How DNA family trees bring justice to rape survivors decades later

Cleveland, Ohio – Cuyahoga County Prosecutors continue to seek justice for survivors of decades old sexual aggressions, identifying suspects through DNA family trees.

“One thing I have learned from working with victims of violent crimes over the last 12 years is to know the value that the victims place to know who (the suspect),” said Mary Weston, assistant prosecutor and supervisor of genetic operations linking DNA or gold unit.

Prosecutor Michael O’malley launched in 2020 with funding from the US Department of Justice to examine cold cases and determine which of them could be resolved by forensic genetic genealogy or family DNA searches. Friday announced his office Seven more suspects of rape – Some accused of offenses for more than 30 years – have been identified.

So far, the unit has identified 16 criminals and has resolved 23 cases of rape from 62 DNA profiles with cold cases.

Such a case was the rape of a 9-year-old boy playing in the woods in 1998, Weston recalled. After her unit identified the suspect, the victim quickly chose it from a photo range, decades later.

“I had a victim to say,” I never knew if he was next to me at Starbucks, “Weston said.

Genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter, who works with Cuyahoga County and law enforcement agencies, said the cases of devastating devastating rape.

“Even if (suspects) they are dead and can no longer be prosecuted, it is still so important to know who was and they are held accountable in a way,” she said.

Friday found a jury Kenneth Edmond Guilty of rape and kidnapping in two attacks in Cleveland for more than 20 years ago. Prosecutors brought the cases to a big jury in 2015, and he was charged as “John Doe”. He was identified by investigative genealogies as a suspect in 2022.

Edmond assaulted a 72-year-old homeless woman on September 15, 2000, while sitting under the Detroit-superior bridge, according to prosecutors. For more than a year later, he grabbed a 21-year-old woman as a throat while walking near East 9th Street and Carnegie Avenue and sexually attacked her.

Edmond is to be convicted on March 26.

How investigations work

Weston was one of the three prosecutors who joined a working group for rape in 2013 after Thousands of tested kits were discovered in the Cleveland police evidence. Since then, the working group has accused more than 960 defendants, the largest issue of any such units in the country.

In cold cases, prosecutors bring information about DNA collected from sexual aggression kits in large juries for the indictment to avoid the status of 25 years. These indictments are subsequently updated with the names of the defendants once there is a break in case or the profile is identified.

Profile that does not match the databases of state or national criminals (which have DIGITAL REGISTRATIONS collected from crime scenes, convicted and arrested crime) requires more sophisticated investigation methods.

Such a method is forensic genetic genealogy. The gold unit works with RAE-Venter to develop family trees of cold cases using commercial DNA databases.

Rae-Venter is the founder of Firebird Forensics, a non-profit that helps the law enforcement investigations and the director of the genealogy genealogy investigating genes, the parent-reedna company

Only two companies – Familytree and Gedmatch – allow law enforcement to use their consumers permission.

When it is charged with applying the law, Rae-Venter establishes how much DNA shares a suspect with other profiles in the database.

“On this basis, what you do is build what we call a speculative family tree for the person you are trying to identify,” said Rae-Venter. “Let’s say you have a couple of people who share enough DNA with the suspect to qualify as a second summers. There are tables that we can use, showing how much the right DNA is equal to what kind of relationship. “

As secondary summers share a set of great-grandparents, Rae-Venter can then use this information to build a reverse genealogical tree and to find all the descendants of the great-grandparents.

“Among these people is the person you are looking for,” she said. “And then you start using other information you know about the person to try to restrict the suspicious pool.”

Rae -venter said the technique was used for the first time in 2009 to help adopts to find their birth relatives. She started using the technique more recently to help solve cold cases.

For example, she helped identify Joseph James Deangelo as a Killer State Golden in 2018, after a 40 -year Manhunt.

Prosecutors can also perform family DNA searches in the databases for criminals to identify the relatives of a suspect and to build a family tree. The prosecutor of Cuyahoga County signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ohio Prosecutor General’s office last year to lead more such searches.

In an example, Weston said, the DNA profile of a suspect has a success in the criminals’ database for a first-degree relative. The investigators obtained a search warrant for a medical biopsy of the dead relative and established that the sample belonged to the suspect’s father. Subsequently, the victims chose the son of a photo formation, solving three cases of rape.

Last year, the Ohio Criminal Investigation Bureau helped to identify the relatives of eight DNA profiles related to the crimes in the Cleveland area. The prosecutors of Cuyahoga County presented eight states of state until this year, with at least four more planned, according to a prosecutor’s spokesman.

The county aims to spend about $ 56,000 from federal subsidy money to help pay investigations, as family DNA searches are more intensive and expensive than traditional DNA testing.

They are also more limited in the field than forensic genetic genealogy, according to RAE-Venter. Family DNA searches require a parent, child or brothers to be in the offender’s database, while forensic genetic genealogy can throw a wider mesh.

Of the criminals identified by the gold unit so far, half came from family DNA searches and half came from forensic genetic genealogy. Both methods come with challenges.

“One of the hardest things for me to learn and to learn our office is that any case can be sent for genealogy,” Weston said.

“If the laboratory should consume all the DNA just to enter something (the database of the criminals), you are not lucky. There are some serious cases that we will never be able to solve, because no DNA remains. “

Weston said that forensic genetic genealogy is primarily limited by costs. Much of the activity of its unit determines which profiles are most suitable for testing. Family DNA searches through the Criminal Investigation Bureau are primarily limited by the workforce.

The gold unit must request family DNA searches through the Attorney General. A multidisciplinary team of experts then examines demand from case to case, one of the highest considerations being the quality of DNA.

At the state level, the Office of Criminal Investigation worked last year 20 cases of family DNA. A spokesman said he is expecting to work a similar number this year.

Looking in the future

Rae-Venter hopes that law enforcement will use forensic genetic genealogy and not just for cold cases.

“The thing that is indeed creepy is how many of these cold cases are serial, which means that if they were tested in a timely manner, probably all the downstream rapes that have not been produced,” she said.

Not everyone shares the same optimism for the use of forensic genealogy to resolve crimes. About the moment when the Killer Golden State case was resolved, groups like ACLU and others have raised concerns about privacy and genetic supervision.

Rae -venter said that genetic privacy is “a horse that left the barn long ago.” She said that the average person of European ancestors has relatives in databases everywhere.

“It is indeed a fake concern,” she said. “I’m not sure what people think it will happen to their DNA. The thought that law enforcement is transformed by your DNA trying to look for who knows what is so ridiculous. “

As for the gold unit, Weston said he would like to expand his work in solving homucids with cold cases. Until recently, the federal financing of the unit and limited the scope to sexually motivated crimes.

For now, she hopes that her work will help to change the way the society looks at the victims of rape.

Cases of rape can be difficult to pursue, especially when traumatized victims often mistakenly remember or avoid presenting themselves, Weston said. The cases in which the victim is in a state of intoxication or under the influence of drugs can be almost impossible.

“We still have problems with facts that are not comfortable for humans, and people do not want to condemn rape people if they are not sure,” she said. “But when the DNA profile is in three kits, we tend to believe every victim, even if the facts are bad.”