Missing and Unidentified Human Remains Grant

This award is funded as an administrative funding adjustment of 15PBJA-23-GG-00830-SLFO. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) is the lead criminal agency in North Carolina. Founded in 1937, the SBI works routinely with prosecutors, clerks of court, and other traditional partners dedicated to the prevention of violent crime, the prosecution of guilty parties, and the exoneration of individuals who are shown to be innocent of wrongdoing. As the Bureau lacks internal capacity to test human remains, this proposal seeks to establish a partnership with the Human Identification and Forensic Analysis Laboratory at NC State University. This project will attempt to fill a gap in the Bureau’s ability to research unsolved homicides. Testing on unidentified remains is not supported by the Bureau’s 2021 Prosecuting Cold Cases Using DNA award. The 2021 project supports FGG and DNA testing, but not on unidentified human remains. The project team seeks to address this gap and reduce the backlog of untested unidentified skeletal remains, so that more cases can be investigated.