Detectives in the York Regional Police, located in Ontario, Canada, had a perplexing scene on their hands in late November 1972. A teenage girl was found dead in the middle of a quiet roadway, bludgeoned to death. It appeared she may have been raped as well.  The victim, 16 year old Yvonne Leroux, was well known to police because of her recent history as the victim in a drug-pushing biker gang’s threats to her safety. But all investigative avenues in pursuit of this information led nowhere. Detectives over the years revived the case, but got nowhere until they obtained a male DNA profile from Yvonne’s autopsy samples in 2001. Finally, in 2021, the investigation turned to IGG, the oldest cold case taken up by Canada’s only in-house law enforcement genealogy team.  They quickly named the man who had killed Yvonne. Her family was relieved to know who had taken Yvonne from them, although many questions remain unanswered.

In June, 1988, a farmer in Baca County, Colorado found skeletonized human remains on his property. Investigators found nothing in the way of identification, and only a 1986 quarter in a pocket. All investigators knew was that they had found the remains of a young woman, who was likely Hispanic, and although a cause of death could not be determined, severe injuries to her legs, and the overall circumstances led police to think that she was the victim of a homicide. Police had no missing persons cases on women in the area that matched their victim, and her case went cold almost immediately. They kept the Jane Doe's remains for years before finally laying her to rest.

In 1975, 19 year old free spirit Teree Becker was found in a Westminster, CO field, after hitchhiking toward home two days earlier.  Police did everything they could to solve her case, but could not identify the culprit. Then, in 1991, it happened again – this time in Las Vegas, NV.  The victim this time was Cherrie Bridgewater.  The cases bore some similarities, but as they were 16 years and states apart, they were not connected until DNA linked both murders to the same man.  And that man would not be named for another decade, when a complex genealogy analysis finally named the despicable rapist and murderer who had snuffed out the lives of these two young women.