Genetic genealogy has helped crack a 50-year-old murder case, the New York Times reports.
Mary Scott was raped and murdered in 1969, but the case went cold, it adds, until recently when her sister, Rosalie Sanz heard about how new DNA techniques had been applied to other cold cases. In 2018, genetic genealogy led to an arrest in the Golden State Killer case, in which some 50 women were raped and a dozen people were killed in the 1970s and 1980s. In June of this year, Joseph James DeAngelo pleaded guilty to more than a dozen murders in the case and received multiple life sentences.
This and other cases spurred Sanz to inquire whether the approach could be used in her sister's case, with the San Diego Police Cold Case Unit finding that genetic genealogy could be used in the case, the Times reports. It adds that 75-year-old John Jeffrey Sipos was arrested in Pennsylvania and is awaiting extradition to San Diego, where he faces charges in the case. According to the Times, Sipos was in the Navy in San Diego at the time of Scott's death.
While genetic genealogy approaches have aided in cold cases, the methods have also raised privacy concerns and worries about the limited oversight of using the approach.