but when you don t know who it is it could be anybody. uh-huh. it was all so personal. the attacker had been in their home. possibly stalked them. maybe brittani wasn t even his intended target? maybe it was one of the other sisters. no one could say for sure. but the family had to put their fears aside when caring for brittani, who now needed all of their help. it s really taking your baby and raising her all over again. so you re raising a child that you already raised. that, i think, was the hardest part, watching mom have to go through that again. you just you wanted to cry for them. five months after the attack, her condition had stabilized to the point brittani could be released from the hospital. but she was far from healed. she didn t realize why she couldn t walk, why she couldn t eat, why she had to learn all these things over again. as helpless as a child, which meant if the attacker
how does it work, in laymen s terms? how can you take dna and make a sketch? well, you focus on those traits that are passed down from parent to child. so if you think about, when you say, oh, you have your mother s eyes. well, you have your mother s eyes because you have your mother s dna. and we can figure out, well, this piece of dna we see in blue-eyed people, but not in brown eyed people. so all your features are connected to your dna. absolutely. parabon started off by helping the u. s. military create dna profiles from the remains of insurgent bombmakers during the iraq war. it wasn t long before cold case detectives were sending them e-mails looking for help, as well. these investigations that we re working on, sometimes they ve been cold for decades. in these cold cases, they re cold because there are no leads. and in a lot of cases that s because there s no witness description, and we re able to give them that just with the dna. from a single dna sample, par
once again it wasn t john doe. somewhat relieved it wasn t him? i was. but if it was him and he was a law enforcement officer, good, we got him. about how many men would you say you got your hopes up for that this could be the one? i think those four were the most significant. but many more were tested. a suspect was developed and then the dna profile wouldn t match. and another suspect developed and no match. every time it seemed like over and over, suspect by suspect they were excluded. we tested and tested and tested and no matches. what s that like up and down, up and town? you get your hopes up and it s not a match? oh, it s really hard and we have to remind each other, all time, okay, how do we move forward? what is it that we re missing.
cases that bore some similarity to brittani s attack. they found one that was eerily similar. oh my gosh, the same part of town. it was at her own home. it was a shovel. they knew her. i thought how could it not be? but his dna didn t match, either. he wasn t john doe. the old school approach of working tips, leads and hunches wasn t paying off. so she went over the case file and came across a report about brittani s cell phone. in 2008, police didn t have the technology to break into the phone without erasing the data. so when it was first processed, there were only so many tools to get in it. brittani couldn t remember her pin. so years later, i took it down to the forensics laboratory for computers. you tried it again? tried it again. there was new advancement in technology? yes. this time technicians were
everything was it right there for you name, for number, i figured out who he was so at the time he had gone t high school with britney so they did an online searc and easily found brittany s ol high school friend to her surprise, he was police officer did that rattle you a littl bit? of course it did. what a better way to just no get caught and covered up she contacted the officer broke the news to him that h was a person of interest in th brittani marcell case. she also collected a sample of his dna. a few weeks later, the results came back. they were negative once again, it wasn t john doe somewhat relieved that it wasn t him was i relieved? i was. if it was him, and he was a la enforcement officer, than good we got him about how many man do you say that you got your hopes up for, that this could be the one? i think those four where th most significant