22-Jul-2024

Wisconsin v. Doxtator – TrueAllele helps solve 1963 cold case

On a black night in June 1963, a white car pulled up to an Enco gas station along an old Wisconsin highway. Oshkosh station owner Wayne Pratt went over to help. The station lights were out. Pratt’s wife found his dead body under a blanket, stabbed over 50 times.

The case went cold. There was no physical evidence or eyewitness. Investigators questioned 75 people and administered 25 lie detector tests.

The case reopened in 2012. DNA testing of old items by the local crime lab was inconclusive. In 2015 and 2023, a private forensic lab retested the items. The degraded low-level DNA was a mixture of different people. Too complex to interpret, the testing was again inconclusive.

In April 2024, Cybergenetics received the lab’s DNA data from the blanket. Unlike less capable forensic software, the company’s powerful TrueAllele technology could handle all the evidence data. TrueAllele computing easily unmixed the degraded low-level three-person mixture into three evidence genotypes.

TrueAllele made the DNA identification. Comparing the blanket’s evidence genotypes with DNA from suspects, the computer found an answer. Cybergenetics’ June report statistically connected deceased suspect William Doxtator to the blanket. Sixty years after the murder, TrueAllele helped close the unsolvable DNA case.