The Arm In The Snow; A Journey From Alaska To Limerick, Ireland June 20, 2009

The Arm in the Snow: A journey from Alaska to Limerick, Ireland
In 1997 two airline pilots discovered the wreckage of Northwest Flight 4422, a DC-4 military transport plane that had vanished in Alaskan glaciers 50 years earlier while en route from Shanghai to LaGuardia Airport. Amid the debris, the pilots found a frozen human forearm and hand, preserved in the ice. Whose arm was it? Nine years after the arm was discovered, forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick, working with a team of experts from the US Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, cracked this amazing case by locating distant relatives living in Limerick, Ireland. Colleen will share her knowledge of mitochondrial DNA, a unique approach to locating surviving kin, and the family research “paperwork” skills that enabled the team to crack this poignant and compelling mystery.