Why this scientist keeps receiving packages of serial killers' hair via nytimes
Those fortunate enough to have a head of hair generally leave 50 to 100 strands behind on any given day. Those hairs are hardy, capable of withstanding years or even centuries of rain, heat and wind.
And during the past 18 months, he has been quietly cooperating with several law enforcement agencies, using this method to extract genetic profiles from the hairs of killers and victims in long unsolved crimes. Though he’s already begun directing some clients to Green, Loe, whose company often works with law enforcement, cautioned that as the technique becomes more widely known, it will create new possibilities for surveillance operatives. It would make real a sci-fi future in which evading detection requires carefully sweeping up hair from a room.
Green is not at liberty to share details of the investigations he’s involved in, beyond the one case in New Hampshire. Neither can he say with whom he is collaborating, beyond that his point people are often Steve Kramer, a lawyer in the FBI’s Los Angeles office, and Barbara Rae-Venter, a genetic genealogist.
At that time, Rae-Venter was working with authorities in New Hampshire to identify a woman and three girls found in barrels in a state park. The bodies had been exposed to decades of sunlight and water, degrading the DNA, even in their bones.Since then, many articles and a podcast series have been dedicated to the case, known as the Bear Brook murders. But when the hair first arrived at his lab, Green knew little beyond the fact that another lab had failed to get what was needed.
To test if he was on the right track, he took a genotype file created from his own hair and uploaded it to GEDmatch, a DNA database of around 1 million people. “That was the Eureka moment,” he said. He generated the same relatives as he had with a file created the traditional way using saliva. Many novel methods played a role in solving the case — DNA was ultimately extracted from one girl’s liver — but Green’s technique was central to the breakthrough, said Jeffery Strelzin, New Hampshire’s associate attorney general.
But the willingness of so many private citizens to help law enforcement use genealogy databases to solve crimes, before the field has been regulated, is causing alarm.
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