Genealogy technology is changing Crime investigation forever
February 28, 2019
For years murder cases have been going unsolved right when the finish line is in sight, but now with new DNA ancestry technology the way that we solve crimes might change forever.
Even after years of being deemed unsolved many cases have resurfaced with new evidence provided by DNA genealogy websites. Cases like the “Golden State killer”, Jane Britton, and the case of eight year old April Tinsley are the most popular of many. But how does it work if the murderers never put their DNA on these websites?
DNA is easily traceable through relatives, that’s why these programs serviced in the first place. The murderer may have a distant aunt who decided to look into her ancestry, and all of a sudden; they have a way to get into contact with someone who may know their suspected murderer, or maybe even a way to test a sample of DNA found on a crime scene.
In the Golden State killers case 72 year old Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. was caught based on evidence from connections made to DNA samples from one of the crime scenes from 1978. Lead detective Paul Holes put this samples into the websites 23andMe.com and Ansestry.com and what was found was shocking. Multiple connections were made to family members of DeAngelo, and the main reason he wasn’t a suspect in the 1980’s is because he worked as a police officer for six years during the height of the cases investigation.
Not only where they able to connect him to 12 murders, they also connected him to 50 rape cases that have since then been confirmed.Not only did they catch the Golden State KIller, they also caught the East Area Rapist. These cases are just examples of what using these websites could do. The fact that they weren’t small cases only helps with the exposure of this idea.
After findings like this its not surprising that detectives commonly use these websites in modern investigations.
So what will be the next newest technology that helps detectives and police officers catch their perpetrator? Something interesting, probably.