To solve three cold cases, this small county got a DNA crash course
14 minutes to read
By: Virginia Hughes
Forensic genealogy helped nab the Golden State Killer in 2018. Now investigators across the country are using it to revisit hundreds of unsolved crimes. In October 2016, the remains of three murder victims, dead for three decades, were laid to rest in Newton County, a rural corner of Indiana.
Two were young men, likely teenagers, the victims of a serial killer in 1983. The third was a woman found dead in 1988 on the bank of a creek. She had been shot in the head, covered with car tires and lit on fire.
A nearly 30-year-old missing persons case involving a central Idaho girl who never arrived home after leaving a local bowling alley has been featured in a television program about nationally unsolved cases.
Posted By Thadeus Greenson@ThadeusGreenson on Sun, Apr 11, 2021 at 8:18 AM click to enlarge Submitted David Josiah Lawson
David Josiah Lawson s mother is intent on both making sure Humboldt County never forgets his name and giving back to the community that has embraced her, echoing her calls for justice.
Lawson, a 19-year-old Humboldt State University sophomore, was fatally stabbed at an off-campus party April 15, 2017, in a case that remains unsolved with charges dismissed against its only named suspect. To mark the fourth anniversary of her son s death, Charmaine Lawson has planned a day of events in the Arcata Plaza on Saturday, April 17.
Arrest made in 2004 sexual assault case thanks to grant given to Pima Co. Sheriffâs Dept.
Pima County sexual assault crime kits By Karly Tinsley | February 26, 2021 at 10:12 PM MST - Updated February 26 at 10:13 PM
TUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD News 13) - Victims of sexual assault may be closer to closure and justice thanks to a new grant given to the Pima County Sheriffâs Department.
SAKI, or Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, provided the department with $2 million in order to test their backlog of sexual assault kits.
Some of the kits dated back to the 1980s.
The sheriffâs department had 354 untested sexual assault kits to start. They were able to send all of them to be tested in a group, and out of those 206 DNA profiles were developed that were entered into CODIS, or the Combined DNA Index System.
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I write of the missing often. And just like the person who started a Reddit thread three years ago, this one has been sticking with me and keeps popping in my head. She was someone s child and someone has to be missing her. She deserves to have her name back.
Just as the sun rose on the morning of May 20, 1996, an unidentified female was found in Highland Park, Michigan. She was fatally shot in the throat in an alley behind 387 Cortland Street.
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Those that lived in the area told Highland Park Police they had heard a gunshot just hours before the grim discovery. Investigators sought tips from the public but to date, no witnesses or relatives of Highland Park Jane Doe have ever come forward.