There are some case that really grip the community, that undercut the sense of safety and security, and that make people lose their faith in humanity. The murder of Sarah Yarborough was such a case.  Sarah was just 16 years old when she was sexually assaulted and murdered in one of the places she should have felt the safest – the grounds of her high school. Not only that, but the crime happened in broad daylight, and there were witnesses who saw her killer.  It was impossible that he was not apprehended – but he wasn’t.  Despite the groundbreaking use of YDNA to identify the killer’s possible surname, the case remained unsolved for years.   When IGG finally provided answers, revealing at long last the name of the man who killed Sarah Yarborough, the Yarborough family and the community of Federal Way, WA breathed a sigh of relief.

n February 1993, a man walking along Trinidad Head; a rocky promontory beach area near the town of Trinidad in Humboldt County, California, made a shocking discovery. He found what he believed to be a piece of human skull. He contacted authorities who verified his hunch. DNA from the skull fragment would be entered into various databases in an effort to learn the identify of the donor with no luck. Years later, the skull fragment would be connected to another case through DNA.

In November, 1987, the Humboldt County Sheriff's dept received an  package in the mail from an anonymous sender. It contained human skeletal remains and an accompanying letter provided directions  to more human remains near Ammon Ridge Road in Humboldt County. Investigators went to the location, and found more human remains. An examination of teeth found with the remains confirmed that they belonged to 48 year old Kay Adams Medin. She had been reported missing from her Trinity County home by her husband in August 1987. The location in Humboldt County where her remains were found is over 100 miles away from her home. 

Eventually, Othram Labs did DNA work on the skull fragment found in 1993 at Trinidad Head, and their work led them to ID the skull fragment as belonging to Kay Adams Medin. That skull fragment was found 45 miles from Kay's home. It remains a mystery as to how the skull fragment wound up so far away from the rest of Kay's remains.

64 year old Velma Nesset set out on April 19^th, 1982, at 4:30 a.m. to walk to her job as a cleaning lady at the Permian Mall in Odessa, TX.  When she did not show up for work, people looked for her, and then called the police. Velma’s partially undressed body was found in a drainage culvert under the mall parking lot.  She had been stabbed, bludgeoned and raped.  The logical suspect, a mentally challenged man who worked at the mall, was tried for her murder. But after that, her case went cold.  A Texas Ranger reinvestigation in the mid 2000s isolated a male DNA profile, but the offender was not in CODIS.  When he was finally named through IGG, police tracked the man down, and he had quite a story to tell them.  According to him, he did not act alone.