Students at Ramapo College’s Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center are gaining a reputation for solving cold cases.

Most recently, they solved the case of a woman reported missing in 2014.

When the students started investigating the case, police had only evidence of a foot found inside a Reebok sneaker.

The foot bone was found in 2017 on the banks of the Delaware River in Pohatcong.

To find out who the foot belonged to, investigators at the New Jersey State Police's Cold Case Unit turned to students at Ramapo College.

The Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center has solved 20 cold cases in two years' worth of work.

Students took DNA profiles from the bone, put it through genealogy databases and started to build multiple family trees. They then made a match with a woman named Maria Quinones Garcia.

Cairenn Binder, who helps to run the program, said it didn't take long.

“From 10 years missing to just a few days of genealogy work,” Binder said.

Quinones Garcia was reported missing in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 2014.

“The students work with a list of genetic relatives and an ethnicity estimate,” Binder said. “This told us that Jane Doe was likely from Puerto Rico.”

While building family trees and looking at those genetic relatives, students caught a break with one of Quinones Garcia’s matching relatives.

“In this case, we were really lucky that it was a first cousin once removed,” Binder noted.

Students also found a missing persons report for Quinones Garcia dating back to 2014 - another lead to work with. New Jersey State Police then took another lead from the students and confirmed the identity.

“They advised us that the potential son of the foot – the biological son - lives in Pennsylvania,” said Trooper Taylor Bonner, with the Cold Case Unit. “It was up to us to go contact the son, interview the son and get a reference sample of the son.”

Troopers took a DNA sample, and it matched. From there, local police and prosecutors could possibly learn what may have happened to Quinones Garcia to cause her death.

“You’re bringing answers to these families who really have no idea what happened,” Bonner said.