Multnomah County Sheriff's Office: Solving Cold Cases with DNA

The Multnomah County Sheriffs Office (MCSO) has completed work which identifies 13 unsolved homicides and five unsolved sexual assault cases which have sufficient DNA evidence where, if processed at a crime lab, progress could be made in solving these "cold" cases. MCSO is still in the process of reviewing 411 unsolved sexual assault cases to determine other cases with viable biological evidence. There is currently a backlog of 50-75 person crime cases waiting for processing at the Oregon State Police Forensic Laboratory (Crime Lab). These cold cases are important to the Crime Lab, but due to limited resources, they are often considered a lower priority to newer cases.
Using funds from this National Institute of Justice (NIJ) grant, MCSO would be able to pay for DNA analysis lab kits used to process these cases at the Oregon State Police Forensic Laboratory. As part of the follow up to evidence discovery, this grant would fund overtime for three detectives to further investigate any hits resulting from the lab analysis. Travel for these investigations, as DNA matches are from a national database, is also requested as part of this grant.
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