St. George • Simple mail-in DNA tests have changed how people learn about their ancestry and even connected distant relatives to one another.
But the power of genetic genealogy doesn’t stop there. Police have turned these quickly growing databases into a new investigative tool, leading to confessions, a guilty verdict — and even one exoneration.
In just the past year, police have used genetic genealogy to identify suspects in more than 60 crimes, mostly cases that have grown cold after years of traditional police work turned up few leads.
None is more notorious than the Golden State Killer case, in which the suspect still faces 13 murder charges.