Genealogy Websites Were Key To Big Break In Golden State Killer Case (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report from The New York Times: The Golden State Killer raped and murdered victims all across the state of California in an era before Google searches and social media, a time when the police relied on shoe leather, not cellphone records or big data. But it was technology that got him. The suspect, Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, was arrested by the police on Tuesday. Investigators accuse him of committing more than 50 rapes and 12 murders. Investigators used DNA from crime scenes and plugged that genetic profile into a commercial online genealogy database. They found distant relatives of Mr. DeAngelo's and traced their DNA to him.

"We found a person that was the right age and lived in this area -- and that was Mr. DeAngelo," said Steve Grippi, the assistant chief in the Sacramento district attorney's office. Investigators then obtained what Anne Marie Schubert, the Sacramento district attorney, called "abandoned" DNA samples from Mr. DeAngelo. "You leave your DNA in a place that is a public domain," she said. The test result confirmed the match to more than 10 murders in California. Ms. Schubert's office then obtained a second sample and came back with the same positive result, matching the full DNA profile. Representatives at 23andMe and other gene testing services denied on Thursday that they had been involved in identifying the killer.

Comments

Such good access

[whoda]

So geneology websites are secretely feeding their data to the government? They make it sound like they simply put his data into a 'DNA search engine' on the internet and got a match.

How distant was the 'distant relative' that they got the original DNA hit from I wonder?

Re:Not so fast!

[another_twilight]

You're looking at this the wrong way.

There is certainly a problem with false arrest and conviction, and a culture that treats an arrest as though it were a conviction.
None of that gets worse because there's a new vector that might point at someone. Sure, now there are people that may not have previously been brought in, and there will certainly be some people who are arrested, even convicted, on poor quality DNA 'evidence', but if the system is broken, it's going to find a scapegoat, regardless of what it relies on.

This is one more tool to differentiate between the three different suspects you are holding. This is a way to exculpate the poor bastard held for 20 years.

More information, more accurate information means a greater possibility for more accurate results.

Demand more of your police. Hold them to higher standards. Denying them better tools for fear that they won't use them well, or may abuse them leads nowhere.

Sorry, I don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's pretty nice they finally nabbed a guy whom they think is the killer. Still have to give him a fair trial, as is due.

But no, this is already very, very disturbing. To wit: "You leave your DNA in a place that is a public domain" the goverment official says. Yes you do, everywhere, involuntary. Meaning that to have any privacy left you can't go to any public place. In fact, if you want to have any privacy left, you can't have any relative, even a distant one, go to any public place, ever. This "a public place" starts right at your door. Hey, even your airco's exhaust is public, and it will contain your dna, so... etc.

So while I don't disagree it's nice to have finally found a very likely suspect in the case (but still only a suspect, not convicted yet!), to do it they had to destroy all privacy forever. "Only for murder cases" you say. I have seen in other cases and fully expect to see here that it won't stay that way. Soon it'll be for everything, down to getting loans, or even China style, for getting on the bus. So no.

I don't think destroying all privacy forever to nab a suspect is such a good idea.

Re:This is one side

[AmiMoJo]

We should wait for this to be tested in court first. In the past similar DNA evidence, where it has been linked through family members, has proven to be unreliable. Particularly where the DNA was preserved for a long time and had to be processed to make a usable sample.

The example of touching something subsequently touched by a bad actor is realistic. There was a case a few years ago where police charged a man with destroying mail, only to discover that his DNA was on it because he wrote the mail in question and was actually the victim. Unfortunately, DNA is the favourite tool of the lazy cop.