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Relative's DNA Solves A 1993 Murder Cold Case (washingtonpost.com)
A 44-year-old living in Maine has just been arrested and charged with committing a murder when he was 18, the Washington Post reports:
The April 1993 slaying of Sophie Sergie, an Alaska Native, was one of the state's most notorious cold cases until Friday, when authorities announced that DNA genealogical mapping helped triangulate a genetic match... Police recovered the suspect's DNA from Sergie's body. At the time, the district court filing said, DNA processing technology had not been introduced in Alaska. A DNA profile confirming the suspect as male was uploaded in 2000, but it did not match anyone in the FBI's database. The case went dormant for years...
Then the alleged "Golden State Killer" was captured [after searching commercial online genealogy databases for relatives who matched DNA found at a crime scene]. The publicity of the feat, state troopers said, sparked the idea for investigators in the Sergie case. Why not try the same? A forensic genealogist prepared a report on Dec. 18, comparing the suspect's genetic material from the crime scene to likely relatives. A woman's DNA profile emerged in the search. Investigators found their link: She was an aunt of Downs's.
Downs had been a student at the college where the murder took place. He's also been charged with sexual assault -- and with being a fugitive from justice for the last 25 years.
Then the alleged "Golden State Killer" was captured [after searching commercial online genealogy databases for relatives who matched DNA found at a crime scene]. The publicity of the feat, state troopers said, sparked the idea for investigators in the Sergie case. Why not try the same? A forensic genealogist prepared a report on Dec. 18, comparing the suspect's genetic material from the crime scene to likely relatives. A woman's DNA profile emerged in the search. Investigators found their link: She was an aunt of Downs's.
Downs had been a student at the college where the murder took place. He's also been charged with sexual assault -- and with being a fugitive from justice for the last 25 years.
How can the suspect be charged with "being a fugitive of justice"? As far as I understand, according to the Fifth Amendment nobody has to incriminate herself. And with a murder charge, there's no statute of limitations.
Until they graduate to using your uncles first cousin's DNA to link you to a protest movement, or to determine you have a greater chance for a medical condition to raise your fees, or to decide your family has a tendency for unorthodox thinking and assign you to reeducation. But trust them. It will never come to that.
"Moron; now THAT is a convincing argument!
"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved."
ATTRIBUTION: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, letter to Benjamin Vaughan, March 14, 1785.—The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Albert H. Smyth, vol. 9, p. 293 (1906).
https://www.bartleby.com/73/953.html
The problem is not the incomprehension of the -er ..."Moron"... the problem is the authoritarian mindset which seems to value closure, order, law and justice (in about that order). A protest movement can in fact be considered "heinous" when it sufficiently inconveniences the top of the pyramid. If you don't believe me, let us step over to the Free Speech Zone and discuss it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
Few want truly "heinous" crimes to go unanswered, but if the mechanisms of retribution become simultaneously too potent and too convenient ...
SPOCK: I do not believe there is much beyond Nomad's capabilities.
KIRK: And we've shown it the way home. And when it gets there
SPOCK: It will find the Earth infested with imperfect biological units.
KIRK: And it will carry out its prime directive. Sterilise.
"The Changeling"
http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/37.htm