Update to this story.
Via Daily Mail:
Investigators hunting the Golden State Killer used DNA information from a genealogy website to identify a sickly 73-year-old as their prime suspect, and then a judge ordered him to undergo a test to prove he was not the serial murderer and rapist.
Cops used a genetic profile based on DNA from crime scenes and compared it to 189,000 others uploaded by family tree enthusiasts on free site YSearch.org to track down the care home resident, who also shared a rare genetic marker with the killer.
Armed with a court order, they then took a DNA sample from the man while he was lying in bed seriously ill. Astonishingly, his daughter was not informed about the test but after she found out used her online family tree to help cops find people who also had similar DNA to the killer so they could be eliminated from the investigation.
The daughter spoke on condition of anonymity because she did not want the family’s name publicly linked to the case. FamilyTreeDNA.com, which operates YSearch.org, said it takes the privacy of its customers seriously but supported ‘ethically and legally justified’ users of its material.
Eventually, police used the same technique on a different genealogy website to track down who they believe to be the real Golden State Killer: 73-year-old former police officer Joseph DeAngelo, who has now been charged with eight counts of murder.[…]
Steve Mercer, chief attorney for the forensic division of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, said privacy laws are not strong enough to keep police from accessing ancestry sites, which have fewer protections than databases which hold the DNA of convicts.
‘People who submit DNA for ancestors testing are unwittingly becoming genetic informants on their innocent family,’ he said.
To track down DeAngelo, investigators used GEDmatch, which has around a million users and is based in Florida.
The site, a no strings attached operation which has never advertised, allows users who have obtained DNA profiles from companies such as Ancestry.com to upload them to expand their search for relatives.
Investigators uploaded the crime scene DNA profile to GEDmatch using a fake profile and pseudonym. They then found a distant relative of DeAngelo before narrowing this down to the grandfather himself, reported CBS.
It is unclear exactly how cops managed to do this but it was most likely through traditional detective methods.
Paul Holes, the lead investigator on the case, said his team did not need a court order to do this and was making use of information people had chosen to share publicly.
GEDmatch insisted it was not aware its database had been used during the investigation and said it does not ‘hand out data’.