‘Tech-shy’ police turn backs on genealogy

Nine months after sensational arrest of alleged US serial killer with breakthrough technique, why won’t Australian authorities use it?

Criminologist Xanthe Mallett says ‘risk-averse’ Australian police forces are missing opportunities to solve crimes.

Nine months after the sensational arrest of an alleged US serial killer using a breakthrough DNA investigative technique, Australian authorities are yet to trial the method.

Joseph DeAngelo was nabbed in California in April and charged with 13 unsolved murders from the 1970s and 80s after being linked to the crimes via a genealogy website.

Since his arrest, US authorities have seized on the technique, with other cold cases falling like dominoes.

Linzi Wilson-Wilde, director of the National Institute of Forensic Science at the Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency, said the approach had “massive” potential.

“I’ve never seen anything like it — something come out of nowhere so quickly and be used so much and so visibly,” she told The Weekend Australian.

But Australian law enforcement agencies have seemingly been caught flat-footed, saying they are not using genealogy websites.

University of Newcastle criminologist Xanthe Mallett said “risk-averse” Australian police forces were missing opportunities to solve crimes due to reluctance to use new technologies. There are more than 500 cold case murders in NSW alone.

Joseph James DeAngelo appears in Sacramento Superior Court.

“No one has used genealogy yet as far as I’m aware,” Dr Mallett said.

“In the US, every week a new cold case is being solved — 30 and 40 years old — because of genealogy. Why are we not using it?”

Dr Wilson-Wilde said Australian police had been “understandably conservative”, with scientists playing “catch-up” and the US ­results not yet tested in court.

“Our legislation is silent on this technique,” she said.

“There was none of the usual build-up and usual research validation, the quality processes that would normally be in place for a new methodology.

“None of that occurred in the US. It just got used. So the scientific scrutiny and public discussion never took place.”

The breakthrough was made possible by the huge popularity of ancestral DNA testing.

One website in particular, GEDmatch, allows users to upload their results to a publicly searchable database, ostensibly to find relatives. It has now found fame as a crime-fighting tool.

By checking DNA from unsolved crimes against this growing public database, detectives assisted by genetic genealogists are tracing family trees and finding offenders who do not show up on official criminal databases.

A view of the home of accused rapist and killer Joseph James DeAngelo. Picture: AFP

Experts in the field say the single best thing anyone can do to solve a serious crime is to upload their genetic information, becoming a “genetic informant”.

Dr Mallett said Australia had also been slow to take up phenotyping, a technique that can glean from DNA a person’s ancestry and hair and eye colour.

“The police want to use it but it’s the scientists that are reluctant,” Dr Mallett said.

She is associated with Parabon NanoLabs, a US company that conducts phenotyping and works with US authorities to solve crimes using genealogy sites.

The company says it identified suspects and people of interest in almost 30 cases using GEDmatch last year.

The company is now offering the same service in Australia.

Genealogy could potentially be used in cold cases such as the NSW murders of teenagers Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock.

The 15-year-old girls were found partially buried in the Wanda Beach sandhills exactly 54 years ago today.

A semen sample taken from Marianne went missing from the Glebe forensic labs years ago. If found now, it would be a prime candidate for matching to a public database.

The number of Australians identifiable via GEDmatch was “much higher than you think”, Dr Mallett said.