How genetic genealogy is cracking Canadian cold cases
Posted December 7, 2022 8:16 am.
Last Updated December 7, 2022 8:18 am.
Companies like 23andMe won’t share your DNA with police, but many people who use those services choose to download their results and cross-reference them with other databases.
While doing so, they either accept or forget to opt out of that data being made available to law enforcement.
Jennifer Pagliaro is a crime reporter at the Toronto Star. She joins The Big Story today to explain how police are using genetic data uploaded to public databases to identify relatives of suspects in crimes committed decades ago.
“Imagine being a family member, and not knowing that a distant relative has committed a heinous crime, and then realizing that you are the reason that police were able to arrest them,” she said.
Recently Toronto Police cracked two decades-old cold cases this way, and the process is gaining popularity with police forces everywhere. So how does it work? Is it legal or ethical? And are we about to see a flood of cold cases coming off the books, thanks to curious people who don’t realize there’s a killer in their family tree?
