May 2021

1980 Ms. Harrison

By |2022-03-09T02:39:49-08:00May 25th, 2021|

On November 10, 1980 hunters in Harrison County, Mississippi (near Biloxi) found the skeletal remains of a 19-25 year old female in the woods near a small creek. Anthropologists have determined that she was a white female, 5'2"-5'5" tall, and had been in the woods approximately 3-18 months prior to discovery. Homicide is strongly suspected. An abnormality in her jaw muscle suggests this young woman may have played a wind instrument. She also had a deformity that may not have been noticeable in life but she may have appeared "pigeon chested." Our initial genetic analysis shows her ancestry appears to be Greek, Armenian or Northern Italian. [...]

2012 Smurfette Doe

By |2022-03-09T02:41:39-08:00May 25th, 2021|

The body of an unidentified female was discovered in Houston, Texas near Walters Road on October 16, 2012. She is believed to have died sometime during the month of September that year. She is described as having a small build, very dark brown, shoulder length, curly hair that was held back from her face with a standard bobby pin. And she was possibly of biracial ethnicity. According to the Houston Chronicle, “one piece of evidence stands out and gives investigators at the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences hope that someone will recognize her: a dark emerald T-shirt with an image of the cartoon character Smurfette daintily plucking petals from [...]

Identifinders solves 1961 Bibb Co. Teen Doe Case – Daniel Paul Armentrout. Case is oldest NCMEC solved using FGG

By |2022-04-03T15:29:19-07:00May 25th, 2021|

**BREAKING: The Identifinders team has identified Bibb County, Alabama’s 1961 John Doe as then 15-year-old Daniel Paul 'Danny' Armentrout from Miami, Florida.  Danny was hitchhiking through rural Alabama when he was killed on March 27, 1961 when the car he was riding in hit a guard rail and plunged into the Cahaba River. The driver survived, but his passenger did not.  The boy had told the driver he ran away from home after his parents separated, but he wasn’t in the car long enough to give the driver more details.  Bibb County authorities at the time kept the boy’s body in the morgue for about two weeks and exhausted all [...]

February 2021

July 2020

Identifinders Assists Orange County DA's Office in Solving the Oldest Jane Doe Case in the County

By |2020-07-23T14:18:20-07:00July 23rd, 2020|

Identifinders International is honored to have assisted the Orange County District Attorney's office in solving the oldest Doe case in Orange County.  In March 1968, a woman was discovered badly beaten, raped, and with her throat slashed in a field in Huntington Beach, CA.  All attempts to determine her identity failed until May 2020 when investigative genetic genealogy was used to identify her as 26 year-old Anita Louise Piteau from Maine.  Her family reported she had driven out to California in 1968 with two friends, hoping to break into the movie business. She wrote one letter to her mother after her arrival, but then was never heard from again. Identifinders wishes to [...]

June 2020

May 2017

DNA-The Next Big Gold Rush?

By |2023-05-24T23:07:04-07:00May 29th, 2017|

The discovery of gold at Sutters Mill, CA in 1848 promised untold wealth for those who had the resources and stamina to outlast the competition.  At the dawn of the California Gold Rush, there were no laws governing property rights; prospectors depended on a system of staking claims to protect their discoveries. Early prospectors did well, earning many times what they would have taken in as common laborers. But within a short time, the techniques of extracting gold became more efficient and sophisticated - far beyond the financial resources of the individual 49er. The tens of billions of dollars of gold recovered from the hills of California were ultimately controlled by only a few.  Many later prospectors returned home empty-handed.We are now experiencing a new [...]

Big Business or Big Brother?

By |2023-05-25T00:02:46-07:00May 2nd, 2017|

At the recent American Academy of Forensic Science meeting in New Orleans, I attended the workshop The Opiate Crisis, Dirty Bombs, Big Data/Big Problems, and Driverless Cars:  On the Leading Edge of Forensic Science - 2017 Theoretical Forensic Sciences "Think Tank".  It seemed like a good session to discover where forensic research is going, aside from the serious look the community is taking at standards of proof within the various forensic disciplines.The talk Who You Are Out in the World and What Do You Think? by Lucy Davis presented an interesting look at the big business side of genetic genealogy.  The substance of the talk was a discussion of the informed consent, the terms and conditions of service (TOS), [...]

December 2016

Who Am I? What is My Name? – Part XII – Taking Stock

By |2023-01-10T21:08:41-08:00December 8th, 2016|

INTRODUCTION As with all research projects, there have been so many zigzags in this story, it's only reasonable to take a break to take stock of where we are in solving the puzzle of Pnina's identity. We haven't solved all the mysteries yet, but we know so much more now than we started with a few years ago. Pnina Gutman is in her 70s and lives in Israel. She leads a normal life as a mother, a grandmother, and a great grandmother, but she has an unusual story. Pnina was smuggled from the Warsaw Ghetto in late 1942 when she was an infant and hidden on the Aryan side by Charlotte [...]

November 2016

Who Am I? What Is My Name? Part XI – Berlin, Warsaw, and the German Soldier

By |2022-07-06T01:19:58-07:00November 8th, 2016|

I recently traveled to Berlin and Warsaw to personally research in the various German and Polish archives.  My hope was to find more information about Gertrude Priess-Spiro and her circle of acquaintance and friends, towards the goal of finding the birth identity of Pnina Gutman, whom she helped smuggle from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942.  I feel that if we can identify the people and organizations that Gertrude was involved with during the War, we may be able to find clues that lead us to Pnina's family. Although my initial search of the German and Polish archives was not successful, I later discovered information that may lead to the identity of the German soldier, the most [...]

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