CHARLOTTE, N.C. — New technology is helping break open cold cases.
A Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department detective says forensic genetic genealogy could help bring closure to families desperate for answers.
Detective Matt Hefner has walked the halls of the department's violent crime division for years, but he hasn’t always been in the unit he’s in today.
"I started working murders in 2012, active cases, and after a year I met the cold case detectives that worked here. I was impressed they enjoyed their job, had a real passion for it, so I started getting interested in that," Hefner said.
That interest turned into a full-time job for the last four years, as he’s now one of the two detectives working homicide cold cases.
His unit has a hefty workload. The police department has roughly 600 cold cases.
"That’s 600 opportunities to open a file and clear a case that has been worked hard but never cleared," Hefner said.
In the grand scheme of things, Hefner says, to solve a murder case isn’t all that difficult. With the right steps, an arrest can happen within the first 24 hours. But when it comes to cold cases, he says, it's a different story.
"The cases that take a month, the cases that take two months, the cases that never get solved, it’s a grind. It’s always grinding and working on it, there’s more sense of accomplishment when you’re done," Hefner said.
When those cases lead to dead ends, it can cause detectives and families to lose hope.
But Hefner says things quickly changed in June for three cases with the use of forensic genetic genealogy, which enabled identification of the victims.
Jose Elder Espinoza was reported missing in 2003 — it was a bone fragment that identified him. It's a similar story for Oliver Doc “O.D.” Mundy and Cody Ray Herrell — both of whom went missing in North Carolina.
The use of forensic genetic genealogy became widely known after the Golden State killer case in 2018, but Charlotte-Mecklenburg police say the method they’re using is different.
"We build a family tree around John Doe, and we try to find out who they might be based on their matches and when our genealogist gets close they start calling these family members or I start calling them … and we start getting elimination DNA — and eventually we have a tree around them and ask 'Who is this? Who could this be?'” Hefner said.
But it isn’t just helping to identify missing persons. Hefner says they're finding it resourceful in other ways.
"We've actually used it on a murder, helping to identify a suspect, when we had no idea who he was," Hefner said.
It's a helpful tool with an expensive price tag. Each DNA test can cost thousands of dollars. Charlotte-Mecklenburg police say they were able to make it happen with funds from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Foundation. Although it can be expensive, Hefer says it could change the future of solving cold cases.
"To identify a killer or identify someone who has spent years in storage, their remains have been in storage, not knowing who they were to finally get that ID or to even get close just to get a good lead. It is so rewarding. It's what keeps us coming back to work. It's why we do it," Hefner said.