The tech helping crack decades-old cold cases

Randy Gail Sperino was last seen alive on the evening of 9 November 1993, as she was getting into a pickup truck in Granite City, Illinois.

The 34-year-old's body was found hours later in a field nearby, the victim of blunt force trauma.

The identity of her killer was a mystery. DNA evidence found at the crime scene was tested against standard law enforcement databases, but no matches were found.

For three decades, investigators from the Madison County Sheriff's Office chased leads and interviewed hundreds of people as they attempted to identify the perpetrator.

The case looked like it would remain one of more than 250,000 unsolved homicides in the US.

Then, last year, detectives tried a fresh approach. They sent genetic evidence to Othram, a Houston-based company that uses DNA technology to help identify the perpetrators in cold and current crime cases.

The Madison County detectives had been inspired by investigative genetic genealogy techniques used to identify the Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo, back in 2018. In that case, an investigative team constructed a family tree to help identify the killer.

They were able to do so thanks to DNA data that relatives had provided to commercial databases, similar to consumer ancestry platforms.

Unlike traditional forensic DNA testing, which generally relies on a direct comparison between evidence and a known person, investigative genetic genealogy can identify distant genetic relatives of an unknown individual.

Othram set about applying this technique to track down Sperino's killer. While the killer's own DNA profile wasn't available, profiles submitted by his extended relatives allowed the company to identify a male family member.

"That lead broke the case open," said Captain Tim Lawrence of Madison County Sheriff's Office, which was responsible for investigating the crime.

It was a crucial clue that led the detectives to Albert "Buddy" Zigler, 70, who then confessed to the murder. He was charged in May this year.

Wes Sperino, Gail's son, said at a press conference: "I finally get closure and I finally know who did this."

The technique that led detectives to Zigler is credited with revolutionising how forensic cases are solved.

It has been highly successful in helping solve cases involving unidentified human remains and identifying suspects in longstanding investigations.

Othram claims it has helped solve thousands of cases. The company's chief executive David Mittelman likens investigative genetic genealogy to a GPS system: "The DNA profile is the GPS signal and it says 'you belong here.' But to understand where 'here' is, you need a map."

Public records, obituaries, and census data build that map so Othram's scientists can establish how different family trees connect.

However, Mittelman is quick to point out that DNA technology can only go so far before "a cascade of investigative steps" are needed.

DNA science isn't the only technology that are helping detectives solve cold cases.

One of the challenges facing detectives on major cases investigations like the hunt for Sperino's killer is the sheer amount of evidence they dig up.

Officers investigating Sperino's murder realised AI could help them wade through the mountains of evidence they had accumulated since 1993.

They used a platform called Centerline AI, from Florida software company CentralSquare, to analyse more than 2,000 pages of records and identify evidence for the DNA testing that helped to break the case.

The AI helped them reconstruct timelines and organise witness information. "It's so much easier than having a detective have to read through 2,000 pages," Lawrence says. His team could interact with the AI like a chat bot.

This also helped when it came to interviewing Zigler after they had tracked him down. Detectives were able to ask questions of the AI to help "figure out if Zigler was being truthful", says Lawrence.

But the technology is "only as good as the investigator," says the captain. There comes a point, he says, "where you leave the technology behind and you have to go track people down and talk to them."

Investigative genetic genealogy has its limitations too. Mittelman says: "It can't solve every case. If you have no DNA, you can't really use this technique."

"But this technique is a lot more powerful and a lot more likely to yield identities than having to rely on the chance that you find a match somewhere in a database," he adds.

While firms like Othram only use ancestry platforms where users have provided consent for law enforcement matching, there remain some concerns about the ethical implications of using this data.

"There are significant privacy concerns," says Denise Syndercombe Court, professor of forensic genetics at King's College London. While one person may have opted in to their DNA being used, genetic relatives may not have given consent.

A lack of funding is another hurdle. Mittelman says: "Every law enforcement agency wants to do it. There's just not a lot of funding for it."

Sometimes cases are funded through donations or crowdfunding. Othram operates a website listing cases that members of the public can help fund.

While investigative genetic genealogy has been adopted in countries such as Sweden, Denmark and Australia, it is not yet used in the UK. The Home Office is conducting a study to consider whether it should be adopted in the UK but did not respond to a request for comment.

The UK is already in a strong position, says Syndercombe Court. "We have such an efficient DNA database that if you can get any DNA out of a crime scene, you've got over a 65% chance of putting a name to that person, which is enormously powerful," she says.

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