On April 18, 2018, Joseph James DeAngelo visited a Hobby Lobby store near his home in Roseville, Calif. As he shopped inside, Sacramento investigators swabbed his car door handle, obtaining a sample of his DNA.
Months later, police arrested DeAngelo under suspicion of being the “Golden State Killer,” a serial murderer and rapist who had evaded capture for 40 years. The swab taken from his car door, coupled with DNA collected from a tissue he discarded from his home, was run through a publicly available DNA database, allowing the cops to construct a family tree of the perpetrator. From there, they narrowed down potential suspects to men of a certain age who lived in the area at the time of the crimes.
Comments