How your family tree could catch a killer...


Genetic genealogists like CeCe Moore are cracking cold cases and transforming policing. As DNA analysis redefines ancestry and anonymity, what knowledge should we be permitted to unlock?


In the nineteen-nineties, policing was revolutionized by forensic DNA analysis, which could identify criminals from biological evidence. The F.B.I. created a national DNA database of convicted offenders, and another for missing persons and for samples taken at crime scenes. Together, they would aid in the investigation of more than half a million crimes. But, when Snohomish detectives uploaded their crime-scene DNA samples, they received no hits. Their suspect was not a convicted felon, and his DNA had not been found at another crime scene. It was possible that he was dead.


With the advent of autosomal-DNA testing, detectives began to surreptitiously rummage through those repositories, too. In 2014, a police department in Florida uploaded a DNA profile from a rapist to GEDmatch, but failed to identify him. It was only a matter of time before people skilled in genealogy would try the same procedure. A year later, a detective in California teamed up with Barbara Rae-Venter, a retired patent lawyer who knew the Methodology, to work on a case. Decades before, a drifter had kidnapped an infant girl and renamed her Lisa; he kept her captive for several years, before abandoning her in an R.V. park, in 1986. Although Lisa had grown into adulthood, she still didn’t know what her given name was, or where she was born; the drifter had zigzagged across the country and perhaps even into Canada. He went by multiple aliases—and was later convicted, as “Curtis Kimball,” of murdering and dismembering a woman. He died in prison, but the detective, convinced that he had more victims, still hoped to piece together the details.


external-content.duckduckgo.com.jpg


external-content.duckduckgo.com.jpg


external-content.duckduckgo.com.jpg


external-content.duckduckgo.com.jpg


external-content.duckduckgo.com.jpg




https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...catch-a-killer