Placer County cold case gets big break thanks to advanced DNA technology identifying remains
APPLEGATE — A Placer County cold case just got a big break thanks to advanced DNA technology identifying a woman nearly 40 years after her death.
Patricia Rose. That's the name of the woman who vanished around 1980. Her 18-month-old was found alone in a Sacramento hotel with no sign of his mother. Rose was never heard from again.
Skeletal remains were found in a heavily wooded area in Applegate, an unincorporated community in Placer County, but were never identified. A newspaper clipping was put out with a reconstruction of what they thought the victim looked like before her death.
In 2005, the remains were sent to another California lab to generate new leads, but no family links were found.
Then, Othram Lab stepped in.
They are one of the few private genealogy labs working with the Department of Justice and law enforcement to help identify human remains. Their sequencing is far more advanced and can trace relatives as far as sixth cousins.
When they took over the case, they found a sibling of the victim living in Oregon. That person had a sister who went missing around 1980 out of Placer County.
Othram Lab spoke about how it feels to be part of such groundbreaking technology.
"It's a great feeling. You know, we put a lot of effort into making sure that we're generating really good data for the investigators to utilize. Ultimately, our job is to give them another lead that they otherwise wouldn't have because they've tried everything else, literally," said Michael Vogen with Othram Lab. "And so, using this advanced technique, we were able to give them a new lead to go investigate, and they do what they do best and confirm those findings and bring answers to a family that's been waiting a very long time for them."
Othram Lab partners with the DOJ and an organization known as Road to Justice in solving cold cases across California.
Now, the Placer County Sheriff's Office is asking anyone with any information about Patricia Rose, who we know was estranged from her husband at the time she went missing, to come forward.