In the same way as lawenforcement databases like codis. Moore in codis, youre looking for that exact match, but in genetic genealogy, we can go way beyond that and use those hundreds of thousands of markers to predict second, third, fourth cousins and beyond. Narrator however, there are serious concerns about Law Enforcement having access to the dna of people who have never committed a crime. That problem can be resolved if people are told their dna is going to databases used by police, which is exactly what a company called gedmatch did. Gedmatch posted a notification on their site alerting their users that Law Enforcement was using the database, and that was what i needed to allow me to finally make the decision to help Law Enforcement. Narrator in 2018, investigators took the Dna Profile from jay and tanyas case
And put it into the gedmatch system. Moore what im looking at is a list of people who share significant amounts of dna with the unknown suspect. Im hoping to get people who share around 3 of their dna or higher. That would be second cousins. Narrator once these distant relatives of a possible suspect were identified, Cece Moore turned to more traditional methods things like Public Records and obituary pages. So, in this way, im reverseengineering the Family Tree of the suspect from the peoples Family Trees that he shares dna with. Narrator in jay and tanyas murder case, hightech Genetic Genealogy and low tech searches of Public Records led investigators to a seattlebased family with four children. Three of those children were female, so i knew they couldnt be the suspect, and there was only one son, so there was only one person
They had potential evidence on their hands, and the sample on tanyas pants looked particularly promising. Collins the scientist at the time she cut that entire stain out, and she saved that stain and she preserved it in the crime lab. It was maintained in a freezer. Narrator at this point, the physical Evidence Wasnt revealing anything about the killer or killers identity. The case looked like it might stall before it really started. They looked at persons locally who had committed those kinds of crimes in the past. They looked at registered sex offenders. Hutton why pick these two kids . There was no reason for anybody to commit this horrible act against them. And i think thats the big question, is why . Narrator there were no answers to that question until there was a bizarre development. Someone, possibly the killer,
Didnt match the dna from the crime scenes. He was mentally ill, homeless, and was eliminated as a suspect. He never faced any charges in connection with the murders. Ive heard of people inserting themselves into crimes, you know, especially people with some sort of mental Illness Or Something like that, but this was about as extreme and strange a case as you could imagine. Narrator dumbstruck and disappointed, detectives were back to square one. Though tips and leads kept coming in, there was a real possibility that jay and Tanyas Killer would never be found. Van cuylenborg it was an open wound that really couldnt heal. Its very hard to not have any answers. As a family, we still talked about jay a lot. We tried really hard to not think about the fact that he had been murdered