Detectives used consumer genealogical website to identify serial killer suspect
The World Food Programme (WFP) will begin distributing vouchers to droves of hungry Venezuelan migrants arriving in neighbouring Colombia, as part of a programme similar to that offered to refugees from war-torn nations like Syria.
Starting next week, the United Nations food agency will offer thousands of migrants gathered in Colombia’s busiest border cities a US$35 (NZ$50) monthly voucher to be used at local grocery stores.
The aim is to provide sustenance to the most vulnerable migrants, who are crossing in growing numbers into Colombia as they flee an increasingly autocratic government and economic crisis.
The WFP hopes to serve 350,000 people over the next eight months, but UN officials say they are relying on the international community to raise US$46m (NZ$65m) to help carry the costs. So far, international aid to help Colombia respond to the humanitarian crisis spilling across its border has been relatively slim. –AP
COLOMBIA:
The break that led police to the man accused of being the Golden State Killer came when they linked DNA evidence from the slayings to genetic information contained on a consumer genealogical website, authorities said yesterday.
Investigators knew the killer only through a string of DNA found at several of the dozen murder scenes. Shaun Hampton, a spokesman for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, said officials had struggled for years to figure out who that DNA belonged to. Recently, they tapped genealogical databases that the public uses to search for relatives and ancestors.
Law enforcement sources said the information from that website dramatically reduced the size of their search. Eventually, they narrowed the investigation to several families listed in the database, with a pool of about 100 men who fitted the age profile of the killer, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Hampton declined to name the site used or provide details about exactly how authorities made the match.
The trail eventually led police to Joseph James DeAngelo, a 72-year-old former police officer
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living in Citrus Heights, a suburb of Sacramento. The sources said the detectives then retraced his life, looking for connections between the numerous crimes throughout California and where he was during those times.
Private companies that provide ancestry searches using DNA samples submitted by paying participants usually also guarantee privacy for their users. However, customers are alerted to potential matches and can use the service to connect with possible relatives. Sacramento County district attorney’s spokeswoman Shelly Orio said more details about the DNA evidence would be laid out today during a court hearing.
Several popular DNA sites – Ancestry.com, 23andme and MyHeritage – all denied that law enforcement officials formally reached out to them about the Golden State Killer case.
Authorities say the Golden State Killer slipped in through backdoors and windows in the dark. He initially struck in the foothills east of Sacramento, raping at least 46 women, before he began killing and headed south.
From 1978 to 1986, he killed 12 people in attacks ranging from the Sacramento County city of Rancho Cordova to the Orange County cities of Irvine and Dana Point.
In Ventura, he tied up a couple with a drapery cord and raped the wife before fatally bludgeoning them with a fireplace log. In Goleta, he bound a doctor and his wife, a clinical psychologist, and shot them both.
The unsolved slayings were not linked for years, and not linked to the rapes until 2000.
When authorities announced DeAngelo’s arrest on Thursday, they said DNA evidence helped to solve the case, but they provided few details.
Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones said the task force had been conducting surveillance on DeAngelo and secretly retrieved his DNA from a discarded item. The DNA matched the samples left by the killer.
California officials have been increasingly turning to so-called familial DNA to solve cold cases, by scouring an offender DNA database for a father, son or brother of an elusive crime suspect.
Laboratory officials look for a relative by scanning genetic profiles in the offender database and looking for DNA samples that match with a suspect’s along several, but not all, markers.
From there, California’s testing method focuses on part of the Y chromosome passed down along the male line, identifying fatherson or full brother relationships.
Experts have said that as more genetic markers for people’s DNA are entered into offender databases, the technology will become more precise.
The state’s early success using familial DNA searches to identify the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killer has prompted some police officials to say this could be a game changer in solving old crimes. But civil liberties groups have expressed alarm, saying the searches raise significant ethical and privacy concerns. Some have questioned their legality.
In 2008, California became the first American state to adopt a familial DNA policy. Under the policy, familial DNA is only to be used as a ‘‘last resort’’ when all other investigative angles have been exhausted. In some instances, detectives search the database several times for the same case.
In the case of the Grim Sleeper killer, an initial search turned up nothing, but state officials ran another scan in 2010. A partial match came back to a man added to the database after a 2008 arrest for firearm and drug offences.
Detectives zeroed in on the man’s father, Lonnie Franklin Jr, who lived close to where many of the victims’ bodies were dumped.
– LA Times