https://www.news.com.au/national/ns...k/news-story/b94924c1ee2d604458408359ea076b7d
n a bid to narrow the pool of potential victims, NSW Police and Pathology have turned to DNA phenotyping - a scarcely used technique that can determine a person’s ancestry, hair and eye colour from a DNA profile.
Phenotyping has only been used in 10 forensic cases in NSW.
Forensic Evidence & Technical Services Command Dr Jennifer Raymond said phenotyping as a “niche technique” that is used as a last resort after other DNA testing.
That includes comparing DNA profiles against databases, like the National Criminal Investigation DNA Database
“Where we go through all our current methods that are available to us and if we still don’t have a result there, that’s when we apply these novel techniques,” she said.
In this case, the testing, which can take up to five days after a profile is extracted from bones, suggested the victim was of Asian descent with brown eyes and black hair.
The description has allowed police to come up with a list of potential victims from the long-term missing person list in NSW.
Supt Doherty said the Missing Persons Registry came up with a list of 565 cases and that was eventually narrowed down to 20 or 30 missing men.
Police are speaking with the families of those people in the hope of obtaining DNA samples to compare against the Royal National Park victim.
“We are hopeful we can get a match, some DNA from the family but if we don’t we are back to square one,” Supt Doherty said.
“Then we have to look at someone who hasn’t been reported missing yet or we may have to go overseas to a broader database.”
He appealed for anyone with a missing loved one who might fit the criteria but who hadn’t been reported missing to contact police.
I think they've added to the article ?