Phoenix police use DNA composite to try to help solve 2005 cold case – AZCentral.com

Snapshot flier(Photo: The Republic)

Phoenix police for the first timehave turned to technology that uses DNA samples to generate facial composites, in an effort to solve a 12-year-old caseinvolving a newborndiscarded in an airport trash can.

Detectives with the Phoenix PoliceCold Case Squadhave been searching for the mother of the baby girl since 2005, when the babywas found dead in a Sky Harbor International Airport trash bin. The cleaning crew found the newborn in a women's restroom with her umbilical cord still attached, police said.

Now, using the advanced technology, police have developed a computer-generated composite showing themost likely traits of a person who shares the DNA found at the crime scene.Something as simple as blood left at the crime scene can now be used to re-create what a person of interest may look like, police said on Wednesday.

Sandra Rodriguez, the original investigator on the case, said Wednesday the case has stuck with her ever since.

"It (the case) didn't go anywhere. There was just too much information and we just couldn't narrow it, or I couldn't narrow it down," Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez and several Phoenix cold-case detectives, who also met with the media on Wednesday,saidthey developed a profile on the mother that went into the national database but never received ahit on it. They since have exhausted their investigative possibilities and now areturning to the DNA technology to generate a composite, the first time the department has used the technology.

Parabon Snapshotis a DNAphenotyping, ancestry, and kinship analysis tool, according to the Police Department. By using DNA samples, the forensic DNA-analysisservicepredicts the physical appearance and ancestry of an unknown person.

The DNA phenotyping technology is able to create what looks like an avatar of a human based off what their DNA describes as being the most likely traits that they may possess. From freckles to eye color to which region of the world a person may have originated from, the technology is able to vividly suggest what a possible suspect may look like, though police stressed it is not considered a guarantee of a person's appearance.

The technology produces a report and composite profile based off the extracted DNA. However, DNA alone cannot provide weight or age information, said police, who added that a standardsample test costs $3,600.

With the help of the new composite depicting what the infant's mother may look like, police are seeking the public's help in finding any new leads in the case.

The Snapshot prediction results aredifferent from a sketch, where a victim will describe the features of a suspect to then be drawn out. Instead, Snapshot considers probabilities of certain traits and similar characteristics that a person of interest may possess based on their DNA, in this case shared by the mother and the newborn.

Cold-case detectives said they are unsure if they will use this technology on future cases.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Phoenix police at 602-262-6141 or Silent Witness at 480-948-6377 (WITNESS).

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Phoenix police use DNA composite to try to help solve 2005 cold case - AZCentral.com