Solving Cold Case Killings Much Harder for Police

Have you ever taken a DNA test and, a few weeks later, had the police show up on your doorstep?

Cracking cold case killings, sometimes decades after the fact, has always been a difficult task for police. But the challenge has recently become much steeper. That's because of new limits on their best tool, genetic genealogy. This science uses tiny snippets of DNA to track down killers via distant family relations.

The U.S.-based website Ancestry.com is the world's largest repository of public genealogical records, pulling together birth, death, marriage, immigration and other documents from across the globe. And it has become a go-to source for police forces seeking to map out family trees.

But a recent update and clarification to the company's terms of service now explicitly bans law enforcement from accessing the paid-subscription site without first obtaining a court order, making detectives' research process harder.

Ancestry.com has a database of more than 28 million DNA profiles, but it has always been inaccessible to police without a warrant.

According to a recent New York Times tally, genetic genealogy has helped solve more than 1,400 cold cases since it was first used to identify California's Golden State Killer in 2018.

Some police forces use FamilyTreeDNA and GEDMatch because you have to check a box to agree to share your data within a criminal investigation. If you don't agree to that, they cannot use your DNA.

You have to understand that when you do these DNA tests, you are putting the most private part of you on the World Wide Web. Every public library can purchase access to all the information on Ancestry.

Just be careful, while you are hoping to be related to some Viking King, you could be related to a serial killer!