The Stearns County Sheriff’s Office is working with Ramapo College’s Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center and a private lab to analyze DNA profiles collected from unsolved cold cases in hopes of tracking down those responsible for the crimes.

“I made the decision that now is the time to try things we haven’t tried before,” said Lt. Zach Sorenson, who leads the Investigative Unit at the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office. “We owe it to our community, to these victims’ families and loved ones.”

One of the cold cases that researchers at Ramapo College in New Jersey are working on is that of the Reker sisters.

On Labor Day 1974, 12-year-old Susan and 15-year-old Mary Reker went to eat at a St. Cloud department store’s lunch counter and never made it back home.

WATCH: 1999 St. Cloud cold case story

Their bodies were later found in a granite quarry outside of town. Law enforcement said the sisters had been fatally stabbed and their killer has never been found. “As citizen sleuths, we get pretty close to these cases without ever carrying a badge or a gun,” said Cairenn Binder, assistant director of the Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) Center at Ramapo College.

The team at the IGG Center is digging through the Stearns County cold cases.

The center works with a lab that provides them with SNP DNA data obtained from evidence left behind in a case.

The SNP DNA data identifies hundreds of thousands or more of genetic markers, more detailed than STR DNA testing results that could identify dozens of markers, according to researchers.

The team then runs the profile through millions of DNA records stored on the sites GEDMatch and FamilyTreeDNA.

“It’s really a lot of genealogy, it’s a lot of sorting through public records, Professor David Gurney, director of the IGG Center at Ramapo College. “Trying to build up family trees and try to identify common ancestors between relatives of the individual we are trying to identify.”

Last fall, the IGG Center helped the Dunn County, Wisconsin Sheriff’s Office with a case that led the agency to make an arrest in a 50-year-old murder case after analyzing DNA left at the crime scene.

Stearns County investigators are hopeful this new technology can provide needed information to crack the cold cases.

“We have hope, with hope comes light that we can provide some of those answers to individuals who have been impacted by this for decades,” Lt. Sorenson said.

If you have any information about any cold case in Stearns County, reach out to investigators by clicking here.