My guess is Y-STR typing + one of the publicly searchable services here: https://t.co/G8I4ZLbSew
— Alexander M. Kim (@amwkim) April 27, 2018
You may have heard that a suspect was arrested who is alleged to be the “Golden State Killer.” DNA played an important role, Relative’s DNA from genealogy websites cracked East Area Rapist case, DA’s office says.
I think Alexander Kim’s supposition is probably right. It wasn’t a direct to consumer company that you know of that uses a genome-wide analysis, but probably old-fashioned Y STR matching which allowed the researchers to converge on the suspect. The public databases for this are extensive enough now that they might yield something, and law enforcement is comfortable with STR tests. This is really a preview of what’s to come. If researchers routinely extract DNA from remains that are tens of thousands of years old it seems clear that a lot more material will come out of old rape kits.
That’s one dimension. The other dimension is that we have many more markers to work with now. Even without whole-genome analysis, you can identify relatives with reasonable precision out to 2nd cousins (it gets a little dicier beyond that).
But the most important variable happens to be with numbers. If you read Alon Keinan’s piece, Crowdsourcing big data research on human history and health: from genealogies to genomes and back again, you know that probably nearly 20 million people have taken advantage of genome-wide consumer testing. Assuming 10 million are in the United States, a substantial number of “cold cases” could probably be closed by just looking for matches within these databases and establishing the pedigrees which suspects come from.
Of course, the genomics companies are not just going to open their databases to law enforcement. But I’m not sure that that will be necessary. There are enough genealogy enthusiasts that public forums and services to facilitate matches will probably suffice. If only a few percent of the American population is in these forums, then that might get us 90% of the way there.
Addendum: There has been some work in forensic genetics “predicting” physical appearance. A lot of this is not primetime, but one area where a lot could be done: fine-scale ancestral analysis. Using haplotype-based methods and looking for matches within public datasets one could probably narrow down the ethnic background of a suspect pretty well from DNA. If the test tells you someone is Northern European in Minnesota that might not help, but if it tells you that they are around half Lithuanian, that might be very useful….
It was GEDmatch that was used in this case:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/26/ancestry-23andme-deny-assisting-law-enforcement-in-east-area-rapist-case/
They used next generation sequencing to get a whole genome sequence from the crime scene and then created a spoof GEDmatch kit with whatever compatible SNPs were available.
There are more details of the methodology here:
http://thednageek.com/genealogy-and-the-golden-state-killer/
Why not just request a test kit from a genomics company, and send in the suspects DNA.
Technically genomics company has not allowed police/FBI access to the database
However, police/FBI have had access to the database with out breaking any “current” laws.
@sbarrum: Because a DNA company expecting a specimen jar of saliva won’t touch one obviously containing blood, semen, hair or skin samples…
last i heard 23andMe only takes spit. you can’t steal spit. basically they’ll send back something that is pure amped DNA cuz they don’t want stuff extracted out of hair or something.
“Of course, the genomics companies are not just going to open their databases to law enforcement.”
No, they should not just turn over data, but. They must respond to court orders (warrants and subpoenas).
However, even if they notify customers when they are subpoenaed, there is not much chance in a privacy argument when the genomics company is collecting the data for family tracing purposes. In that case there is something like an expectation of publicity.
A medical genomics company, particularly one that accepted samples from doctors and sent the results to doctors, might have a physicians privilege argument.
This issue may become very hot. I would be really interested in hearing you and Spencer discuss it on your podcast. You might want to bring in a lawyer. if you don’t know one with relevant expertise, you should call the pr person at UT Law. They will have a list of faculty who will speak on given topics.
This happened much faster than I expected. It’s not unlike the stuff happening with Facebook and the like – the tech has moved fast into the consumer space and consumers have rushed to hand over their personal data without anyone having given much thought as to the likely consequences, until those consequences suddenly become apparent.
Let the thumb sucking begin. From the Saturday NYTimes:
“The Golden State Killer Is Tracked Through a Thicket of DNA, and Experts Shudder: The arrest of a suspect has set off alarms among some scientists and ethicists worried that consumer DNA may be widely accessed by law enforcement.” By Gina Kolata, and Heather Murphy on April 27, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/health/dna-privacy-golden-state-killer-genealogy.html
“To Catch a Killer: A Fake Profile on a DNA Site and a Pristine Sample” By Tim Arango, Adam Goldman, and Thomas Fuller on April 27, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/us/golden-state-killer-case-joseph-deangelo.html
The legal questions are very interesting.
The short version of this story is that the police found the alleged perpetrator’s bodily fluids in a duplicate rape kit in the freezer of the Ventura County Medical Examiner. They extracted DNA from that and used the genomic information derived from the extracted DNA to look for the AP’s identity. The matches they found were of his relatives who had uploaded their genomic information to a genealogy web site in the hopes that someone would find a match. The police found AP’s relatives on the genealogy web site. And used their identities to trace AP.
Now, reasonable expectations of privacy are the touch stone of privacy rights under the 4th Amendment, which regulates police searches and seizures.
The AP had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the bodily fluids he left at a crime scene. Just as there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in trash left out for collection.
The relatives might object, but since they put their genomic information into the public domain hoping that others would look at it, they had no expectation of privacy at all.
The genealogy website might object to a violation of their terms of use or privacy policy, but their claim can only result in a payment of monetary damages by Police to the website. I don’t see how that would affect the ability of the state to prosecute AP.
Further, the investigation material will not be terribly relevant at trial. The police can take a DNA sample from AP and match that directly to crime scene material.
This whole story would be a great question in a criminal procedure class.