Bryan Kohberger case: FBI's DNA tactics didn't violate law, but they raise another public safety concern
With great investigative power, genetic genealogists have a great responsibility to conduct themselves ethically to preserve a system that is entirely reliant on public participation to solve violent crimes, according to CeCe Moore, a pioneer of the industry and the chief genetic genealogist at Parabon NanoLabs.
The use of investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) to solve violent crimes has overwhelming public support, she said, but privacy concerns are still an issue in cases like University of Idaho student murders suspect Bryan Kohberger's, where the FBI accessed two databases that purport to exclude law enforcement from their services. As a result, unwitting users could be submitting clues that lead detectives to their own relatives without knowing it.
Transcripts unsealed of a closed-door hearing on the defense's attempt to have DNA evidence thrown out of court revealed that the FBI violated a Department of Justice interim policy and the terms of service of the two private databases agents turned to after the smaller ones, FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch PRO, didn't pan out.
"Our policy is to stick with just those databases because of the concern that the public could turn against this tool," Moore said, explaining why her team at the private lab avoids doing what the FBI did. "We don't want to just solve one case and lose out on being able to use this for potentially hundreds of thousands, millions of cases in the future."
The FBI declined to comment and instead pointed to Judge Steven Hippler's Feb. 17 order, in which he wrote that investigators had not violated Kohberger's constitutional rights or broken any laws when they uploaded samples to MyHeritage and GEDMatch (without the "PRO").
"This is not the first case where this has been brought up," Moore told Fox News Digital. "It's not the first case where a judge has weighed in on this question and made a similar ruling, because legality and companies' own terms of service are not the same thing – and so that is how the FBI is able to legally use that non-consented database."
Four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death in a home on Nov. 13, 2022 – Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20.
Under Mogen's body, police found a knife sheath that helped crack the case – it had a DNA sample on it. The sample did not match anyone in the FBI's national criminal database, nor did it match anyone in two small genealogy databases that share their material with law enforcement.
So, the FBI checked two other publicly accessible databases that ultimately led them to Kohberger, who was first identified as a person of interest on Dec. 19, 2022, and arrested on Dec. 30, 2022.
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If investigators hadn't turned to IGG, a suspect may have never been apprehended. They'd spent weeks with no solid leads, although Kohberger was studying for a Ph.D. in criminology at Washington State University, just 10 miles from the crime scene.
He had driven home to his parents' house in Pennsylvania before he was arrested.
"The more violent crimes I've been working and seen, the incredibly negative impact it has on surviving victims, their families and society as a whole, I can really see both sides now, a lot more than I did when I first started working with law enforcement," Moore said. "There's certainly a part of me that is supportive of doing everything we can within the law to stop these people in their tracks."
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In essence, law enforcement is allowed to go anywhere the public can, Moore said. Even though the individual database's terms of service may say that detectives need to stay out, they aren't violating the law by going in anyway.
The concern among critics, however, is that law enforcement could risk dissuading members of the public from participating in genetic genealogy testing over concerns that their data could be taken behind their backs, despite companies claiming it is protected. Many users want to trace their family trees, not necessarily help solve crimes.
The two largest databases, 23andMe and Ancestry DNA, don't face this issue, because they don't allow copied files of DNA samples to be uploaded. They require them to come directly from the source: a highly accurate sample from a cheek swab.
That kind of sample typically doesn't exist in the early stages of a case where police turn to IGG, usually with something collected from a crime scene.
So far, the methods continue to show strong public support, Moore said.
"Most people out there want us to use this tool to stop violent criminals," she told Fox News Digital. "I believe it was 91% of the people that we surveyed . . . [who] said that they want it used for this purpose, and I was surprised how many people even wanted it used for lesser crimes."
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