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The Associated Press and the Everett Washington HeraldNet carry a story about a 30 year old double murder solved using Public Genealogy Sites similar to the Golden State Killer story carried here on SoylentNews.
Deaths of two Canadian visitors shopping in the Seattle area were unsolved since 1987.
The deaths remained a mystery for more than 30 years, until DNA led to a major breakthrough. A genealogist, CeCe Moore, worked with experts at Parabon NanoLabs to build a family tree for the suspect, based on the genetic evidence recovered from the crime scenes. They used data that had been uploaded by distant cousins to public genealogy websites. They pinpointed a suspect, Talbott, a trucker living north of Sea-Tac International Airport.
Police kept him under surveillance until a paper cup fell from his truck in Seattle in early May. A swab of DNA from the cup came back as a match to the evidence that had waited 30 years. Before then, Talbott had never been considered a suspect. Days later he was in handcuffs.
This time the police used Parabon NanoLabs (more well-known for generating facial models from mere samples of DNA) to build a family tree of the killer by submitting the 30 year old crime scene DNA samples to multiple genealogy sites.
Results from those sites were combined by a Parabon genealogist to map the family of distant cousins found in those data bases. Police were then able to narrow down the list using other methods unmentioned.
Neither article mentions if any family members were stalked by police while being eliminated as suspects, or whether any samples were submitted by other family members.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17 2018, @07:57PM (2 children)
This is one of those new areas in forensics and law enforcement where I feel like the cure is going to quickly get worse than the disease.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday June 17 2018, @08:10PM
When they ask you for a DNA sample for exclusionary purposes you can bet it's going straight into a national database even when it does in fact exclude you.
Because, surely if your third cousin was a rapist, you must be too. /Sarcasm
So far police have been quite sensitive to the potential for abuse, but they've also been very circumspect about exactly what level of invasive or coersive investigation methods are employed. We've learned to be suspicious when police start keeping methodology secret.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday June 18 2018, @08:26PM
I bet you every time they've generated a model that's impressed anyone, they already had a related photo to work from.
Me, cynical?
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