Jul 22 2022

This Week in Forensic Science

No one has hours to scour the papers to keep up with the latest news, so we’ve curated the top news stories in the field of Forensic Science for this week. Here’s what you need to know to get out the door!

Identity of Mystery Fossils Found in Chinese Cave Revealed by DNA Analysis (CNN – 7/14/2022)

- A mystery surrounding human fossils found in a cave in China has been solved by DNA sequencing, according to a new study, and it sheds light on the ancestry of the very first Americans.
  In 1989, a thigh bone and part of a skull were found in a cave in the Chinese province of Yunnan in the southwest area of the country. Radiocarbon dating conducted in 2008 on the sediments where the fossils were found indicated they were around 14,000 years old — which would mean they were from a period of time when Homo sapiens (modern humans) had migrated to many parts of the world. However, primitive features of the bones niggled scientists, who questioned what species of human the fossils belonged to.

How Genealogy Helped Solve a 25-Year-Old Cold Case of an Infant’s Death (UpNorthLive – 7/14/2022)

New details are available on how investigators cracked a 25-year-old case where the remains of an unidentified infant were found inside of a vault toilet at a campground.
Since 1997, the case of “Baby Garnet” has been reopened more times than the Mackinac County Sheriff can remember.

Improving the Mental Health and Well-Being of Forensic Examiners (Forensic – 7/15/2022)

Law enforcement takes a toll on officers’ mental health. When you spend a few decades of your life handling one crisis after another, it’s no surprise that the cumulative impact can be damaging to one’s state of mind. However, there’s a subset of law enforcement officers – the investigators and forensic examiners who dive deep into evidence – for whom mental well-being can be even harder to maintain.
In the world of examiners, evidence of violent crimes, or crimes against children, offer visceral and painful images and messages that can be very hard to shake if we don’t take care of our mental health on an ongoing basis. (And that’s not to exclude the frontline officers, who have to face the suffering of victims every day.)

Will County Coroner’s Office Teams With Othram to Identify 1997 Jane Doe Found Among Remnants of Local Landmark (WJOL 1340 – 7/15/2022)

In 1995, the building’s remnants were excavated and relocated to a second location in Rockdale. It was there that the bones would later be discovered, intermingled with brick, stone, and other building material. Following the discovery of the bones, pathologists determined that they had been disturbed twice postmortem prior to their discovery, indicating that they were present at the original factory location.
Only partial skeletal remains were recovered, yet pathologists were still able to estimate a few things about the unknown woman. She was determined to be between the ages of 15 and 24 years old, and to have stood between 5’ and 5’10 tall. No conclusive determinations were made about the woman’s weight, hair color, or eye color. The woman’s cause of death could also not be determined, although investigators believe that she died sometime after 1986 but prior to the Rust Craft building’s demolition.
Despite exhaustive efforts, investigators were unable to develop a facial image or take further steps to establish the woman’s identity. With few leads for investigators to pursue, the case eventually went cold. In 2022, the Will County Coroner’s Office partnered with Othram with the goal of using advanced forensic DNA testing to identify the woman or a close relative.

Investigators Give ‘Princess Doe’ Back Her Name on 15th Anniversary (Forensic – 7/15/2022)

- On July 15, 1982, a maintenance worker at the Cedar Ridge Cemetery in Blairstown, New Jersey came upon a body. Unlike the other residents of the cemetery, this corpse did not belong here. Blairstown is a small, rural village in the northwest region of New Jersey near the Pennsylvania border. What the Blairstown Police Department now had on their hands was an unidentified female victim that had been exposed to the elements for several days. The decedent was a female aged between 14 to 18, wearing a red T-shirt and peasant skirt. Any visual identity of the victim would remain impossible since her cause of death was blunt force trauma to the face and head.
  Lt. Eric Kranz, the original lead investigator of the Blairstown PD, now retired, had few if any leads to the case that shocked this small, quiet rural town. He utilized every tool, including the media, to gain national attention on the decedent he named “Princess Doe.” The extensive media coverage and an HBO documentary “MISSING” became the impetus for then FBI Director William H. Webster to make Princess Doe the very first unidentified decedent entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC).
  Continued coverage of the Princess Doe case in the media, including “America’s Most Wanted,” and the “Untold Story of Princess Doe” by Christie Leigh Napurano brought in multiple leads, but nothing with sufficient evidence to identify her or her assailant. That is, until 2022.

DNA Leads Investigators to Charge Suspect with Killing Lindy Sue Biechler 46 Years Ago (Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office – 7/18/2022)

- The Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office and the Manor Township Police Department announce the arrest of a suspect in the 1975 murder of 19-year-old Lindy Sue Biechler in Manor Township. Lancaster County Detective Christopher Erb and Manor Township Police Department Detective Sergeant Tricia Mazur filed criminal homicide charges against 68-year-old David Sinopoli of the 300 block of Faulkner Drive, Lancaster, regarding Biechler’s murder. Sinopoli was arrested at his home on July 17 around 7:00 a.m. without incident. He was arraigned and remanded to Lancaster County Prison without bail. In October 2021, they found one—the M-Vac wet-vacuuming system.

Meeting the Forensic Challenges of Subadult Skeletons (Forensic – 7/18/2022)

- Whether it be the skeleton of a child found in the woods by police, the commingled skeletal remains of a family lost in a natural disaster, or bones recovered from a mass grave by human rights investigators, the forensic problem remains the same: How to identify the age, sex, and “population affinity” of bones from an infant, child, or adolescent?
  Answering that question, according to specialists in forensic science and anthropology, is difficult because identifications of what are known as “subadults” are based on traditional forensic methods that lack the underlying data needed to accurately read markers of age, sex, and population affinity in skeletal remains. Accurate identification is important because more than 460,000 children are reported missing in the United States each year. Although the overwhelming majority are found or return home on their own, about 1 in 10,000 is not found alive, according to organizations focused on missing children.

Wyoming Mother Arrested in Cold Case Death of Michigan Baby (Forensic – 7/18/2022)

- A Wyoming woman has been arrested and is awaiting extradition to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to face arraignment in the death 25 years ago of a baby found discarded in the waste pit of an outhouse, authorities said Wednesday.
  Investigators traveled to Wyoming on Tuesday to interview the 58-year-old woman, who confirmed she was the child’s mother, Mackinac County Sheriff Edward M. Wilk said in a statement.
  The woman gave investigators information “that provided probable cause to arrest her on the charge of homicide-open murder,” Wilk said.
  The baby girl was found in the waste pit of a Garnet Lake campground outhouse in Hudson Township and was dubbed “Baby Garnet.”
  The woman formerly resided in the Garnet Lake area, Wilk said.

DNA Links Man to 3 Rapes, Murders over 15 Years (Forensic – 7/20/2022)

- Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced that his office has charged a 76-year-old man living in Texas with four murders, including the slaying of a teenage girl, dating back to 1980.
  “I want to commend the tenacious and dedicated work of those who helped solve these horrific crimes,” Gascón said. “I cannot imagine the pain that these families have endured. Their loss is immeasurable. We hope that together we can bring justice to the families who have endured so much and have waited years for this moment.”
  Billy Ray Richardson was charged with four counts of murder with the special circumstance allegations of multiple murders, murder during the commission of a rape and murder during the commission of a burglary.

Cold Case Genealogy Unit ID’s Suspect in 1990 Murder of Petty Officer (Forensic – 7/20/2022)

- San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan said a man has been arrested in connection with the 1990 murder of Larry Joe Breen, 32, in Point Loma. San Diego police, the FBI and the Knox County, Tenn. Sheriff’s Office took Brian Scott Koehl, 51, into custody in Knoxville, on July 13, 2022, after a warrant was issued for his arrest. Koehl will be extradited to San Diego where he has been charged with murder.
  The victim, a petty officer and cook in the U.S. Navy stationed aboard the USS Fox CG-33, was found on May 25, 1990, in the backyard of a home at the corner of Nimitz Boulevard and Locust Street. The victim had recently rented the home and was preparing to move in. He was slumped against a fence in the backyard and had been stabbed several times in the neck. His car was missing and was later found abandoned over a mile from the crime scene. Despite a thorough investigation by both the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the San Diego Police Department at the time, the murder went unsolved.
  Recently, these agencies reexamined the case, and, with the assistance of the District Attorney’s Office Cold Homicide and Research Genealogy Effort (CHARGE), an investigative lead was developed, which led to the current criminal charge against Koehl and his arrest.

MS Medical Examiner’s Office, Biloxi PD, and Harrison County Coroner’s Office Team with Othram to Identify 2019 Jane Doe (DNASolves – 7/20/2022)

- - In September 2019, human remains were found on the roof of a building in downtown Biloxi, Mississippi, near the 800 block of Barthes Street. The building was abandoned and had been unoccupied for at least 15 years. There were no clues to the unknown person’s identity and investigators could not find a missing person record that matched what they knew about the remains. In March 2021, the case was entered into NamUs as #UP78458.
    In August 2021, the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office, Biloxi Police Department, and Harrison County Coroner’s Office teamed with Othram to use Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing to help generate new leads that might identify the unknown man or his next of kin. Othram built a genealogical profile from the skeletal remains sent by the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office. Carla Davis, Mississippi native and genealogist, performed the genealogical research.

Genealogy Helps Identify Mansfield Murder Victim (Forensic – 7/20/2022)

- The Hernando County Sheriff’s Office has identified one of the two remaining unidentified victims in the Mansfield investigation from 1981. In March and April of 1981, four sets of human remains were recovered from the Mansfield property located in Hernando County. Two of the victims were immediately identified. The other two victims remained unidentified until now, where one of the victims has recently been positively identified. HCSO investigators have recently sought the services of the University of North Texas and
  Parabon Nano Labs (Parabon), a DNA technology company in Virginia. Parabon specializes in DNA phenotyping: the process of predicting physical appearance and ancestry from
  unidentified DNA evidence. The HCSO worked with the University of North Texas and Parabon for this investigation. Law enforcement agencies use the company’s Snapshot DNA Phenotyping Service (Snapshot) to narrow the suspect/victim list and generate leads in criminal investigations. DNA evidence from the unidentified victims’ were submitted to Parabon to generate actionable leads for this cold case.

DNA Doe Project and Gregg County Sheriff’s Office Identify Jane Doe from 2002 (DNA Doe Project – 7/20/2022)

- Twenty years after her partial skeletal remains were located by construction workers off Highway 135 in Gregg County, Texas, the Gregg County Sheriff’s Office and the DNA Doe Project have determined that her name was Pamela Darlene Young.
  Pamela Young of Arlington, Texas, died approximately two years before her partial skeleton was found, and the Tarrant County Medical Examiner determined she had an unrepaired cleft palate. Despite this clue to her identity, investigators soon ran out of leads to follow and the case went cold.
  Early in 2020, Lieutenant Eddie Hope reached out to the DNA Doe Project to begin the process to use investigative genetic genealogy to identify Ms Young, who was known as Gregg County Jane Doe 2002. A DNA profile was developed from a molar and was uploaded to GEDmatch Pro, a database that allows law enforcement to compare DNA profiles of Jane and John Doe unidentified remains to those of people who have uploaded their profiles to the public side of the database at GEDmatch.com. The genealogy in this case was extremely complex, and it took almost two years for the experienced volunteers from the DNA Doe Project to narrow down the family tree to identify Pamela Young. A DNA sample from her daughter confirmed the identification.
  After a case review was conducted by another team from the DNA Doe Project, team members working on Gregg County Jane Doe were able to use the mitochondrial DNA haplogroup to significantly narrow their focus and ultimately identify Ms Young. “There was a lot of endogamy in the family, which made the case much more difficult,” said Kevin Lord, team co-leader.