Mystery deaths and cold cases in Charlotte increasingly solved by family trees, DNA

A new scientific method is helping detectives in Charlotte solve cold cases, bringing answers to families who had long since given up on closure.

Detectives with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department have named four people who were previously unidentified for years after they died. CMPD has solved at least two cold cases using DNA evidence paired with family trees. The process is known as forensic genetic genealogy.

Forensic genetic genealogy first caught public attention in 2018 when police in California identified the Golden State Killer. The alleged killer is accused of a series of rapes and murders spanning back to the 1970s. Investigators took DNA from the rape kit of one of the victims and used that to search ancestry databases for a possible suspect.

In Charlotte, Detectives Carol Owens and Matt Hefner, in CMPD’s cold case unit, said the technique has been invaluable in helping solve some of their oldest cases.

Recently, CMPD used forensic genetic genealogy to solve a 40-year-old double-murder and to identify four people who died with their identities unknown.

The first was Napoleon McNeil who was identified in 2022 by the NC Unidentified Project and CMPD. The NC Unidentified project is a nonprofit that partners with CMPD, dedicated to identifying unknown deceased persons.

McNeil’s body was found in 2010 and he was originally from Raleigh with no known Charlotte connections, CMPD said at the time.

His family said they had given up on finding him until the family tree DNA process was able to identify him, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.

Shortly after, CMPD identified Jose Elder Espinoza, 35, who was reported missing by his family in 2003 and had been unidentified for 14 years. His body was found in a wooded area near Dixie River Road in west Charlotte. Police believe he was murdered and his death is still being investigated.

CMPD identified Espinoza with help from the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that uses forensic genealogy to identify unknown deceased persons. The project is another organization CMPD partners with to solve cold case identifications.

Next, CMPD detectives identified Cody Ray Herrell, a homeless man who was found dead in Charlotte in 2021. There were no signs of trauma on Herrell’s body and CMPD detectives were able to identify him in March.

CMPD’s most recent identification happened in May when detectives were able to place a name to a person who had gone unidentified for nearly 35 years.

Oliver Doc Mundy, a World War II veteran, was found in an elevator shaft at an old hotel under construction in 1988. The building is now the Dunhill Hotel.

It is unclear how Mundy died. He was known to live on the streets of Charlotte and was unidentified until forensic genetic genealogists and detectives found a distant family member and were able to connect him via his family tree and DNA.

These first identifications “lit a fire” under detectives because they realized what familial DNA testing could accomplish, Hefner said. Hefner first used the technique in 2021 while working with CMPD’s cold case homicide unit to identify human remains.

“We still got six or seven (we are) actively working. And we’ve got three or four unidentified people that we’re trying to get the funding to do,” Hefner said.

Using DNA and family tree data to identify victims and suspects long after they’ve died or disappeared is the future of many investigations, says a researcher with Western Carolina University’s Forensic Anthropology program.

Nicholas Passalacqua, director of the program, helps oversee research at the university’s human decomposition facility. This facility studies the way human bodies decompose outdoors and helps researchers identify people after they die.

While the university doesn’t directly partner with law enforcement using forensic genealogy, Passalcqua has worked on a few cases with the process and calls what it can do “amazing.”

“It’s a new thing, it’s a relatively small field. Maybe in 20 years, it’ll be very ubiquitous and it’ll be how most identifications are done,” Passalcqua said. “But it’s not something that’s accessible to even most cases right now, just because it’s a very resource and time intensive process.”

CMPD cold cases

Detectives had a breakthrough using familial DNA early this year when CMPD used the technique to solve a decades-old cold case. This was the first time the technique was used to solve a homicide case in North Carolina, according to CMPD.

In 1984, 27-year-old special needs teacher Sarah Mobley Hall and her 10-year-old son, Derrick Mobley, were found strangled in their home close to the Hidden Valley neighborhood in Charlotte.

James Thomas Pratt, 60, was not a suspect when police initially investigated the case, though he lived nearby and was thought to have a “friendly relationship” with Hall, according to CMPD.

CMPD worked with the FBI to take DNA from the original crime scene and match it to family members using ancestry databases. Pratt was arrested in York County on February 1, CMPD announced in March.

Capt. Joel McNelly, CMPD’s Violent Crimes Division commander, said he hopes the department will continue using familial DNA to solve cold cases.

“We’re just on the front end of all this, it’s only going to get better,” McNelly said. “There’s a lot of bad people that have done a lot of bad things that are probably a little concerned right now.”

CMPD first used the technique to solve old sexual assault crimes.

Owens said she first became familiar with the technique in 2018, around the same time the Golden State Killer was arrested.

In 2019, detectives found a match and were able to arrest a suspect in a 13-year-old rape case in Charlotte.

CMPD used funding from a sexual assault kit initiative to pay for testing. This initiative is funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance and helps law enforcement to analyze previously untested sexual assault kits. Over the past six years, the initiative gave CMPD millions in grant grant funding the department used to test hundreds of these kits.

Solving these cases and making identifications after so many years can be bittersweet to victims and their families, Owens and Hefner said.

“Unfortunately, the list of people that I have (who are deceased) … a lot of them appear to be homeless people. So they were kind of forgotten here when they were alive,” Hefner said.

“So even if you figure out who they are, finding their family can be difficult and so there’s happiness that we’ve identified some of them, but also some sadness, that they kind of lost that connection with them.”

Forensic genealogy

CMPD partners with scientists to solve these mysteries.

Leslie Kaufman, a Forensic Genealogist and co-founder of the NC Unidentified Project, believes that every person deserves to die with their name known. The project works to discover identities to the nearly 149 unidentified deceased persons in the state.

“Their families need to know where they were, and what happened to them,” Kaufman said.

Kaufman has partnered with CMPD and law enforcement agencies across the state to solve some of these cold cases.

One of the biggest challenges Kaufman and smaller agencies throughout the state face is funding, she said.

Performing familial DNA testing on a set of remains cost approximately $6,000, CMPD told the Observer. Grants often don’t cover victims unless murder or foul play are suspected, Kaufman said.

“If they are accident victims, if they are overdoses, undetermined or suicides, then there is no funding for those,” Kaufman said. “That’s where the North Carolina Unidentified Project comes in. To help we’re trying to raise money and get grants to cover those as well because they still all need to be identified.”

Another hurdle Kaufman and CMPD face is how many users are in the only two genealogy databases law enforcement is permitted to use — Family Tree DNA and GEDMatch. The two commercial ancestry services allow people to find and map their family tree based on DNA samples. Although the services can be used by professionals, typically those who use the sites are creating profiles out of curiosity and for personal research.

While these databases are huge, a person can opt out of allowing law enforcement to see their data.

Hefner encourages people to consent to law enforcement searches when submitting DNA info to these companies.

“The more users there are in the system, the easier it’s going to be for us to solve these cases,” Hefner said.