DNA registry assists in identifying remains
Gaithersburg repository helps prevent ‘unknown soldiers’
Marine Cpl. Jim E. Moshier was presumed killed in 1967 when the helicopter carrying him and 10 others crashed in Vietnam.
His remains came home to rest in mid-July, thanks in part to the Department of Defense DNA Registry, comprised of a DNA special laboratory in Rockville and DNA repository in Gaithersburg.
‘‘I had never experienced the death of somebody extremely close until that happened 40 years ago,” said DeMarco, 66. ‘‘It’s hard enough for somebody young to accept a death when you see the body. But when you are told that something has happened halfway around the world and you will never see that person again, that is very hard to accept, especially for a young person. Young people are not supposed to die.”
The return of her younger brother’s remains allowed DeMarco and her 89-year-old mother some peace, she said Sunday.
The Marine who was 23 when he died was greeted at the airport by family, a special ceremony and the motorcycle-riding Patriot Guard on bikes bearing American and POW⁄MIA flags. More than 300 mourners attended Moshier’s military funeral, complete with 21-gun salute, his sister said. The soldier was buried in a hometown cemetery — near his father and the young son whom he had never met.
Identifying the fallen
The Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, the world-class Rockville laboratory that assisted in identifying Moshier uses nuclear, mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal DNA techniques to identify current-day and ancient remains.
The lab has helped name soldiers killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other major conflicts, including World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War and the Vietnam War, said Col. Louis N. Finelli, chief deputy medical examiner and director.
The lab has been called on to identify remains of passengers of United Flight 93, the Columbia Space Shuttle, Sept. 11 victims killed in the Pentagon, and many others beyond military personnel — even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The lab has unique capabilities, like the ability to test hair and improvised explosive devices, Finelli said. So elite are the system and its scientists that the FBI sends work — as do other countries, the Defense Department and some criminal attorneys.
‘‘Basically we’re one-stop shopping,” Finelli said last week. ‘‘If we can’t do it, you’re probably going to be out of luck.”
Age and availability of DNA samples from tissue or bone often determine testing procedures. Nuclear DNA, which comes from the cell’s nucleus and divides evenly into DNA from both parents, is typically used for identifying military personnel killed in the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, Finelli said.
Ancient or ‘‘challenged” remains damaged by the environment or other factors are usually tested using mitochondrial DNA, found in the cell's mitochondria and inherited only from the mother. This testing helped determine Moshier’s identity.
Mitochondrial DNA is tougher to test, but can come from tiny samples and multiplies abundantly, so is easily duplicated by a lab.
Some years ago, DeMarco attended a Sacramento conference held by the Defense POW⁄MIA Personnel office, which holds regular meetings to keep families informed about the cases of missing loved ones.
DNA Registry scientists were there to take mitochondrial DNA. DeMarco offered hers.
‘‘It’s an intense process to identify these families,” Finelli said. ‘‘It can take years. We have [specimens] we’ve had in the laboratories for years and we’re just missing that extra bit of DNA that will convince the families.”
The nation’s Joint POW⁄MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) works with other governments, including those of Korea, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, to find remains of military personnel missing in action.
Once remains are found, JPAC sends them to a Central Identification Lab in Hawaii for initial identification.
Then the DNA Registry lab in Rockville tests for sure.
‘‘Some people will not want to believe. They will contest it,” Finelli said. ‘‘Some people just start crying the minute you show up at the door and say, ‘We believe we have your loved one.’”
Storing DNA
An unmarked deep-freeze warehouse hidden deep in Gaithersburg assures that there will never again be an unknown soldier.
After Operation Desert Storm in the 1990s, the Defense Department decided it needed a more reliable method to identify remains.
Since 1992, the DNA Registry’s Gaithersburg repository has gathered samples from 5,130,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guard, said Lawrence H. Drayton, director of repository operations.
A large percentage is housed in ‘‘Big Bertha,” a two-story, 31-foot long, 24-foot deep, 22-foot wide storage freezer cooled to an icy negative 22 degrees.
Upon enlistment, military members smudge two quarter-sized blood samples on a small white card marked with their name and social security number. Cards are shipped to Gaithersburg from more than 1,300 sites worldwide.
Lab technicians affix a bar code label marked with the donor’s first initial and first three letters of the donor’s last name to the sample. The information is then entered into a database to verify military status, then vacuum-packed in a plastic bag to be stored for 50 years.
In 2006 the warehouse collected 301,903 samples and expects in 2042 — the repository’s 50th anniversary — to have 17 million.
‘‘They do a marvelous service,” DeMarco said.
