Genealogy site tapped in serial-killer case
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The genealogy website used to find the man accused of being California’s Golden State Killer had no idea its database was tapped in pursuit of a suspect who eluded law enforcement for four decades, the site’s co-founder said Friday.
The revelation came as former police officer Joseph DeAngelo made his first court appearance. Handcuffed to a wheelchair in orange jail scrubs, he looked dazed and spoke in a faint voice to acknowledge he was represented by a public defender. He did not enter a plea.
Authorities never approached Florida-based GEDmatch about the investigation that led to DeAngelo, and co-founder Curtis Rogers said law enforcement’s use of the site raised privacy concerns that were echoed by civil liberties groups.
The free genealogy website, which pools DNA profiles that people upload and share publicly to find relatives, said it has always informed users its database can be used for other purposes. But Rogers said the company does not “hand out data.”
“This was done without our knowledge, and it’s been overwhelming,” he said.
For the team of investigators tracking the attacker suspected of killing 13 people and raping nearly 50 women during the 1970s and ’80s, GEDmatch was one of the best tools, lead investigator Paul Holes told The Mercury News in San Jose.
Officials did not need a court order to access GEDmatch’s large database of genetic blueprints, Holes said. Major commercial DNA companies say they do not give law enforcement officials access to their genetic data without a court order.
Also on Friday, court records obtained by The Associated Press showed that investigators used information from genetic websites last year that led to the wrong man.
An Oregon police officer working at the request of California investigators persuaded a judge in March 2017 to order a 73-year-old man in a nursing home to provide a DNA sample. It’s not clear if officers collected the sample and ran further tests.
The Oregon City man is in declining health and was unable to answer questions Friday about the case.
DeAngelo, 72, was arrested Tuesday after investigators matched crime-scene DNA with genetic material stored online by a distant relative. From there, they narrowed the search down to the Sacramento-area grandfather using DNA obtained from an item he discarded, Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said.
Civil libertarians said the practice raises legal and privacy concerns for the millions of people who submit their DNA to such sites to discover their heritage.
There are not strong privacy laws to keep police from accessing ancestry site databases, said Steve Mercer, the chief attorney for the forensic division of the Maryland public defender’s office.
“People who submit DNA for ancestors testing are unwittingly becoming genetic informants on their innocent family,” Mercer said, adding that they “have fewer privacy protections than convicted offenders whose DNA is contained in regulated databanks.”
While people may not realize police can use public genealogy websites to solve crimes, it is probably legal, said Erin Murphy, a DNA expert and professor at New York University School of Law.
“It seems crazy to say a police officer investigating a very serious crime can’t do something your cousin can do on a Tuesday,” Murphy said.
While most consumers would have to get a genetic profile from a commercial company such as Ancestry.com and 23andMe, the police may have obtained the DNA profile in their crime lab before uploading it to GEDmatch, she said.
DNA was just coming into use as a criminal investigative tool in 1986 when the predator also known as the East Area Rapist apparently ended his decade-long wave of attacks.
As a former police officer, DeAngelo probably would have known about the new method, experts said.
Police at the time suspected they were chasing a fellow officer or armed services member because he was so methodical and meticulous, said Wendell Phillips, a former Sacramento deputy who joined the hunt for the rapist who terrorized the suburbs east of the state capital.
In fact, officers assigned to a special task force were required to submit saliva samples to exclude anyone who shared a genetic trait, Phillips said. About 85 percent of people secrete their blood type in saliva and body fluids, but the rape suspect was in the roughly 15 percent who didn’t.