well yes this is another video that's rather murdery and if that's the sort of thing you're
looking for don't forget to check out my new podcast the casual criminalist it puts out two
new episodes every week from serial killers that haven't aged at a primary school yet
to schizophrenic breakdowns and bible-obsessed sociopaths my writer callum is combing through
the graveyards of history like an absolute weirdo and it's all in the name of giving you some sweet
sweet true crime content so if you're looking for a good true crime podcast that's casually done
why not give the casual criminalist to try there are links in the description below
and now today's video dna has been the single most valuable tool in solving crimes in the
last century genetic evidence has proven capable of solving crimes that have been
unsold for decades but the problem is often how to get the dna needed to solve those
crimes it's not enough for a criminal to leave evidence at the scene law enforcement needs
something to match it to enter the genealogy industry so many people in
recent years have been voluntarily uploading their own dna information to public websites
that law enforcement has been able to solve literally dozens of once unsolvable crimes
10. the golden state killer in what is likely the most famous case of dna from an ancestry
site being used to solve a crime the infamous golden state killer was caught in 2018 more than
30 years after he stopped a spree of rapes and murders that left 13 victims dead and 50 raped
during his original crime spree the golden state killer was known by several names including the
original knight stalker the bezalia ransacker and the east area rapist it wasn't until 2001
that dna evidence was used to confirm all three of those criminals were the same guy
who had originally been committing acts in the 1970s and 80s in 2018 law enforcement took the
novel step of looking to genealogy websites to find and match the dna they had on file
using the databases of genetic material uploaded by people who were just interested in finding out
about their family history they were able to score some partial matches that meant people who were
genetically related to the killer had used the services a family tree was made to pinpoint the
killer that consisted of a thousand people the tree was then trimmed by getting rid of people
who were the wrong age or lived in the wrong part of the world at the time of the deaths
in time only one name was left on the list joseph james deangelo the former police officer was
arrested and charged with multiple murders he took a plea to avoid the death penalty and at the age
of 70 the golden state killer was given 12 life sentences 9. the death of helene pruzinski helen
brzezinski went missing in january 1980. it was believed that she had vanished on her way to a
bus stop the next time anyone saw her was when her body was discovered in a field she had been raped
and stabbed to death the police were not able to follow up on many leads and no one was ever
arrested for the crime not until many years later jessie still made use of the site 23andme in 2018
in an effort to learn more about her family tree like so many other people have what she couldn't
have known at the time was that she was tipping off the police to what happened to helen prazinski
40 years prior still's dna was flagged by law enforcement it shared some of the dna with
the genetic material on file for the murderer not still herself of course but a family member stills
turned out to be the cousin of helen brzezinski's killer ironically still had added a dna to the
site because she was a fan of true crime and had been very interested in the case of the golden
state killer she knew that the killer had been caught thanks to dna from a genealogy site and
wanted to upload her own in the hopes that maybe it could be helpful somehow to someone one day
two months later law enforcement contacted her about the connection to the killer with still's
help law enforcement built a family tree and came up with james clanton a relative she didn't even
know she had number 8. the cobb county rapist in 1999 there were a series of three unsolved rapes
that took place in cobb county georgia the police were able to gather dna from the crimes but there
was no match in the criminal database to narrow down the field to a suspect law enforcement went
to paribas nanolabs a company that specializes in something called dna phenotyping which can assist
law enforcement in solving crimes phenotyping is being able to predict the appearance of something
based on genetic markers so essentially the company can analyze dna and then predict what the
suspect looks like it can't give a precise photo of the person but it can tell you things like
hair color eye color and skin color mix in the dna ancestry data and you have a very solid tool
for catching killers with help of parabol law enforcement was able to find a distant ancestor
of the killer on the site ged match this allowed them to narrow the field down to a suspect in the
rape cases police found a suspect who already had a criminal history of burglary and being a peeping
tom they took a dna sample from the suspect for a comparison and confirmed that he was in fact the
rapist however shortly after providing the sample to law enforcement the man committed suicide
preventing the case from going any further 7. the murder of lorianne smith back in 1997 28 year old
lorianne smith was discovered in her own room by her parents she had been shot to death and there
were no signs of forced entry to the home police had very little to go on on the case stalled out
there was no robbery but there were signs lori had tried to fight off her attacker that had resulted
in dna being left at the scene but as with many of these cases it had no match in the system
fast forward to 2007 a relative whose dna matched up with the killers submitted a sample to an
ancestry site with parabon's help law enforcement was able to identify jerry lee a corrections
worker as the killer howie knew the victim or the nature of the crime has not been fully revealed
but lee was also charged with burglary number 6. the chameleon curtis kimball is a murderer
so is larry banner and gordon jensen of course they're all the same person and kimball famously
admitted at a pre-trial hearing in 2003 that he had murdered yoon soon jun despite pleading no
contest to second-degree murder previously kimball his name is actually terry peter rasmussen had
previously served time for child abandonment and other crimes what no one knew at the time
was that he had a host of aliases and had been a prolific serial killer of women children for
years this led to law enforcement calling him the chameleon police were able to connect the man who
abandoned his five-year-old daughter in the 1980s to the murder of yunsen jiren and determined that
kimball vanner and jensen were all the same men but they still didn't know that he was terry peter
rasmunson at this point and wouldn't learn as much for over a decade when the police performed
a paternity test on lisa the girl he was arrested for abandoning in the 80s they found out ramuson
was not the father the man he claimed to be curtis kimball simply did not exist before that arrest
police had the girl now in her 20s put her dna on ancestry.com and 23andme the data turned up some
distant cousins and a family tree was built with the data they found they were able to find the
girl's grandfather whose own daughter had long ago gone missing that daughter ended up being lisa's
mother the grandfather last saw his granddaughter in 1981 when she was left with her mother and her
mother's boyfriend a man named bob evans evans was of course rasmussen police then tested the dna of
four bodies they found in barrels over the years in bear state park hoping to find lisa's mother
the dna didn't match but the dna of one did match bob evans he had killed a relative a new family
tree was built using his dna and police were able to track mass muslim down he was sent to prison
and died in 2010. 5. the norcal rapist the norcal rapist terrorized much of the same area
as the golden state killer some years before and law enforcement used the same methods to
trap him a serial rapist he had victimized at least 10 women between 1996 and 2006.
using the same game plan that caught the golden state killer law enforcement checked the genealogy
databases and got a hit a 58 year old safety specialist from uc berkeley it took only 10
days for them to track him down based on genetic information from the site when he committed his
crimes one of his victims managed to stab him in the arm with a pair of scissors though he tried to
clean the crime scene he was unable to get it all that dna is what eventually led to his capture
number four the billboard murder in 1998 a crew of landscapers discovered the body of ten-year-old
bobby witt under a billboard in california when the body was first discovered it was a john doe
no one had reported a child missing and there was no evidence of who he might have been
his identity wasn't discovered until 2019. police followed up on a connection between the boy and
the case of an unidentified woman found the same year in south carolina dna comparisons confirmed
the woman had been the mother of the boy the woman myeong hua cho had told friends that she was
returning to south korea so when no one saw her again they thought nothing of it dna was able to
track down her relatives and then john russell wit whom she had met when he was stationed in south
korea and who was the father of the boy witter was already serving a sentence for armed robbery
had the murder convictions added to it number three serial killer and rapist robert brashers
in 1999 robert brashes took his own life during a standoff with the police the cops were after
him thanks to a long rap sheet of crimes in 2018 dna linked him to three cold case murders which
included a 12 year old girl the crime took place back in 1998. after the murders the killer tried
to continue his crime spree at another home with another family though he did shoot the victim they
didn't die and were able to describe the assailant when a relative of brash has uploaded their dna to
ged match the sample was linked to the rape of a 14 year old girl police described brashes as
a serial killer and rapist who had a long list of other crimes ranging from impersonating a police
officer to burglary to weapons charges even though brash was already deceased there was at least some
closure for families of his victims who were never certain what happened to their loved ones
number two the potomac river rapist the man known as the potomac river rapist was feared throughout
washington dc in the 1990s he committed at least 10 rapes from 1991 to 1998 by cutting
phone lines and restraining and raping women in their own homes as his crime spree progressed he
became more violent and would brutally assault his victims and even murder christine merzian
unfortunately police were only coming up with dead ends at the time and the killer escaped justice
for decades it wasn't until one of the killer's own relatives did a home dna test and submitted
their results to ged match that the tides turned parabon labs was able to identify a link between
the family members dna and genetic material from the crimes they were able to then track down
60-year-old charles daniel warwick and charge him with the rapes of murder 1. the church assault the
case of an elderly woman being assaulted in her church is unique among nearly all cases that have
made use of genetic testing to track a subject out like many others parabol nanolabs was integral in
helping law enforcement find the perpetrator but what was unique here was the crime this was one
of the few times that the criminal did not rape or kill their victim instead it was an assault
that was being investigated police argued that the perpetrator had the potential to offend again so
went to extreme measures to find them parabon used ged match and a sample of dna that was found at
the crime scene the attacker had broken a window to gain access to the church where they strangled
the woman from behind as she played the organ she lost consciousness several times and did not see
who it was but the person had left blood on the window that they came through the sample was not
in any criminal database but ged match proved to be more successful the sample was matched to an
uncle of the suspect who pointed law enforcement to a relative who lived near where the crime took
place police tracked the suspect down the 17 year old high school student they had school officials
monitor him at lunch one day and took a discarded milk container from his meal after it was thrown
in the garbage they matched the dna from the milk container to the blood on the window the case
isn't all that remarkable in and of itself but it did send some shock waves through the industry
that parabon would use their technology to track down someone who had committed an assault rather
than use it for more violent crimes was very unusual gd match states that they do not allow
their databases to be used by law enforcement except in cases of murder raping kidnapping
the ceo broke his own rules to allow this one to go through and that caused serious backlash
the result was that ged match changed their rules to make them much more strict about how and when
law enforcement can access records so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did
please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and thank you for watching