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!
How Tooth Isotopes Help Bring Home Unidentified Soldiers (The University of Utah – 11/10/2022)
One of the keys to bringing home unidentified military remains, including POW/MIAs and the more than 81,500 soldiers unaccounted for in conflicts dating back to World War II, is using science to determine where home might be. University of Utah scientists are engaged in an effort, in support of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, to develop methods that can trace the geographic origin of remains, particularly teeth.
Why teeth? Because everyone’s body, including their teeth, contains a record of where they’ve lived and traveled in the form of various stable isotopes of common elements. Through the Forensic Identification of our Nation’s Deceased with Element Mapping, or FIND-EM, project, Gabriel Bowen, professor of geology and geophysics, and colleagues are building a nationwide isotope map to help narrow down the geographic origin of unidentified remains.
Genetic Genealogist Helps Solve a Case That Had “A Gnat’s Eyebrow of DNA” Left from the Crime Scene (CBS News – 11/11/2022)
Gabriella Vargas is a self-proclaimed “pink-haired, tattooed mom from California who enjoys woodworking and gardening.” She also happens to be one of the most talented investigative genetic genealogists in the world, according to the investigators she worked with. When the 34-year-old Roxanne Wood cold murder case came across her desk in April 2021, “it was deemed unsolvable prior to my involvement,” Vargas said.
Vargas was confident she could solve this cold case – and fast – finally bringing justice for Roxanne Wood’s family. “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant takes viewers inside the haunting case in “The ‘Unsolvable’ Murder of Roxanne Wood.”
Baby Holly Case: Genetic Genealogist Who Helped ID Murdered Texas Couple Explains How She Cracked the Case (FOX News – 11/12/2022)
In 1980, a young couple moved from Florida to Texas with their infant daughter, Holly Marie, before they vanished.
The last time family and friends of Harold “Dean” Clouse Jr., 21, and Tina Gail Linn Clouse, 17, had heard from the couple was October 1980, when Tina sent a letter to Dean’s mother, Donna Casasanta, with photos of Holly standing upright and pushing her walker.
On Jan. 12, 1981, a man walking in the woods with his German Shepherd came across the badly decomposed remains of two people along Wallisville Road, on the outskirts of Houston, some 265 miles from the Clouses’ last known address in Lewisville. Investigators were unable to identify the two victims — a man who had been beaten to death and a woman who had been strangled. Nearly 40 years later, in October 2021, a team of genetic genealogists with Identifinders International, LLC, was able to identify the deceased as Dean and Tina Clouse.
Body With Gunshot Found in Search for Tulsa Massacre Victims (AP News – 11/12/2022)
West Virginia State Police Receive $285K for Forensic Lab (U.S. News & World Report – 11/14/2022)
West Virginia State Police are receiving more than $285,000 to improve and advance the agency’s Forensic Lab through education and training.
The funds from the Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grants Program are provided by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs and Bureau of Justice Assistance. The grant is administered by the Justice and Community Services Section of the West Virginia Division of Administrative Services.
Is Environmental DNA the Future of Forensic Testing? (Forensic – 11/14/2022)
Can plants solve crimes? It’s been known for a long time that botanical evidence has forensic value. Back in the 1930s, Edmond Locard, the “father of forensics,” reported how a single seed of a rare species of dandelion caught up on the jacket of a murder suspect placed him at the scene of the crime. Locard had observed the plant growing next to the body. This sort of plant trace evidence is more valuable than ever today in forensic investigations and can include microscopic materials from plant seeds, pollen, spores, and their DNA.
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