Cold case heated up with DNA

Apr. 15—DNA is a big advancement in police work, something foreign to the investigators working the Beth Doe crime scene on Dec. 20, 1976.

Lt. Devon Brutosky, state police Troop N criminal investigation section commander, said a lack of technology back then often made police work harder. They relied on tips, which could take a long time to vet.

Things like processing a crime scene are still done the same, though today investigators take more time with visual evidence, and evidence processing has advanced, Brutosky said at a Wednesday news conference at Lehighton Borough Park, where Pennsylvania State Police discussed the recent arrest of Luis Sierra, 63, Ozone Park, New York, in the 1976 murder of his girlfriend, Evelyn Colon, 15.

In March, after 44 years, investigators used DNA to finally identify Beth Doe's remains as Colon, and that led to their arrest of Sierra for her murder.

The defendant was 19 when she went missing and when her unidentified and dismembered remains were found in suitcases tossed from an Interstate 80 overpass bridge above the Lehigh River in East Side Borough, Carbon County.

"DNA is the biggest improvement," said Brutosky. It gave Beth Doe her identity more than four decades after her murder.

It's also the future said David Mittelman, CEO of Othram Inc., a Texas-based company established in 2018. Othram's work led to the real person behind Beth Doe.

Mittelman said Othram is the only company in the United States with the capability to process entire cases in-house, though they are sometimes asked to participate in a "team" project.

"Sometimes we work a case end to end," he said.

What makes Othram different is it has the ability to capture hundreds of thousands of DNA markers from crime scene evidence, compared to a typical 20 DNA marker process. It specializes in challenging crime scene evidence that other labs find unsuitable because they are degraded or there is too little evidence to examine.

The Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, was designed to track repeat crimes using 20 DNA markers, but the problem is if someone isn't a repeat offender, they can't be found.

Othram uses forensic-grade genome sequencing, which applies modern sequencing and genomics to forensics in a process Othram created and uses exclusively to work with law enforcement in solving crimes.

In Colon's case, they had 44-year-old skeletal evidence that they linked to Colon's nephew, Luis Colon Jr., of Texas. Colon Jr. had put information into genealogical databases to find his long-lost aunt, believing like other family members that she was still alive.

"That actually ended up being the key piece," Mittelman said.

Once her family identity was established, it led police to her alleged killer.

But, this case wasn't exceptional, Mittelman said.

"You're seeing a glimpse of the future," he said.

Mittelman believes DNA will eventually drive repeat crime into extinction and clear a backlog of hundreds of thousands of unsolved cases.

Othram works with law enforcement on human identification for forensic evidence and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children because, Mittelman said, no one should remain nameless.

"How do you seek justice for someone if you don't know who they are," he said. Unsolved cases also cause other damages, leaving family stalled in a tragedy they can't move past.

"These cases may be decades old, but there is urgency for the people affected by it," said Mittelman.

Contact the writer: achristman@standardspeaker.com; 570-501-3584