True crime meets forensic science in the What Remains podcast from WRAL Studios. With no ID, human skeletal remains often end up at medical examiners’ offices where they sit in storage closets for years, gathering dust as evidence slowly disappears. These are some of the most difficult cold cases to crack. Unsolved murders. Missing people never identified. Families without answers. Every year in the United States there are 600,000 missing person reports and 4,400 sets of unidentified human remains are found. But matching the remains to the missing people is not an easy task.  

Meet the passionate scientists and investigators dedicating their lives to the seemingly impossible: matching missing persons to unidentified human remains. In the emerging field of forensic science, they coax clues out of bone, using what remains to put a person’s identity back together. The veteran detective who devotes his career to bringing closure to families. The volunteer forensic genealogist who uses new tools like GEDmatch to narrow down an ID. The part-time web sleuth who helps shape the national missing persons database, NamUs. The forensic anthropologist using DNA testing to identify race, sex, body type and features that help coax a name from the bones. The scientists who study human decomposition at a body farm in western North Carolina. The forensic artists who build facial reconstructions from nothing but skulls. And the parents who endure years of not knowing what happened to their children. All working toward the same goals: finding a name, solving cold cases, bringing justice and closure to families. WRAL Studios presents What Remains, hosted by veteran crime reporter Amanda Lamb.