PAUL: In this week's Missing Ahead, learn now genetic genealogists are teaming up with law enforcement to help crack cold cases.</s>RACHEL CRANE, CNN INNOVATION AND SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Our DNA carries a specific instruction set for an individual's physical characteristics. With a small sample Parabon NanoLabs can create a facial composite called a phenotype that predicts what a person looks like. It's technology that can help break criminal cold cases wide open. It's the kind of stuff from a sci-fi movie, you know what I mean?</s>ELLEN GREYTAK, PARABON NANOLABS: The phenotyping is definitely very sci-fi.</s>CRANE: After being brutally beaten, 17-year-old Brittani Marcell was put into a coma. She lost all memory of the attack, leaving police with just a one piece of physical evidence, a single drop of blood. For the next 10 years the case went unsolved until Marcell recalled a name, Justin Hansen. With that drop of blood Parabon NanoLabs produced this facial composite linking Hansen to the crime, a suspicion confirmed later with an additional DNA match. He was convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison.</s>GREYTAK: Going forward the number of cold cases will decrease and also active cases can potentially be solved more quickly. Cases won't have to go cold.</s>CRANE: It costs about $3,000, but the results can mean authorities spend less time and manpower to solve a case. DNA can't reveal a person's age, though, so Parabon estimates what a person would look like based on how long ago the crime was committed.</s>GREYTAK: So basically, we're predicting where the face falls on different facial dimensions in what we call face-space.</s>CRANE: By generating leads from DNA left at a crime scene as opposed to matching it to a database, Parabon is giving law enforcement a powerful new crime fighting tool.
New Technology Uses DNA to Create Facial Imaging.