Did Paul Holes recreate a slice of Ancestry.com?

[Any of N]

On various message boards, we speculated over the years about combining DNA results with genealogy records. First find a set of potential relatives and then go about investigating those people the old fashioned way, with gumshoe detective work. While the linked DNA-genealogy info is exactly what Ancestry.com provides (as do other commercial services), it's typically not available to LE without a court order. Someday, at some point in the future, all that would be available to them via their own comprehensive government-generated databases. No warrants needed and everything right at their fingertips. But that might well come much too late to find a living GSK, so what to do in the meantime?

The answer seems to be: (1) use open source genetic databases and (2) hire professionals to painstakingly compile the relevant genealogy records. Paul Holes and colleagues basically recreated slices of Ancestry.com, the slices they needed. Simple in concept but requiring an awful lot of leg work. Or so it seems to me. Anyone disagree or have any insight?

If this is right, it leads to a couple of questions...

How long has this been going on?

I had assumed that LE was playing around with this approach for years. (There were indications.) Some of the recent media reports seem to conflict with each other. The process that led to DeAngelo started in March, or something like that. Then there was the POI in Oregon who had DNA collected on his deathbed last year. The statements from Holes himself are very general.

Was there anything really new-new involved?

GEDmatch, the open source service involved, has been around for years. Aligning DNA with genealogy records is a well-established practice. This is apparently the first time that LE put so much time and resources into this approach. Is that what's new? Or was it in producing DNA results form semen samples that are compatible with the commercial services (typically obtained with cheek swabs)?


Here are a couple of sources:

...In the end, the key to cracking the Golden State Killer case lay in public databases and records.

In January of this year, Holes obtained a backup DNA sample from a 37-year-old murder in Ventura County in Southern California that had been preserved in a freezer. With this larger quantity of DNA, the investigators were able to run it on a “microarray” that simultaneously tests for hundreds of the thousands of genetic markers spread across the whole human genome.

The same technology is used by the ancestry testing companies to match their customers to potential relatives, so Holes created a fake identity and uploaded the profile to GEDMatch. The most promising match shared a quantity of DNA suggesting that it was a second cousin of the killer.

Then came the painstaking process of using public records and local newspapers to extend family trees out from the matching profiles to find living people with close relatives connected to the locations where the murders and rapes happened.

“Obituaries are one of the best things out there,” Holes said. “Census records are awesome.”

The best match turned out to be another false lead. Although the family tree Holes and his colleagues constructed led to a potential suspect, he was cleared when a sibling voluntarily gave a DNA sample.

It took a five-person team four months to work from potential third or fourth cousins of the killer to finally identify DeAngelo as the leading suspect — succeeding where four decades of conventional police work had failed.

Cops Forced A Company To Share A Customer’s Identity For The Golden State Killer Investigation, BuzzFeed, May 1, 2018.

Police haven’t yet publicly detailed the methods that led them to DeAngelo. Yet DNA experts say the simple upload-and-match scenario wouldn’t have worked in this case. DeAngelo’s DNA wasn’t in any police database. And snippets collected from crime scenes aren’t in the same form as the DNA in genealogy sites. In addition, consumer testing companies don’t participate in criminal investigations without a warrant. Even if a company was willing to help, police didn’t have saliva or cheek swabs from potential suspects the companies need to conduct their tests. So investigators would have had to do a lot of genetic legwork to get the DNA data and format it in a way that GEDmatch could recognize.­­

Colleen Fitzpatrick and Margaret Press have pioneered a way to do just that. The pair cofounded the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that uses genetics and genealogy to put a name to remains from unidentified people, including crime victims. The techniques developed for their organization are probably the same ones used in the Golden State Killer case, Fitzpatrick and Press say.

...

Police “followed this genetic lead to try to investigate this case in a novel way,” says Katsanis. “But it took a lot of resources. ... If they’d had the wrong DeAngelo, it would have been a lot of investigation for nothing.” Such extensive genetic detective work is difficult and takes money and manpower most jurisdictions can’t spare, says Katsanis.

New genetic sleuthing tools helped track down the Golden State Killer suspect, ScienceNews, April 29, 2018.

[tim]

May 5, 2018 21:52:14 GMT Any of N said:

On various message boards, we speculated over the years about combining DNA results with genealogy records. First find a set of potential relatives and then go about investigating those people the old fashioned way, with gumshoe detective work. While the linked DNA-genealogy info is exactly what Ancestry.com provides (as do other commercial services), it's typically not available to LE without a court order. Someday, at some point in the future, all that would be available to them via their own comprehensive government-generated databases. No warrants needed and everything right at their fingertips. But that might well come much too late to find a living GSK, so what to do in the meantime?

The answer seems to be: (1) use open source genetic databases and (2) hire professionals to painstakingly compile the relevant genealogy records. Paul Holes and colleagues basically recreated slices of Ancestry.com, the slices they needed. Simple in concept but requiring an awful lot of leg work. Or so it seems to me. Anyone disagree of have any insight?

It depends on how you define "an awful lot of leg work". I am a genealogist. Working alone, I created a family tree of approximately 400 direct ancestors in about 30 to 40 hours, using resources at ancestry.com. i mapped my family trees all the way to many of my 10th and 11th great grandfathers/grandmothers in much of the family tree.

I am surprised that it took a team of 5 genealogists four months to track down JJD from a third or 4th cousin. I would have estimated it would take one good genealogist, working closely with Paul Holes, just about 40 to 50 man-hours to focus on JJD as a strong suspect. Perhaps the 5 man yeam would stop researching whenever they found a likely suspect until that suspect was eliminated by DNA test. Otherwise it is hard to imagine why it took the 5 man team 4 months to identify JJD.

A 5 man team working 40 hours a week for 16 weeks is approximately 1,400 man-hours!

[Any of N]

It sounds like they were working on multiple PI's at once, not just focusing on DeAngelo.

So, tim, have you looked at him yourself and do you have any insights on his ancestry?

[tim]

May 6, 2018 1:38:31 GMT Any of N said:

It sounds like they were working on multiple PI's at once, not just focusing on DeAngelo.

Yeah; thats what i have always thought too. The 5 man team was looking at multiple relatives of the 3rd or 4th cousin of the earons as POIs. I am still surprised that it took months for the 5 man team and LE to test JJD's DNA.

So, tim, have you looked at him yourself and do you have any insights on his ancestry?

I have not looked up JJD's ancestry at any genealogical websites. I don't have any insights into JJD's ancestry that you dont already know from this message board.

With the resources that i have, if i wanted to give up the time & energy for the task, i could probably make a family tree of JJD's family and discover the country of origin of hundreds of JJD's ancestors like i did for my own family. I dont want to invest my time & energy into that. If the DNA test said JJD is predominantly of northwestern europeam descent, then chances are excellent that JJD is predominantly of northwest european descent. A person can have an italian surname with less than 01% of their ancestors coming from the nation that is now Italy.

[auxarcia]

I think that what is new here is the use of these genealogical databases to solve crime, find does, etc. Honestly, it hasn’t been that long that a large number of people had access to commercial DNA tests that allowed them to combine DNA with genealogy. For this method to work, the tests had to be widely available enough for JJD’s 4th cousin to pay for one. Then, he had to be interested enough in that process to upload data to GEDmatch. I have done a 23andme test, I have spent years tracking my own family history, but it never occurred to me to upload there because I’m not tracing any real genealogical mystery.

I disagree that it would be easy to track JJD this way, because you are tracing and unknown and doing it backwards. Usually you start with a person and follow a tree back in time from one source. The research to find JJD would have been much more complicated because they didn’t know exactly who they were looking for in the records. They probably had to eliminate a huge number of people.

I mean, I have literally hundreds of 4th cousins. They would have had to trace each of the male cousins to possible suspects that lived in the right time and place. I think the process would be intensely difficult in that sense.

Overall, yes, I think Holes had to have created a version of something like ancestry. com. His team may have used the website as a research tool. It is not just used a tool for submitting DNA, but a very powerful tool for finding public records too. And one can build a tree on anyone one wants if you have an account. I use it to build trees on people I research all the time (I write about history semi professionally), even though I am not related. I don’t know why LE wouldn’t be able to use it that way as well, in combination with results from GEDmatch.

I think this method is exciting, as someone who is interested in history because it allows us to get a better view of the truth. I am excited about it as someone interested in true crime, because it allows us to solve crimes like this one. But in the big picture, what’s new here is the combo of DNA and genealogy to solve crime, which is only possible because of newly available commercial DNA tests, and nerds like me who really want to know exactly where they come from, genetically, for whatever reason.

[Any of N]

May 6, 2018 2:05:45 GMT tim said:

May 6, 2018 1:38:31 GMT Any of N said:

It sounds like they were working on multiple PI's at once, not just focusing on DeAngelo.

Yeah; thats what i have always thought too. The 5 man team was looking at multiple relatives of the 3rd or 4th cousin of the earons as POIs. I am still surprised that it took months for the 5 man team and LE to test JJD's DNA.

So, tim , have you looked at him yourself and do you have any insights on his ancestry?

I have not looked up JJD's ancestry at any genealogical websites. I don't have any insights into JJD's ancestry that you dont already know from this message board.

With the resources that i have, if i wanted to give up the time & energy for the task, i could probably make a family tree of JJD's family and discover the country of origin of hundreds of JJD's ancestors like i did for my own family. I dont want to invest my time & energy into that. If the DNA test said JJD is predominantly of northwestern europeam descent, then chances are excellent that JJD is predominantly of northwest european descent. A person can have an italian surname with less than 01% of their ancestors coming from the nation that is now Italy.

Yes, I'm well aware that a surname can be misleading of ancestry. The indications are that DeAngelo actually does have Italian ancestry. A lot of it. You wouldn't to have invest a ton of time and energy to take a look. 

[brawlpups]

May 5, 2018 21:52:14 GMT Any of N said:

On various message boards, we speculated over the years about combining DNA results with genealogy records. First find a set of potential relatives and then go about investigating those people the old fashioned way, with gumshoe detective work. While the linked DNA-genealogy info is exactly what Ancestry.com provides (as do other commercial services), it's typically not available to LE without a court order. Someday, at some point in the future, all that would be available to them via their own comprehensive government-generated databases. No warrants needed and everything right at their fingertips. But that might well come much too late to find a living GSK, so what to do in the meantime?

The answer seems to be: (1) use open source genetic databases and (2) hire professionals to painstakingly compile the relevant genealogy records. Paul Holes and colleagues basically recreated slices of Ancestry.com, the slices they needed. Simple in concept but requiring an awful lot of leg work. Or so it seems to me. Anyone disagree or have any insight?

If this is right, it leads to a couple of questions...

How long has this been going on?

I had assumed that LE was playing around with this approach for years. (There were indications.) Some of the recent media reports seem to conflict with each other. The process that led to DeAngelo started in March, or something like that. Then there was the POI in Oregon who had DNA collected on his deathbed last year. The statements from Holes himself are very general.

Was there anything really new-new involved?

GEDmatch, the open source service involved, has been around for years. Aligning DNA with genealogy records is a well-established practice. This is apparently the first time that LE put so much time and resources into this approach. Is that what's new? Or was it in producing DNA results form semen samples that are compatible with the commercial services (typically obtained with cheek swabs)?


Here are a couple of sources:

Just a question of databases and math. Find a common region of origin based on DNA, say Italy and a sub-region. Find people who immigrated to the US from this region that also have the DNA markers your consider relevant.

Find enough lineages of immigrants that have the marker to find a closely related subset of immigrant lineages. Use mathematical modelling to find out how many generations you need to go back for the common ancestor.

Using Geneology trees then find the likely common ancestor.
Work back down the the branches to find all families with DNA and / or Geneology to identify the common generation for the offender likely birth year. 

Test the common generation on the most likely lines after filtering for location.
Each test get's you statistically closer to the right hit. The problem is that you can't be sure when the right hit is being tested VS a near hit.

A mistake Paul Holes almost made was when he was going to door knock JJD to eliminate him as a POI, luckily for him he had second thought as there where too many other indicators being to being a possibile positive match.
Knowing that JJD tended to kill when confronted it would seem that lady luck was there that night.

What might be new as per your observation; maybe they are backdooring CODIS for related offenders, so something investigators would not discuss as it would be a warrantless search, since no 100% match.

So the question would be "is CODIS now being used for near matches and combining with GED match peers to improve and speed results?"
The inducement for companies to cooperate is all the jucy data, all on the informal professional peer networks and so out of site of the legal defense whose client might be the target of this co-operation. In another words no peer discovery before conviction as no records exist.
Perhaps LE provides a peek into CODIS related results as a reward to DNA and geneolgy companies they may utilize in this fashion 

Perhaps new legal interpretation has been developed by some states or federal attorney to legalize the results. 

This type of data sharing occurs between NSA and LE as an example as well so this type of collusion is not unkown.
Not exactly legal but handled informally on the you did not hear it from me basis.
Legally is only required for establishing your case but how you develop a suspect is not always held to this bar.

You just need to find a legal way in after the fact to have a succesfull prosecution. 

This is why JJD's lawyer is challenging the DNA and resisting a sample. He was developed by DNA that was not court ordered so the work around is now using the court ordered sample for prosecution. So the issue was the throw away DNA, but the real issue may be CODIS and whoever did the looking for investigators (if this is what was, in fact, done). 

[spodey]

May 6, 2018 13:43:12 GMT brawlpups said:

May 5, 2018 21:52:14 GMT Any of N said:

On various message boards, we speculated over the years about combining DNA results with genealogy records. First find a set of potential relatives and then go about investigating those people the old fashioned way, with gumshoe detective work. While the linked DNA-genealogy info is exactly what Ancestry.com provides (as do other commercial services), it's typically not available to LE without a court order. Someday, at some point in the future, all that would be available to them via their own comprehensive government-generated databases. No warrants needed and everything right at their fingertips. But that might well come much too late to find a living GSK, so what to do in the meantime?

The answer seems to be: (1) use open source genetic databases and (2) hire professionals to painstakingly compile the relevant genealogy records. Paul Holes and colleagues basically recreated slices of Ancestry.com, the slices they needed. Simple in concept but requiring an awful lot of leg work. Or so it seems to me. Anyone disagree or have any insight?

If this is right, it leads to a couple of questions...

How long has this been going on?

I had assumed that LE was playing around with this approach for years. (There were indications.) Some of the recent media reports seem to conflict with each other. The process that led to DeAngelo started in March, or something like that. Then there was the POI in Oregon who had DNA collected on his deathbed last year. The statements from Holes himself are very general.

Was there anything really new-new involved?

GEDmatch, the open source service involved, has been around for years. Aligning DNA with genealogy records is a well-established practice. This is apparently the first time that LE put so much time and resources into this approach. Is that what's new? Or was it in producing DNA results form semen samples that are compatible with the commercial services (typically obtained with cheek swabs)?


Here are a couple of sources:

Just a question of databases and math. Find a common region of origin based on DNA, say Italy and a sub-region. Find people who immigrated to the US from this region that also have the DNA markers your consider relevant.

Find enough lineages of immigrants that have the marker to find a closely related subset of immigrant lineages. Use mathematical modelling to find out how many generations you need to go back for the common ancestor.

Using Geneology trees then find the likely common ancestor.
Work back down the the branches to find all families with DNA and / or Geneology to identify the common generation for the offender likely birth year. 

Test the common generation on the most likely lines after filtering for location.
Each test get's you statistically closer to the right hit. The problem is that you can't be sure when the right hit is being tested VS a near hit.

A mistake Paul Holes almost made was when he was going to door knock JJD to eliminate him as a POI, luckily for him he had second thought as there where too many other indicators being to being a possibile positive match.
Knowing that JJD tended to kill when confronted it would seem that lady luck was there that night.

What might be new as per your observation; maybe they are backdooring CODIS for related offenders, so something investigators would not discuss as it would be a warrantless search, since no 100% match.

So the question would be "is CODIS now being used for near matches and combining with GED match peers to improve and speed results?"
The inducement for companies to cooperate is all the jucy data, all on the informal professional peer networks and so out of site of the legal defense whose client might be the target of this co-operation. In another words no peer discovery before conviction as no records exist.
Perhaps LE provides a peek into CODIS related results as a reward to DNA and geneolgy companies they may utilize in this fashion 

Perhaps new legal interpretation has been developed by some states or federal attorney to legalize the results. 

This type of data sharing occurs between NSA and LE as an example as well so this type of collusion is not unkown.
Not exactly legal but handled informally on the you did not hear it from me basis.
Legally is only required for establishing your case but how you develop a suspect is not always held to this bar.

You just need to find a legal way in after the fact to have a succesfull prosecution. 

This is why JJD's lawyer is challenging the DNA and resisting a sample. He was developed by DNA that was not court ordered so the work around is now using the court ordered sample for prosecution. So the issue was the throw away DNA, but the real issue may be CODIS and whoever did the looking for investigators (if this is what was, in fact, done). 

And then there is this article on a couple of swings and misses before success in the "family tree" hunt for GSK:

www.buzzfeed.com/peteraldhous/family-tree-dna-subpoena-golden-state-killer?utm_term=.nkB9QdllE#.or6ObREEr

[spodey]

May 5, 2018 21:52:14 GMT Any of N said:

On various message boards, we speculated over the years about combining DNA results with genealogy records. First find a set of potential relatives and then go about investigating those people the old fashioned way, with gumshoe detective work. While the linked DNA-genealogy info is exactly what Ancestry.com provides (as do other commercial services), it's typically not available to LE without a court order. Someday, at some point in the future, all that would be available to them via their own comprehensive government-generated databases. No warrants needed and everything right at their fingertips. But that might well come much too late to find a living GSK, so what to do in the meantime?

The answer seems to be: (1) use open source genetic databases and (2) hire professionals to painstakingly compile the relevant genealogy records. Paul Holes and colleagues basically recreated slices of Ancestry.com, the slices they needed. Simple in concept but requiring an awful lot of leg work. Or so it seems to me. Anyone disagree or have any insight?

If this is right, it leads to a couple of questions...

How long has this been going on?

I had assumed that LE was playing around with this approach for years. (There were indications.) Some of the recent media reports seem to conflict with each other. The process that led to DeAngelo started in March, or something like that. Then there was the POI in Oregon who had DNA collected on his deathbed last year. The statements from Holes himself are very general.

Was there anything really new-new involved?

GEDmatch, the open source service involved, has been around for years. Aligning DNA with genealogy records is a well-established practice. This is apparently the first time that LE put so much time and resources into this approach. Is that what's new? Or was it in producing DNA results form semen samples that are compatible with the commercial services (typically obtained with cheek swabs)?


Here are a couple of sources:

...In the end, the key to cracking the Golden State Killer case lay in public databases and records.

In January of this year, Holes obtained a backup DNA sample from a 37-year-old murder in Ventura County in Southern California that had been preserved in a freezer. With this larger quantity of DNA, the investigators were able to run it on a “microarray” that simultaneously tests for hundreds of the thousands of genetic markers spread across the whole human genome.

The same technology is used by the ancestry testing companies to match their customers to potential relatives, so Holes created a fake identity and uploaded the profile to GEDMatch. The most promising match shared a quantity of DNA suggesting that it was a second cousin of the killer.

Then came the painstaking process of using public records and local newspapers to extend family trees out from the matching profiles to find living people with close relatives connected to the locations where the murders and rapes happened.

“Obituaries are one of the best things out there,” Holes said. “Census records are awesome.”

The best match turned out to be another false lead. Although the family tree Holes and his colleagues constructed led to a potential suspect, he was cleared when a sibling voluntarily gave a DNA sample.

It took a five-person team four months to work from potential third or fourth cousins of the killer to finally identify DeAngelo as the leading suspect — succeeding where four decades of conventional police work had failed.

Cops Forced A Company To Share A Customer’s Identity For The Golden State Killer Investigation, BuzzFeed, May 1, 2018.

Police haven’t yet publicly detailed the methods that led them to DeAngelo. Yet DNA experts say the simple upload-and-match scenario wouldn’t have worked in this case. DeAngelo’s DNA wasn’t in any police database. And snippets collected from crime scenes aren’t in the same form as the DNA in genealogy sites. In addition, consumer testing companies don’t participate in criminal investigations without a warrant. Even if a company was willing to help, police didn’t have saliva or cheek swabs from potential suspects the companies need to conduct their tests. So investigators would have had to do a lot of genetic legwork to get the DNA data and format it in a way that GEDmatch could recognize.­­

Colleen Fitzpatrick and Margaret Press have pioneered a way to do just that. The pair cofounded the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that uses genetics and genealogy to put a name to remains from unidentified people, including crime victims. The techniques developed for their organization are probably the same ones used in the Golden State Killer case, Fitzpatrick and Press say.

...

Police “followed this genetic lead to try to investigate this case in a novel way,” says Katsanis. “But it took a lot of resources. ... If they’d had the wrong DeAngelo, it would have been a lot of investigation for nothing.” Such extensive genetic detective work is difficult and takes money and manpower most jurisdictions can’t spare, says Katsanis.

New genetic sleuthing tools helped track down the Golden State Killer suspect, ScienceNews, April 29, 2018.

More info about Colleen Fitzpatrick:  starlocalmedia.com/opinion/blogs/blog_7/tracing-our-roots-award-winning-forensic-researcher-to-speak-to/article_d2fc25ec-5de0-11e8-b1ad-5f11d07c5106.html

[Any of N]

I still have a few stray after-the-fact musings on the DNA, and this thread is as good a place as any to put them.

"DNA will solve this case!"

Wow, was this assertion ever trumpeted around here, and then some. It always had zero information value, too. Of course DNA was going to solve the case, if solved it ever became. It was thoroughly baked into the cake. DNA had already tied the EAR and ONS cases together. It had already confirmed that there was indeed a serial killer operating in SoCal. Eventually a POI would generate a DNA hit. After 40+ years it was very likely the only way to prove the offender's guilt.

"Why don't they commandeer Ancestry.com or 23andMe?"

This question was asked endlessly as well. No matter how many times it was answered it would be brought up again and again as if it had never been asked before. Why can't LE just use those services? Because they are maintained by private companies, because those companies have privacy agreements in place with their users, and because the law looks unkindly at LE fishing expeditions. (Everything still true.) It was also worth mentioning that the case was solvable without resorting to those means, an assertion which turned out to be true.

There are so many civil liberties concerns about forensic DNA that an entire book could easily be written on the subject. Oh, yeah, there was actually one already in existence that we could refer to. I happened to cite it myself about a hundred times: Inside the Cell: The Dark Side of Forensic DNA by Erin E. Murphy. But hey, let's just pretend an entire area of constitutional law never existed.

"If only LE could use Ancestry.com or 23andMe, they'd solve the case."

This points to where I was dead wrong. I strongly suspected there was some reason for why this wouldn't work, like our offender being adopted. (Or coming from a thin line of descent, or immigrating from a country with low participation in the DNA services, or something.) Surely LE had poked around here already, using databases that we might not even know anything about. Nope, apparently not. Not until recently, and they used a common well-known database.

"Gattaca will be here a week from Tuesday."

Oh, those geniuses with their rapid DNA advancements! AI and machine learning! Sophisticated algorithms!  Before you know it LE will be able to take a tiny degraded sample, drop it into a hand-held unit, and bzzzzzzt, case solved! We'll have a perfect likeness of the guy's face (at the right age and BMI) with his name, current address, and cell phone number. Whoa Nelly. Everything is just advancing with leaps and bounds.

Except it didn't go down that way. Every bit of the technology they used was available from the moment this message board came into existence, from what I can gather. Probably a few years before that.

This was a practical workaround, folks.

No quotation marks here because this is my assertion. Paul Holes and his team apparently did the following:

• Obtain a fresh biological (semen) sample from which to extract DNA.
  
• Obtain autosomal DNA results which are normally obtained with saliva samples.
  
• Upload the autosomal results to an open source database and find distant relatives. 
• Gather genealogy data the old fashioned way to find a common ancestor to the relatives and the offender.
• Filter through potential suspects from the genealogy results using old fashioned gumshoe detective work.

Based on what Paul Holes said on the Criminology podcast, Steps 1 and 2 were not trivial. He had already used up all of his samples from Contra Costa County, and it's not normal procedure to extract the type of DNA results he needed from the sample he eventually obtained. Maybe there was some newer technology used in Step 2, but everything else looks like is was pretty "old" technology to me. This day and age, GEDmatch and online archived newspapers (wedding announcements and obituaries) are tired and true tools. Great work, kudos all around, but this was not cutting edge stuff.

My take.

I'm glad JJD is in custody, but my joy is tempered a bit by how they found him. Most users of GEDmatch were not thinking about LE when they uploaded their data, I'd be willing to bet. Yet for those of us with privacy concerns I think there's a big silver lining. This absolutely proves that there's no need to push the boundaries of forensic DNA law.

Holes caught JJD by using GEDmatch and digging up old public genealogy records. With a little experience it will only get easier. Parabon was marketing a turnkey service within days, it seemed. The brave new world of Gattaca is just not necessary to solve the remaining cold cases. Why trample on privacy rights when it's not necessary?

[Deleted]

Tim or Any, this is just a hypothetical question but if JJD had been adopted would it have made any difference? Let’s assume that the adoption was done the right way and that LE could have obtained a warrant if they narrowed in on the adoption agency. There are a few of these types (ie; David Berkowitz) that would have this hypothetical.

[Any of N]

saund10295 -- I'd say it's a big maybe. First they found the common ancestor and then they searched down multiple branches of the family tree. Let's say they developed a few good POI's but nothing came of it. Then what? Where might an adoption have occurred? Lots of places. I assume they would need some type of court order but this would be quite the fishing expedition. My naive guess is that this is too broad, but I don't really know.

[annielynn]

Has anyone else wondered out of pure curiosity what pseudonyms LE used for their fake profiles to gather genealogical data from GEDmatch? I've wondered that a couple times.

[Deleted]

Jun 11, 2018 2:29:44 GMT Any of N said:

saund10295 -- I'd say it's a big maybe. First they found the common ancestor and then they searched down multiple branches of the family tree. Let's say they developed a few good POI's but nothing came of it. Then what? Where might an adoption have occurred? Lots of places. I assume they would need some type of court order but this would be quite the fishing expedition. My naive guess is that this is too broad, but I don't really know.

Right but wasn’t JJD born in NY?? Somehow his distant cousins led to California. So let’s say the hypothetical adopted culprit-to-be was born in NJ, and adopted by a CA couple. His bio mom was a 17 year-old girl from Teaneck bio dad was 19 y-o boyfriend from Hackensack. Both later grow up and have families, separately. LE runs the DNA and sees relatives in NJ. Don’t they say this is a half sib of Teaneck mom’s kids, and half sib of Hackensack dad’s kids. And then do they have to make the phone calls and start doing the gumshoe work? I guess what I’m saying is no familial hits in the criminal database can mean one or two things: your culprit’s immediate fam is squeaky clean, or he was adopted. Of course he could have been an only child, etc. But either way it’s solvable, if they do the legwork, no?

[Any of N]

Jun 11, 2018 3:07:28 GMT saund10295 said:

Jun 11, 2018 2:29:44 GMT Any of N said:

saund10295 -- I'd say it's a big maybe. First they found the common ancestor and then they searched down multiple branches of the family tree. Let's say they developed a few good POI's but nothing came of it. Then what? Where might an adoption have occurred? Lots of places. I assume they would need some type of court order but this would be quite the fishing expedition. My naive guess is that this is too broad, but I don't really know.

Right but wasn’t JJD born in NY?? Somehow his distant cousins led to California. So let’s say the hypothetical adopted culprit-to-be was born in NJ, and adopted by a CA couple. His bio mom was a 17 year-old girl from Teaneck bio dad was 19 y-o boyfriend from Hackensack. Both later grow up and have families, separately. LE runs the DNA and sees relatives in NJ. Don’t they say this is a half sib of Teaneck mom’s kids, and half sib of Hackensack dad’s kids. And then do they have to make the phone calls and start doing the gumshoe work? I guess what I’m saying is no familial hits in the criminal database can mean one or two things: your culprit’s immediate fam is squeaky clean, or he was adopted. Of course he could have been an only child, etc. But either way it’s solvable, if they do the legwork, no?

You're envisioning a scenario where they trace the decent down to both parents. I'm thinking that they traced it down to only one. That is, multiple possibilities of one of the parents.

Paul Holes talks like he wasn't so sure it was going to be JJD. He was ready to talk to the guy himself and get a cheek swab, figuring it likely was not him. If Holes had traced down to JJD from both parental lines, I think he would have been quite optimistic.