Author: Tina Hesman Saey / Source: Science News
For the second time in less than a month, DNA probes of family trees in a public database have helped police catch a murder suspect.
On May 17, detectives in Washington arrested 55-year-old William Earl Talbott II of Seatac for the 1987 double murder of Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg. A new DNA sleuthing technique called genetic genealogy led to Talbott’s capture. His arrest came just weeks after police in California used the new trick to identify a suspect in the Golden State Killer case (SN Online: 4/29/18).
Arrests in these two cold cases are probably just the beginning of the technique’s use.
Parabon NanoLabs, a DNA-forensics company based in Reston, Va., announced May 8 that it has already used 100 genetic profiles generated from crime-scene DNA to search the public genealogy database GEDmatch. So far, the company has identified about 20 cases in which genetic genealogy alone could pick out a likely suspect. One of those profiles led investigators to Talbott.
Another 30 of the 100 cases may be solvable with a combination of genetic genealogy and additional police work, says genetic genealogist CeCe Moore, founder of The DNA Detectives, a genetic-genealogy group with nearly 89,000 members on Facebook.
The group focuses on helping adoptees and other people with unknown parents find their biological families. Moore is working with Parabon to identify possible perpetrators in murder and rape cases.“It’s impossible not to feel the satisfaction of bringing to justice people who have evaded responsibility for pretty heinous crimes,” says New York University School of Law professor Erin Murphy.
Genetic genealogists used crime-scene DNA to probe a genealogy website called GEDmatch. Two people in the database shared some DNA with the supposed killer, both at the second-cousin level. That finding suggested that each person probably shared great-grandparents with the suspect. Reconstructing these people’s family trees led police to further investigate and arrest…
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