read more posts by
Brooke A Smith
The way in which a forensic/law enforcement investigator goes about approaching an investigation into a crime really isn’t that dissimilar to the way a genealogist goes about approaching an investigation into establishing facts relevant to family history. Both seek to establish, as closely as possible, and with the aim of being beyond any reasonable doubt, the facts in relation to a matter under…
On 24 January 2019, Seth Augenstein, Senior Science writer for ‘Forensic Magazine’, reported that the State of Maryland in the United States of America, had introduced a Bill into State Legislature for debate that would effectively see the use of Forensic Genealogy prohibited.[1] The premise of the introduction of the Bill, and the perceived nature of the debate that would ensue, would centre around…
It is important to realise that genealogical DNA databases are viewed and used by law enforcement investigators in exactly the same way as other sources or databases that are non-genealogical related. That is, they are used to establish a pool of ‘persons-of-interest,’ and then through old-fashioned detective work, that pool is narrowed down to a few possible suspects that will undergo…
Following on from Part 1, and having established that the use of genealogical DNA bases as a source of direct identification evidence of a suspect in Court is not accepted by the Court, attention will now turn to how genealogical DNA databases are used by investigators to widen a pool of suspects when the pool of suspects, identified through more ‘routine’ investigative techniques, has gone…
There has been considerable writing over recent months concerning the use, by law enforcement investigators, of genealogical DNA databases as a tool for the solving of cold case serial crimes, such as homicides and sexual assault, and whether the use of such databases for non-genealogical purposes is at odds with the purpose for the creation of the databases in the first place, and constitutes a…
As this is my first post on this website, I wanted to address the basic rule of investigation before considering the more specific details of a forensic approach to genealogical research. At the most basic level, an investigation can fall short for a number of reasons, which can include a lack of evidence to support, or negate, a theory an investigator may have about an event. A lack of evidence…