ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
Project Justice is a non-profit organization focused on solving cold cases, particularly those involving unidentified remains, by funding advanced DNA testing and forensic genealogy.
The entity recently celebrated its 50th solved case, a nearly 20-year-old mystery in Yavapai County, Ariz. As Project Justice co-founder Justin Woo tells it, it was very thrilling to receive the news at the end of June.
“It’s been in the works over multiple years by this point. When we started, we weren’t really thinking ‘One day we’ll have solved 50 cases around the country’ or anything like that, we were just working one case at a time and working to help bring these cases some closure,” Woo said. “But we do feel very proud to have reached this, it makes us feel good knowing we’ve helped on these cases.”
Woo and Project Justice co-founder Lydia Ansel then talked about how the company got started.
“We began this in 2020, and our first solve came in 2021, which was a murder case in Las Vegas, where we’re headquartered,” Woo said. “After that, we started working on more cases throughout the U.S. We now have more than 50 cases solved, and many of them are missing people and identifications for various law enforcement agencies. And you never know when you start this process how long everything could take – it could be months, years, or longer depending on the circumstances surrounding the particular case.”
“And that very first case was very inspiring for us – we weren’t in the true crime field at all or anything like that, we just knew of a new company that was doing amazing work using new technology and forensics and genealogical DNA,” Ansel added. “And it was Justin’s idea to reach out to them because they were trying to crowdfund each case, but Justin said he’d fully fund the cases if they were brought to Las Vegas, and that case broke the world record for the smallest amount of DNA used to solve a crime, and it also helped solve two other murder cases. We realized we could help make an impact and bring awareness of this new technology to other people and help solve even more cold cases. From there, we created Vegas Justice League, and then we realized there was so much more of an impact we could make, so we continued to grow. That’s when we started Project Justice, which is our national initiative, and from there, we now have more than 150 cases, with more than 50 of them officially now solved. And the momentum is definitely building, we have more than $1 million of donated funds to go directly toward solving these cold cases, and Justin covers all of the operating costs himself. Even when someone only donates, say, $10, it goes directly toward solving these cases, which is really important to us, because we want everyone to feel every cent is going toward this extremely important work. There are no credit card processing fees or anything like that, we take care of all of that stuff so 100 percent of the donations go toward the cases.”
Ansel added there are a few different ways Project Justice gets a case.
“Sometimes law enforcement comes to us directly and asks for some assistance – they don’t usually share the details with us due to the investigation’s circumstances,” Ansel said. “We’ve also reached out to different labs and worked with them – in fact, there’s a lab based in Houston we’ve funded many cases with, and we basically tell them ‘We have X amount of money, how many cases could that help get started?’ and then they have their own network of other labs and law enforcement partners. A lot of times, we don’t hear anything else about a case until it’s officially solved, and it’s always a bit of a surprise when we realize one case or another happened to be one of the cases we funded.”
Ansel and Woo said there are many benefits to having an entity like Project Justice available.
“There are people throughout the U.S. who have missing loved ones and have no idea what happened to them or any of those details, so one of the things Project Justice is really proud of is having that chance to give answers to those families,” Ansel said. “There was one case involving a veteran who disappeared, and the family thought he was suffering from PTSD and just abandoned the family, but it turned out that was not the case and he was tragically taken from them. There have been other cases where we’ve been able to help identify remains of people who have been missing for decades and help their families give them a proper final resting place. There was one case of a man who got hit by a train and he wasn’t able to be identified for multiple decades until the use of this technology was available. And by helping in identifying remains, that can be a major step in the investigative process and figuring out what exactly happened to this person, more of the whodunit of it all, so it’s a huge piece of the puzzle.”
“And a good example of that is, say a body was found in Las Vegas and is identified, there sometimes turns out to be a missing person report filed a long time ago, and that can spark more effort into a proper investigation so the full picture can come about,” Woo added. “And what we’ve found with several of those murder cases is once we’ve identified the murderer’s DNA, there are other cases it can be tied to. In fact, there was a case not too long ago from Colorado that also had a connection to a Las Vegas case. If you commit a crime and your DNA is in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), you could be connected to multiple other crimes that wouldn’t have otherwise been solved by traditional detective methods because that DNA is available to be compared to everything else at the crime scene.”
As for the future? Woo and Ansel said they would love to see expansion in multiple aspects.
“One benefit of funding the use of this new technology, local law enforcement is now more aware of it and are able to solve their own cases using it, which is very inspiring to us because even though we’d love to fund all the cases in the world, there’s only so much fundraising we can do,” Ansel said. “Of course, if people want to contribute to what we do, we’d more than appreciate that. However, we’ve noticed in Las Vegas, for example, how the local metro police department has a specific budget for this type of DNA and forensic analysis, and we’re seeing more people getting involved in terms of awareness and all of that. The hope is for all of these cases to be solved at some point, and for the mindset to change from ‘if they’re solved’ to ‘when they’re solved. We have noticed, as law enforcement entities in different areas of the U.S. are beginning to see more results from this, they’re reaching out to us more and finding more funding for using this technology, and we’ve now got more than $1 million of funds we’ve raised and contributed ourselves to this. Since we’ve reached this milestone of solving more than 50 cases, that’s such a big deal in itself because that means things are moving faster, and we’ve got more cases pending. I would just love to see that momentum continue.”
“When we started this in 2020, this was all new for us. When we went to talk to the people at the Las Vegas Metro Police Department, they’d never used this science before and were rather skeptical of the process,” Woo said. “We’ve proven to them and others throughout the U.S. this process works and there have been hundreds of cases solved using this methodology, and we’ve contributed to 50 of those cases. I know with the Las Vegas police, they have a couple large rooms filled with binders full of cold cases, and now, through this process of helping them, they’re able to reevaluate and re-categorize everything. And there are now more people on that team helping with that work, with even more people getting hired, which is great. Law enforcement is definitely becoming more and more aware of it, and money is starting to be allocated in various budgets for technology like this, which we’re very happy to hear. Overall, we’re glad to be able to assist law enforcement in these cases and give help and closure to the families in whatever ways we can.”
