(Othaniel Phillip “Otie” Ames)
Another decades old cold case is solved with the help of genetic genealogy. Snohomish County cold case detectives began going through their unsolved cases 14 years ago, and improvements in DNA technology gave them hope some of these cases might be solved. This technology has helped them to reduce the number of unsolved cases to four. That’s four families still waiting to learn what happened to the people they love.
Othaniel Ames – “Uncle Otie” to his family – disappeared sometime in 1980 and was found later that year by a teenage boy fly fishing in the Stillaguamish River. That boy’s family is still friends with some of Ames’ relatives. They contacted the man, who is now in his 50s, and they say he was shocked to learn the news and told them the memory of discovering Ames is still vivid after all these years.
The autopsy didn’t show any trauma, nor did it appear he drowned, but he did have some heart issues, so it’s assumed he died of natural causes. However, they weren’t able to identify Ames’ remains until Snohomish County again called on Othram of Texas.
Genetic genealogist, Deb Stone, says she had to start with a family tree of more than 12,000 people and used relatives’ genetic profiles uploaded to public sites to narrow it down. “When you’re working with very low matches, the tree can become so large it’s quite unwielding,” Stone says, “This tree had 12,000 people in it, that were all related to each other in one another way, and once I was able to identify those great, great, great grandparents and have someone upload their DNA, I was able to reduce the number of people I needed to look at to about one-hundred people.”
Relatives – some who remember him well and some with only vague memories – now have Ames’ remains, and they say they are grateful to have this closure.
You can watch the entire news conference in the video below:
