When a homicide detective in California's Central Valley last year reopened the investigation into the unsolved killing of a bakery owner, she turned to an increasingly popular forensic tool credited with helping solve hundreds of cases across the United States and Canada in recent years.
The detective, Ashley Sanchez of the Kern County Sheriff's Office, said she was confident she had evidence that could help identify a person whom she believes was involved in the gruesome 2010 death of Juanita Francisco, 49. But paying for the genetic genealogical work needed for that effort was not so straightforward, she said.
In the end, it was funded not by local taxpayers or a state or federal grant,but by a crowdsourced fundraiser.
That unusual funding source reflects what experts say is the often grim financial reality for many seeking to use the technique, which surged in popularity after the arrest of the "Golden State Killer" eight years ago and has been used to solve more than 1,600 cases in the U.S. and Canada,according to an ongoing tally updated earlier this yearby a criminology professor at Douglas College in Canada.
Authoritiesinvestigating the possible abduction of Nancy Guthrieare also exploring the possibility of using the method, which relies on traditional genealogical research and modern DNA analysis to unravel unsolved crimes and cases of unidentified human remains.
Some government grant funding is available, said David Gurney, director of the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center at New Jersey's Ramapo College, but the amount of money provided by the federal government and states "is not even scratching the surface."
In many instances, that means crowdfunding has been the solution. Tracey Dowdeswell, the criminology professor in Canada, estimated that roughly 120 of the 1,600 cases in her database were crowdfunded, though she said that number is likely an undercount and she cautioned that many cases often have several sources of funding. Most are cases of unidentified remains, she said.
Dozens more cases listed on sites likeDNA Doe Project,Moxxy Forensic InvestigationsorDNASolves— where Francisco's funding drive was posted — have been successfully crowdfunded and not yet solved or posted and not yet funded.
"I think it is amazing that members of the public are willing to donate money to help solve these cases," Gurney said. "But it's not a sustainable criminal justice system."
David Mittelman, CEO of Othram, the Texas-based DNA lab behind DNASolves, described that site as the destination for a subset of the company's cases that "literally cannot be worked — not because there's no evidence, not because there's no interest, but because there's no funding channel for them."
To Gurney, the necessity of crowdfunding shows how little awareness there is that genetic genealogy could help clear the backlog of unsolved cases in the U.S. He cited federal data showing the method could potentially be used in hundreds of thousands of unsolved violent crimes and tens of thousands of unidentified remains cases.
"It's going to be difficult to scale up this work to tackle the backlog of uncleared cases until there is more funding," Dowdeswell said.
Just a handful of labs
Genetic genealogy relies on a few crucial components. Researchers need a DNA sample — and a profile — for the person they're trying to identify. And they need to upload that profile to GEDMatch or FamilyTreeDNA, the consumer DNA databases that permit access for law enforcement purposes. That profile can then be used to develop a family tree to help pinpoint the source of the unidentified DNA.
Obtaining a suitable profile can be a daunting task, however, since the DNA samples needed to develop those profiles are often old and degraded, said Kendall Mills of Season of Justice, a nonprofit that fundraises for law enforcement agencies that need advanced DNA analysis but can't afford it.
Only a handful of private labs in the U.S. — labs like Othram — are capable of doing the kind of work required to develop those profiles, Mills said.
"Typically, the private labs have access to more sensitive technology, newer technology," she said. "They also have the ability to conduct a lot of research and development that our taxpayer-funded labs just don't have the capacity for. But they come with a higher price tag."
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The consumer DNA databases provide researchers access for a fee of more than $1,000, Gurney said.
Some state and federal agencies are beginning to do the labor-intensive genealogy work that follows, Gurney said, but the vast majority of that research is done with assistance from a patchwork of nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies and at least one school — Ramapo.
Some groups like Ramapo and the DNA Doe Project, a pioneering nonprofit that has worked with law enforcement agencies and medical examiners to help solve more than 150 cases using genetic genealogy, rely in part or entirely on networks of volunteers for their genealogy work and do it at no cost. Others, like Othram, do it in-house for a fee.
For Othram, only a small percentage of its genealogy cases are crowdfunded, Mittelman said, noting that the company typically relies on a mix of state and federal grants, philanthropic gifts and nonprofit funding. Still the company's DNASolves sitelists dozens of casesfrom across the country that have been successfully crowdfunded, andseveral more— each in pursuit of a $7,500 goal — that have not. Dowdeswell said she's cataloged 40 cases that have been solved through the site.
DNASolves was initially developed to highlight case outcomes, Mittelman said, but Othram began using it for crowdfunding after a law enforcement agency couldn't afford forensic work on a high-interest case. The company launched a fundraiser that was immediately successful, he said.
Gurney said the center at Ramapo doesn't need crowdfunding because its casework is funded by an educational component — the center offers a certificate in genetic genealogy — and donors.
But for the DNA Doe Project, crowdfunding is vital, said Matthew Waterfield, the organization's director of communications.
In Waterfield's view, the single biggest obstacle for genetic genealogy is the cost of lab work and rising upload fees associated with the DNA databases relied upon by investigators.
He recalled the case of an unidentified elderly woman found in a shallow Arizona grave that needed nearly $5,000 in funding to cover lab and database access fees. It took many months for the organization to raise that moneythrough its "Doe-Nate" site, he said, and eight hours for its network of volunteer genealogists to solve the case once they could upload the DNA profile.
"I would love to tell you that was an isolated case, but it isn't," Waterfield said. "We have other cases where it has taken quite a while to get the money together, and once the money has come through, our volunteers have set up on the case, and within hours or days or weeks, have identified somebody, resolved a cold case and provided answers to a family after decades."
If more funding were available, Waterfield added, "we would be seeing an unfathomable number of cases being solved right now."
Advocating for federal funding
To try and address the field's financial woes, Othram has advocated for the Carla Walker Act — federal legislation that would fund $10 million in annual grants for law enforcement agencies to pay for genetic genealogy services if they can't do the work in-house, he said, and it would pay for public crime labs to upgrade their equipment so they can begin doing the work themselves.
"You're not gonna clear hundreds of thousands of cases with one company or even 10," Mittelman said. "What you really need is hundreds of labs working in concert with modern technology."
Waterfield said the DNA Doe Project supports the bill, which has been introduced in theHouseandSenatewith bipartisan backing. The provision that provides funding to law enforcement agencies, he said, could help keep the price of lab work down by allowing those agencies to choose from a range of companies and genetic genealogy researchers.
For Sanchez, the homicide detective, promoting a fundraiser for a cold case investigation is something she never thought she'd have to do. But she did, appearing in a lengthy video about the case released by her department in November and in an interview on the livestream of a true crime show in December.
The case was posted on Nov. 21. By early January, it had been funded.
Now, Sanchez said, she can get back to doing her job — and hopefully get the lead she needs to find out who murdered Juanita Francisco.
