Season 3 of DNA: ID kicks off with a massive 3 part episode; In 1982, young Naval recruit Pam Cahanes had finally finished boot camp and graduated with her apprentice airman class. A weekend Liberty Pass allowed Pam to leave the Naval Training Center Orlando base for the first time in months. But Pam didn’t live to enjoy her newfound freedom. She was found strangled in her underwear, in the yard of a vacant house, shopping bags of personal items and her clothing strewn around her. Despite an extensive investigation, DNA evidence, and a prime suspect, her case went cold. This case was one of the first in Florida to use Forensic Genealogy to identify a suspect, someone never named in the case file. And when that person’s DNA was entered into CODIS, the investigators learned that he WAS named in the case file – in a murder case in Hawaii two years before Pam’s.

In our final episode of 2023, we review the full length cases we covered this season on DNA:ID as well as the Doe mini episodes. We also touch on current events, trials, and news, that may affect past cases, and change the future of investigative genealogy.

DNA: ID will return for an all new season on January 29, 2024. Happy holidays to all of our listeners.

On July, 24th, 2000, an unidentified man's body was found floating 27 miles off the coast of Jonesport, Maine. Due to the lack of ID, and condition of his remains, not much could be gathered to help investigators determine who this John Doe was, or how he died, although they were able to determine that he did have some specific health issues. The man known as 'Jonesport John Doe' was cremated and buried in an area cemetery. A sample of his DNA was collected with hopes that he would one day be identified, although early attempts proved fruitless.

Eventually, genealogy made it possible to determine that Jonesport John Doe was actually a man named Philip Kahn who had been reported missing by his family in Las Vegas shortly before his body was found. Why Kahn left his family behind and how and why he wound up in Maine remains a mystery. Confounding the mystery is the fact that Philip Kahn may actually have been someone else altogether; creating a mystery within a mystery.