Special Projects
July 2010 Consultant, Elmer Crawford Murder Case, Melbourne, Victoria Police Department - Assisted Melbourne law enforcement in locating a mitochondrial DNA reference in Ireland and Australia for fugitive killer Elmer [...]
Unknown Child on the Titanic – Part IV (Conclusion)
When AFDIL attempted an identification through Y-DNA, I was asked by my colleague Dr. Odile Loreille to find a Y-DNA reference for Sidney Goodwin. We were just finishing up the identification of The Hand in the Snow, so she knew I was available for a new project. Of course, my first step was to search Ancestry.com to [...]
Unknown Child on the Titanic – Part III
To understand what happened next, you have to know a little about mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Mitochondrial DNA is contained in small, football-shaped inclusions outside the nucleus of a cell. It's widely believed that mitochondria were once independent bacteria that invaded primitive cells millions of years ago. Instead of being digested, these bacteria took [...]
Unknown Child on the Titanic – Part II
After eight and a half decades, there was little left of the child's body. Only a small piece of wrist bone and the crowns of three tiny baby teeth had survived the inclement weather and damp, slightly acidic soil. In the spring of 2002, when Parr and Ruffman determined that the child was not [...]
Unknown Child on the Titanic – Part I
On April 20-23 1912, on its mission from Halifax to salvage remains from the Titanic, the crew of the cable ship Mackay-Bennett pulled 306 bodies from the frigid waters of the north Atlantic. Only one of them, body No. 4, was that of a child. At the time, the best that forensic identification [...]
Maurice Conway
The best part of our projects is the good friendships we form with the people whose lives we touch. On our recent trip to Ireland, Andy and I visited with Maurice Conway and his family in Co. Limerick. Maurice provided the DNA match that confirmed that the remains found in the wreck of Northwest Flight [...]
The Hand in the Snow
Our blog would not be complete without a mention of The Hand in the Snow. This was our first big military identification case with the Armed Forces DNA ID Laboratory, performed with a dream team of top forensic scientists. Our successful identification of the frozen arm and hand found in the Alaska glacier as [...]
Case Histories
I have been fortunate to have been a key member of several projects that have challenged my abilities as a forensic genealogist. Several have been posted on my Identifinders International site. The Hand in the Snow, James Jake-Smithers-Gray, and Benjaman Kyle are just three. I have also been involved in the exposure of two Holocaust [...]