DNA testing for identification purposes was in its earliest stages in 1987. The forensic DNA techniques that would eventually become standard tools in identification — both criminal and civil — were being developed and refined in exactly that period. The Carlina White case did not involve the most cutting-edge forensic technology even by 2011 standards, but the OCME’s ability to confirm a DNA match between a mother, father, and putative child was a routine procedure by that point. It had not been routine in 1987.
In 2011, when Carlina called NCMEC:
The database was publicly searchable on the internet. Any person with internet access could go to the NCMEC website and look at photographs of missing children, search by state or age or year of disappearance, and examine age-progression images that had been updated over decades.
The DNA confirmation was a matter of a few weeks — DNA collected between January 4 and 7, results back by January 18. The scientific infrastructure for kinship testing was mature and reliable.
The FBI had investigative tools and coordination capacity that would not have been available in the same form in 1987. The arrest and interview of Pettway, once Carlina’s identification was confirmed, happened in days.
What did not change between 1987 and 2011 was the fundamental human element: it still took a person — specifically, Carlina White — to look at a photograph, recognize something in it, and make a phone call. Technology made the search possible and the confirmation reliable. The decision to search, and the persistence to keep searching over years, was Carlina’s own.