This article appeared in Volume 9, No 4. May 2006 Issue of the Campus Connection of the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth

DNA lab helps solve 22-year-old missing person case

Forensic analyst Melody Moore enters DNA profiles into the Texas Missing Persons DNA Database at the health science center every day, but once in a while, a profile is out of the ordinary.

One such profile was DNA from Beverly Charlton, the mother of a missing girl from Washington, who’s DNA was uploaded into the TMPDD in March 2006. Moore said it gave herchills when she entered the information and it matched a sample in the database.

“There were only two other people here — it was about 6:30, and I was doing this one last thing before I went home,” Moore said. “I stuck [the profile] in the database and hit the search button, and it made a match.”

The profile Moore entered into TMPDD matched DNA from an unidentified bone found in Missoula, Mont., in 1984. The match identified the sample as Marcella Bachmann, who ran away from her home in Vancouver, Wash., when she was 16. King County, Wash., Sheriff’s Office reports said she disappeared in 1984, and her body was discovered on Christmas Eve of that year. The report said she had been shot and buried in a shallow grave outside Missoula, Mont. Authorities in Missoula believe she may have been the victim of serial killer Wayne Nance.

The bone sample from Montana was received at the health science center in August 2004, and Lisa Sansom, forensic analyst at the health science center’s DNA lab, entered the profile. “It was really kind of cool,” Moore said about discovering that the two samples matched. “It’s what we’re here for, and it’s so cool when the database works.”

Moore said it was her first “cold hit” — when remains and reference samples are submitted independently of each other without any investigative leads linking the reference samples to the remains. The database is programmed to seek matches between DNA from remains, such as Bachmann’s, and references, such as that from Bachmann’s mother. After Moore discovered the match in April, further DNA samples from Bachmann’s brother in Missouri and her father in Oregon confirmed the identification.

Raphael Crenshaw, a detective with the King County Sheriff’s office, said this case would have been impossible to solve without the TMPDD. Not only did the TMPDD provide the tool to match DNA from Bachmann’s remains found in Montana to her mother’s DNA from Washington, but the service is free to law enforcement officials, which encourages agencies to take advantage of it. “Montana wouldn’t have shipped [Bachmann’s] sample to Texas unless it was free, and we wouldn’t have shipped [Bachmann’s mother’s DNA] to you, except it was free,” Crenshaw said. “It was a perfect opportunity for us to eliminate [Bachmann] as a ‘Jane Doe.’

For us, it’s a good thing, because it shows the system works.” “The bottom line is, without the availability of the national database administered by the FBI, there would have been no hope of identifying her,” said Arthur Eisenberg, PhD, director of the health science center’s DNA identity laboratory. “There is hope that families, some day, will get a sense of closure, and the hope is to identify who murdered this individual and prevent them from killing anyone else.

“Having families with missing loved ones provide reference samples helps us help them find the information they so desperately need,” he said.

Solving the Bachmann missing person case proved significant not just for the Texas Missing Persons DNA Database, but also for the national database and law enforcement as a whole, said George Adams, missing persons program coordinator at the health science center and a former Fort Worth police officer. Law enforcement agencies in Washington, Montana, Missouri and Oregon worked together to collect DNA samples and submit them to the Texas Missing Persons DNA Database, which is part of the FBI’s national DNA database, demonstrating that the system is an effective tool that can successfully help solve cases in multiple jurisdictions and multiple states. “The case is a watershed,” Adams said. Solving the Bachmann case proved that the system of DNA submission into a nationwide database can help solve cases, no matter how old the case or in what condition the remains are found, he said. Adams likened an identification like Bachmann’s to an investigator switching on a light in a closed closet.

The identification provides information that helps the family of the missing person and helps law enforcement officials pursue accountability in cases where a crime has been committed. Adams also said the use of DNA matching, as in the Bachmann case, helps prevent assumptions, mistakes or oversights from affecting the investigative process.

To date, the database has helped identify the remains of about 60 people by matching their DNA to that of family members. The database has also produced five cold hits, similar to that made in Bachmann’s case. The Texas Missing Persons DNA Database is part of the UNT System Center for Human Identification, which encompasses the DNA Identity Lab at the health science center where information is entered into the TMPDD, as well as the work of Harrell Gill-King, PhD, director of the UNT Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology and Human Identification at UNT Denton. Dr. Gill-King works on a physical description of the unidentified person based on skeletal remains, while the DNA Identity Lab profiles the sample’s genetic material for comparison with other profiles in the database.