State cold cases get federal grant for DNA testing

“We are focusing on cases that were tested anytime from the 1970s or 1980s to very recently and they just don’t have any investigative leads that are useful.”

Sevasti Papakanakis, deputy director of forensic biolog y/DNA for the Division of Scientific Services

Connecticut public safety officials are using a federal grant to do genetic genealogy DNA testing on long-dormant cold cases in the hopes of finally getting them solved.

“We are focusing on cases that were tested anytime from the 1970s or 1980s to very recently and they just don’t have any investigative leads that are useful,’’ said Sevasti Papakanakis, deputy director of forensic biology/DNA for the Division of Scientific Services, which runs the state forensic lab.

The announcement comes less than week after Hearst Connecticut Media examined the need for more funding to do genetic genealogy DNA testing on the state’s 44 cases of unidentified remains, which in some instances are being crowdfunded to get the profiles done.

The cold case money is coming from a federal grant obtained by the Division

of Scientific Services at the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection to do genetic genealogy DNA testing, which generates more data points that can be compared with DNA profiles uploaded onto commercial genealogy websites such as GEDmatch.

The way the technology works, the genealogy DNA profiles that are generated from cold cases are compared to DNA profiles that have been voluntarily placed in the database of commercial websites that people agree can be utilized for law enforcement purposes.

Investigators can find a match to a relative of an unidentified perpetrator or victim and then figure out the identity of the person by contacting the family.

The grant money, which became available in October, is being used two ways, Papakanakis said. Either the state lab is utilizing some of the grant money for supplies when it does its own DNA testing on cold cases, or the money is being used to send items to a private lab to generate DNA profiles.

The lab has reviewed 30 cold cases submitted by police departments throughout the state and will be actively working on 20 of the cases that meet the criteria for use of the grant money, Papakankis said.

The other 10 cases also will be worked on by the lab, she said. All of the cases involve sexual assaults or homicides, she said.

In order for a cold case to qualify for the grant funding it must involve a violent crime that has had DNA testing already done linking the crime to a suspect, whether or not the suspect’s name has been identified, and there has been no match in the law enforcement database.

Other cases that would qualify for grant funding involve homicide victims who are unidentified and some sort of suspect profile, whether or not the suspect’s name has been identified, has been developed.

“In forensic genealogy you are using public databases that can be used to link family trees and find a possible relative to a possible perpetrator,’’ Papakanakis said. “There are so many cases we have in this state that haven’t been solved.”

Genetic genealogy DNA was used to identify two men who later were convicted of sexually assaulting women in previous decades, according to a news release announcing the grant money issued Thursday.

In one case, Michael Sharpe, a former charter school administrator in the Hartford area, was convicted in 2022 after investigators used genealogy databases to link him to the sexual assaults of four women in 1984, the release said.

Police used DNA samples that Sharpe’s relatives had submitted to GEDMatch, according to the release.

In another case, police arrested Angelo Alleano of Vernon using DNA data publicly available from a specific family tree, officials said. Alleano later pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual assault, the release said.

Officials also recently announced that 1970 New London murder victim Linda Sue Childers was identified through genetic genealogy DNA profiling by Otham lab in Texas.

The cost of developing genetic genealogy DNA profiles is $7,500 per case, said Ortham’s leaders David and Kristen Mittelman. Childers was unidentified for decades until the DNA profile by Ortham revealed a match with a sister who had provided her DNA on a commercial genealogy website.

Ortham is working with the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner on 17 cases, all of which are in various stages of crowdfunding through DNASolves.com because up to this point there has been almost no federal, state or local funding to get the genealogy DNA profiles done.

Papkanakis said some of the unidentified remains cases may qualify for funding if they meet the criteria of the grant.