Channel 2 exclusive: Go inside the lab that has solved more than a dozen Georgia cold cases

ATLANTA — It was June 6, 2019 – a newborn with her umbilical cord still attached was found in the woods behind some homes in a Cumming neighborhood.

Not more than an hour old, police say the infant, later named “Baby India” by the nurses at Northside Forsyth Hospital, was left there to die. Amazingly, the child was found.

After thousands of hours of investigating by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the FBI and the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office, investigators decided advanced technology known as familial DNA was needed.

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Channel 2 Action News recently visited Othram Labs in the Woodlands, Texas, where familial DNA analysis is done.

“Traditional forensic testing looks at 20 markers, and then you upload those 20 markers to the CODIS database, which is the FBI database of known perpetrators in the United States. Unfortunately, when you’re working cases like Baby India or other cases involving victims that are known, you can’t do that because the victims are not a known perpetrator. So they’re not going to be in that database,” said special agent Brian Head of the cold case unit of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations.

But they could be in a genealogical database, which is where Othram Labs found Baby India’s biological father.

Police don’t believe the father knew about the pregnancy-- but that lead helped them identify Baby India’s biological mother, Karima Jiwani, 40, who is in the Forsyth County Jail charged with murder, cruelty to children, aggravated assault and reckless abandonment.

So what does Othram do that local crime labs can’t?

“They’re bringing new types of investigative avenues for us to follow. It is absolutely a help for the GBI,” Head said.

Instead of 20 markers like the current technology, Othram is able to get hundreds of thousands of markers to build a DNA profile.

“Most of our cases are solving between fourth and sixth cousin, and some even beyond. And so that is what you need in order to be able to figure out where someone belongs,” said Kristen Mittelman, chief development officer for Othram.

A new Georgia law called the Coleman Baker Act allows families of homicide victims to request law enforcement agencies take another look at their cold cases.

According to Project Cold Case, there are roughly 12, 144 Georgia cold cases dating back to 1980. Agencies like the GBI are welcoming the help of established labs like Othram.

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“So the GBI is definitely working on our unsolved homicides, our cold cases. We are using all the resources that we have available. The Georgia legislature and the governor’s office funded this unit fully. And we are using all those resources to use the private labs to send our samples out,” Head said.

To date, Othram has solved 13 cold cases in Georgia, and they are currently tasked with working on four more, and are currently using crowdfunding to foot the bills.

“Hundreds of cases every day come to us that have been stagnant, a dead end for decades and no hope. And now there’s hope that all those cases can be looked at,” Mittelman said.

The cost for Othram to take on these cold cases is from $5,000 to $7,000, which if agencies can’t pay for it, they will crowd source to get them funded.

That is what the company is currently doing to solve to Gwinnett County cold cases.

If you would like to help them out, CLICK HERE.

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UPDATE: SOLVED UPDATE: The GBI identified her in November as 5-year-old Kenyetta Odom. Her mother and stepfather have been indicted in her death. Found in Ware County in 1988. Victim's body was located in a brown baby blanket placed in a gym bag, in a cement filled suitcase inside a TV console cabinet. (Georgia Bureau of Investigation)

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