Solving criminal cold cases in Thunder Bay.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: SPECIAL REPORT: THUNDER BAY

Ten years ago, few made the connection that mitochondrial DNA could be used as an investigative tool to solve criminal cold cases.

How quickly things have changed.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

And few people in Thunder Bay ever thought their city of grain elevators, pulp and paper mills had the burgeoning potential to be a global hub in the fast-growing field of life sciences and medical research.

Arlene Lahti and Curtis Hildebrandt are the faces of this so-called new knowledge economy.

Inside sanitized rooms accessed only by fingerprint identification, the Lakehead University grads and senior scientists at Molecular World Inc. (MWI) gown and mask up to solve another mystery.

When degraded material from an exhumed grave moves beyond the investigative abilities of government or police forensic labs, it's sent to Molecular World, often straight from the crime scene.

They can deal on a daily basis in their clean lab and recovery unit with a sometimes grisly smorgasbord of skeletal remains, pieces of human appendages, shell casings, shoes embedded with glass or garments flecked with blood, saliva, semen, strands of hair (sometimes decades old) to either tie people to crime scenes or exonerate them.

Molecular World is the only Canadian facility to use both nuclear and a variety of DNA techniques used in human identification, including mitochondrial (maternally-inherited) DNA.

"Every day I come to work, I remember these are people who are victims," says Lahti. "We're dealing with people's lives.

"We try to have a sense of humour, it can get pretty depressing, but this is real life and these people had horrible things happen to them and we're trying to help them or help their families get some closure."

Four years ago, Lahti and Hildebrandt helped renovate a Royal Bank building in the former downtown core of Port Arthur into a highly secure facility.

The basement bank vaults are ideal storage space for evidence.

Since 2003, the seven-employee private lab has been out to constantly prove themselves to their clients by boasting the fastest turn-around time in Canada in screening samples and reporting back results within days or sometimes overnight.

"We know the meaning of overtime," says Lahti.

"We have no choice when it needs to be done now," adds Hildebrandt.

The company has made great strides is securing accreditation and building up their case work.

MWI regularly works with Canadian law enforcement agencies, Immigration Canada and has a contract with...