(TNS) — Without advanced DNA testing developed by a Texas lab, Iowa City Police investigators may not have been able to identify an infant found in 1992 in an Iowa City landfill because the DNA tissue sample was “degraded and contaminated.”
The advanced testing helped investigators identify the “Johnson County John Doe (1992),” as he was initially known in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, after using genealogy to piece together a familial connection, Michael Vogen, director of case management at Othram in The Woodlands, Texas, told The Gazette.
The Iowa Attorney General’s Office reached out to Othram in 2021 for help on this case. Othram developed the advanced DNA testing — forensic-grade genome sequencing — in 2018…