Cases solved by investigative genetic genealogy
Investigative genetic genealogy combines crime-scene DNA with public genealogy databases to trace a perpetrator through their relatives. Since 2018 it has resolved hundreds of long-cold U.S. homicides.
32 documented cases.
Ada Elizabeth Fritz
On May 18, 1976, the body of an older woman was found in Sessions Creek in Grand Bay, in south Mobile County, Alabama. She had been shot in the back of the head, and her hands had been removed. With no hands for fingerprints and no identification, she became a Jane Doe, and after an autopsy her remains were cremated in 1979 and placed in a mass grave, leaving investigators with no body to test. For 47 years no one knew who she was. In December 2022, Mobile County Sheriff's Office cold-case investigator and genetic genealogist Olivia McCarter, working with Moxxy Forensic Investigations, located an old ceramic dental mold made from the victim's mouth that still carried trace skin cells. Intermountain Forensics in Utah used an M-Vac wet-vacuum system to recover an uncontaminated DNA profile from the mold and performed whole-genome sequencing in early 2023. Through investigative genetic genealogy, McCarter identified the woman within about 19 days of research as Ada Elizabeth Fritz, born in 1914 in Sheridan, Wyoming, and last known to live in Batesville, Arkansas; she had never been reported missing. A nephew in another state provided a confirmatory DNA sample, and the Mobile County Sheriff's Office announced the identification in August 2023. Investigators have said they believe Fritz was killed by Henderson James Williams, a man later convicted of murdering his elderly mother in Mississippi in a strikingly similar manner, with her hands removed and her body left in water near Grand Bay; Williams died in a Mississippi prison in 2008. Because Williams is deceased and was never charged in Fritz's death, the attribution is the investigators' stated conclusion rather than a court finding.
Angie Raye Dodge
Angie Dodge, 18, was raped and stabbed to death in her Idaho Falls apartment on June 13, 1996. Christopher Tapp was wrongfully convicted in 1998 based on a coerced false confession despite DNA excluding him; he was released in 2017 and fully exonerated in 2019. Investigative genetic genealogy by Parabon NanoLabs identified the actual killer, Brian Leigh Dripps Sr., who pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2021.
April Marie Tinsley
April Marie Tinsley, 8, was abducted on April 1, 1988 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and her body was found three days later in a DeKalb County ditch. For years her killer left taunting notes; in 2018 investigative genetic genealogy identified John D. Miller of Grabill, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 80 years.
Barbara Mae Tucker
Barbara Mae Tucker, a 19-year-old business student at Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham, Oregon, was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and beaten to death on the evening of January 15, 1980, as she walked to an evening class. Witnesses saw her run onto Northeast Kane Drive with blood and mud on her face, waving for help as drivers swerved around her, before a man pulled her back into a wooded area near the campus. Her body was found the next morning by arriving students. The case went cold for more than four decades. In 2000 the Oregon State Police Crime Lab developed a male DNA profile from autopsy swabs, but it matched no one. In 2021, investigative genetic genealogy by Parabon NanoLabs and chief genetic genealogist CeCe Moore identified Robert Arthur Plympton as the likely source; Gresham detectives covertly collected chewing gum he discarded, and the lab confirmed the match. Plympton, who had been a 16-year-old high school student at the time of the killing, was arrested on June 8, 2021. After a bench trial, Multnomah County Circuit Judge Amy Baggio found him guilty of murder on March 15, 2024, and he was sentenced on October 3, 2024, to life in prison with a minimum of 40 years.
Carla Jan Walker
Carla Jan Walker, 17, was abducted on February 17, 1974 from a bowling alley parking lot in Fort Worth, Texas, and her body was found in a culvert near Benbrook Lake three days later. The case stayed cold for 46 years until DNA from her clothing was analyzed by the forensic lab Othram, which used forensic-grade genome sequencing and genetic genealogy to identify Glen Samuel McCurley. McCurley was charged in September 2020, pleaded guilty in August 2021, was sentenced to life without parole, and died in a Texas prison in July 2023.
Carol Sue Klaber
Carol Sue Klaber, 16, a junior at Dixie Heights High School in northern Kentucky, was last seen on June 4, 1976 after getting into a car near Devou Park; her body was found the next day in a roadside ditch on Chambers Road in Walton, Boone County. She had died of blunt force trauma with evidence of strangulation and sexual assault. The case stayed cold for nearly 47 years until the Boone County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit, working with the Houston-area forensic lab Othram and funding from Season of Justice, used forensic-grade genome sequencing and genetic genealogy to identify the killer as Thomas W. Dunaway, who was 19 at the time and lived about a mile and a half from Klaber's home. Dunaway died in 1990 at age 33, so he was never charged, but on March 8, 2023 authorities announced the case solved and the Commonwealth's Attorney said the evidence would have been sufficient to convict him.
Carolyn Fisher
Carolyn Fisher, a 41-year-old woman, was found dead on May 22, 1998, alongside Interstate 40 East near the Jefferson Street exit in Nashville, Tennessee, after being sexually assaulted. DNA collected at the scene came from a single male suspect but went unmatched for more than 20 years. In 2020, a Metro Nashville Police Department cold case detective submitted the profile to ancestry research databases, and in 2023 a private genealogy company developed a potential match. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation laboratory confirmed the DNA belonged to Michael Anthony Bean, who had himself been murdered on June 23, 1998, in an unrelated case about a month after Fisher's death. On February 4, 2026, the MNPD announced Bean as the suspect, concluding no one other than Bean was involved in the homicide.
Christine "Christy" Mirack
Christy Mirack, a 25-year-old sixth-grade teacher, was raped, beaten, and strangled in her East Lampeter Township, Pennsylvania home and found on December 21, 1992. The case went cold for 26 years until investigative genetic genealogy identified local DJ Raymond Charles Rowe, who pleaded guilty in 2019 and is serving life without parole.
Dana Ireland
Dana Ireland, a 23-year-old woman visiting the Big Island of Hawaii from Virginia, was struck while riding a bicycle on a remote road in the Puna district on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1991, then kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and beaten and left along a fishing trail in the Waawaa area, where she was found gravely injured; she died early on Christmas Day at Hilo Medical Center. Three men, Frank Pauline Jr. and brothers Ian and Shawn Schweitzer, were prosecuted and convicted in 1999 and 2000 on the strength of disputed jailhouse and informant testimony, even though DNA evidence had excluded all three; all three convictions were later overturned, with Ian Schweitzer freed in January 2023 after roughly 23 years in prison and Shawn Schweitzer exonerated in October 2023. In 2024, investigative genetic genealogy identified Albert Lauro Jr., a Big Island man who had lived within about two miles of the crime scene, as the source of the unknown male DNA recovered from Ireland and the scene. Confronted by investigators in July 2024, Lauro died by suicide days later, before any arrest.
David Knobling
David Lee Knobling, a 20-year-old man from the Newport News area of Virginia, was shot to death in September 1987 alongside 14-year-old Robin Margaret Edwards at the Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge in Isle of Wight County, on the south bank of the James River. The two had driven out in David's black Ford Ranger pickup; his truck was found abandoned in the refuge parking area with the engine running, and the bodies of the two victims washed ashore days later, both shot in the head. The killings became associated in the public mind with the so-called Colonial Parkway murders, a cluster of unsolved homicides of young couples in the Tidewater region of Virginia in the late 1980s. The case stayed cold for more than 36 years. In January 2024, the Virginia State Police announced that DNA recovered from the crime scene, developed through forensic genetic genealogy and confirmed by the Virginia Department of Forensic Science, had identified the killer as Alan Wade Wilmer Sr., a waterman from Lancaster County, Virginia, who had died in December 2017 at age 63 before he could ever be charged. Because Wilmer had no felony record, his DNA had never been in any database and could only be lawfully obtained after his death. The same DNA work has since tied Wilmer to additional Virginia killings from the 1980s, including the 1989 murder of Teresa Lynn Howell, the 1988 murder of Laurie Ann Powell, and the 1986 Colonial Parkway murders of Cathleen Thomas and Rebecca Dowski.
Eve Wilkowitz
Eve Wilkowitz, a 20-year-old publishing-company secretary, took a late train home to Bay Shore, Long Island, on the night of March 22, 1980 and was abducted while walking from the station. She was raped and strangled, and her body was found three days later on a Bay Shore lawn. The case stayed cold for 42 years until investigative genetic genealogy led the Suffolk County Police and the FBI to Herbert Rice, a neighbor who had lived a few houses from where the body was found and who died of cancer in 1991. Rice's body was exhumed in March 2022, and DNA from his remains matched evidence preserved from the crime, allowing the Suffolk County District Attorney to name him as the killer.
Helene Pruszynski
Helene Pruszynski, a 21-year-old college intern from Massachusetts working at a Denver radio station, was abducted, sexually assaulted, and stabbed to death in January 1980; her body was found in a field off Daniels Park Road in Douglas County, Colorado. The case went cold for nearly 40 years until investigative genetic genealogy identified James Curtis Clanton, who had been living in Florida under a former identity. He was arrested in December 2019 and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in 2020.
Jeanne Ann "Jeanie" Childs
Jeanne Ann "Jeanie" Childs, a 35-year-old woman, was found stabbed roughly 65 times in her south Minneapolis apartment on June 13, 1993. The case went cold for more than two decades until investigative genetic genealogy traced unknown crime-scene DNA to Jerry Arnold Westrom, who was arrested in 2019 and convicted of first-degree murder in 2022.
Jennifer Persia
Jennifer Lynne Persia, a 16-year-old sophomore at Sterling High School, was beaten, bound at the neck with a ligature, and stabbed more than 20 times in her family home in Magnolia, Camden County, New Jersey, on April 4, 1994. DNA collected at the scene never matched a known suspect, and the case went cold for more than three decades. In 2025 New Jersey State Police re-tested clothing from the 1993 murder of 24-year-old Marebeth Welsh; the resulting male DNA profile matched the unknown blood profile from Persia's scene, linking the two killings. Investigative genetic genealogy and kinship DNA testing of relatives identified Francis T. Schooley, a Mantua Township man who had done construction work for Persia's stepfather and who died by suicide in 2000 at age 39, as the source of the DNA in both cases. Because Schooley was dead, no prosecution was possible; the Camden County Prosecutor's Office announced the findings on April 9, 2026.
Jody Loomis
On August 23, 1972, 20-year-old Jody Loomis left her Bothell, Washington home on a bicycle to visit her horse at a nearby stable and was sexually assaulted and fatally shot in the head in the woods of Snohomish County. The case, the county's oldest unsolved murder, went cold for decades until investigative genetic genealogy on semen recovered from her boot identified Terrence Miller, who was arrested in 2019. Miller died by suicide on November 9, 2020, hours before a jury convicted him of first-degree murder.
Julie Ann Hanson
Julie Ann Hanson, a 15-year-old girl, left home on a bicycle on July 7, 1972, in Naperville, Illinois; she was sexually assaulted and stabbed, and her body was found the next day in a field. The case went cold for nearly 50 years until forensic genetic genealogy identified Barry Lee Whelpley, a former Naperville resident living in Minnesota, who was arrested in 2021 and died in jail awaiting trial in 2024.
Laura Kempton
Laura Kempton, a 23-year-old Portsmouth Beauty School student, was found beaten to death in her ground-floor apartment at 20 Chapel Street in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the morning of September 28, 1981 by a police officer who had come to serve a parking summons. She had been bound with cords and sexually assaulted, and she died of massive trauma to the left side of her head. Investigators recovered a male DNA profile from evidence at the scene but pursued hundreds of leads over four decades without identifying her killer. In 2021 and 2022 the Portsmouth Police, the New Hampshire and Maine forensic laboratories, the Attorney General's Cold Case Unit and the genetic-genealogy firm Identifinders International used forensic genetic genealogy to trace the crime-scene DNA to Ronney James Lee, a security officer who had been 21 at the time. Lee had died of acute cocaine intoxication in 2005, so no arrest or prosecution was possible. On July 20, 2023 the New Hampshire Attorney General and Portsmouth Police announced the case resolved and closed, naming Lee as the man responsible.
Leslie Preer
Leslie Preer, 49, was beaten and strangled inside her home on Drummond Avenue in Chevy Chase, Maryland, on May 2, 2001; her body was found in an upstairs bathroom after she failed to show up for work. The killer left DNA under her fingernails, but it matched no one, and the case went cold for more than two decades. In 2022 Montgomery County police turned to forensic genetic genealogy, which traced the unknown profile through a distant relative in Romania to Eugene Teodor Gligor, the former boyfriend of Preer's daughter. Detectives confirmed the match with DNA from a water bottle he discarded at Dulles airport, arrested him in 2024, and he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, receiving a 22-year sentence in what prosecutors called the first Maryland cold-case murder solved with familial DNA.
Linda Bernhardt
Linda Bernhardt, a 24-year-old woman, and her husband Clifford Bernhardt, also 24, were killed in their home in the Billings Heights area of Billings, Montana, on the night of November 6, 1973. Linda was bound and sexually assaulted, and both were strangled and beaten. The double murder went unsolved for 45 years despite an investigation that grew to tens of thousands of pages and roughly 80 DNA comparisons. In 2015 the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office cold case unit engaged Parabon NanoLabs, whose genetic genealogist CeCe Moore built a family tree from the killer's crime-scene DNA and traced it to Cecil Stan Caldwell, a former co-worker of Linda's who had died in 2003. The match was announced at a March 2019 news conference; because Caldwell was long dead, he was never charged.
Linda O'Keefe
On July 6, 1973, 11-year-old Linda Ann O'Keefe was abducted while walking home from summer school at Lincoln Intermediate School in Corona del Mar, a neighborhood of Newport Beach, California, after she was last seen near a turquoise van. Her body was found the next morning in a ditch in the Back Bay area of Upper Newport Bay; she had been strangled. The case stayed cold for more than 45 years until investigative genetic genealogy by Parabon NanoLabs and genealogist CeCe Moore, working from DNA preserved on Linda's clothing, pointed investigators to James Alan Neal. Neal, then 72 and living in Colorado, was arrested in February 2019. He had used the name James Layton at the time of the crime. He died in custody in July 2020 before he could be tried.
Marise Ann Chiverella
On March 18, 1964, nine-year-old Marise Ann Chiverella was abducted, sexually assaulted, and strangled while walking to her Catholic school in Hazleton, Pennsylvania; her body was found that afternoon in an abandoned strip-mine pit. The case stayed cold for nearly 58 years until investigative genetic genealogy identified James Paul Forte, a local bartender who died in 1980, as her killer. Because Forte was long deceased, he was never charged or tried; the case was closed by official identification.
Melinda Lou Barnhouse
In September 1989, the body of a young woman was found strangled and nude in the bushes at a rest area off the southbound side of Interstate 55 near mile marker 26 in Lincoln County, Mississippi. Investigators could not identify her; they estimated her age between 16 and 35 and buried her as Jane Doe in a pauper's plot at Rosehill Cemetery in Brookhaven. About a year later, Alfred Ray Case of Brookhaven was arrested, charged with manslaughter in her death, and convicted; he was sentenced to 20 years and, according to reporting, is not eligible for release until 2030. The victim, however, remained unidentified for more than three decades. In 2022 the Mississippi Office of the State Medical Examiner, the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office, and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation turned to forensic genetic genealogy, sending evidence to the Othram laboratory in The Woodlands, Texas. Othram used Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing to build a genealogical profile and traced a family tree, and on May 10, 2023, through DNA testing of a close relative, the long-unidentified Jane Doe was positively identified as Melinda Lou Barnhouse, originally from Maryland.
Michella Welch
Michella Welch, a 12-year-old girl, disappeared on March 26, 1986, after taking her younger sisters to Puget Park in Tacoma, Washington; she was killed, and her body was found in a nearby gulch. The case stayed cold for more than three decades until investigative genetic genealogy through Parabon NanoLabs identified Gary Charles Hartman, who was arrested in 2018 and convicted in 2022.
Michelle Martinko
Michelle Marie Martinko, an 18-year-old high-school senior, was found stabbed to death in the front seat of her family car in the parking lot of the newly opened Westdale Mall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the early hours of December 20, 1979, after attending a school choir banquet the night before. She had been stabbed 29 times. The killer left his own blood on her dress and on the car gearshift, but the case went cold for decades. In 2018, investigative genetic genealogy through Parabon NanoLabs traced that crime-scene DNA to Jerry Lynn Burns of Manchester, Iowa. Police covertly recovered his DNA from a drinking straw he discarded at a Pizza Ranch restaurant, confirmed the match, and arrested him almost exactly 39 years to the day after the murder. A jury convicted Burns of first-degree murder in February 2020, and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Rita Curran
Rita Curran, a 24-year-old schoolteacher, was beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled in her Burlington, Vermont apartment in July 1971. The case went unsolved for more than 51 years until, in 2023, investigative genetic genealogy identified her killer as upstairs neighbor William DeRoos, who had died in 1986 and was never charged.
Ronald Eugene Woodham IV
On December 4, 2008, utility workers found the body of a newborn boy abandoned in a wooded area near Conway, in Horry County, South Carolina. He had been born alive and, according to the coroner, could have survived with medical attention; instead he died of exposure. Unidentified, he was buried under the name 'Baby Boy Horry.' The case stayed cold for more than a decade until investigative genetic genealogy by the Texas lab Othram identified the infant's parents. His mother, Jennifer Sahr, formerly Jennifer Rickel, a Coastal Carolina University student at the time of the birth, was arrested in March 2020 and charged with homicide by child abuse. In September 2022 she pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced in 2023. The infant was later given the name Ronald Eugene Woodham IV by his biological father.
Roxanne Wood
Roxanne Leigh Wood, a 30-year-old woman, was found murdered in the kitchen of her home in Niles Township, Berrien County, Michigan, in February 1987, after a night out bowling. She had been sexually assaulted and her throat had been cut, and the killer left a small amount of his DNA at the scene. The case went cold for 35 years, with Roxanne's husband Terry Wood remaining the primary suspect despite no evidence against him. In 2020 the Michigan State Police, partnering with Western Michigan University's Cold Case Program, sent the badly degraded evidence to Identifinders International, where forensic scientists built a usable DNA profile from what was called a record-low amount of genetic material. Investigative genetic genealogist Gabriella Vargas traced that profile through public genealogy databases and, in a matter of days, narrowed the suspects to three brothers, pointing to Patrick Wayne Gilham of South Bend, Indiana. Undercover troopers covertly collected Gilham's DNA from a discarded cigarette, confirming the match. Gilham, who had a prior conviction for a 1979 sexual assault in Indiana, was arrested in February 2022, pleaded no contest to second-degree murder, and was sentenced to 23 to 50 years in prison.
Sophie Sergie
Sophie Sergie, a 20-year-old former University of Alaska Fairbanks student, was sexually assaulted and murdered in a women's bathroom in Bartlett Hall on the UAF campus in April 1993. The case went cold for roughly 25 years until investigative genetic genealogy traced crime-scene DNA to Steven Downs, a former dorm resident then living in Maine, who was convicted of murder and sexual assault in 2022.
Stacey Lyn Chahorski
In December 1988 the body of a young woman was found along Interstate 59 in Dade County, Georgia, near the Alabama line, and for more than three decades she was known only as 'Rising Fawn Jane Doe.' In March 2022 forensic genetic genealogy identified her as Stacey Lyn Chahorski, a 19-year-old from Norton Shores, Michigan. Months later the same technology identified her killer as Henry Fredrick 'Hoss' Wise, a long-haul truck driver who had died in 1999 — making it the first known case in which both victim and killer were identified through investigative genetic genealogy.
Stephanie Isaacson
Stephanie Isaacson, a 14-year-old Las Vegas girl, was sexually assaulted and strangled on the morning of June 1, 1989, while walking a shortcut to Eldorado High School in eastern Clark County, Nevada. Her body was found the same day in a desert lot near her path. The case went unsolved for 32 years. In 2021, after a private donation funded the work, the Texas forensic lab Othram used Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing to build a genealogical DNA profile from only about 120 picograms of preserved evidence, roughly the equivalent of 15 human cells, then the smallest amount of DNA ever used to identify a suspect. Investigative genetic genealogy led detectives to Darren Roy Marchand, who had died by suicide in 1995 and whose preserved DNA from a 1986 murder case confirmed the match.
Sylvia Quayle
Sylvia Quayle, 34, was sexually assaulted, stabbed, strangled, and shot to death inside her Cherry Hills Village, Colorado home, where her father found her on August 4, 1981. The case stayed cold for roughly four decades until investigative genetic genealogy traced crime-scene DNA to David Dwayne Anderson, a former local who had moved to Cozad, Nebraska. He was convicted of first-degree murder in 2022 and sentenced to life in prison.
Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook
Tanya Van Cuylenborg, 18, and her boyfriend Jay Cook, 20, a couple from Saanich, British Columbia, were murdered in November 1987 during an overnight trip to the Seattle area; Tanya was found shot in Skagit County and Jay was found beaten and strangled in Snohomish County. The case went cold for three decades until investigative genetic genealogy identified William Earl Talbott II in 2018. He was convicted in 2019 in what is widely described as the first U.S. criminal trial to use the technique.