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U.S. NEWS Saturday 28 april 2018

APNewsBreak: Serial killer search led to wrong man in 2017

By MICHAEL BALSAMO and database by a distant rela- would submit DNA to a
JONATHAN J. COOPER tive. They relied on a differ- commercial company
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — ent website than they had such as Ancestry.com and
Investigators hunting down in the Oregon search, and 23andMe to create a ge-
the so-called Golden State they did not seek a warrant netic profile, the FBI did so
Killer used information from for DeAngelo's DNA. for investigators, Holes told
genetic websites last year Instead, they waited for The New York Times.
that led to the wrong man, him to discard items and The profile was then up-
court records obtained then swabbed the objects loaded to GEDmatch using
Friday by The Associated for DNA, which proved a a fake profile and pseud-
Press showed. conclusive match to evi- onym, the Times reported.
An Oregon police officer dence that had been pre- The site allows users to re-
working at the request of served more than 30 years. main anonymous.
California investigators per- Also Friday, the co-founder A year earlier, Holes had
suaded a judge in March of the genealogy website identified a rare genetic
2017 to order a 73-year- used by authorities to help marker in the assailant's
old man in a nursing home identify DeAngelo said he Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, who authorities suspect is the DNA. He entered the in-
to provide a DNA sample. had no idea its database so-called Golden State Killer responsible for at least a dozen formation among 189,000
It's not clear if officers col- was tapped in pursuit of murders and 50 rapes in the 1970s and 80s, is accompanied profiles at the genealogy
lected the sample and ran the suspect who eluded by Sacramento County Public Defender Diane Howard, right, as website, YSearch.org, and
he makes his first appearance, Friday, April 27, 2018, in Sacra-
further tests. law enforcement for four mento County Superior Court in Sacramento, Calif. the results led to a relative
The Oregon City man is in decades. Associated Press of the Oregon man.
declining health and was Authorities never ap- A spokeswoman for Family-
unable to answer questions proached Florida-based DNA, said Steve Mercer, DNA expert and profes- TreeDNA.com, which oper-
Friday about the case. GEDmatch about the in- chief attorney for the foren- sor at New York University ates YSearch.org, said the
The case of mistaken iden- vestigation that led to sic division of the Maryland School of Law. company wasn't contact-
tity was discovered as au- DeAngelo, and co-founder Office of the Public De- "It seems crazy to say a po- ed by law enforcement.
thorities hailed a novel use Curtis Rogers said law en- fender. "People who submit lice officer investigating a "While we take our custom-
of DNA technology that forcement's use of the site DNA for ancestors testing very serious crime can't do ers' privacy and confidenti-
led this week to the arrest raised privacy concerns are unwittingly becoming something your cousin can ality extremely seriously, we
of former police officer that were echoed by civil genetic informants on their do," Murphy said. "If an or- support ethically and legal-
Joseph DeAngelo at his liberties groups. innocent family," Mercer dinary person can do this, ly justified uses of ground-
house outside Sacramento The free genealogy web- said. While people may not why can't a cop? On the breaking advancements
on murder charges. Crit- site, which pools DNA pro- realize police can use pub- other hand, if an ordinary of scientific research in
ics of the investigative ap- files that people upload lic genealogy websites to person had done this, we genetics and genealogy,"
proach, however, warned and share publicly to find solve crimes, it is probably might think they shouldn't." company officials said in a
it could jeopardize privacy relatives, said it has always legal, said Erin Murphy, a While most consumers statement.q
rights. informed users its database
DeAngelo's suspected of can be used for other pur-
being the sadistic attacker poses. But Rogers said the
who killed 13 people and company does not "hand
raped nearly 50 women out data."
during the 1970s and '80s. "This was done without our
Handcuffed to a wheel- knowledge, and it's been
chair in orange jail scrubs, overwhelming," he told The
DeAngelo made his first Associated Press.
court appearance Friday. For the team of investiga-
The 72-year-old looked tors, GEDmatch was one of
dazed and spoke in a faint the best tools, lead inves-
voice to acknowledge he tigator Paul Holes told the
was represented by a pub- Mercury News in San Jose.
lic defender. He did not en- Officials did not need a
ter a plea. court order to access GED-
He has been charged with match's large database of
eight counts of murder, genetic blueprints, Holes
and additional charges are said. Major commercial
expected, authorities said. DNA companies say they
"We have the law to sug- do not give law enforce-
gest that he is innocent ment access to their ge-
until he's proven guilty and netic data without a court
that's what I'm going to ask order. Civil libertarians said
everyone to remember," the practice raises legal
DeAngelo's public defend- and privacy concerns for
er Diane Howard said out- the millions of people who
side court. "I feel like he's submit their DNA to such
been tried in the press al- sites to discover their heri-
ready." tage. Privacy laws aren't
Investigators were able to strong enough to keep po-
make the arrest this week lice from accessing ances-
after matching crime- try sites, which have fewer
scene DNA with genetic protections than regulated
material stored in an online databanks of convicts'