"Genetic Detective" series on ABC (American, find, search)
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For those interested in the forensic use of genetic genealogy: the series "Genetic Detective" debuted on ABC last night, featuring CeCe Moore.
In the first episode, CeCe described her background and how she transitioned from family genealogist, to genetic genealogist who specialized in helping adoptees identify family members, to using the same methodology to track down perpetrators using crime scene DNA and GEDmatch.
The episode detailed the first case assigned to her, which was the double murder of Canadians Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylerborg near Seattle in 1987. She was able to identify the killer after only two hours using her genetic genealogy skills. The suspect was then tracked, police collected a used paper cup which he discarded, and the DNA on the cup was a match to the crime scene DNA. The suspect was then apprehended.
A very compelling illustration of how this technology is being used to solve cold cases.
Overall, I was impressed. In order to dumb it down for network TV, I expected it to be very heavy on drama and very light on science, but it was not nearly as slanted as I feared. I thought the science and her process were well presented, considering the audience, and law enforcement was portrayed in a meaningful and respectful manner. I hope it lasts for awhile. It was one of the better network shows I've watched in awhile.
Oh yeah... I did not know Cece had been a model in a previous life. She was hot!
I thought it was very self-serving and her comments saying she does not leave the house for the genealogy research is just not believable. I hope it gets better but I will probably give it another episode.
Literally, why did she just not e-mail the matches on Gedmatch? She was talking about recreating their trees. There's an e-mail for a reason. That made me super mad/ It was so dramatic when it didn't need to be.
Literally, why did she just not e-mail the matches on Gedmatch? She was talking about recreating their trees. There's an e-mail for a reason. That made me super mad/ It was so dramatic when it didn't need to be.
That's Television 101 right there!
I have a cousin who has been in reality TV, directing and producing for almost 20 years now, and it's crazy to hear his stories on how fake and unnecessary things are in his industry, but it's all about the DRAMA.
Literally, why did she just not e-mail the matches on Gedmatch? She was talking about recreating their trees. There's an e-mail for a reason. That made me super mad/ It was so dramatic when it didn't need to be.
Because she didn't have to. It didn't take her long to figure out who it was. I also have developed a policy of never contacting someone to find out who they are if I can figure it out myself. Even when there's little to go on I can often figure out who they are and build a tree. But I wonder if maybe there is a requirement when working on these crime cases that they're not allowed to contact kit managers to ask questions. Maybe more will come out in future episodes. I really want to know if there have been people in GEDmatch contacted by "crime solvers" who asked them questions, or if it's pretty much "hands-off."
Literally, why did she just not e-mail the matches on Gedmatch? She was talking about recreating their trees. There's an e-mail for a reason. That made me super mad/ It was so dramatic when it didn't need to be.
In order for data used as evidence to be considered valid it needs be compiled by an independent researcher. Plus there is the practical aspect of not wanting to alert the criminal.
Because she didn't have to. It didn't take her long to figure out who it was. I also have developed a policy of never contacting someone to find out who they are if I can figure it out myself. Even when there's little to go on I can often figure out who they are and build a tree. But I wonder if maybe there is a requirement when working on these crime cases that they're not allowed to contact kit managers to ask questions. Maybe more will come out in future episodes. I really want to know if there have been people in GEDmatch contacted by "crime solvers" who asked them questions, or if it's pretty much "hands-off."
Contacting matches is a last resort. I have a few friends that volunteer with DDP. I asked how they do the whole process because I know it has to be a very involved.
They have various teams that work together. They do the actual trees on Ancestry where they use records and hints. After they get the matches on GEDmatch and/or FTDNA, they will lay them out and build very detailed trees where they have to keep track of the DNA matches, what level cousin match/cM's, plus what ever common DNA matches there are. From there they figure out common ancestors of all of the DNA matches.
Depending on how close they manage to get, they contact LE with what they have. If they're stuck, they'll give the details to LE such as last names, ethnicity, and areas that the ancestors were from. LE could put out an article targeting those locations to see if any relatives call with tips or they will start testing family of the closer matches.
There have been times when they've lucked out on Ancestry such as one of the 1st cases they solved where they actually found the missing person in someone's public tree listed as deceased, last seen with a date.
Quote:
Originally Posted by historyfan
In order for data used as evidence to be considered valid it needs be compiled by an independent researcher. Plus there is the practical aspect of not wanting to alert the criminal.
Agree that they want to do as much as they can without contacting the match but in some cases have had to contact the matches. There was one case in the current events section; Mom says police lied to her about DNA. I thought I had posted it in the Golden State killer thread but see that I didn't. I'm going to add it when I'm done submitting this reply. LE lied to matches saying they were trying to identify a murder victim and not that they were trying to identify the person that raped and killed the victim. Some of the family members that were tested were upset that they were lied to while another said he would have given his DNA if LE were honest saying that they were investigating a murderer in his family.
This is a very long article. I'm only posting key parts. You really have to read the whole article to see all of the details. Towards the end they say that not only did they ask the mother for her DNA using the ruse of a Jane Doe, they also asked her husband who refused without a warrant. That alone would have had me question why they needed both parents DNA when the mother was the one with a niece she hadn't heard from in a long time. That would have been a red flag to me. Of course if this mother was the mother of the deceased girl, she would want LE to do everything they could to get DNA.
What was the most surprising to me besides the father not doing it was that out of the couples 2 sons that could have been the rapist/ murderer was that they didn't start with the son that had a record; but then again they didn't say if the one they started with had a record too. Maybe he did have a record that was worst then his brothers.
VALDOSTA, Ga. — On an October morning in 2018, Eleanor Holmes and her husband left home to run an errand and found two men inside their front gate. They introduced themselves as detectives from Orlando, Florida, and said they needed the couple’s help.
.... said they were trying to identify someone who’d been found dead many years earlier, the Holmeses recalled. They were looking for the person’s relatives, and were using DNA and genealogical records to stitch together a family tree that they hoped would lead them to a name. Friendly and businesslike, they said they’d already got DNA samples from Eleanor Holmes’ sister and an aunt. And now they wanted hers.
Holmes already knew about the detectives’ visit to her sister. It worried her that someone in her family had died without anyone knowing about it. She had relatives in Orlando, including a niece whom she hadn’t heard from in more than a decade. So she agreed.
She thought nothing of it until a few days later, when she got a frantic phone call from the girlfriend of one of her sons, Benjamin Holmes Jr. Orlando police had just arrested him for allegedly fatally shooting a college student, Christine Franke, in her Florida home in 2001. They’d used DNA and genealogical records to tie him to the crime.
In that panicked moment, it dawned on Holmes that the detectives hadn’t told her the truth. They’d used her DNA to help build a case against her son.
In the months before taking her DNA, Orlando detectives visited more than a dozen of her relatives in Florida and Georgia. Several said they were told a similar story before agreeing to provide DNA samples.
She’d been shot once in the head, and her wallet, containing no cash, had been discarded on the floor, according to court documents. Her clothing had been partially removed, and investigators found semen on her body. .....
The researchers, led by Parabon’s top genealogist, CeCe Moore, found two cousins of the suspected killer in GEDmatch and traced their common ancestors to a husband and wife who lived in Valdosta in the first half of the 1900s.
The Valdosta couple had an extremely large family, producing a sprawling family tree. Navigating that thicket left Fields and the researchers at dead ends, unable to go further without getting DNA from more people in the family.....
While American courts have ruled that police are allowed to mislead people to obtain evidence, there’s a debate within law enforcement over how honest police should be in seeking DNA from people who aren’t suspected of a crime.
Fields and his partner, Detective Michael Moreschi, arrived without any advance notice. It quickly became clear that they already knew a lot about the Holmes family.
“They knew my father, they knew my children, they could name every one of my children, where they lived. Everything that they wanted, they had it right there,” Holmes recalled. “Except for my DNA.”
Before submitting to the swab, she said she joked with the detectives that they might find out that she was related to them.
“I didn't really think it over,” she recalled.
The detectives then asked her husband for his DNA. He declined and walked away.
“For me to give my DNA to you, you have to come with some kind of papers from lawyers or something,” Benjamin Holmes Sr. recalled. “Just going to walk in out of the blue and say, ‘I want to take your DNA, could you give me a sample?’ No.”
....the suspect was one of her two sons, Reginal Holmes and Benjamin Holmes Jr., who both lived in Orlando
Investigators first focused on Reginal Holmes, following him to work as he installed air conditioning units at a construction site. An undercover officer approached him, got into a conversation with him, and offered him a bottle of Gatorade. Reginal Holmes took it and drove away, with the undercover officers tailing him, according to Fields’ affidavit. When Reginal Holmes threw the bottle into a dumpster, a detective retrieved it and took it to the state crime lab, which obtained a DNA profile and compared it to the crime scene DNA. There was no match, making Benjamin Holmes Jr. the prime suspect.
He was a Wendy’s restaurant manager with a record of arrests dating to 2001, mostly low-level drug charges and probation violations, as well as a domestic violence charge, according to Fields’ affidavit. Officers put him under surveillance. On the second day of following him, officers watched him step outside a friend’s house with a cigar and a beer, then throw them out. An undercover detective retrieved both, and police sent them to the crime lab, which found a match with the DNA from the crime scene.
In order for data used as evidence to be considered valid it needs be compiled by an independent researcher. Plus there is the practical aspect of not wanting to alert the criminal.
This was my thinking too.
I was actually kind of bored watching it. I didn’t really learn anything I hadn’t already read about. Maybe the following episodes will be better since I might know less about them.
Last night's episode featured the multiple crimes of Robert Brashers, which I was unfamiliar with, but I didn't enjoy all the filler having to do with CeCe and her family moving house. I noticed that while in the first episode she claimed to have solved the case in two hours, this time she said that she knows every case she works on will take a long time. Maybe she decided it would be more to her advantage not to go so fast and make it look easy, but to drag out the process and make it look like more work than it is? Made me wonder how much she's making off of this enterprise and whether that's why they moved to a better house.
Two things struck me: Brashers' daughter's interview by CeCe and her statement that she was "glad" that CeCe discovered that her father had committed these crimes, and that she wasn't "mad" at CeCe for finding this out, even though all of it clearly disturbed her. How often does a detective ask a family member if they are "mad" about their family member getting caught?
And the Scherer son from Missouri whose mother and sister were killed by Brashers, said that the solution to the crime didn't really change anything for him. It must be hard to feel any satisfaction when the perpetrator is already dead and can't be punished for the crimes. Couldn't help but feel bad for the guy.
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