Cold Cases and Genetic Genealogy

I first had the idea for this blog post 2 years ago, but life got in the way so I saved my references and forgot about it. As many of you know, after more than 15 years as a high school science teacher, I will be starting a new career as a forensic investigative genetic genealogist soon. Completing this blog post feels like the best way to explain what I will be doing professionally without divulging any specifics of my own employment. That being said, I want to begin by telling you a story...

Rahway, New Jersey circa 1910

Imagine being able to travel back in time to early spring 1887. On a chilly Friday morning, March 25th, in Rahway, New Jersey, four brothers headed to work at the nearby Clark felt mills came across the body of a young woman who had been brutally murder. Her body lay on the side of the road near the Central Avenue bridge (not far from the intersection of Central and Jefferson Aves), a large pool of blood frozen on the ground beside her. Her face was extensively bruised from a severe beating, her hands bore defensive wounds, but perhaps most shockingly of all, her throat had been cut twice from ear to ear. 

Rahway New Jersey, 1887 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map

Now homicide was unusual in this area in 1887, especially one so violent. Add to this the fact that the victim, estimated to be in her early 20s, was said to be very pretty, with dark hair and light eyes, and well dressed and you had an instant national obsession with the mystery.

A sketch of the victim, published in April 1887 (source: National Police Gazette)

There was a lot of wild speculation about who the young woman was and where she'd come from - her time of death was likely the evening before and she was not terribly far from the train station which made Rahway easily accessible from other parts of New Jersey and New York City. Despite the murder weapon being recovered near the body as well as multiple large shoe impressions around and leading away from the victim, a dozen or so personal items of the victim recovered from a handbag found in the river and many eyewitness statements collected over a long investigation, neither the victim nor her murderer were ever positively identified. To this day, the victim is simply referred to as the Rahway Jane Doe. 

Reward for the Suspect, equivalent to about $18,750 today

A homicide that is unsolved for a long period of time in known as a cold case. The reality is that with each passing day, week, month, year or decade, the probability of solving that cold case diminishes significantly. However, law enforcement does not stop investigating these cases, as there is no statute of limitations on prosecuting a homicide or identifying a victim. Unfortunately due to limited resources, these cases can languish if there is no substantial new evidence or information available to the detectives.

National Institute of Justice Cold Case DNA Program

In 2008, direct to consumer genetic tests began to be marketed to the public, largely by US startup 23andMe. These tests give customers the opportunity to learn more about genetic variants they'd inherited, match with previously unknown genetic relatives and learn more about the places in the world their ancestors likely came from. All that was required was some spit in a tube, but initially the tests were quite costly. Our own family had quite a few genealogical brick walls that could only be solved using DNA, but I didn't have the money to spend so I waited and watched. By 2013, the price had come down to a much more reasonable $99 so I jumped in. Ancestry.com is the largest paid subscription genealogy company and had been for a long time when they decided to dip their toe into the genetic testing waters in 2012. With a well established paying customer base, their database steadily shot past the number of clients in 23andMe's database. It is currently the largest database of its kind globally, with over 22 million users.

DTC Genetic Database Growth

Adoptees and genealogists with problematic tree branches were the first to recognize how powerful comparison of family trees with known genetic relatives could be for uncovering the identity of previously unknown individuals. An entire subculture of genealogists developed to cater to folks with unknown parentage and the term "genetic genealogist" was born. Fast forward to 2017 in California when the cold case investigator Paul Holes working on the so-called Golden State Killer crimes (13 murders, 51 rapes and 120 burglaries) got a clever idea. He'd learned a bit about genetic genealogy through his own family research and wanted to know if the same technique could work for finding the suspect. His initial attempts to find a suspect where not particularly successful so he enlisted the help of Dr. Barbara Rae-Venter (ex-wife of Craig Venter, the head of Celera Genomics, which was the private company to first sequence a human genome in the early 2000s). Dr. Rae-Venter has a PhD in biology as well as a law degree, doing both research and patent law in her career. Since retiring, she's worked full time assisting law enforcement on cold cases. 

It's extremely important to note that law enforcement agents cannot directly access the paid subscription genetic databases like Ancestry or 23andme. Instead, investigators rely on accessing GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA's databases, which allow people to upload their raw data from other companies into their database to try to find matches across testing platforms. Also know that users can opt out of allowing law enforcement to see if they match DNA from a crime scene. So here's how things played out in California...

Are you ready for some sobering statistics? According to the NIJ, there are approximately 240,000 unsolved homicides in the United States. According to RAINN, there are over 290,000 victims of rape or sexual assault per year in the US - that's a new victim every two minutes. According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Systems (NamUS), approximately 600,000 people go missing every year in the US. About 90 percent of those people are recovered within a year (dead or alive), but still for a staggering number of families there are no answers. Over 4000 unidentified bodies are recovered each year. Several organizations (i.e. DNA Doe Project) focusing on identifying these John and Jane Does have been successful in crowd sourcing funding to get the necessary genetic testing and genealogy done. But we have a serious identification problem in this country - one that can be made better through adequately funding the expansion of forensic investigative genetic genealogy.

As you and your loved ones consider taking DNA tests through Ancestry or 23andme or any of the other myriad of sites, please seriously consider contributing your DNA to GEDmatch and opting in to law enforcement seeing your matches. This tool is only as good as the size of the database - the fewer people in the database, the longer it can take to crack a cold case.

As far as Rahway Jane Doe, the local police department is still open to collecting tips. And who knows? Perhaps one day, someone will raise the money to exhume her body to get a DNA sample so that she can be returned to her family at long last.