A 43-year-old Hamilton man was just charged in a murder that happened nearly 20 years ago in Toronto.<\/p>\n
Back in 2006, 21-year-old Patrick Santos was beaten and tortured before he suffocated to death.<\/p>\n
At the time, investigators developed a DNA profile from the scene, but it didn\u2019t match anyone in the national databank. The trail went cold.<\/p>\n
Fast-forward to 2025, police identify a person of interest using modern DNA tech.<\/p>\n
So how was it done?<\/p>\n
Since 2020, Toronto police worked the case with a company based out of Texas called Othram.<\/p>\n
This company is able to use even the smallest amounts of DNA or degraded DNA to help police develop leads in cases that are decades old.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo they\u2019ll come to us to essentially reinterpret the DNA evidence,\u201d said David Mittelman, CEO of Othram. \u201cAnd what\u2019s special about what we can do is, basically we could identify almost anyone from DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mittelman says traditionally, crime forensics has relied heavily on DNA matching.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a very risky kind of approach because you don\u2019t always have, you know, a lucky chance match in a database,\u201d Mittelman said. \u201cAnd you may not always have a lead to compare against.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Othram uses a different method.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so in this specific case, they asked us if we\u2019ll be able to look at the DNA evidence and determine if it\u2019s good enough to build a DNA profile that could be used not just to match someone, but to actually find out who they are,\u201d Mittelman said.<\/p>\n
Othram begins by tracing the DNA\u2019s historical origins \u2014 or geographical ancestry. This leads to family groups and genetic similarities which are then used to create family trees.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe trees of everyone related to you should then eventually reveal where you fall in the tree,\u201d Mittelman said. \u201cAnd so through a process, kind of a reverse, engineering a tree, you can figure out a family tree, you can basically figure out who is a likely candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mittelman says this process is called forensic genetic genealogy.<\/p>\n
Once investigators have these leads, they can do follow-up work to uncover if any of these people were at the crime scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the idea here is that if you don\u2019t have someone to compare against the crime scene, you use forensic genetic genealogy \u2014 these new tools to find a candidate.\u201d Mittelman said. \u201cAnd then you can just ask the age-old question of was this person there? And a direct comparison will tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says that\u2019s what happened in the case of Patrick Santos. Back in 2006, there was no match for the original profile in the national database.<\/p>\n
The DNA profile used in traditional forensics has 20 data points. The DNA profile Othram uses has half a million. This builds them a much larger set of data to work from.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd like I said, you\u2019re able to figure out the historical origins of a person, you know, families that they\u2019re related to and eventually individuals that are closely related to them,\u201d Mittelman said. \u201cAll that information together goes back to law enforcement. They form a hypothesis and they say, \u2018You know what? This might be the guy that left the DNA,\u2019 and then they go back and do that original test that simply says, \u2018Were you at the crime scene?’\u201d<\/p>\n
More information about Othram<\/a> can be found on their website and YouTube<\/a> channel.<\/p>\n