DNA profiling is the process of determining an individual's deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) characteristics. DNA analysis intended to identify a species, rather than an individual, is called DNA barcoding.
JonBenét Patricia Ramsey was an American child beauty queen who was killed at age six in her family's home at 755 15th Street in Boulder, Colorado, on the night of December 25, 1996. Her body was found in the house's basement about seven hours after she had been reported missing. She had sustained a broken skull, and a garrote was tied around her neck. The autopsy report stated that JonBenét's official cause of death was "asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma". Her death was ruled a homicide. The case generated worldwide public and media interest, in part because her mother Patsy Ramsey, a former beauty queen, had entered JonBenét into a series of child beauty pageants.
The Central Park jogger case was a criminal case concerning the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a woman who was running in Central Park in Manhattan, New York, on April 19, 1989. Crime in New York City was peaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the crack epidemic surged. On the night Meili was attacked, dozens of teenagers had entered the park, and there were reports of muggings and physical assaults.
FamilyTreeDNA is a division of Gene by Gene, a commercial genetic testing company based in Houston, Texas. FamilyTreeDNA offers analysis of autosomal DNA, Y-DNA, and mitochondrial DNA to individuals for genealogical purpose. With a database of more than two million records, it is the most popular company worldwide for Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA, and the fourth most popular for autosomal DNA. In Europe, it is the most common also for autosomal DNA. FamilyTreeDNA as a division of Gene by Gene were acquired by MYDNA, Inc., an Australian company, in January 2021.
The Oklahoma Girl Scout murders took place on the morning of June 13, 1977, at Camp Scott in Mayes County, Oklahoma, United States. The victims were three Girl Scouts, between the ages of 8 and 10, who were raped and murdered. Their bodies were then left on a trail leading to the campsite's showers, about 150 yards from their tent. The case was classified as solved when Gene Leroy Hart, a local jail escapee with a history of violence and rape, was arrested. However, Hart was acquitted in March 1979 after a jury unanimously returned a verdict of not guilty.
Steven Gerald James Wright is an English serial killer, also known as the Suffolk Strangler. He is currently serving life imprisonment for the murder of five women who worked in Ipswich, Suffolk. The killings took place during the final months of 2006 and Wright was found guilty in February 2008 and given a whole life order.
Timothy Wilson Spencer, also known as The Southside Strangler, was an American serial killer who committed three rapes and murders in Richmond, Virginia, and one in Arlington, Virginia, in the fall of 1987. In addition, he is believed to have committed at least one previous murder, in 1984, for which a different man, David Vasquez, was wrongfully convicted. He was known to police as a prolific home burglar.
The Gilgo Beach serial killings were a series of murders spanning from the early 1990s until 2011. Many of the victims' remains were found over a period of months in 2010 and 2011 during a police search of the area along Ocean Parkway, near the remote beach town of Gilgo in Suffolk County, New York. The search was prompted by the disappearance of Shannan Gilbert, who, like many of the known victims, worked as an escort and advertised on Craigslist. The perpetrator in the case is known as the Long Island Serial Killer, the Manorville Butcher, or the Craigslist Ripper.
On February 24, 1986, the body of Sherri Rasmussen was found in the apartment she shared with her husband, John Ruetten, in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. She had been beaten and shot three times in a struggle. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) initially considered the case a botched burglary and were unable to identify a suspect. Rasmussen's father believed that LAPD officer Stephanie Ilene Lazarus, who was formerly in a relationship with Ruetten, was a prime suspect.
The Redhead murders is the media epithet used to refer to a series of unsolved homicides of redheaded females in the United States between October 1978 and 1992, believed to have been committed by an unidentified male serial killer. The murders believed to be related have occurred in states including Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The murders may have continued until 1992. The victims, many remaining unidentified for years, were usually women with reddish hair, whose bodies were abandoned along major highways in the United States. Officials believe that the women were likely hitchhiking or may have engaged in prostitution.
Seya Sadewmi, was a four-year-old Sri Lankan child who was abducted, raped and murdered. The girl went missing from her house on 12 September 2015 while sleeping with her mother. After an extensive search of the premises by the police K9 unit, the naked body was discovered on the morning of 13 September 2015 near a canal. The body was found 200 meters away from the house. An autopsy revealed that Sadewmi had been sexually assaulted and was strangled to death. Four arrests were made by the Kotadeniyawa police, and two of them were later exonerated after a DNA testing. Third suspect, Dinesh Priyashantha subsequently confessed to the crime. Later he revealed that his brother, Saman Jayalath, manipulated him into confessing. Once arrested, Jayalath concurred with Priysantha's allegations and was detained for further investigations.
Vanessa Teresa Marcotte was a 27-year-old American woman who, while walking on a rural road in Princeton, Massachusetts, was assaulted and murdered. Her case went unsolved until April 15, 2017, when authorities announced that 31-year-old Angelo Colon-Ortiz of Worcester, Massachusetts, had been arrested for her murder after being linked by DNA evidence.
Karina Anne Vetrano was a 30-year-old American woman who was attacked, sexually assaulted, and murdered while running in Spring Creek Park in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens, New York City. The case attracted national media attention, partially due to how it went unsolved for nearly six months. A suspect, Chanel Lewis, was arrested and charged with her murder in February 2017 after being linked by DNA evidence. Lewis' trial began on November 5, 2018, and ended in a mistrial on November 21, 2018. A retrial took place in March 2019. On April 1, 2019, Lewis was found guilty on three counts of murder and one count of sexual abuse; he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
15-year-old Nicole van den Hurk disappeared on 6 October 1995 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Her body was found in the woods between Mierlo and Lierop on 22 November.
Parabon NanoLabs, Inc. is an American company based in Reston, Virginia, that develops nanopharmaceuticals and provides DNA phenotyping services for law enforcement organizations.
Jay Roland Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg were a Canadian couple from Saanich, British Columbia who were murdered while on a trip to Seattle, Washington in November 1987.
GEDmatch is an online service to compare autosomal DNA data files from different testing companies. It is owned by Qiagen.
Charles Thurman Sinclair, also known as the Coin Shop Killer, was an American criminal suspected of various murders of coin shop owners between the early 1980s and the 1990s. He was categorized as a nomadic killer who was linked to murders across the western United States and Canada.
The Favoriten Girl Murders were a series of sexually-motivated crimes committed against a young woman and two young girls: Alexandra Schriefl, Christina Beranek and Nicole Strau in the Viennese district of Favoriten. This case was among the most extensive and costliest investigations in Austrian history.
