DNA Identification - Identifinders International, LLC

December 2010

Benjaman Kyle – Close Calls, Part I

By Austin Bethell|2010-12-12T02:00:05-08:00December 12th, 2010|

Hi Colleen: I read the article about you in the June 2010 issue of More Magazine, and am curious about one thing. Are you the same person who competed on Wheel of Fortune in 1991? If so, I was one of your competitors. Just curious! Margot Theresa Cox In fact, I was on Wheel of Fortune in 1991. (I lost. I was the third contestant in line, and the other two women, including Margot, mopped up on the puzzles before I could get a letter in edgewise.) When I wrote her back, identifying myself as her competitor, Margot answered: When I got your response I had to [...]

Benjaman's 23 and Me Matches

By Austin Bethell|2010-12-09T22:36:13-08:00December 9th, 2010|

Benjaman Kyle is the adopted name of an amnesiac who was found near Savannah, GA in August 2004. (See his Wikipedia page for more details.) Since recovering from a severe beating that left him unconscious, he cannot remember who he is. Benjaman took a 23andMe autosomal DNA test earlier this year, hoping to discover close relatives, or at least possible names in his family and the geographical locations where they could be found. As of December 9, 2010, Benjaman's list of 23andMe matches includes a total of 411 matches ranging from 3rd to 10th cousins. Benjaman's top 23andMe match is a third cousin named Thomas Perry whose family has lived in the area around Saluda, [...]

Bonnie's New Family

By Austin Bethell|2010-09-06T01:43:45-07:00September 6th, 2010|

Finding Bonnie's birth father was one of our most difficult birth parent searches. Bonnie and her brother Michael knew they were born in Germany in the 1950s, but they did not know they were adopted until 2002. Although Bonnie had a copy of her birth cerificate, she had not questioned why her parents names did not appear on it, and why it was issued two years after she was born. When Bonnie's mother passed away, a chance remark by a neighbor revealed the truth. Bonnie explains: We only found out [we were adopted] because of a neighbor woman, who knew my mother through Bingo. I was walking my dogs when she approached me and offered her condolences. She casually mentioned to me [...]

DNA Rule-Out for Cold Case, Australia, 1970 – Part II

By Austin Bethell|2010-09-01T23:51:35-07:00September 1st, 2010|

Through a casual exchange of emails a few weeks ago, Deb Cashion alerted me to a recent article "Police chase DNA of Elmer Crawford relatives in Northern Ireland" that appeared in the Herald Sun. It described the Victoria police search for a DNA family reference for Crawford. Since I was traveling in Ireland at the time, I offered to help locate the required reference. Deb put me in touch with Keith Moor, the Insight Editor of the Herald Sun, an award-winning journalist and the author of the article. Keith forwarded me two new articles that appeared in the Sun on July 14 "Mystery man was a drifter" and July 15 "Police chase tip to retrieve DNA" that provided more information [...]

DNA Rule-Out for Cold Case, Australia, 1970 – Part I

By Austin Bethell|2010-08-29T20:43:15-07:00August 29th, 2010|

A crime that could not escape media attention in Australia, any more than the Manson family murders could have evaded the public eye here in the States-Elmer Crawford brutally murdered his pregnant wife Theresa (35) and his three children Kathryn (13), James (8), and Karen (6) in 1970. He then disappeared. He electrocuted them while they slept using an electrical cable he had fashioned from an extension cord and alligator clips he attached to various places on their bodies, then bashed them with a hammer. He then drove nearly four hundred miles with their bodies in the back of his car, and rolled it over the side of the Loch Ard Gorge in Port Campbell National Park, Victoria. He was probably hoping the car would vanish [...]

Unknown Child on the Titanic – Part IV (Conclusion)

By Austin Bethell|2023-06-11T10:44:00-07:00August 21st, 2010|

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 obtain information about the Goodwin genealogy. I immediately found Sidney's parents Frederick and Augusta in 1901 living in Middlesex with their four oldest children Lillian (5), Charles (4), William (2), and Jessie (1). Frederick was listed as a print compositer.Because Frederick and his sons perished on the Titanic, to find a Y-reference for the family [...]

Unknown Child on the Titanic – Part III

By Austin Bethell|2023-06-11T10:42:19-07:00August 19th, 2010|

Cell with Nuclear and Mitochondrial DNA 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 up residence in the cell, forming a symbiotic relationship with it. The cell provided them with food and water, and the mitochondria provided the cell with energy for metabolism and heat. The arrangement worked out so well that millennia later, a human cell has up to 1,000 mitochondria, each carrying five to ten copies [...]

Unknown Child on the Titanic – Part II

By Austin Bethell|2023-06-10T16:21:54-07:00August 17th, 2010|

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 Gosta Paulson based on a mismatch between the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) obtained from the bone shard and DNA provided by a maternally-linked Paulson relative, the teeth became more significant in the identification efforts. Dr. E. J. Molto, an anthropologist and the director of the Paleo-DNA Laboratory at Lakehead University, suggested that the three teeth belonged to "quite a young child". [...]

Unknown Child on the Titanic – Part I

By Austin Bethell|2023-06-10T15:44:42-07:00August 14th, 2010|

Index card from 1912 describing the Unknown Child 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 could offer was the observations, recorded on an index card, that the child was a boy, about two years of age, probably a third-class passanger.Since no one came to claim the baby, the crew of the Mackay-Bennett took responsibility for the child's remains, arranging a beautiful funeral for him at [...]

Maurice Conway

By Austin Bethell|2010-08-11T23:03:49-07:00August 11th, 2010|

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 4422 were those of his distant cousin Francis Joseph van Zandt. During our time together, Maurice took us to the old Conway farm where Frank's mother Margaret Conway was born and grew up. We walked the road she walked with her sisters and brothers as they started from home for America. And of course we paid our respects at the Conway [...]

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