Chenzo Cases.

Closed files · 8

Solved cases worth remembering.

Real cases that got their ending, picked because how they were solved is worth knowing: new science, stubborn detectives, or one tip that changed everything.

  1. 2003Found After 22 Years: Mary Lou CombsPalm Coast, Florida · Missing personShe was found more than 22 years later, still in her car underwater just off Palm Coast. A volunteer dive team spotted a bumper, and FBI underwater evidence divers and FCSO pulled the wreck up from the muck.Solved
  2. 1996The Beer Cans That Solved a 1996 Store KillingOrlando, Florida · HomicideA 25-year-old case with the killer's blood at the scene but no database match, cracked when genetic genealogy pointed to a family and detectives collected beer cans he threw away at a gas station.Solved
  3. 1992Christy Mirack and the Wedding DJEast Lampeter Township, Pennsylvania · HomicideOne of the first genetic genealogy cases to end in a conviction: a 25-year-old murder of a schoolteacher traced to a familiar local wedding DJ.Solved
  4. 1981The Coach Next Door: Linda SlatenLakeland, Florida · HomicideAn FDLE-backed genetic genealogy search led detectives, 38 years later, to a man the family knew: the youth football coach of the victim's son.Solved
  5. 1981Buckskin Girl: Marcia KingTroy, Ohio · UnidentifiedOne of the first unidentified people named through public genealogy databases. Volunteer genealogists found her family in about four hours after 37 years, a turning point for the field.Solved
  6. 1980Pamela Kay Wittman: A Name After 43 YearsPort Orange, Florida · UnidentifiedThe killer was known and long dead, but the victim had no name: a woman a serial killer led detectives to in the early 1980s went 43 years as a Jane Doe until DNA from bone gave her name back.Solved
  7. 1975The Golden State KillerSacramento, California · HomicideThe case that made investigative genetic genealogy famous: a 40-year-old serial case broken by matching crime-scene DNA to distant relatives in a public genealogy database, which opened the door to hundreds of other cold-case solves.Solved
  8. 1974The Lady of the DunesProvincetown, Massachusetts · UnidentifiedNew England's most famous Jane Doe stayed nameless for 48 years through three exhumations and multiple reconstructions, and once she had a name, investigators found the answer in her own marriage within a year.Solved

Know a solved case more people should hear about? Send it in.