"People won't have to wait decades to find out what happened to their loved one ever again," said Othram Inc.
THE
WOODLANDS, Texas (KTRK) -- A southeast Texas company is hopeful their
technology might change forensics forever and lead to the end of cold
cases.
Othram
built their lab in 2019 in The Woodlands. Kristen Mittelman with Othram
said the company uses DNA sequencing and genomic technology to help
identify victims and perpetrators for law enforcement.
"People
won't have to wait decades to find out what happened to their loved one
ever again," said Kristen Mittelman. "As I said, you need a very small
percentage of the population in order to be able to identify everyone.
That small percentage of the population is already in these databases so
no, you could not opt out. If you left DNA at a crime scene, I'm here
to say you'll probably get caught. It's a matter of time now. We've
solved murders from 62 years ago."
Othram's CEO, David Mittelman,
welcomed ABC13 onto their campus earlier in April. There, he showed us
the cartridges used in their sequencer to build a DNA profile, which is
taken from evidence often worn down with time or too tiny to extract
with traditional methods.
"What street corner can you go to, to
solve a cold case?" said David Mittelman. "We saw an opportunity to
bring the technology to an area that is massively underserved."
So far, they've seen success.
Othram's website features multiple cases that were solved with their help, and expertise.
They use the site to crowdfund since they don't have any dedicated funding, and the technology costs about $5,000 per cold case.
"Until
we can bridge that divide between people knowing the technology exists
and the government actually funding this technology so it can work at
scale in the United States. We need people to come out here, like you,
and tell this story," said Kristen Mittelman. "To explain the difference
and to bring awareness to what's possible so that it's required."