EDMONTON – In the 2014 federal budget, the government earmarked funding for a DNA index that would help police match the DNA profiles of missing Canadians with unidentified human remains, potentially bringing closure to families of missing people across the country.
“I got pretty emotional,” said Melanie Alix, whose son, Dylan Koshman, disappeared in Edmonton in 2008. “You don’t know if it’s ever going to happen, and it’s a long road.”
Since her son went missing, Alix has been petitioning the government to establish a national missing persons DNA databank.
READ MORE: DNA not being used in new database for missing persons and unidentified remains
“It was overwhelming because it felt like it was falling on deaf ears for so long, and then, all of a sudden, it’s becoming part of our new budget.”
Ottawa outlined $8.1 million to fund the DNA index for five years starting in 2016 and another $1.3 million per year going forward.
FEATURE: Global News’ special Budget 2014 site
Alix believes the DNA databank could lead to answers for many Canadian families left not knowing what has happened to their loved ones.
“We don’t know where Dylan is still, but if he left the province and his remains were found without any identification, we could find him maybe,” said Alix. “The connection across the country having a DNA bank is going to help a lot of unidentified remains lying in morgues.”
“This is huge. It will help bring closure to a lot of people who don’t know where loved ones are or even if they are deceased.”
Judy Peterson of British Columbia has been pushing for a DNA index like this one for years. Her 14-year-old daughter Lindsey disappeared in 1993.
Peterson was in Ottawa for the budget announcement, and was acknowledged for her efforts by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty on Tuesday.
Currently, police collect DNA samples from family members of missing persons, but there is no way to compare files across provinces unless investigators specifically ask about a certain file.
“If we have DNA samples that we can now compare against all jurisdictions across the country, it’s going to eliminate the chance that an investigator in another jurisdiction thinks to compare or even ask us if we have DNA on Dylan’s case specifically,” explains Det. Sean Jenkinson, who has been working on Koshman’s file with the Edmonton Police Service (EPS).
“If Dylan travelled to B.C. and we didn’t know that, then he becomes ‘unidentified remains’ in B.C. unless the investigator in B.C. thinks to talk to Edmonton.”
Under this federal plan, DNA of missing persons would be stored and shared across Canada.
“This DNA index is going to give us the ability to just simply upload a DNA profile and then basically wait for the system to do its work,” adds Cst. Jim Gurney, with the EPS Missing Persons Unit. “Then, once we get a positive hit, we can work to do further comparison on that one.”
The EPS currently investigates between 1,600 and 1,700 missing persons cases a year. And, while the majority of those are solved, there are about two or three a year that are not.
“It definitely is going to benefit us and policing as a whole to have that kind of tool at our disposal,” said Jenkinson. “There’s no doubt in my mind that it’ll help resolve files as soon as it’s up and running.”
He says a similar program in the United States helped solve about 11 cases in the first couple of years it was in place.
“I think solving one file is worthwhile, but 10 or 11 is still a huge number.”
“I received a phone call actually directly from Dylan Koshman’s mom , Melanie Alix, yesterday,” shared Jenkinson, “and she was quite excited by the news… I think it’s just been a long, hard process for her being so active with the petition, and the private members bill, and pushing that forward for the last few years. I think it’s going to be a great sense of relief for her.”
“Not having closure is a really hard position to be in,” said Alix. “I hope that they can move forward with this and we can see a bill being passed in the future.”
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