The following excerpt is from the Regina Post Leader via MSN:
The quest to find the identity of Michael Kirov, the man previously known only as “John Doe” who died on a Regina railway 26 years ago , relied on advanced DNA technology and painstaking genealogical research.
Investigators in the Saskatchewan Coroners Service and the Regina Police Service (RPS) had already received a DNA profile from the RCMP in Ottawa. It had 21 markers, essentially patterns in the chemical coding that makes up DNA. Markers differ widely between strangers, but are passed on within families. Investigators ran Kirov’s DNA through the national missing person’s database and found what they thought was a close match to family of a missing person, but it didn’t lead anywhere.