Identifying assailants via FGG
As per their regular process, DNA Labs promptly returned the sample results to the contracting agency who uploaded them into CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), the FBI-operated national DNA database for criminal justice. When there are no CODIS hits, as in this case, DNA Labs turns to the frontier of forensics: Forensic Genetic Genealogy, or FGG. FGG applies the same technology platforms like 23andme, Family Tree and GEDmatch to find genetic family relationships in criminal casework. "Essentially, we are building out these big family trees and working our way down to try to find that person of interest," Oefelein says.
“FGG analysis involves analysis of large numbers of SNPs or even whole genomes for comparison with genealogy databases, but recently Verogen launched a dedicated DNA profiling kit for FGG: the ForenSeq® Kintelligence Kit, our tool from the QIAGEN–Verogen partnership portfolio.
While commercial kits look at as many as 300,000 SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), the Kintelligence targets 10,230 SNPs which are the most useful markers for kinship. Because they are homing in on a smaller area, we need significantly less DNA, which means that samples that were previously not suitable for genealogy are now ideal for this type of analysis," Oefelein says.
A cold case out of Oregon involving a male individual who had gone missing after a fishing trip in 1998 would be the first case solved using Kintelligence.
The case was re-opened in 2020, when Nici Vance Ph.D., a Forensic Anthropologist from Oregon State, sent a single tooth to the DNA Labs for analysis. Her office had received a federal grant to address the backlog of unidentified human remains in the state. "They were very well versed in extracting degraded bone and decomposed tissue samples and we liked the fact that they had developed some robust methodologies," Vance says.
In the GEDmatch analysis, DNA Labs hit upon the family members of a man, Kenneth Heasley. He drowned in 1998 along with his friend, Gary Gelsinger when their boat capsized. Both their remains washed ashore soon after, but only Gelsinger had an ID on him. It took nearly a quarter-century before forensic technology advanced enough to identify Heasleys remains.