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I realize any impact will be minimal, but I was thinking that perhaps it may make things harder for people who actually plan their crimes, because they will have no control over this aspect of things. Your relatives can submit their DNA for analysis, so you have no control over it - who's gonna be able to keep track of what their 3rd cousins do?
It's fascinating to me that genealogists may become crime solvers in a way.
It may just as likely lead to other crimes, such as blackmail.
I believe it was a letter on a disk though and they were able to trace the disk to a computer at his church and the computer was assigned to someone named Dennis. They then looked in the church's directory and found the name Dennis Rader as a church officer. Then they proceeded from there.
Rader even somehow asked the officer in charge of the investigation if it was possible to trace a computer disk and the officer told him it was not. After he was captured Rader asked the officer why he lied to him and the officer replied "because I was trying to catch you".
You would be correct. That's pretty much how it went down. I live just south of Wichita, and this thing hit pretty close to home. Had a girlfriend at the time of the Otero murders, and she was terrified of this guy... for good reason. Even though we didn't know we had a serial killer out there, it was still scary. Rader is a real piece of work. Too bad we were too late with the DP for him.
Or a criminal killing off family members before they can send their DNA to one of these places. ..........
It would be a big disappointment to the killer to discover that DNA is taken from murder victims, so killing the relative wouldn't stop the police from linking the victim's DNA to the killer's DNA.
And the relative(s) whose DNA pointed to the killer would not necessarily be known to the killer. The detectives simply obtain the probative killer's DNA using standard techniques and once a match that is all the jury needs to know.
All Federal, State and Municipal Law Enforcement Agencies already use DNA testing plus not sure about having some mail in DNA website that may not be even based in the Country means they have no State or Federal legal authority or Jurisdiction to investigate crimes.
Otherwise this all sounds like that Tom Cruise Movie Minority Report.
Impact is more than minimal. BTK and golden state killer crimes as far back as the '70s were both apprehended through family dna on genealogy sites.
Will it continue? I dont think anyone who uses these genealogy sites does so to solve crimes. Will it make some reluctant to use the sites accessable by LE? Probably so.
That's not true in the case of BTK. BTK was caught because he foolishly asked police if they could trace floppy disks, they told him no, and so he sent them a floppy disk that was traced back to him.
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