In one of the oldest cases covered by DNA: ID, in 1970, 16 year old Pam Conyers vanished after an evening trip to the Harundale Mall in Ann Arundel County, MD.  There was no question that Pam had run away, and police immediately began a search for the teen.  Two days after she left the mall with her purchase, her car was found hidden in brush in a wooded median of a new highway that was being constructed, not far from her home.  Soon, her body was found nearby.  Pam had been raped and murdered, and dumped in the woods not far from the construction site.  Clues discovered at her autopsy and in her car led police to theorize that there were two perpetrators.  Whoever they were, they eluded investigators for decades.  Finally, when the Parabon genealogist used IGG, she was able to identify a suspect.  And then the FBI stepped in an identified another. 

In 2003, human skeletal remains were found in a very remote area of Mt. Hood, Oregon.  Not much was determined about the person the scant bones belonged to, other than she was a female.  The Hood River County Sheriff’s Office attempted to identify the remains by scouring the many missing person’s cases in the area, but was unable to give a name to the deceased.  In 2020, a Parabon phenotype analysis predicted that the Jane Doe had brown hair, fair skin, and green or hazel eyes.  The Parabon genealogist used IGG to identify the bones as belonging to Tisha Ann Dyer.  Tisha was last known to be living in Portland, and was last in contact with her family in 2002.  What happened to Tisha, and how did she end up on Mt. Hood? After two decades, Tisha finally has her name back and this is her story. 

DNA: ID is back after summer hiatus with a doozy of a case!  On Thursday, November 21^st, 1985, Roger Dean was seen by neighbors drinking his morning coffee in his garage.  The next thing they knew, Roger way lying in the cul de sac, shot to death.  His hysterical wife told a terrifying tale of a masked gunman, restraints, demands, a fight, gunshots.  After the dust settled, Roger’s wife and daughter ended up in police crosshairs.  They would be re-traumatized five years later when the killer resurfaced, trying to extort money from the grieving widow.  Even though witnesses had seen the gunman, and the FBI chased the extortionist all over Denver, he eluded authorities, and the case went cold.  But, the gunman had made a crucial mistake, leaving behind evidence that decades later would be used by a savvy law enforcement genealogist to identify him at long last.