- September 22, 2024
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Of Flagler County’s 21 cold cases, Flagler County Sheriff's Office Detective Sarah Scalia said, she prefers to work with the older, unidentified remains first.
The longer a case is open, she said, the more leads close: memories fade, relatives and friends age and die, and evidence could deteriorate.
“I’m still going through all the cases,” she said. “Things degrade over time, also, if it (the evidence) wasn’t stored in the right bag — like, say, we put it in plastic years ago, when nobody realized that wasn’t a good idea.”
DNA evidence in cold cases is important for identifying victims and solving the cases, Scalia said. The case of recently identified Robert “Bruce” McPhail is one such example, where a private lab was able to identify some of McPhail’s distant relations through DNA testing.
In 1977, FCSO deputies recovered the body of an unidentified man floating in the Intracoastal Waterway. The man had multiple stab wounds in his abdomen and had been shot. His body had been bound and weighted down.
When McPhail’s body was found, no one could identify him, Scalia said. She sent his remains to Othram, a private forensic genetic genealogy corporation, earlier in 2023. In August, the FCSO announced McPhail’s identification.
Othram co-founder Kristen Mittelman said Othram is unique in forensic DNA testing.
DNA is a consumable resource during testing, Mittelman said: Part or all of a sample is destroyed as it is tested. In forensics, especially cold cases, investigators may only have a limited sample of DNA to test.
“That’s what’s missing in forensics thus far, is that predictability that I will not consume your sample or your budget unless I know I can bring help to your investigation,” she said.
Othram scientists use a different testing method, building a genealogical profile by comparing a DNA sample to Othram’s DNA database of both human and non-human DNA.
That lets them filter out contaminant DNA and build out the genetic markers of the DNA sample to create a genealogical profile. The process can take six to eight weeks, she said.
“We get the DNA and we compare it to everything we’ve done before, and we can tell law enforcement with certainty whether or not we can build on these profiles, and whether it’s something we’ve done previously,” Mittelman said.
Once the DNA has been extracted, Othram’s genealogists begin searching for common ancestors in Othram’s DNA database. Law enforcement can then use that genealogical information to track down and interview potential relatives of the individual, she said.
The McPhail case was difficult because of how long McPhail’s body was in the water, Mittelman said.
“There’s a lot of extra contamination that comes along from being in water for so long,” she said. “But we’ve worked with skeleton remains that have been floating off the coast of Australia for 95 years. So for us, it’s not something we haven’t seen.”
Scalia said Othram was able to identify someone in Canada who shared a great-grandparent with McPhail. When she received Othram’s results with the possible relative, she called the woman to explain the situation.
The woman turned out to be McPhail’s first cousin, once removed — she and the victim shared a great-grandparent, and their grandparents were siblings — and didn’t remember too much about the man after almost 30 years.
“I spoke to them and they were like, ‘Yeah, we haven’t heard from Bruce since about the mid-1990s.’ I’m like, okay, can you tell me about Bruce,” Scalia said. “The more things they told me … There’s no other people [it could be.]”
From there, it was a process of elimination: Were there any other male family members the right genetic distance? Were there any unaccounted-for siblings, or other cousins? Was there a way to test the victim’s DNA against his parents’ remains?
His parents had been cremated, Scalia said. But after extensive research, law enforcement could finally identify the man as McPhail.
In the three years since Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly formed the Cold Case Unit, its detectives have managed to arrest a suspect in one case and identify McPhail’s remains.
A case is considered “cold” when all leads have been exhausted, Scalia said.
In missing persons cases, the case is considered long-term after 90 days, and, by state statute, must be entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, she said. At that point, law enforcement retrieves DNA samples and dental records for future identification.
Flagler County has 21 cold cases. The details of three cases, Scalia said, are not available to the public, but the other 18 are — a mix of homicides and missing person cases spanning from 1980 to 2022.
Scalia is the second detective to work the unit. Her predecessor, Cpl. Andrew Cangialosi, worked the Cold Case Unit from 2020 until late 2021, when he was promoted to the Community Policing Division.
Scalia said Cangialosi did most of the leg work of organizing and modernizing case files. All of the case files and evidence had been stored at the Sheriff’s Office’s old operations building and needed to be reorganized and digitized.
Still, Cangialosi was able to mostly resolve the 2018 homicide case of Frances King, 85, who died of starvation. The suspect, Kim Zaheer, is King’s daughter. Her trial was scheduled to begin last April, but in May, the court ruled Zaheer incompetent to proceed.
When Zaheer was arrested in 2021, three years after a medical examiner ruled King’s death a homicide, it was the first arrest in the Cold Case Unit since its creation in 2020.
Cangialosi said he chose King’s case first because, at the time, it was the most recent of the homicides.
“It was a more recent case. ... The detectives that were handling it before were already up to date on today’s standards,” he said.
Staly said it is important to keep investigating these cases and dedicate the necessary resources to them. As time passes, people and relationships change, and some people may be more willing to talk now than when the crime was committed, he said.
“I think that there are leads in all of those cases that need further investigation,” Staly said. “We have to be the voice for the victims that aren’t here anymore.”
Scalia said she has just sent out the remains of a 1980 cold case — the county’s oldest open homicide —to Othram for review. In that case, unidentified skeletal remains were found in a culvert on the side of State Road 11. The case has been unsolved for 43 years.
You're the gatekeeper. You're the keeper of the things. You have to know everything."
— SARAH SCALIA, FCSO detective
While she waits on those results, she tries to work on other cases, she said.
“I don’t want to do too many at once,” Scalia said. “You have to know everything, so if you do 20 cases at once, you’re going to get stuff mixed up. It’s going to be overwhelming.”
Cangialosi said the biggest difference between working cold cases and working active cases is that there is more time to process and investigate cold cases — reading and re-reading case files and, if they’re still around, talking to the former detectives on the case, as well as the suspects, witnesses and the victim’s family.
“With cold cases, you have obviously more time to deal with it because it’s already been sitting for such a long time,” he said. “You have a lot more time to really play the chess game, to think about your next move.”
DNA is the key to solving these cases, he said. As technology advances, there are more and more ways to pull DNA from fibers, from bones. And good detectives save everything, even for use in the future use when technology might become more advanced, Cangialosi said.
“It’s really a big deal, in the cold case world,” he said.
Identifying McPhail has opened up new avenues of investigation, Scalia said. Now, she knows where he is from and when he moved to Florida — in the mid-’90s, to South Florida — and several people called in with photos after they recognized him.
At this point, Scalia said, detectives don’t have a solid explanation for how McPhail ended up in Flagler County from South Florida.
“There’s some theories,” she said, “but we’re not ready to share.”
For Staly, getting closure for victims’ families is the most important thing and the reason he opened the Cold Case Unit in 2020.
Creating the unit allowed him to dedicate resources and staff specifically to cold cases, he said.
There's no doubt in my mind: If the case can be solved, Detective Scalia will get us there."
— RICK STALY, Flagler County sheriff
“These cases take a long time and, you know, you make small steps with these cases,” he said. “No case should go unsolved, especially a serious case like a homicide or a missing person.”
Staly said the families deserve closure and the victims deserve justice, and he wants these cases solved just as much as Scalia does.
“Detective Scalia is very dedicated,” he said. “Eventually, she’ll get us there. There’s no doubt in my mind: If the case can be solved, Detective Scalia will get us there.”
