KOMO TV (Seattle) is carrying a story about unsolved "Cold Case" murders in Tacoma that occurred in 1986.
TACOMA, Wash. - Using cutting-edge technology not available until now, investigators have released composite sketches of two men suspected of abducting and killing two young Tacoma girls in 1986.
Police say they are determined to solve the two horrific murder cases, which have gone cold after three decades - and they are hopeful the new technology will help lead them to the killers.
There were no witnesses. But DNA samples were found. So how were the sketches made?
The "composite sketches" were generated by a computer based on a process called DNA Phenotyping which is the prediction of physical appearance, using information extracted from DNA which accurately predicts genetic ancestry, eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling, and face shape in individuals from any ethnic background, even individuals with mixed ancestry.
"These are composites much like a witness giving a description and a computer program making a sketch based on known appearance factors," Loretta Cool of the Tacoma police said in a prepared statement. "These composites will not be exact but the outcome is a visual reference that may look similar to what the suspects looked like in 1986."
The process was developed by Parabon Nanolabs and the process is explained on their web site.
How close are the predictions?
Parabon's website has some examples generated from DNA contributed by known volunteers. You can compare the sketches with photos of the volunteers and judge for yourself. Personally, I think Yolanda McClary's actual IMDB photo is virtually a dead ringer for the computer prediction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2016, @01:10PM
The right way to check it is to select a bunch of sufficiently similar looking volunteers, generate "DNA images" from them, and then give the real and computer generated images to test subjects who have to find out which generated face belongs to which real face. The accuracy of the method would then be reflected in the fraction of correct pairings, compared to the expected fraction for pure random pairings.