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>> My name is Brandon McCollum
and I'm a forensic DNA examiner

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for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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So when I'm handed a specific case, I need to
look at the evidence that's submitted the case

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from a DNA perspective and I
determine what evidence I'm going

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to test and how it's going to be tested.

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Once we generate results from those tests, I'll
then interpret that information that we gathered

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from the testing procedures and then I provide
that information to investigators in the field.

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If necessary at any point I then have to
testify in the court of law to the results

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that I've obtained through
the DNA testing at the FBI.

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So with it being at the FBI I do see
cases literally from all around the world,

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and those types of cases span counterterrorism
cases, counterintelligence casework.

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Also the typical violent crimes that you think
of, like murders, robberies, sexual assaults,

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things like that, but we also do
do missing persons investigations

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and paternity testing as well.

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One of those is a cold case
that was cold for about 30 years

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in California that I was involved in.

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Without giving too many details, basically
a 14-year-old girl was walking home

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from school one day and she was brutally
murdered and stabbed upwards of 50 times,

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and there was no real evidence in the case.

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DNA testing technology didn't exist
at that time 30 years ago, no subject,

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and so the case literally went cold.

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And a cold case team sent in some evidence for
some DNA testing and what we had found was,

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remarkably, is that during that attack
the subject also had bled himself.

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So what we were able to obtain was an unknown
male DNA profile on the victim's purse

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that was hanging in a tree from the
location where she was murdered,

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and the blood reasonably was going to
belong to the perpetrator of that crime.

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We were able to put that unknown male
DNA profile on the victim's purse

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into a DNA database and it hit to a previously
convicted offender, thereby basically solving

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that case that went cold for 30 years.