Tuesday, June 30, 2020

"Long Lost Cousin" Takes a DNA Test

I knew I had some first cousins who are children of the brother of my father. I've known their names for decades. I had never met them or if I ever did, it would have been at my grandfather's funeral when I was about 9 years old and I don't remember. Then, once I grew up and started working on my genealogy, I knew they lived somewhere in California. They had relatively common first names and Miller for a last name and they lived in California. I really had no hope in finding them. The Bixenman family history books, written by Sister Catherine Seemann around the year 2000 listed the children of these cousins.

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Solving Crimes Using Genealogy and DNA

I'm sure everyone has heard of the new technique of solving crimes using DNA and genealogy. I thought I'd review the television shows out there that deal directly with this process of solving cold cases, along with how it touches our lives.

The first case that gained publicity for being solved using genetic genealogy was the Golden State Killer case. In this case, the perpetrator committed at least 100 burglaries, 50 rapes and 13 murders between 1974 until 1986. I'm not sure this could be considered a cold case since the lead investigator never let up in trying to find the killer. The technique of using DNA triangulation along with family tree building of DNA matches found on GEDmatch.com led to the arrest of the murderer in 2018.