In April 1987, Cathy Sposito was brutally killed on a popular, scenic hiking trail in broad daylight in Prescott Arizona. Despite multiple earwitnesses to her murder, her killer eluded police. A massive investigation turned up two prime suspects, but there was no smoking gun. Then, a 1990 sexual assault on the same trail mirrored the MO, and again, the killer escaped. This time, the survivor was able to describe her attacker, but his identity remained unknown. The two crimes were linked only theoretically until DNA evidence connected them, and tied them to the same man. And that man was given a name by forensic genealogy, which solved the two cases at once.

On December 30, 1985 Auburn city employees 25 miles south of Seattle, Washington were investigating a car that had gone over an embankment. While surveying the area, they made a startling discovery; two sets of human remains. The remains, which turned out to be those of two young women, could not be identified at the time and were named Bones 16 and Bones 17. For investigators, it became clear that the remains were quite possibly victims of The Green River Killer who was responsible for the murders of potentially dozens of sex workers in the Seattle area.

In October 1989, Krista Martin was found bludgeoned and raped in her apartment in Wichita, Kansas. Krista was a very social young woman with lots of friends and quite a bit of drama in her life – none of which led to her murder. Police investigated thoroughly, but were stumped for years. Krista’s case went cold until the WPD reopened it in 2020 with a focus on the DNA evidence. Like most of DNA: ID’s cases, this case never would have been solved without forensic genealogy – but in this case, the genealogical analysis uncovered a misattributed parentage event, and left one family relieved and thankful to have answers, and one family in complete denial and anger. We still don’t know what happened between Krista and Paul Hart on that day in 1989. But we do know the he lived just six houses away from Krista, and that he killed her.