It led police to John Sipos 51 years after Mary Scotts killing. So, what is investigative genetic genealogy? – lehighvalleylive.com

John Jeffrey Sipos and his wife Susanne bought their home in October 2003 on Cobbler Road in North Whitehall Township, property records show..

And they lived there for the next 17 years without brushing up against the law until Pennsylvania State Police came knocking on Oct. 24 with an arrest warrant from a judge in San Diego.

The 75-year-old John Sipos, San Diego police would later announce, was a suspect in the late November 1969 killing of Mary Scott.

Cold case units from the San Diego Police Department and the California countys district attorneys office evaluated the case and were able to use forensic genealogy to identify a possible suspect, according to a brief news release from police on Tuesday. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Scotts younger sister, having read stories about how DNA and genealogy had led to the arrest of killers, had around the 50th anniversary of her sisters death ... reached out to a law enforcement friend to help get her sisters folder to the top of the cold-case pile.

Parabon NanoLabs and its Chief Genetic Genealogist CeCe Moore werent involved in this investigation, but they are pioneers in the field.

The science -- which Moore says is properly called investigative genetic genealogy -- is about 10 years old and was initially developed to help adoptees learn about their roots.

Its an extremely powerful tool for any type of human identification, Moore, who heads Parabons Genetic Genealogical Services for law enforcement, said in an interview with lehighvalleylive.com from her home in California.

About two and a half years ago, that unit of Parabon entered the world of criminal investigations and has an unparalleled record of over 130 successful identifications in criminal cases, according to background Moore provided.

Her work led to the first conviction, the first conviction through jury verdict, and the first exoneration in criminal cases where the suspect was identified through investigative genetic genealogy.

Raymond "DJ Freez" Rowe pleaded guilty to killing Christy Mirack many years after the 1992 crime in Lancaster.Pennsylvania Department of Corrections

Moore said her first case was the December 1992 murder of school teacher Christy Mirack in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where the DNA and genealogical work in the spring of 2018 would lead to suspect Raymond DJ Freez Rowe, who wasnt on police radar, according to a published report. There was a significant amount of DNA left at the scene after the sexual assault, beating and strangulation. A DNA profile earlier uploaded by Rowes half-sister to a public database would be the key to solving the crime, a published report said.

An arrest would be made in June 2018 and Rowe would admit his guilt to charges of first-degree murder, rape, forced deviate intercourse and burglary. Rowe, now 52, is serving his life sentence in a Pennsylvania state prison.

It was a seminar through the DNA Doe Project that would led Lehigh County Coroner Eric Minnich to the Mirack case and the ongoing efforts to use DNA and genealogy to solve cold cases. In addition to determining the cause and manner of deaths, the coroners office tells families their loved ones have died. Sometimes thats difficult or nearly impossible due to a lack of information about the person who died. The county has one long unidentified body -- a John Doe case -- and Minnich wonders if this is a route to a resolution.

Lehigh County Coroner Eric Minnich.

Its something weve talked about, he said about using genetic genealogy. Its not something weve done anything about yet. ... As new things become available, its good to apply current standards to old cases. Identification is huge. Currently we use DNA to identify people by comparison from potential family members, but we have to know something. When we dont know anything, theres no simple way to compare DNA.

Investigative genetic genealogy is new to me, he said. Im learning about it too.

But to not consider the evolving science, you might miss an opportunity for identification, Minnich said.

So what changed from the days of the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) that is the most commonly known DNA repository for crime cases -- but is limited to criminals -- and the development of Parabons work?

The first thing Moore points out is the field is more about genealogy than DNA.

The goal, either way, is to bring answers to people, at first, years back, in family mystery cases and later in such groundbreaking efforts as the Golden State Killer case, which was not a Parabon case but an early and well publicized example of proof of concept. Parabon, based in Reston, Virginia, at that point was in the business of making facial sketches from crime-scene DNA, wired.com reported.

When that case went public, law enforcement really sat up and took notice, Moore said.

CODIS, for example, works with a small portion of a persons genome -- 20 genetic markers, Moore said.

Were looking at hundreds of thousands of genetic markers, she said about the companys work in 2020.

It allows us to detect and predict much more distant relatives, she said. We can predict third, fourth cousins and we can re-engineer the family tree. Were looking at piecing the common ancestors back together that points to one family or one person.

The challenge at first was the DNA pool.

And years ago scientists such as Moore would have to become promoters.

You already know some of the names of commercial applications. 23 and Me. Ancestry. My Heritage. Family Tree DNA.

You send off your DNA to learn more about your roots. Of those four, Family Tree DNA was the only one that made the information public, Moore said. GEDmatch, which caught the publics attention during the Golden State Killer case, is the other major public database. So, working with citizen scientists," the effort began to get people who were already sending DNA to the retail companies to also send the results to GEDmatch, Moore said.

We had to promote this idea of using DNA in order to resolve family mysteries, she said. It was part of my job to get the word out. It took years to build those databases.

Thousand and thousands of volunteer hours later and the pool was much deeper. Family Tree DNA, where people have to actively opt out or results of the free upload become public, has about a million results, Moore said. The investigative industry saw a setback more than a year ago when GEDmatch, which had about 1 million results public, suddenly changed its default from opt in to opt out of DNA results being made public and thus accessible to law enforcement investigations, Moore said. But its back up to about 300,000, she said.

The issues are Fourth Amendment privacy concerns and company transparency worries, news reports say.

The scope of the new science has limits. Most of the people who have the disposable income and interest to pay to send their DNA to the retail firms tend to have ancestry from northwestern Europe, Moore said.

If someone has deep routes in the United States, its easier to identify them, Moore said. With recent immigrants its harder.

And then theres what may be the tougher reality. Moores oldest case dates to 1967. The Scott case is from 1969.

Nobody in a police uniform was worried about DNA preservation in the late 1960s. Or the 1970s. Even into the 1980s. And remember, the jury didnt buy DNA evidence in the mid-1990s when O.J. Simpson was on trial in the killing of his wife.

Thereve been fires, floods, extreme temperatures and contamination over the decades in police evidence storage areas, she said.

Parabon needs about 60% of a persons DNA to work with.

Some of its been thrown out or ordered by judges to be destroyed, she said.

But if the evidence was kept in paper bags or cardboard boxes in a temperature-controlled space -- the key is to avoid extremes -- the DNA can remain viable over many years, she said. It could just be a matter of luck and benign oversight.

Surprisingly, many have worked out to be usable, Moore said.

The truly crushing part for families is now that the science exists, they learn that the crime-scene DNA no longer does, she said.

Her job begins once the DNA has been determined viable, there is a large enough sample and a raw DNA file has been created, she said.

That file is compared against all the people in the public databases, she said.

If as little as 1% of the DNA matches, we can detect these distant relationships, she said. The search is for a common ancestor.

Perhaps it leads to great-grandparents.

You hope you have enough data to narrow it down, Moore said. Optimal cases have matches for all four grandparents. Somehow all these people fit to make this one person related to all these matches. ... The amount of DNA shared helps us predict the relationship.

And thats when the even more detailed and truly difficult part of the effort begins.

Were using the DNA as a guide, she said. From there on its all genealogy.

Anyone who has ever fooled around with ancestry.com knows what comes next.

Birth records. Death records. Any record that might feed a family tree. But in reverse.

Most people learn their lineage from themselves on back. From what you know to what you dont know.

But Moore has to start deep in a familys history and work forward, building a reverse genealogy, she said.

You have to determine the descendants, she said. How did their children and grandchildren marry?

Family tree after family tree is constructed and considered. Paths are followed until they end. Several groups go one way, but how do they relate to other groups of possible distant relatives?

And then?

With lots of crimes, theres one person who fits, said Moore, who has been a full-time genetic genealogist on the PBS series Finding Your Roots with Louis Gates Jr. and has other television credits as well. Its also pretty common that its a set of brothers. You cant tell. You have to go out and get the DNA.

Because thats the positive match. You determine whose DNA is a probable match and then police get the real thing, either through the suspects willingness to cooperate or investigators' efforts to find abandoned DNA on a cup or a cigarette or in the trash, she said.

Sometimes if there are brothers who dont look the same, DNA can predict eye color or hair color and be used to rule someone out, she said.

But, in the end, the genetic genealogists work is a guidepost in the investigation. While San Diego police said genetic genealogy was used to develop Sipos as a suspect, there must be other factors that point to his potential guilt, Moore said.

Her work is not evidence for court, she said.

This is a tool to point them in the right direction, she said.

The ensuing DNA test would be the evidence, she said.

So, whats all this cost? Sounds expensive.

I guess it depends on perspective, she replied in a followup email. It is extremely inexpensive if it helps solve a case that has been worked for years or decades, using a huge amount of public resources.

Then again, for underfunded departments ... it can be expensive. For this reason, we started JusticeDrive.org to help agencies crowd fund, she said.

The cost varies, Moore continued. It is about $1,500 for the DNA processing and about $3,500 for the genetic genealogy research on most of our cases, so a total of approximately $5,000.

Law enforcement agencies who collect DNA evidence would only have to pay a lab for the DNA analysis and processing, she noted. Man-hours can easily add up to more than $3,500, however, if officers have to trace the genealogy.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting lehighvalleylive.com with a subscription.

Tony Rhodin can be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com.

Excerpt from:
It led police to John Sipos 51 years after Mary Scotts killing. So, what is investigative genetic genealogy? - lehighvalleylive.com