Colleen M. Fitzpatrick Speaking Topics

• Lying with Wolves - Misha Defonseca Holocaust Fraud Exposed

  The memoirs of a girl of eight who wandered 3,000 miles across Nazi-occupied Europe searching for her missing parents was amazing enough. Add in her claims of surviving two freezing winters living with a pack of wolves and you have a truly astonishing tale. Unfortunately the life story that earned its author $10M and was translated into 18 languages was just that. A story. On February 28, 2008, Misha Defonseca admitted that her bestseller, Surviving with Wolves, was, as she preferred to say, "not the real reality".

  What brought about Misha’s stunning confession was the work of a dogged team of forensic genealogists. With the help of a woman in Belgium who had been a hidden child during WWII, the team produced documents showing that at the time she claimed to be skinning rabbits in the snow and stealing food from farmhouses on her way to Poland, she was actually a four year old living with her grandparents’ flat in Brussels.

  The fact that Defonseca confessed based on the only written and photo documentation alone disappointed the research team. Had she not done so, we were prepared to prove her true identity through matching her DNA with living family members.

  Short description for brochure: On February 28, 2008, Misha Defonseca admitted that her international bestseller, Surviving with Wolves, was "not the real reality". As this talk explains, what brought about Misha’s stunning confession was the work of a dogged team of forensic genealogists who discovered documents about Misha’s childhood thought impossible to obtain.

  Audience Level: All levels. Category: Methodology Format: Powerpoint AV Requirements: LCD Projector, Screen, and Lapel Mike

  Links for further information:

  Does Publishing Need Genealogists? Publishers Weekly interview, Jan 2009

  Identifinders International Case History

  Wikipedia article on Misha Defonseca

• James-Jake Smithers-Gray, How DNA Solved an 80 Year Old Family Mystery

  No matter how outlandish a story may seem, there is always an element of truth in it. But if the truth is not evident in the story itself, take a better look at the storyteller.

  Since he fled the US in 1924, John Henderson Gray lived a life without a past. There was no doubt that he had been a troubled young man. Why else would he have fled to Australia and changed his name?

  “Jake” died in 1970, leaving five grown children and a wife who had always wondered who he was. In 2002 Jake’s daughter Cindi visited a psychic, desperately hoping for an answer. Ironically he presented her with a lead that was false, yet provided a path to the truth. He told Cindi that her father’s name was Fitzpatrick, leading her to contact me as the group administrator of the Fitzpatrick DNA study.

  Come hear how after six years, a DNA match led to the end of nearly 80 years of frustrating speculation. Come hear how knowing Cindy’s dad’s last name led to unending discoveries about his former life half the world away. This story had a beginning, but thanks to DNA, it will never have an end!

  Summary: John Henderson Gray was a man in Australia without a past. When he died in his 70s in 1970, he left a wife and family wondering who he was. Come hear how DNA led to the discovery of his true identity, helping solve a family mystery that was eight decades old.

  Audience Level: All levels. Category: Methodology Format: Powerpoint AV Requirements: LCD Projector, Screen, and Lapel Mike

  Links for further information:

  “One Man, Two Names, Three Families” Ancestry Magazine, July 2009

  “DNA reveals story of dad’s disappearance” Raleigh News and Observer interview with John Smithers

  Identifinders International Case History

• The Unknown Child on the Titanic - identified? - Identified!

  On Sunday 14 April 1912, the SS Titanic on her maiden voyage to America with 2207 souls onboard, struck an iceberg and sank in less than three hours. Only 705 passengers survived. Of the 328 bodies recovered by the salvage operation sent from Halifax, just one was that of a child. His identity was known only to God for nearly a century until 2002, when Dr. Alan Ruffman and Dr. Ryan Parr announced that they had identified the remains of the “Unknown Child” as Eino Panula, a 13-month-old Finnish baby who had perished in the accident with his mother and four older brothers.

  But was this identification correct?

  In 2007, a controversy arose because the shoes of the child, held in the Maritime Museum in Halifax, were too large for a 13-month old. It was then revealed that the results of the DNA test had been tied between Eino and 19-month-old Sidney Leslie Goodwin, so that the final identification had been based on estimates of the maturity of three tiny teeth found in the grave. Maybe that estimate was wrong.

  Come hear how we resolved the controversy and so that the Unknown Child on the Titanic in unknown no longer.

  Short Description for Brochure: In 2002, the Unknown Child on the Titanic was finally identified as 13-month-old Eino Panula. But the identification was called into question based on his preserved shoes. Come hear how we resolved the controversy so that the Unknown Child on the Titanic in unknown no longer.

  Audience Level: All levels. Category: Methodology Format: Powerpoint AV Requirements: LCD Projector, Screen, and Lapel Mike

  Links for further information:

  Remembering New-Found Kin, Halifax Chronicle Herald, 1 August 2008

  Unlocking a Titanic Mystery Orange County Register, October 6, 2009

  Titanic's unknown child: The critical role of the mitochondrial DNA coding region in a re-identification effort Forensic Science International, 10 January 2010

  Identifinders Blog article with full story on identification

  Identifinders International Case History

• The Hand in the Snow - The Crash of Northwest Flight 4422

  As reported by MSNBC, CNN, and newspapers worldwide:

  On March 12, 1948, at 9:14 pm, Northwest Flight 4422 en route from Shanghai to New York, slammed into Mount Sanford, a 16,237-foot peak located in a remote area 200 miles northeast of Anchorage, Alaska.

  The 30 military personnel onboard were killed instantly and because of its remote location, the crash site was abandoned. It would take 50 years, and the efforts of two airline pilots to reach the scene of the accident. It would take another ten years and a team of world class forensic genealogists, DNA experts, and fingerprint analysts to identify the frozen human forearm and hand that were found by the pilots, well-preserved in a glacier for half a century.

  By September 2008, 28 of the 30 passengers had been eliminated by fingerprints, DNA, or both. Only two passengers remained

  • the two most difficult to locate family references for for DNA analysis.

  Our search for the family of Passenger #29, was featured in newspapers around the world, including USA Today. Come find out how we achieved the impossible and found a DNA match for the “Hand in the Snow”, finally laying to rest the 30 passengers of Northwest Flight 4422.

  Short description for brochure: As reported by hundreds of newspapers worldwide: Fifty years after Northwest Flight 4422 crashed in Alaska, a frozen human arm and hand was found in the wreckage by two commercial airline pilots. It would take another ten years and a world class team of forensic specialists to make a positive identification of the remains. This talk tells our story.

  Audience Level: All levels. Category: Methodology Format: Powerpoint AV Requirements: LCD Projector, Screen, and Lapel Mike

  Links for further information:

  RTE Ireland Television Network Interview, January 2009

  Scientific American 60 Second Science Blog, March 2009

  Irish Examiner newspaper article

  MORE magazine interview, 2009:

  Futher:

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleen_Fitzpatrick_(forensic_genealogist))

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_4422

  www.identifinders.com/hand.html

• The Secrets of Abraham Lincoln's DNA

  It has been suspected that Abraham Lincoln may have suffered from a variety of genetic disorders including a rare cancer called MEN2B. However it is only recently that DNA testing has become available that could confirm these suspicions that until now have been based solely on Lincoln’s physical appearance and historical reports about the condition of his health.

  The Abraham Lincoln DNA project is one of the first in the area of Bio-Historical research—the study of how the genetics of historical figures may have influenced the course of world history.

  Our efforts to obtain a sample of Lincoln’s genome to DNA test have caused us to deal with a large variety of issues, from the ethics of genetic testing an American icon who died over a century ago, to the question of whether Lincoln could have been adopted or illegitimate. There are further issues relating to establishing the provenance of Lincoln relics that could yield the President’s nuclear DNA. To authenticate the relic, the DNA obtained must be shown to be Lincoln’s and not to have come from contamination from others handling it over the decades. This would normally be done by comparing the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) found on a relic to the mtDNA of a member of the extended Lincoln family who is maternally-linked to the President. But this is not easy, considering Abraham Lincoln has no known living descendants, his brother and his sister died without issue, and no one knows the origins of his mother Nancy Hanks; her family has never been conclusively identified.

  This talk will discuss the how we are addressing these issues, and the fascinating secrets that we have so far unlocked about Abraham Lincoln’s DNA.

  Short description for brochure: Abraham Lincoln is one of the most researched individuals in history. Yet his DNA still holds many mysteries. It has been suspected that Abraham Lincoln may have suffered from a variety of genetic disorders including a rare cancer called MEN2B. However until now these suspicions have been based solely on Lincoln’s physical appearance and historical reports about his health. The success of the Abraham Lincoln DNA project will open the door to Bio-Historical research— the study of the influence of the biochemistry of leading historical figures on world history. This talk will discuss the fascinating secrets that we have so far unlocked about Abraham Lincoln’s DNA.

  Audience Level: All levels. Category: Methodology Format: Powerpoint AV Requirements: LCD Projector, Screen, and Lapel Mike

  Links for more information:

  Mental and Medical Health of Abraham Lincoln

  The Physical Lincoln by John Sotos

  Did Abraham Lincoln have Marfan’s Syndrome?

  Marfan's Syndrome

  RxPG News: Research Suggests Abraham Lincoln Suffered from Spinocerebellar Ataxia type 5 (SCA5)

• DNA Identification of the Missing Identity Children of the Holocaust

  Of the 1,600,000 Jewish children who lived in Europe before World War II, only 100,000 survived the Holocaust. Most Child Survivors were hidden children, shuttered away in attics, cellars, convents, or farms. Unfortunately, in the chaos that reigned after Europe was liberated, restoring children to their birth families was especially difficult–many parents perished in the camps, children were often too young to know their own names, and some children had been moved countless times to keep them safe. Today, there are still hundreds of Child Survivors who have been unable to discover their birth identities.

  Identifinders International in collaboration with 23andMe has started an exciting new pilot study to show how autosomal DNA testing can help “missing-identity” children recover long lost family connections. People who share DNA typically share family geography, history, and family names. Therefore characteristics shared by the families of a Survivor’s DNA autosomal matches must be shared by the Survivor too, yielding new clues about the identity of the Survivor’s birth family.

  Come listen to personal stories of Child Survivors, and hear how autosomal DNA testing has given them new hope in their decades-long search for their birth identities.

  Short description for brochure: Identifinders International in collaboration with 23andMe has started an exciting new pilot study to show how autosomal DNA testing can help “Missing-Identity” Children recover long lost family connections. Come hear personal stories of Child Survivors, and hear how autosomal DNA testing has given them new hope in their decades-long search for their birth identities.

  Audience Level: All levels. Category: Methodology Format: Powerpoint AV Requirements: LCD Projector, Screen, and Lapel Mike

  Links for more information:

  Identifinders Blog Articles on Pnina Gutman

  Who Am I, What is My Name? Pnina, Otwoc, and the Kazcmareks

  Who Am I, What is My Name? Pnina, Wolfgang, and the Warsaw Ghetto

  Missing Identity website entries for Barbara Wenglinski and Baby Girl from Rozwadow

  JewishGen Blog: DNA Success Story: Finding the Origins of a Hidden Child

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