After a two-year hiatus, Portland Police Bureau’s Cold Case Unit returns to action, with a $2.5 million grant and a whole new world of forensic technology at its disposal.

The grant, funded through the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, will support a team of detectives and victim advocates as they look into around 300 still-unsolved homicides dating back to the 1960s, including the 2001 murder of Lewis Elementary School sixth grader Joshua Jeffries. Since its founding in 2004, the unit has cleared more than 50 cases. “Our goal is to bring as many of our unsolved cases up to current investigative standards as we can,” says detective Brendan McGuire, who has worked for PPB since 1996.

There’s good reason to hope for a break in their cases: $300,000 will be set aside for advanced testing like forensic genetic genealogy, a technique which compares crime scene evidence to DNA in genealogy databases. The practice gained traction in 2018 after detectives in California identified the Golden State Killer through a cousin’s MyHeritage profile. It has since moved countless cases forward.

Past Cold Case Unit arrests have also relied on genetic genealogy, but the unit disbanded in 2022 just as use of the method gained noticeable traction. Amid COVID-era turmoil, the bureau had racked up too many new cases to put increasingly scarce resources toward the old ones, per PPB public information officer Mike Benner. Two detectives kept “limping along” with cold cases, says McGuire, who helped solve the 2013 murder of newborn Baby Precious using genetic genealogy in 2023.

For the families of victims, the return of a dedicated unit means the return of hope for long-awaited answers. “We’re hopefully on track for resolution and healing. That’s what we need,” says George Spaulding, whose son Brian Spaulding was murdered in 2017. Brian’s killer has not yet been found.