Detective Andrew Houghton

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246 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 28 Jul

Detective Andrew Houghton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.

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Somebody Knows Something · S3E8: Family Trees · 29 Jun 2026 podcast

Ideally, we would use direct DNA from the actual missing person.

We can use things like hair from a hairbrush or other personal items like a toothbrush.

But again, in this case, we don't have that option.

As we mentioned earlier in the season, this case leaves us with one option and one option only if we're going to use DNA.

And that is familial DNA.

As Chris and I said in our first episode, Witeria had five children, four daughters, and a son.

For this case, several of her children have passed away, and one of those daughters was placed with an adoptive family after birth.

So far up to this point, we're still working to try to track her down.

We have used current open source searches, and we've spoken with some members of WhiteCurious family, so we can try to track down some DNA that they could provide.

But the biggest issue is, the actual type of DNA also really matters.

Chris and I thought it might be useful to explain to our listeners why we need to be so specific with our DNA standard in a case like this.

And basically, the reason is that DNA that's stored in different locations in our body is, well, different.

According to the National Human Genome Research Institute, a person has two types of DNA, nuclear DNA and mitochondrial DNA, also called mtDNA.

Nuclear DNA, as the name suggests, is located in the cell's nucleus, and mitochondrial DNA is stored in the mitochondria.

While nuclear DNA has about 20,000 genes, mtDNA contains only 37.

and those genes mainly support energy production and help the mitochondria generate cellular energy.

MTDNA is really important when it comes to cold cases because, in many cases, we don't have direct DNA from a missing person.

But it can be used in other ways too.

While we are using this technology in this case to try to identify a missing person, nuclear DNA and MTDNA are also often used to identify unknown offenders.

Nuclear DNA is basically the gold standard in most situations, but something like a shed hair or a hair fragment doesn't typically contain nuclear DNA in many situations.

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