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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.
I work extensively in the DNA field and I would like to share a finding here.
We came across a subject that has no apparent link to its sibling as far as we can tell. This puzzles us a lot. Maybe his genes come from many generations ago and they have skipped several generations before manifesting themselves.
Or, for the ones that believe in miracles or extraterrestrials, this could be a spontaneous breakthrough due to influences that we are not yet aware of.
Due to research confidentiality guidelines, I can only share that said subject lives in San Jose and is often seen in Palo Alto.
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.
that slippery slope where the feds have massive dna databases on everybody... even if the databases aren't entirely theirs.
but what's worse is 'everybody' is willingly giving dna samples away... with absolutely no protections once the private companies involved get their grubby paws on it.
it wouldn't surprise me at all if one or more of these 'ancestor' gimmicks was an fbi / cia / nsa front, since the government can't go around grabbing dna samples from everybody.. they've come up with a way where the people willingly provide it to third parties instead.. third parties that the feds can then siphon data from whenever the fuck they want.
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.
...switched at birth
"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
Its how the courts sees it... Strange absolutely, however the same law can be viewed many different ways, all equally viable in the courts.
[($)]
Who knows what new technology will allow authorities to uncover what you were doing years ago...
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Are they sure it's him? Can they prove he was there?
He is still a suspect. The case isn't "solved" untill you have a conviction. Guilty untill proven my ass....
Are they sure it's him? Can they prove he was there?
His DNA was found on the victim. If this takes the form of his sperm in the relevant locations on the victim's body and his skin under the victim's fingernails it's kind of hard to dispute. You can try to argue that the two of you had passionate sex before the victim was raped and murdered by an unknown condom using, HEV suit wearing rapist whose DNA was therefore completely missing from the victim's body but that brings us to a rather famous item from brother Occam's shaving kit.
"irst cousin's DNA to link you to a protest movement" protest movement don't leave DNA. Neither has any DNA presence ever lead to something similar. Ever.
"determine you have a greater chance for a medical condition to raise your fees" that is already done with preexisting condition and I am betting my ass off a lot of US insurance have plan for this. Unfortunately the way it is in the US you are better off fighting for universal care than fighting against such a DNA test plan...
"decide your family has a tendency for unorthodox thinking and assign you to reeducation" that is even more stupid as unorthodoxe thinking is nurture, not nature , baring mental illness.
No the real reason to fight against such DNA test search in genealogic DB, is because those DNA check are not nearly as random and as unique as CSI show tell you. If you look into ancestry DB chance are you won't get your 1 in 6 billion (or which ever) probability, because of various effects. So now you get randomly accused of a crime and if they can tie you to the place you get arrested. Which is the *contrary* to what should happen. DNA should be a confirmation not a shotgun approach to find guilty party in a huge DB.
If I publish my DNA code in the web then anyone can synthetize the parts used in the basic police dna tests and sprad them around. What is the value of DNA evidence against me after that?
This is bad because too many slashdot'ers smoke marijuana which is known to cause irrational paranoia.
Look guys. If the big bad gov'ment is going to fake evidence to pin a murder on you for some reason, then they are just going to fake evidence to pin a murder on you whether you take a commercial DNA test or not. Further, while these consumer level tests can help law enforcement find and narrow down suspects, they aren't going to be admissible in court. Any defense lawyer worth their paycheck would get them thrown. What WOULD happen is that law enforcement would use the public or commercial databases to find or narrow down suspects. Then they would get a warrant to collect a DNA sample under chain-of-custody and run a proper test at an accredited forensics laboratory. Assuming YOU DIDN'T DO THE CRIME, the cops using DNA databases is more likey to clear you from the suspect list than it is to put you on it.
Similarly, if an insurance company is going to use genetic profiling to decide who to raise rates on, then they aren't going to rely on your test from Ancestry.com. They are just going to make you take one of their tests. (Which is illegal, but what ever.)
Look guys. If the big bad gov'ment is going to fake evidence to pin a murder on you for some reason, then they are just going to fake evidence to pin a murder on you whether you take a commercial DNA test or not.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence... Normally, that's the conspiracy theorist's fallacy, but you've found a reverse application: the real concern here is not that The Man is out to get you personally, but the authorities' capacity for incompetence and misunderstanding of statistical significance, and their disinclination to question anything that seems to offer an easy solution.
Actually falsifying evidence involves people in power taking a real risk. Buying the snake oil because we don't yet require politicians, lawyers or police to have any scientific education doesn't seem to have any consequences.
Compare two random samples of DNA and maybe the chances of an accidental match are 1:100,000,000 - but search for a DNA match in a database of 100,000,000 people and its a near certainty that you'll find an accidental match (but still quote the 100,000,000 figure to the jury)... Then fail to ask whether that 1:100,000,000 is just the theoretical chance of two "fingerprints" matching, or if it factors in experimental error, cross contamination etc. and crowd-source your database from "low stakes" ancestry tests that might not work to forensic standards, and present it all to a jury that have watched way too much CSI:New York... and even if justice does prevail and the falsely accused walks free, by the time the wheels of justice have ground to a conclusion, you've already destroyed their family and career (oh, and probably re-traumatised the victims, into the bargain). BTW: can you remember where you were and what you were doing this day in 1993?
Its like the use of face-recognition and crime-prediction technology by the police - they probably have great potential value when used properly for screening and prioritising, but the potential for abuse is immense - whether its treating a match as "proof" because tfalse positives are politically inconvenient when he force paid $1.5m for the technology, or walking into one of the huge, gaping "confirmation bias" traps that these technologies present and getting a false proof of their efficiency.
NB: are statistics and the scientific method on the compulsory curriculum at law school yet?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Was named after a vacuum cleaner... Because he'd suck up all the evidence of his illegal crossdressing affairs... then keep enough evidence on them to make sure they would never spill his beans :)
I've read of unintentional contamination problems with DNA evidence. I'm afraid that in the near future the DNA contamination will be intentional and comes in the form of a spray can carried by the criminals. I would not want to be the "usual suspect" whose DNA is used for this purpose.
"Where were you on 23th January 2019? DNA evidence says you are guilty of this crime. Prove that you are innocent or go to prison."
I think this idea actually has potential..........
For a couple hundred bucks, I could acquire a used PCR Thermocycler and the necessary reagents to amplify the DNA from a single hair bulb or the rim of a coffee cup. Could this be used to frame someone for a crime he didn't commit? Would a jury find this to be anything less than slam-dunk evidence of guilt?
dimensions of the possibility space; consider for instance the (in)famous practice of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
also, possibly...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment
it often seems that those with "power" of whatever sort are held to a LOWER standard of behavior.
After reading about the "Golden State Killer" being found through a GedMatch search, I uploaded my own DNA raw data to the site. If my DNA can help track down a cold case, I want to do whatever I can to help!
In most parts of the US, the police are still the good guys.