider the now-deceased Arthur Rudy Martinez as the killer of 30-year-old Jane Morton Antunez and 28-year-old Patricia Dwyer in the late 1970s.

Antunez was found in the backseat of her car on a dirt road with her throat cut and sexually assaulted in November of 1977. In January of 1978, Dwyer was found stabbed to death and sexually assaulted in her home. Both women were found with their arms bound behind them. At the time, the county sheriff’s office believed both women had been killed by the same person.

DNA evidence spots suspect in 1970s San Luis Obispo County murder cases
This bit intrigued me!
How cancer medical treatment solved a cold case | IOL News
"According to the Tribune, investigators tracked down a girlfriend who had lived with Martinez when he was on the lam before 2014 in the Fresno area. Remarkably, the woman went into her medicine cabinet and pulled out an old razor Martinez had used.


That razor was tested, and came back as a DNA match to the material taken from the crime scene."
rbbm.
 
Is it just me or does the fact that these women were never even report missing make everyone sad?
It really does make you think... all these other Jane Doe's we are all guilty of obsessing over finding their identities, may not be any of the missing people we compare to them. That's incredibly heartbreaking because when you look at HOW MANY unidentified bodies there are, vs how many were actually successfully identified... it's insane.
 
Body found in Yost Park identified through forensic genealogy

The Snohomish County Medical Examiner has identified the body found last fall in Yost Park as that of 58-year-old Timothy D. Conrad of Snohomish County. The medical examiner had previously determined suicide as the cause of death.

“He was identified by matching his DNA with known databases, which revealed familial connections,” said Edmonds Police spokesperson Sgt. Shane Hawley. “Through these we were able to identify and work with family members for identification.”

Conrad’s body was found last Nov. 10 by a couple out for a walk in Yost Park. He had a campsite in the park and had apparently been living there for some time.

According to Hawley, he appeared to have been deceased for two to four weeks prior to being discovered.

https://myedmondsnews.com/2019/04/body-found-in-yost-park-identified-through-forensic-genealogy/

WA - WA-Snohomish County-Male-New drawing, DNA sleuthing give hope in Edmonds cold case
 
APR 30, 2019
Oregon man arrested in 25-year-old Vancouver homicide
A 57-year-old Oregon man faces murder allegations in the death of a Vancouver woman strangled in her bed 25 years ago.

Audrey Hoellein, 26, was found strangled at the Family Tree Apartments on the 8000 block of East Fourth Plain Boulevard on July 17, 1994, according The Columbian archives. She was also known as Audrey Frasier.

Richard Eugene Knapp, 57, of Fairview, Ore., was linked to the crime based on DNA testing and arrested in Oregon on suspicion of first- and second-degree murder with sexual motivation, according to court records filed Monday in Clark County Superior Court. He was booked into Clark County Jail on Tuesday.

[...]

Last year, Vancouver Police came in contact with Parabond Nanolabs at a conference, Detective Neil Martin said at the press conference. After submitting DNA obtained from the crime scene in June, the company delivered a phenotype and snapshot report, which included a digital composite of the suspect’s appearance both at the time of the murder and now.

The company also provided a genealogy report in October after a member of Knapp’s family submitted DNA, Goudschaal said. The report matched the DNA to Knapp.

[...]
 
Ellen Greytak: New DNA Techniques Will Keeping Cases From Going Cold | Inverse
New DNA Techniques Will Keep Cases From Going Cold
If there's DNA — even if it's from 50 years ago — it still ties that perpetrator back to that crime scene.
By Ellen Greytak, Director of Bioinformatics at Parabon NanoLabs on May 3, 2019

"Government-sponsored DNA databases, such as CODIS, have been extraordinarily effective for matching crime scene DNA to previous offenders, but in the cases we work on at Parabon, the perpetrators have managed to avoid ever having their DNA collected by law enforcement."

"That crime scene DNA profile has been sitting in a database for decades waiting for a match, but the perpetrator has never been available for comparison. Sometimes that’s because the perpetrator has died, while others have simply managed to live under the radar. They’ve been able to go on living their lives while their victims had their lives taken away."
"When detectives come to us with crime scene DNA, they’ve already uploaded the DNA to a database and not gotten a hit, and they’ve already excluded all the obvious suspects. These cases often have no witnesses, so the only information detectives have about the perpetrator is whether they are male or female, which is one of the only things that can be determined from a traditional DNA profile. Beyond that, it could be anyone."
 
Over four decades after a young couple was discovered dead in their Montana home, authorities revealed Monday they finally tracked down their killer with the help of a genealogy database.

The Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office announced that Linda and Clifford Bernhardt, both 24, were killed at their Billings-area home in 1973 by a former co-worker of Linda's...

"Today we can tell you that based on the evidence collected on the scene, which includes biological evidence and all the reasonable inferences taken from this evidence, we have determined that Cecil Stan Caldwell, a former coworker of Linda Bernhardt at Ryan's Inc. is the person responsible for the deaths of Linda and Clifford Bernhardt," Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder told reporters. Caldwell died in 2003.



Cold case killings of Montana couple solved after 45 years using DNA evidence

ETA MT - MT - Linda & Clifford Bernhardt, both 24, Yellowstone County, Nov 1973
 
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The cases involved the 1989 rape of a 52-year-old woman and the 1994 murder of Le Bich-Thuy, a French-born 42-year-old research biologist who was also raped, Montgomery County Police said last week. Both had been followed home from a Rockville train station.

Police said the person who committed the crimes was Kenneth Day -- but Day has been dead for two years. He died in West Virginia when he was 52 and his obituary said his survivors included a daughter and two grandchildren.


DNA, forensic genealogy link man who died in 2017 to 2 cold case rapes, killing
 
Authorities in Washington state finally cracked a 51-year-old murder of a woman only to discover the suspect, a former sheriff's deputy, died three days before they were granted an arrest warrant.

The Spokane County Sheriff's Office revealed in a Facebook post this Monday that detectives were planning to arrest 85-year-old Duke Pierson in Covington County, Alabama in connection to the murder of Dorothy Fielding in 1967.
Two other deaths in the area around the same time caught the attention of police, who believed they might have been connected.
One was the case 47-year-old Ruby Lampson, who was reported missing on June 6, 1967.
The second was the reported suicide of 33-year-old Sandra Pierson, Duke Pierson’s wife at the time.


Washington cold case solved 51 years later only for cops to discover suspect died last week; may be involved in 2 other killings
 
Authorities in Washington state finally cracked a 51-year-old murder of a woman only to discover the suspect, a former sheriff's deputy, died three days before they were granted an arrest warrant.

The Spokane County Sheriff's Office revealed in a Facebook post this Monday that detectives were planning to arrest 85-year-old Duke Pierson in Covington County, Alabama in connection to the murder of Dorothy Fielding in 1967.
Two other deaths in the area around the same time caught the attention of police, who believed they might have been connected.
One was the case 47-year-old Ruby Lampson, who was reported missing on June 6, 1967.
The second was the reported suicide of 33-year-old Sandra Pierson, Duke Pierson’s wife at the time.


Washington cold case solved 51 years later only for cops to discover suspect died last week; may be involved in 2 other killings

Fascinating story—but did I overlook what DNA had to do with it?
 
Fascinating story—but did I overlook what DNA had to do with it?

You may be right. It could have been solved from good police work and because it was such an old case, I made a wrong assumption about DNA from this in the same article. Here is another link that does not mention DNA either.

"With these similarities, Detective Keyser began reviewing all three cold cases and worked to obtain additional information," police said. "This led to Friday’s arrest warrant for Pierson charging him with the murder of Fielding."

https://www.andalusiastarnews.com/2019/01/31/local-man-charged-in-1967-cold-case/
 

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