The person who began her own investigation in 2013 was Colleen Fitzpatrick, a nuclear physicist who happened to take up forensic genealogy as a hobby and wanted to help with the case. Forensic genealogy uses DNA to make familial connections and identify ancestors and help solve puzzles. Fitzpatrick had already helped reunite Holocaust survivors, adoptees and their birthparents, and even identified a child that had died on the Titanic after tracing the DNA of his relatives. It was this forensic genealogy that cracked the case.

Luckily, Blake Ruff and his daughter had both submitted DNA samples to 23andMe.com and Ancestry.com, which Fitzpatrick accessed in order to analyze. The Ruff family said they had submitted the samples in an effort to provide the daughter with a way to find out about her mother. Fitzpatrick used these samples to determine the history of the family, but it took years to finally come up with a match…