Anne Arundel County Police Use DNA Snapshot to Aid Identification of Baltimore Murder Victim, Leading to Arrest and Confession

announced that Detectives at the Anne Arundel County Police Department in Maryland used the company's Snapshot® DNA Phenotyping service, leading to the arrest of a Baltimore resident for murder. On 29 January 2018, Baltimore Police charged Taras Caldwell with the murder of his girlfriend, Shaquana Marie Caldwell, bringing closure to a case that began in Anne Arundel County on 14 June 2017 when Anne Arundel County Police received a report that skeletal remains had been found in Glen Burnie, Maryland. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined that the decedent was a female approximately 20 years of age and that foul play was suspected in her death.

In the fall of 2017, after initial investigative efforts failed to reveal the victim's identity, Anne Arundel County Police contacted Parabon NanoLabs with a request to use the company's Snapshot® DNA Phenotyping service to generate a likeness of the victim to assist with identification. "We had engaged Parabon on such cases in the past and felt it would be the most efficient way to get to a positive identification," said Anne Arundel County Police Detective Sgt. Rob Price.

Snapshot's analysis of the DNA indicated the victim was of African American ancestry, with brown to dark brown skin, brown eyes, black hair, and no freckles. Thom Shaw, a certified forensic artist at Parabon, performed a facial reconstruction from the victim's skull and digitally combined it with the DNA predictions in order to generate an image of how the victim may have looked when she was alive. "The ability to fine tune a Snapshot composite with details from a skull gives the best possible likeness of an unidentified victim," says Shaw.