I think several of the wild fires set two years ago were by a guy who worked as a firefighter during the summer months.
BTK for example.
Another good one, Ted Bundy, who while being interviewed on his own discussed theories on the Green River Killer, and a tip that led to them catching him.
I’ve been out of my true crime junkie phase for awhile, but as a twitter follower of Oswalt, I picked up the book a few weeks ago and just started it last week.
Chilling, and amazing that they caught the dude. I watched the press conference. I appreciated the brother of one of his victims advocating for the integration of DNA and rape kits into de rigeur police procedure. It’s inane that there’s such resistance. Must be that they don’t want all their wrongful convictions overturned…
It will be fascinating when it comes out what led them to the killer, and no doubt equally haunting if he talks and the breadth and detail of his crimes is documented.
I’ll be interested to find out if he talks and the 1986 murder was the last felony crime he committed.
Glad to see it happen and I’m betting McNamara’s book did a lot more to help it happen than anyone will admit, even if it was just extra resources and interest. Which is as fitting an epitaph as anyone could hope for.
I haven’t yet started the book but I’ve been listening to these podcasts while commuting and at work. The guy was an amazingly accomplished burglar. Seriously good, even getting into homes with security systems at a time when those were rare.
Also it sounds like they got a tip elsewhere, but confirmed the suspect with DNA prior to the arrest.
Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones said the task force had been conducting surveillance on DeAngelo and secretly retrieved his DNA from a discarded item, such as a soda can. The DNA matched the samples left by the killer. Authorities would not say how they initially came to see him as a potential suspect.
I wonder what the tip was because apparently he wasn’t on their radar until just a week ago. His immediate family was reported to have been shocked about his arrest.
One from The Onion.
Wow, that is brutally honest.
Okay, this is how they found him: They used online genealogical sites to find a DNA match for what they had on record.
Yeah, that’s gonna cause a lot of conversation in the privacy realm.
Wow, how on earth is that legal? So basically we’ve been paying these sites to collect our DNA for the world’s largest crime database?
Yeah, last I heard, the two biggest – 23 and Me and one other – had flatly refused FBI overtures to get a peek at their DNA databases.
I’m guess the way it was structured is that identities tied to DNA profiles were strictly hidden, and only revealed in the event of a match at a high threshold.
But still…
Because you sign off for it when you use the service, though, naturally most people don’t read that part. I’ve known it for quite a while, but I bet most people don’t or don’t care.
Speaking of DNA:
I’m wondering still if that’s the whole story.
This is a case where the last crime was committed 31 years ago. It’s hard for me to believe that specifically for this case – where there’s no imminent danger to the community – the FBI got those commercial DNA outfits to finally break their longstanding refusal to allow access to their data.
Perhaps this was just the most visible capture in a wider sweep operation?
I don’t know how these things work, but I think if you submit your own DNA, they may give you info…but I don’t think they can tell you “Mary Jones in Sheboygan might be a long lost aunt of yours.”
Yeah, they totally tell you that.
Thing is, though…why would they do that?
If they knew they wanted his DNA and had a sample, they’d just check it against their own forensic evidence. So no, probably not that.
I think what he’s saying is that they submitted GSK’s DNA to the sites like, “Hey, I’m looking for my relatives.”
Companies do the testing and matching, and say, oh, you’ve got family here, here, and here. They the police investigate the entire family tree for any male relatives between a certain age, and start looking into them.
Ah, OK. In theory that makes a lot of sense.
But I wonder if they would have the specific samples required by those places, which usually require swabs and whatnot.
California law allows for familial DNA searching.
On April 21, 2008, California was the first state to make familial searches legal under certain circumstances. The State of California Department of Justice (DOJ), developed a DNA Partial Match Reporting and Modified CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) Search Policy that may result in investigative information provided to law enforcement officials in unsolved cases. This would only apply to criminal cases where the crime scene DNA profile is a single-source profile and where all other investigative leads have been exhausted. The process developed requires special DNA testing performed on the Y chromosome which produces common male profiles in a paternal lineage and has a biological match with the offender’s Y chromosome profile. The policy was developed to address privacy concerns while also providing information that may be useful in solving a violent offense. The DNA “partial match” will result when the profile shares at least 15 STR (Short Tandem Repeat) alleles with a different but potentially related offender profile. The name of the related offender may be released to the investigating agency if the protocol has been followed and all of the conditions are met.