The Golden State Killer case, popularized by Michelle McNamara's (Patton Oswalt's late wife) recent book, was cracked wide open this week when they arrested a suspect who was identified by entering the perpetrator's DNA into a genealogy database and identifying a relative who had submitted their DNA into the database.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/us/golden-state-killer.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

For those that can't read the article, the basic summary is that police entered the DNA profile of a serial rapist/murderer into a Genealogy website (similar to Ancestry). They found someone in the database, who had willingly submitted their DNA to the database for genealogy purposes, who was genetically a relative of the perpetrator and then looked at that relatives family to find a male in the correct age range and with ties to the crime area. Once they identified a potential match, they followed that suspect around until he left his DNA in a public domain (think throwing away a soda can at a park) and then picked up the DNA and matched it to the crime scene DNA. Meaning they had finally found their man after decades.

I think this is a fascinating use of DNA technology and something that the killer never could have imagined when he committed his crimes in the 70s and 80s. It's also worth adding that this genealogy database allows this type of search, but it doesn't seem like all of them do.

What are people's thoughts on this? Do you have concerns about new uses of DNA technology?