Specialists are using public-access DNA databases to track down violent criminals such as the notorious Golden State Killer. But the technique raises a host of legal and ethical questions
DNA sleuth CeCe Moore recalls the moment that the pieces came together, in May, in the hunt for her first suspected killer – the man now thought to be responsible for the brutal 1987 murders of a young Canadian couple on a trip to Seattle. While Moore is used to uncovering secrets – she’s helped hundreds of adopted children to identify their biological parents – finding someone who might be guilty of murder was shocking. “It is hard to even put into words. It was a very surreal feeling,” she says. Moore, a genetic genealogist known in the US as an expert on the PBS television series Finding Your Roots, runs DNA Detectives, a Facebook group of 100,000-plus members, which helps people find their biological parents.
Since May, she has also headed a forensic genealogy unit at the DNA tech company Parabon, which helps police find perpetrators of violent crimes – mostly unsolved murders and rape. She uses a controversial method called genetic, or forensic, genealogy that is becoming indispensable to police forces while raising legal and ethical questions. To date, the work of Moore and her team has led to identifications in 21 US cases and she says that there will be more soon (no case has yet come to trial, so all those identified are for now suspects only).
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