HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla — A cold case from 1985 has finally been cracked. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office pieced together the identity of a man who died decades ago using forensic genetic genealogy.
"I think one unidentified individual is too many," Harrison Cowan, Medical Examiner Manager of Operations, explained.
However, inside the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner office, there are 50 unidentified remains dating back to the 1970s.
Forensic professionals are elbows deep as they use fingerprints, dental x-rays, and facial reconstruction to help crack some of the cases gone cold.
"If none of those really hit any sort of successes, then unfortunately, they just sit there," Blake Patel, Cold Case Investigations Supervisor, said.
Forensic genetic genealogy is sparking hope for investigators.
They told us when you submit your DNA profile to websites like Ancestry or 23andMe and then upload it to either of the two major databases, GEDmatch or Family Tree DNA, they can then use that data to try and piece together a family tree.
"With this genetic genealogy we can pinpoint through distant relatives and build up family trees to then specify we know that this person belongs to this family line, and then specifically pointing out where in this family line this person may belong," Patel explained.
Patel said this technology is just another tool in their box they hope will help put a dent in the dozens of unsolved cases.
"If we didn't have this technology our cases could be unidentified indefinitely," Cowan explained.
Patel added you can decide what information you want investigators to have access to from your DNA profile, but said it helps them bring closure to families and even solve violent crimes.
"It's extremely fulfilling just to know that all this effort and training and resources that we've put into it, is providing answers to these family members that may have had this ambiguous grief for so many years, not knowing what has happened to their loved one. It also just shows so much respect to these remains. They're not just people sitting in a morgue. They were living human beings," Patel said.
