Laramie County Deputies Hope Forensic Genealogy Will Solve ‘Baby John Doe’ Case
The Laramie County Sheriff's Office has partnered with Othram -- the first private laboratory built to apply the power of modern parallel sequencing to forensic evidence -- in hopes of identifying a homicide victim known for 33 years as "Baby John Doe."
"We're hoping to raise a total of $5,000 for the laboratory to do their examination of the evidence that's been submitted," said Deputy Jeff Barnes. "We're kind of hoping this will give us some additional leads to go on and open this cold case."
In February of 1988, a couple that had gone out for a walk discovered the body of a newborn baby boy wrapped in a blanket and lying in a culvert near Happy Jack Road and McKinney Drive.
"There was still some oxygen and stuff in the lungs leading to believe that the baby was born alive," said Barnes. "It was ruled a homicide but ... nobody's really examined it for an extended period of time."
"Now with this DNA laboratory being capable of extracting DNA from evidence that had been lingering for years with all their new technology and everything, we're hoping to get some more genetics and all these other things that they specialize in," Barnes added.
"(Othram) reached out to me this morning (and) said they're still working on it," said Detective Sgt. Curtis Burch. "So as far as putting a timeline on it, I couldn't do that yet."
Burch urges anyone with information that could aid in solving the decades-old case to call him at (307) 633-4763.
"The lab has their own crowd funding page," said Burch. "People will be able to follow that link -- https://dnasolves.com/articles/laramie_county_baby_john_doe/ -- and contribute and help cover the expenses for the examination and analytics that go with it."