How technological advancements are helping solve cold cases from the 1800s
It was Oct. 6, 1977, the day Doug Durnall's 27-year-old sister Linda Lebeau disappeared.
"I could tell, by the way my sister and I got along and how close we were, that something was not right," Durnall said.
Years turned into decades and into lifetimes, but there was no trace of Lebeau or if she'd ever come home. Durnall said his mother never gave up, hoping that her daughter would turn up one day.
"She always had hope," Durnall said. "She wouldn't even move from her house. She never changed her phone number just in case my sister would call."
She never did.
It wasn't until last year Durnell received closure when El Dorado sheriff's deputies knocked on the door of his Northern California home.
"The sheriff's department from El Dorado County came up and told me they found my sister's body and she was pronounced dead," Durnall recalled. "I said she's been missing for 47 years."
Authorities discovered Lebeau's bones down an embankment along the Ortega Highway in Riverside County in 1986, nine years after she disappeared.
Forensics determined someone shot her in the head, but no one could identify the corpse.
The Riverside County Coroner's Office holds onto the remains of more than 200 people they have yet to identify. Their records are listed in dusty old books which tell the stories of crime and mystery dating back to the late 1800s.
"Someone is someone's child," said Sgt. Nancy Rissi from the Riverside County Coroner's Office. "Someone is someone's family member. And for us to give them their name back to them is our driving force."
Rossi works hard to do just that; to identify the unnamed and grant their families closure. As a coroner sergeant in Riverside County, she grinds to uncover the name of every Jane and John Doe listed in the encyclopedias of unidentified remains.
Most of the remains lie in unmarked graves all over the county.
"I was able to get close to half a million dollars over the next three years to exhume some of the decedents, submit DNA and just do a lot of these things that require a lot of funds," Rissi said.
So far, her department has exhumed three bodies as she focuses on cases before DNA was ever heard of, let alone collected. But with new technology, she can now get the answers that were once unavailable.
"They're able to bore a hole into here, the thickest aspect of the femur, and still get DNA even with how old this is," Rissi said.
Rissi and her team have carefully collected bones to send them off for DNA analysis. One of the most effective at this unusual task of identifying old bones is a Texas company called Othram.
"We've built a process called forensic-grade genome sequencing that can use that evidence from all those cases that couldn't have gotten justice," said Dr. Kristen Mittelman, a biochemist and molecular biologist with Othram. "When we first started we worked only on cold cases that were previously intractable. Law enforcement [agencies] weren't sure this technology worked."
However, in the last four years, they've solved hundreds of cases dating back to 1881. They take degraded and partial remains and use technology to fill in the gaps to create a DNA sequence that can be matched to law enforcement databases.
"Often you just find a fraction of a skull or a fraction of someone's remains that may have floated up in the water," Mittelman said. "Every time we're able to get to that answer — that person's answer — there's someone there that's looking for them."
Someone like Durnell.
"Back in my das this would have been science fiction," he said. "Now it's reality."
Durnell admits he was skeptical 10 years ago when he was asked to submit a DNA sample. But now, he's glad he braved through his suspicion.
"We're talking about almost 47, 48 years of mystery that has finally been resolved," he said. "It boggles my mind."
Durnell just wished his mom and his dad could be with him to hear that their daughter has finally been found.
"I just wish my mom and dad were still alive to hear that news," he said. "To let them have some peace because to their dying day they always wanted to know."
He hopes his sister's story gives other families peace and encourages anyone with a missing loved one to provide a DNA sample too. Because the answers they are waiting for may not be so out of reach.
