DNA evidence used to solve cold case murders

The DNA testing industry, made up of companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe, possesses the profiles of more than 12 million people. Using some of this data, but mainly a growing open database called GEDmatch, “Cold case” murders are being solved at a record pace—and the suspects are all white men.

Why only white men? Genealogy databases mostly reflect people of northern European ancestry. Building a family tree, killers with similar roots are the ones that can most easily be found this way.

Investigators are entering genetic evidence from unsolved rape-murders into a database of DNA profiles. Genealogists can use matches to distant family to locate the probable suspect.
Since the first cold case was broken in April, the floodgates have opened. Genetic genealogy has pointed to a suspect in four more cases, including two this week. Here’s the list so far:

• April 25th – Police arrested Joseph James DeAngelo for being California’s notorious Golden State Killer.

• May 18th – Truck driver William Talbott arrested for a 30-year-old double murder in Washington State.

• June 22 – Gary Hartman arrested for the murder of a 12-year old in Tacoma, Washington in 1986.

• June 25- James Otto Earhart named as the suspect in the killing of realtor Virginia Freeman. Earhart was put to death in 1999 for a different crime.

• June 25 – Police arrest Raymond “DJ Freez” Rowe, for the killing of a Pennsylvania school teacher 25 years ago.

The genealogist behind the last four cases is CeCe Moore. Moore’s genetic skills have been seen on PBS’s Finding Your Roots, on 20/20, and on daytime TV programs like The Dr. Oz Show, where she uses direct-to-consumer DNA tests to find the parents of adoptees, foundlings abandoned in dumpsters, and “war children” fathered during conflicts. She has solved hundreds of cases of unknown parentage.