Like the Golden State Killer, Here Are 8 Cases that could Be Solved by DNA and Genealogy
Sometimes secrets hide among the branches of a family tree.
After the arrest of alleged Golden State Killer (GSK) Joseph James DeAngelo, police revealed the novel method they’d used to find him: forensic genealogy. As defined in a 2016 interview by practitioner Colleen Fitzpatrick, forensic genealogy is simply “the study of identity and kinship in legal contexts.”
So, DeAngelo’s arrest came in part from a relatively new and unexpected direction for a pursuit some once considered an absorbing hobby. Using the Golden State Killer’s DNA profile, police searched for a hit on GEDmatch, a kind of self-service site that allows people to find family connections
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from around the world. There was a tangential hit.
A long-ago ancestor who’d lived in the early 1800s. Using forensic genealogy, investigators made meticulous family trees, tracing family relations, ever-expanding branches of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, cousins and so on. In the end, they found DeAngelo, who fit their profile of GSK in too many ways to count.
After learning how the serial killer was fingered, anyone fascinated with cold cases immediately jumped to the next logical step: Who else is lurking in the shadows of the virtual forest of family trees?
At least one legendary unsolved serial case may already be on its way to answer. There are many others with available DNA evidence that’s never matched any existing DNA profiles in law enforcement databases. Leaving aside the huge questions about privacy regarding this kind of investigation for a moment, read about a sampling cold cases—some famous, others obscure—ripe for genealogical investigation below.
The Zodiac
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Killer Anyone with an interest in true crime history probably heard of tracking the Golden State Killer with genealogy and thought of the Zodiac. The murders committed by a faceless, taunting psychopath 50 years ago have replaced Jack the Ripper as a source of fascination in the public mind. Zodiac is the ultimate catch, even though there have been much more violent and prolific killers—like the GSK. And the fact is we may soon have some answers about the Zodiac. Investigators in San Francisco and nearby jurisdictions are poring over Zodiac evidence again, hoping to use new, more refined DNA technology to obtain a viable sample—likely from one of the letters Zodiac sent to the press. If they manage to build a full profile their next stop may be a genealogy site like GEDMatch. The Murders of Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg Details of this double homicide have been haunting viewers of Unsolved Mysteries for decades.
In November 1987, Jay Cook, age 20, and his 18-year-old girlfriend Tanya Van Cuylenborg traveled from Victoria, Canada into Washington State. The pair were kidnapped and murdered. Tanya was raped, and her body left in Skagit County, Washington. Jay was found dead later. He’d been strangled and beaten to death. Ominously, one official told Unsolved Mysteries that “the way Jay died was indicative of things that we’ve seen before inside the prison walls.” DNA collected, in this case, has been used by Parabon NanoLabs to create a physical profile. It seems like genealogical investigation might be the next logical
step. [embed: https://www.facebook.com/KVALnews/videos/10155418401183282/] Unknown Serial Killer, Eugene, Oregon In 2000, DNA again surfaced a previously unknown serial killer in much the same way the Golden State Killer was discovered. Police in Eugene, Oregon discovered the murders of Gladys May Hensley, Janice Marie Dickinson, and Geraldine Spencer Toohey were all committed by the same man. At least two victims had been viciously raped before death. Parabon NanoLabs’ Snapshot service was again utilized by the Eugene PD in early 2018, revealing the killer to be a fair-haired and blue-eyed man with northern European ancestry—but that didn’t seem to put them any closer to a suspect. And after all, Parabon profiles aren’t foolproof; any DNA analysis calculating possible appearance and traits could be wrong. It’s easy to imagine some trace of the killer’s family may be online even now, waiting for a match. The Aurora Hammer Killer A man rampaged across Aurora, Colorado in the winter of 1984, raping, stabbing, and bludgeoning his victims. He saved his worst for the Bennett family, brutally murdering Bruce Bennett, then raping and killing Bruce’s wife Debra and his older daughter Melissa. Then he seemed to vanish. Though this serial killer didn’t take as many lives as the Golden State Killer, the level of violence and cruelty in his crimes was the same—to the degree that it’s chilling he’s never been caught. As with several other cold case suspects, police have secured a portrait rendered from DNA analysis—but no matches from any national database. Could the Hammer Killer, even if long dead, be found on GEDMatch, or 23andMe? Hopefully. JonBenet Ramsey Yes, JonBenet. One of the most intriguing unsolved murders from the end of the 20th century, the 1996 murder of a little girl in Boulder, Colorado has vanished beneath layers of theories, amateur investigations, botched police work. It’s hard to know where the Ramsey case begins, and no one knows where it will end. Police and pretty much everyone else has long suspected the girl’s parents, but some tests of DNA found on the girl’s body have supposedly exonerated John and the late Patsy Ramsey. If that exoneration holds and police still have testable DNA, the Ramsey case might be ideal for a search directed at finding the killer’s extended family. Or, if so many following the case for so long are correct, JonBenet’s immediate family. The Boy in the Box In this case, a search for a DNA match to the victim may be what leads to his killer. In February 1957, a blonde little boy was found in a cardboard box in a Philadelphia neighborhood. He was no more than 7 years old and had been discarded in a large cardboard box. The boy had been horribly abused and was malnourished when he died. He became a cause celebre in Pennsylvania and across the country but was never identified. He’d been murdered, but any trace of his killer was gone with his name. Police have been able to obtain DNA in the years since his death, and have even attempted to find a familial match—but investigators fear it may be too degraded. There’s still hope, though, as DNA extraction methods grow more refined every year. It’s worth it, even after all these years, to simply have a name, and learn if he had a home. The Yogurt Shop Murders On Dec. 6, 1991, 13-year-old Amy Ayers, 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison, her 15-year-old sister Sarah, and 17-year-old Eliza Thomas were killed inside the I Can’t Believe it’s Not Yogurt shop in North Austin, Texas. There was a hideously organized aspect of the murders. The girls had been bound, stacked like cord wood, then shot, execution-style. The killer or killers then set the shop on fire. Police found evidence of sexual assault and were able to collect DNA. In 1999 police arrested four men and two were convicted. DNA tests worked in their favor, however—the evidence didn’t match either man. If police can’t find the killer in national databases, a search of public files might unravel the mystery. The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders The triple homicide of Girl Scouts Lori Lee Farmer, 8, Doris Denise Milner, 10, and 9-year-old Michele Guse was the stuff of horror movies. They arrived at Camp Scott in northeast Oklahoma on June 12, 1977. It was a traditional gathering in a traditional space. That night the girls set up their tents and went to sleep. In the night someone slit their tent open and climbed in, carrying a red flashlight. He raped and bludgeoned Lori and Michele. Doris was tied up and gagged. He took her outside, raped and strangled her. The killer left them in a horrible tableau in the end, outside the tent, wrapped in their sleeping bags. It was a nightmarish crime that rocked the state. A Native American named Gene Leroy Hart was tried and acquitted of the murders. When he died just two years later, many in Oklahoma were still convinced of his guilt. The case has been considered cold ever since. There have been questions about the viability of the DNA in this case, but as of 2017, the investigating agency was still willing to try. Will they ultimately find Hart at the end of that trail after all? Or will they find a complete surprise, someone who had never been on the radar, just like the Golden State Killer? It might be worth it just to try.
The Jonbenet Ramsey case has remained unsolved for twenty years now, and I realize, it might not ever be solved, but I do have a theory. My theory involves three different things, the build up, the murder and the cover-up. In the end, I do not think that there was an intruder that broke in the house, the evidence just doesn’t add up to that. I feel as if somebody in the family killed her, and the Ramseys covered it up. If you go even deeper, John Ramsey could have compensated John Mark Karr to take the blame, and to get some of all of the post-murder weight off of his chest. In order to find who killed J.B.R., we have to look into the Ramseys’ lives first. We know that the Ramseys had money, a lot of it. And the odd amount of money in the ransom note just doesn’t make any
On the night that Jessop’s body was found, the first snowfall of the season was challenging police to find any evidence related to the case at the scene. The police conducted their search ...
George’s journey in the criminal justice system began when officers arrested her at her house in the presence of her children, which occurred rather in a calm manner, considering the nature of her charges. The detectives arrived at her house with a social worker to secure her children, and they refrained from making a brutal arrest scene by not
As we learned this week, DNA databases are used by various governmental agencies for several different purposes. We all have seen new magazine shows such as, 20/20 or Dateline, that show the collection of DNA samples from suspects in a case that is compared to those collected at the scene of the crime. But what happens when the sample is an incomplete match, compromised, or contaminated? The answer is the wrongful conviction of innocent citizens. The case that I have decided to highlight, is the wrongful conviction of Herman Atkins. In 1986, Atkins was convicted of two counts of forcible rape, two counts of oral copulation, and robbery in the state of California. It was alleged that Herman entered a shoe store, and raped, beat, and robbed a
It was summer hot and humid July but all was not well for homicide was in the air. Jeremy Ringquist had, after a divorce and begin unemployed, had taken up residence with his parents once again. Thirty-eight years of age Jeremy, was charged with the death of his parents and attempting to hide the bodies in a freezer.
According to the FBI’s NDIS Statistics, CODIS has produced over 120,300 hits assisting in more than 117,800 investigations as of June 2010 (Federal Bureau of Investigations, 2010). All states collect DNA from convicted felony offenders, but many have passed bills t...
found behind the guest house was proven by DNA testing to have O.J.'s blood and
Kevin, Johnson. “DNA clears Ramsey family in JonBenet’s death.” USA Today n.d.: MAS Ultra-School Edition. Web. 20. Feb. 2014.
People study history because they wish to strengthen human connections. The same can be drawn about the pursuit of genealogy. Whether it be connections to nobility, to a specific ethnic group or a specific event in history, there are diverse motivations to study genealogy According to Francois Weil, “Genealogy provides a powerful lens to understand personal and collective identities.” In essence Weil’s Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in America is a study of American identity over a span of four centuries through a discussion of genealogy and family history.
The book Murder in the Bayou: Who Killed the Women Known as the Jeff Davis 8?, written by independent journalist and private investigator Ethan Brown, tells the horrific true story of the bayou town of Jennings, Louisiana located in the heart of the Jefferson Davis parish. During the four year duration between 2005 and 2009, the town of Jennings was on edge after the discovery of the bodies of eight murdered women were found in the filthy canals and swamps. The victims became known as the “Jeff Davis 8.” For years, local law enforcement suspected a serial killer, and solely investigated the murders based on that theory alone. The victims were murdered in varying manors, but when alive they all shared many commonalities and were connected to
DNA testing with the help of the Gov. Lastly, Butler was released in January 2000 and
Forensics has changed the way our criminal system works now. A lot of cases are being solved because of the development of forensics. Even cold cases are being brought up to the light to be investigated again and a good percentage of the cases are being solved and criminals are being brought to justice. The green river killer is one case that really got me intrigued into forensics and I got mesmerized by the techniques that are being used to catch murderers and other crimes being committed. The green river killer had an interesting childhood that led him to be a serial killer. He committed multiple murders on prostitutes and left there families with agony and pain. But advances in DNA ultimately led to his demise, police officers were able to capture and arrest him and bring justice to a lot of family’s mourning for their sisters, mothers, and daughters. His story is intriguing and is one that I would like to tell.
Through the creation of the Murder Accountability Project, Thomas Hargrove developed the Hargrove Algorithm which “uses FBI homicide data to identify clusters of murders with an elevated probability of containing serial killings” (“Who We Are,” 2017). Therefore, the algorithm utilizes data mining to target cases with similar methods of killing in a specific geographical area. As serial killers are known to have a specific modus operandi, this data mining tool can efficiently detect hard to see patterns over large periods of time which would take criminal investigators years, if at all, to correlate. “The algorithm’s identification of 15 unsolved strangulations in Gary was corroborated in 2014 with the arrest of Darren Deon Vann, who confessed
Through this research I have found that forensics and forensics anthropology work hand in hand. They seem to be closely related in regards (regards is an emotion, you mean regard) to solving criminal cases. A huge interest for me, while conducting this research is the impact the analysis has on cold cases. Cold cases are very important and require an extensive analysis of one’s life whose life? Mine?. Often victims in a cold case do not have strong family bonds, or persons that they are close to. It is imperative within life to have friends and persons, who will say something if you are not seen in a couple of days or weeks. Knowing where a person may be or what a person is involved is important in the case of a missing person. It is a vital part of forensics in relation to forensic anthropology. Within forensics anthropology you can find out more detailed information on the decomposition process. Steadman (2014) The information (what information?) can be used to identify a victim and maybe lead to clues of the perpetrator. New paragraph The study of a victim may also l...
Singer, Julie A. "The Impact Of Dna And Other Technology On The Criminal Justice System: Improvements And Complications."Albany Law Journal Of Science & Technology 17.(2007): 87. LexisNexis Academic: Law Reviews. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.