Prince George’s will use DNA registries to solve cold cases through new DOJ grant
By Katie Mettler,
Washington Post
| 11. 19. 2020
Prince George’s County is one of 10 jurisdictions across the country that will receive a $470,000 grant from the Justice Department to reopen cold cases using forensic genetic genealogy — a new investigative technique that draws on privately curated DNA databases from popular genealogy websites to compare with samples collected from crimes.
The funding could help investigators reopen as many as 60 cold cases over the next three years, Prince George’s prosecutors and police said at a news conference Thursday.
“This is just another area where we’re going to make a big difference in Prince George’s County,” county State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy said.
There are more than 600 cases of serious and violent crimes in the county in which DNA was collected from the scene but the sample did not generate a match in the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, often referred to as CODIS.
The leads ran out, and the cases went cold.
But with this new funding, the county’s cold case task force will be able to spend thousands of dollars reprocessing those DNA samples against data from...
Related Articles
By Josie Ensor, The Times | 12.09.2025
A fertility start-up that promises to screen embryos to give would-be parents their “best baby” has come under fire for a “misuse of science”.
Nucleus Genomics describes its mission as “IVF for genetic optimisation”, offering advanced embryo testing that allows...
By Hannah Devlin, The Guardian | 12.06.2025
Couples undergoing IVF in the UK are exploiting an apparent legal loophole to rank their embryos based on genetic predictions of IQ, height and health, the Guardian has learned.
The controversial screening technique, which scores embryos based on their DNA...
By Frankie Fattorini, Pharmaceutical Technology | 12.02.2025
Próspera, a charter city on Roatán island in Honduras, hosts two biotechs working to combat ageing through gene therapy, as the organisation behind the city advertises its “flexible” regulatory jurisdiction to attract more developers.
In 2021, Minicircle set up a...
By Vardit Ravitsky, The Hastings Center | 12.04.2025
Embryo testing is advancing fast—but how far is too far? How and where do we draw the line between preventing disease and selecting for “desirable” traits? What are the ethical implications for parents, children, clinicians, and society at large? These...
