It seems that now is a difficult time for criminals - the police are looking for those accused of serious crimes, using the most modern technology. For example, DNA analysis. A few days ago, on April 25, Sacramento police
arrested 72-year-old James Deangelo. Previously, he served in the police, and at the same time commit the most serious crimes, taking advantage of his position. In the press of those years, Deangelo called "The Real Night Hunter", "The Killer from the Golden State" and "The Rapist from the Eastern District." The perpetrator tried to find for 40 years.
It was discovered thanks to DNA services, which are now becoming increasingly popular. The police had copies of the killer's DNA materials left at the crime scene. Having deciphered the DNA, the experts loaded the information into one of the genealogical services and began to look for matches.
Law enforcers used the GEDmatch database, which is open to everyone. After the analysis, the police obtained coincidences with several people at once, or rather, family trees. Immediately get information about a particular person can not, because the genetic code of close relatives is very similar, this applies to twins, brothers and sisters, including cousins and other relatives.
Using this information, the police began to search for those people who fit the descriptions of the killer and the rapist, left by his victims, who managed to survive.
Further, the police managed to find out that the former police officer James Deangelo looks like the criminal most of all. California State Attorney of Contra-Costa Paul Howes went to the house of the suspect in March 2018. He wanted to ask for a DNA test. But after he changed his mind, and the police received samples of materials, having established surveillance of the criminal. The results were ready in four hours and they completely matched the criminal's DNA profile.
Representatives of the GEDmatch resource reported that no one contacted them from the police, all the law enforcement officers received their own due to the fact that the resource bases are open. The policy of using GEDmatch says that DNA data without problems can be used not only by relatives of users whose information is loaded into the database. The developers of the service even advised those people who did not want the police to use their data when searching for criminals to remove information about themselves. Nevertheless, the fact of using information, even if it is generally available, without a request from the police, is far from pleasant to everyone.
Interestingly, initially, the US police suspected another person, whose data were also very similar to the decrypted samples of the criminal's DNA. This man was a 73-year-old man who is in a nursing home in the United States. But analysis of his DNA samples showed that he was not involved in the crimes.
Actually, the use of all available data by the police is only a matter of time. After all, now the Internet has a large number of transcripts of the DNA of different people. Only this year, the service of 23andMe and Ancestry DNA was used by 12 million people. This already allows you to find relatives of almost any person (at least in the US), whose data is not in the database.
By the way, California law enforcement already has a DNA base of more than two million criminals. In 2010 (eight years ago, yes), the police managed to catch a serial killer only because of the arrest of his son due to a minor crime. When they took a DNA sample from a young man and deciphered it, it turned out that the closest relative of the arrested was suspected of committing a series of brutal murders. Samples of his biomaterial were found at the crime scene, so the arrest of a dangerous criminal after that was a matter of decision.
