Progress Made in 4 Cold Cases in New Mexico

The episode details how the Sandoval County Sheriff’s Office utilized forensic genetic genealogy and advanced DNA sequencing to resolve a significant portion of its cold case backlog by 2026. By partnering with specialized labs and state agencies, investigators successfully identified the remains of four individuals who had been missing for years, ranging from a former professional wrestler to a young woman lost to addiction. These breakthroughs were achieved through innovative technology like whole-genome sequencing, which can extract usable data from aged or degraded skeletal remains where traditional methods previously failed. While some cases led to the discovery of accidental deaths ra...