The first step in finding Golden State Killer suspect: Finding his great-great-great-grandparents on:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-golden-state-dna-match-20180427-story.html.

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There was no match in the FBI’s national DNA database. A search of California’s forensic data bank came up blank. The clue that led investigators this week to the door of the suspected Golden State Killer came instead from an unexpected source: an amateur genealogy website that’s something like the Wikipedia of DNA. Advertisement The arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., a 72-year-old former police officer suspected of a string of rapes and murders across California from 1976 to 1986, hinged on GEDmatch.com, an open-source platform where people volunteer their genetic information in hopes of finding long-lost family members. The breakthrough marks a novel investigative technique concocted by authorities desperate for leads in one of the nation’s most notorious cold cases. Investigators were not sure what, if anything, they would find, but they eventually uncovered a new trail they traced back to DeAngelo’s great-great-great-grandparents. From there, they spent months narrowing down his family tree to land upon him as the suspect. The tactic highlights the increasingly complex relationship between law enforcement, which covets genetic data; private sector companies, which have amassed heaps of it; and civilians, who volunteer their most personal information without always knowing how it will be used. And the approach is fraught with ethical questions. “It was basically a long shot on their part,” said David Foran, director of the Forensic Science Program at Michigan State University. The largest genealogy services, 23andme and Ancestry.com, conduct DNA tests for paying customers but largely shield their findings from other parties. GEDmatch is a free service where consenting users upload test results from a variety of genealogy websites and cross-reference their findings to discover relatives who might have tested with different companies. “It’s kind of intended to be unregulated so people on their own initiative can load their information,” UC Berkeley law professor Andrea Roth said. Founded in 2011, the site is run by genealogical enthusiasts and is funded by donations and sales of more sophisticated search features. It has amassed around 950,000 user profiles — a fraction of 23andme’s more than 2 million customers and Ancestry.com’s 10 million test-takers. But GEDmatch’s data is not encrypted and is stored in plain text. Its privacy policy warns its information could be used for purposes beyond genealogical research. That made the site the perfect tool for investigators, who were able to search it without needing a warrant and parse genetic profiles of a new swath of individuals who haven’t previously been arrested. Turning to GEDmatch was the idea of forensic criminologist Paul Holes, who spent years on the Golden State Killer investigation and recently retired from the Contra Costa County district attorney’s office, and Stephen Kramer, an FBI lawyer.

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