I’m still in San Diego for the rest of this week and while hanging out at the KOA Resort hot tub, my husband and I got to talking with some other folks. When people hear what I do I often get “well, I’m not uploading my DNA anywhere.” I get so disappointed with this response because I already know they have little to no understanding of investigative genetic genealogy, yet they’ve made such an important decision because of the misconceptions about IGG.

Let me start by saying, law enforcement does not have unfettered access to your DNA profile when you upload to GEDmatch, DNA Justice or FTDNA. By the way, these are the only DNA databases we can access on law enforcement cases. They only see you as a match to their case kit. The case kit is the DNA profile from the crime scene. When you opt in to law enforcement, they see your name, email address, amount of DNA you share with the kit (cMs) and if you have a GEDcom or WikiTree associated with your account. They cannot see you at all if you don’t match their case kit. So no unfettered access to your DNA profile.

I also heard this that night: My family are all good people, we don’t have anyone doing bad things. You’d be surprised the “bad things” family members are doing that no one knows. But anyway, even if your family are angels and do no wrong, we still need you to opt-in to law enforcement use. We need your match to a case kit to help us find ancestors of the person who left DNA at a crime scene. Every match helps us to narrow down ancestors so we can narrow down our search with IGG and provide a lead to law enforcement. The matches are often so small, you won’t know the actual person we narrow down to because they’re a fourth, fifth or even sixth cousins, or greater. Doubt you know your sixth cousins.

We really need minority populations to upload to these databases because they are under-represented. No one wants to lose a family member or friend to a violent crime. But ask those who have lost someone and have waited 20 or more years for justice what they wouldn’t give to have people upload their DNA profile and opt-in to law enforcement. Your upload could bring peace to a family that has lost someone to violence.

If you have done a consumer DNA test with Ancestry, MyHeritage, 23&Me or FamilyTreeDNA, you can download your DNA profile, save it on your computer, and then upload it to GEDmatch (www.gedmatch.com), DNA Justice (only for law enforcement so always opted-in; www.dnajustice.org) and FamilyTreeDNA (www.familytreedna.com). You MUST opt-in at GEDmatch and FTDNA when you upload.

I attended the I4GG Conference last weekend and it was great! As an investigative genetic genealogist, it’s nice to hear the success stories of others and also their struggles, which I experience as well. Some of my takeaways from the conference:

1. Kintelligence is not worth it for cold cases. Qiagen is actively pursuing sales to law enforcement agencies across the country. Having worked on Kintelligence cases myself and hearing the presentation from a law enforcement agency that does its own IGG, Kintelligence is not worth it. Success rates are very low because it is only good at finding second cousin or closer matches. We don’t get those kind of close matches often in IGG. We’re working with more distant matches and we need to know they are legit. The “All Matches” showing up on GEDmatch for Kintelligence cold cases are not legitimate. The presenter in this session showed 65% of “all matches” were false matches using a Kintelligence kit. What a huge waste of time. Law enforcement, don’t buy this system, it’s not helpful for your cold cases. Stick to whole genome sequencing. I know it’s pricier but we know it works for IGG.
2. Loved Dana Leeds’ discussion on “His, Hers & Theirs.” She showed three case studies I found very interesting and can’t wait to see if she presents again on her conclusions once she’s finished.
3. Barbara Rae Venter presented several IGG cases that used an algorithm designed by Dr. Lawrence Wein at Stamford University. She wasn’t able to provide much information on the algorithm, seems they provided information to Dr. Wein and after he did his algorithm he provided them with the next match for tree building. They continued this process until MRCA couples were found and then continued the IGG process. Dr. Wein, will you share this algorithm for use with all the IGG community?
4. So many presentations on IGG leads that resolved cold cases or unidentified human remains. It brings me peace to see people regain their names or justice being served for lives ended to early. I hope it brings some measure of peace to the families whose loved one’s case was resolved through IGG and presented at the conference this year.