Colleen M. Fitzpatrick


Colleen M. Fitzpatrick is an American scientist and entrepreneur. She helped identify remains found in the crash site of Northwest Flight 4422, that crashed in Alaska in 1948, and co-founded the DNA Doe Project which identifies previously unidentified bodies and runs IdentiFinders, which helps find suspects in old crimes.

Early life and education

Colleen Fitzpatrick was born April 25, 1955 in New Orleans, Louisiana. She received her BA in physics from Rice University, and her MA and PhD in nuclear physics from Duke University.

Career

She lectured at Sam Houston University for two years, before working on a laser radar system at Rockwell International and then high resolution optical measurement techniques at Spectron Development Laboratories. She then founded, in her garage in 1986, Rice Systems, an optics company that did contract research and development. Her company grew to employ seven scientists but closed in 2005 after NASA dropped the spaceship to Jupiter project on which the company had been working.

Forensic genealogy

Fitzpatrick coined the term forensic genealogy. She had started writing a book about forensic genealogy in 2002, and after no publishers would accept it, she self-published the book in 2005. She started selling her book at genealogy conferences. She set up a corresponding website, and started writing columns on the topic for magazines and websites. In 2006, Hebron Investments asked her to find a missing person because someone wanted to buy land, but the title owner could not be found. This led to her trying to locate owners of unclaimed property in 75 cases in 30 countries.
Her next venture, Identifinders International, founded with her late partner Andy Yeiser, uses the techniques of forensic genealogy to find missing people. In 2007 she helped identify the body of a child about two years old that died in the 1912 Titanic disaster as Sidney Leslie Goodwin from England, aged 19 months, whose family had died the wreck and had relatives in New Zealand. In 2008 she helped identify the remains found in the wreckage of Northwest Flight 4422 that crashed in Alaska in 1948. That same year she helped expose Misha Defonseca's book " Years" as a fraud. Fitzpatrick and Sharon Sergeant also exposed as a fraud Herman Rosenblat's book Angel at the Fence. She also helped In 2020 Identifinders International and The Porchlight Project helped Ohio police identify James Zastawnick as a suspect in the 1987 murder by strangulation of 17-year-old Barbara Blatnik.
In 2014, Fitzpatrick helped police narrow down the list of suspects to five men with the surname Miller for the murder in Phoenix, Arizona of Angela Brosso, 22, in 1992 and the murder of Melanie Bernas, 17, in 1993. Police found there was only one possibility and DNA testing confirmed that Bryan Patrick Miller matched DNA from the killer. In 2015 Miller was arrested and charged with the two murders. Miller had been a suspect at the time of the murders, but released for lack of evidence. Miller was also later charged with the 2012 murder of 13-year-old Briana Naylor. Fitzpatrick believes this was the first cold case solved by genetic genealogy.
In 2015 Fitzpatrick, Cece Moore and a team of adoption researchers helped Benjaman Kyle, an amnesiac since 2004, find his identity ' and family members.
In 2016, Fitzpatrick played a role in establishing the true identity of Lori Erica Ruff, a woman who had assumed a false identity in 1988 and committed suicide in 2010, after which her husband's family discovered she had stolen the identity of a deceased child. Ruff turned out to be Kimberly McLean, who had severed all ties with her family and adopted a new identity to avoid being located by them.
In 2018 and 2019, she helped Rapid City, South Dakota police with the case of the rape and murder by strangulation of 60-year-old Gwen Miller in 1968. Using Y-DNA, Fitzpatrick narrowed the possible suspects down to 6-7 men with the surname Field. Local police were then able to identify Eugene Field as the prime suspect. Field had already died in 2009 from cancer.
In 2020 she helped Orange County, California police identify the body of a young woman who had been found in 1968 beaten, raped and her throat cut near Huntington Beach as 26-year-old Anita Louise Piteau. Fitzpatrick also helped identify the suspected murderer as Johnny Chrisco who had already died of cancer in 2015.

DNA Doe Project

In 2017 she co-founded with Margaret Press the DNA Doe Project which has the aim of identifying dead adults for their families. In June 2020 she resigned from the project.
Their first success in 2018 was identifying the dead "Buckskin Girl" in Ohio as belonging to Marcia King from Arkansas. They also identified the bodies of "Lyle Stevik", "Joseph Newton Chandler III", "Alfred Jake Fuller", "Anaheim Jane Doe" and "Washoe County or Sheep Flats Jane Doe" in 2018.
In 2019, they identified the bodies of "Lavender Doe", "Rock County John Doe," "Butler County Jane Doe", "Annie Doe", “Vicky Dana Jane Doe”, "Belle in the Well", "Orange Socks", "I-96 Jane Doe", the "Mill Creek Shed Man", "Phoenix Jane Doe", "Marion County Jane Doe", "Barron County John Doe" and "Clark County John Doe", the remains of a headless man in an Idaho cave identified as a suspected murderer who had died about 100 years before, probably in 1916.
In 2020, her team identified the bodies of "Barron County John Doe", the "Corona Girl", "Peoria County John Doe", the "Lime Lady". and a Jane Doe in Phoenix, Arizona.

Professional associations

She is a Fellow of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers and an Associate Member of the American Academy of Forensic Science.

Selected works

;Books
;Book chapters
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