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.
