DNA analysis company hired to help crack 4 of Shasta County’s unsolved homicides

One of the unidentified homicide victims was a man killed in Lakehead in 2003, his body found in a shallow grave near a pair of old metal handcuffs that were on the ground.

Three other unsolved homicides in Shasta County were reported in 1979, 1990 and 2013. Those people and the perpetrators also remain unknown.

The Shasta County Coroner’s Office hopes the identities of victims in these four homicides will be solved through its recent partnership with a private company that specializes in investigative genetic genealogy — the study of human DNA to sleuth out information that helps solve crimes.

“We partner with law enforcement to be able to solve cases that otherwise would be a DNA dead end,” said Kristen Mittelman, chief development officer for Texas-based Othram. “People shouldn’t have to wait 20 years to find out what happened to their loved one or where their loved one is.”

Where are they?: Dozens of unresolved homicide cases linger in Redding, Shasta County

‘Spinning our wheels’

Law enforcement agencies rely on traditional testing of evidence from a homicide scene that could include strands of hair or fragments of bone.

That doesn’t always lead to an answer.

“We’re spinning our wheels on these cases that have undergone every other type of analysis,” said Shasta County Deputy Coroner Investigator Hailey Collord-Stalder.

After that, “there’s nothing left to do” except use investigative genetic genealogy, also known as forensic genetic genealogy, she said.

“It’s just the combination of DNA analysis and genealogy. So it’s got that two-part component, those two parts that really bring it all together,” said Collord-Stalder.

She said Othram officials contacted the Shasta coroner’s office last year about one of the county’s unsolved homicide cases the agency had listed in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. That national government database, also known as NamUS, helps investigators match long-term missing persons cases with unidentified remains.

Rather than the case Othram originally got in touch about, Collord-Stalder said her agency asked the company to first use its technology to analyze the unsolved Lakehead homicide from 2003.

She said: “We haven’t been able to do anything about it, which is really unfortunate, simply because we didn’t know the identity of the victim. And so when justice is being prevented, simply because we can’t ID someone, any means necessary to get them ID’d is really important.”

Finding answers can be tough

As part of their investigation, the coroner’s office examined DNA from the scene and sent a sample to the California Department of Justice’s index system of DNA. Any matches found there would “have to be really closely related, like a parent or a sibling or a child” of the victim, said Collord-Stalder.

But forensic genealogy company Othram “can look at sequences of DNA and match it to potentially somebody like an eighth great grandparent or a fourth cousin who could be related to your unidentified remains or your unidentified suspect sample. And so from there, that genealogist can start to map where this individual may have come from,” she said.

Vanished: 19 disappearances that are still without answers in Redding, Shasta County

DNA repositories at private companies from samples collected from people seeking information about their heritage can also assist agents pursuing hard-to-solve crimes.

Those DNA profiles can go into a genetic repository, making the information “useful for law enforcement,” she said.

Collord-Stalder said forensic genetic genealogy information helped solve the Golden State Killer case: “They were able to match his DNA profile to somebody in his family who had uploaded to one of those sites.”

More on the unsolved Lakehead homicide

Authorities said a father and his adult daughter were setting fox traps in an area off Dog Creek Road north of Lakehead when the father glimpsed a pair of old handcuffs on the ground and then spied a shallow grave that appeared to have been dug up by a bear.

The trappers called Shasta County law enforcement, who ruled the man’s death a homicide after finding bones, skull fragments and strands of dark hair at the site, in addition to the handcuffs.

Traditional investigation methods to sleuth out information failed to identify the man, who had foot-long, straight brown-black hair and was of average to below-average height. It was unclear whether the man was killed where his body was found, or if his body was dumped there, information from Othram said.

Othram’s services cost about $7,500 per case, an amount typically covered by funders such as the law enforcement agency requesting the service, as well as private donors and money provided by federal government groups that in the Lakehead case included NamUS.

The Shasta coroner’s division also donated $200 toward the cost of getting the Lakehead homicide case analyzed using Othram’s technology, Collord-Stalder said.

Mittelman said after Othram gets involved, finishing its analysis and coming back with new leads can take four to six weeks.

“We’ve already solved dozens of cases in California by using this technology, so we’re optimistic we can determine this man’s identity,” said Mittelman.

Michele Chandler covers public safety, dining and whatever else comes up for the Redding Record Searchlight/USA Today Network. Accepts story tips at 530-338-7753 and at mrchandler@gannett.com. Please support our entire newsroom’s commitment to public service journalism by subscribing today.

This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Shasta County hopes DNA analysis can answer unsolved murders