In April, 1985, the skeltonised remains of a woman were discovered in a shallow grave on Crescent Beach, 50 miles south of Jacksonville,Florida. There was no identifcation, and no missing persons in the area matched the remains. Police quickly ruled the death a homicide but had very little clues to go on, other than some extensive injuries the victim had suffered some time before her death; wounds that had healed up. It was thought that she may have been in a serious car accident. They believed the victim was 30-50 years old. Overall, police had little to go on, and the case went cold. Over the years as DNA technology advanced, police tried various methods to ID their victim. Finally in May, 2024, Crescent Beach Jane Doe was identified as Rockville, MD native Mary Alice Pultz Jenkins. She had gone missing in 1968 after becoming estranged from her family. She was last known to be in the company of her boyfriend John Thomas Fugitt, who detectives discovered went by the alias Billy Joe Wallace. Fugitt died on death row in 1981 for an unrelated murder. It's unclear if Fugitt could be responsible for Mary Alice's murder, and police are having trouble tracking the couple's movements prior to her body being found.

In 2012, a young woman called Rockingham County, NC authorities in the middle of the night and reported that an intruder had shot her parents. Troy and LaDonna French were mowed down with bullets in their own home. Their daughter Whitley, was left to tell the unbelievable story. Investigators knew that the killer was someone with access to the house – but who? After three years and 65 failed DNA comparisons, they were stumped. They decided to use sophisticated partial DNA matching to compare the killer’s DNA with that of someone close to the family – someone whose DNA did not match the killer’s in a straightforward comparison. Then, phenotyping gave them even more information - and what they found blew the case wide open.

When 16 year old high schoolers Eric Goldstrand and Lliana Adank were shot to death in at the popular Fall Creek recreation area in June 1977, residents of the teens’ hometown of Eugene, Oregon were shocked and devastated. There were hundreds of witnesses, tips, and leads… a surplus of information that led investigators nowhere. Suspect after suspect failed to pan out, and the case went cold for years, then decades. Extensive investigation into similar campground murders of couples also led nowhere. Finally, a cold case detective determined to solve the murders was able to employ forensic genealogy to identify a potential suspect, who was alive and living in another state. Investigators closed in on him, but he knew they were coming.