[ SECRET POST #5958 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5958 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.



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02.



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03.
[Succession, Roman Roy]



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04.
[minecraft youtube?]



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05.
[Green Hell]



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06.
[Lost Ruins]
























Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 30 secrets from Secret Submission Post #852.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[feotakahari]

I'm tentatively suspicious. I mean, the blood spatter analysis and handwriting analysis people turned out to just be making shit up.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I guess it depends on how much you trust DNA testing. The process uses databases of user-submitted genetic samples to find a related match to a sample taken from the crime scene. For example, maybe the murderer who left their DNA on the victim isn't in the database, but their third cousin twice removed might be. So by that process, they can narrow it down to a family... then a branch of that family... then you can check birth/death records, social media, etc. and find out all the living members who might be 1) male 2) the right age 3) known to be living in the area where the murder occurred. THEN you chase down that potential suspect and take a fresh sample of their DNA and run it against the crime scene DNA.

[(Anonymous)]

This. "Handwriting analysis" was always qualitative. DNA analysis is quantitative. And if you accept that DNA evidence is reliable, then all genetic genealogy does is give you a larger pool of DNA samples to compare your crime scene evidence against.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think there is any evidentiary process that American police can't find a way of fucking up, whether through malice or incompetence

[philstar22]

Entirely accurate. But the fucking up version of DNA testing usually is one of two things: 1. A lab tech deciding to make police happy by finding false positives or 2. police refusing to test or hiding or lying about the results.

[(Anonymous)]

And let's be real. Number 1 is less "lab tech decides to make police happy" and more "police offers lab tech financial or other compensation to find false positives," because if lab tech gets caught out they've destroyed their career and are also going to jail when the police department throws them under the bus. And given that the bulk of DNA analysis done by crime labs is still connected to sexual assault cases, the police are typically less incentivized to bribe DNA analysts than, for example, drug chemists.

[philstar22]

Yes to all this.

[(Anonymous)]

Admittedly, all of this sounds like the premise for an intriguing movie.

[(Anonymous)]

But as I understand it, "user-submitted genetic samples" doesn't mean the samples come from people who intended to donate them to a policing database. It's people using DNA testing services like 23AndMe out of personal curiosity, but then the cops are given access.

There are major ethical/privacy issues that I wouldn't trust a TV show to handle well. It would just end up being more copaganda.

[(Anonymous)]

Most of the companies like 23andMe don't actually cooperate with law enforcement; you usually have to voluntarily submit your data to one of the few that does (like GEDMatch) and for most of them even then you have to actively opt-in to the law enforcement search. So the individuals that match usually have actively chosen to donate to police.

The issue is that just because Aunt Karen consented to helping the cops doesn't mean that Uncle Bart did, but Aunt Karen's DNA matching is close enough to let anyone who wants to find Uncle Bart, and with genetic genealogy even Third-Cousin-Twice Removed Egbert is.

(The other issue is government trying to force sites like 23andMe to share data whether they want to or not.)

[(Anonymous)]

Given 23andme's historical issues with data privacy and communication of how they keep said data private, I can see them buckling on this one really quick.

https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-digit/submission/23andme-losing-at-digital-privacy/

[(Anonymous)]

At the moment, at least, nobody is convicted based on genetic genealogy alone - they use the genealogy to get a list of suspects, but once they have suspects, they use actual direct DNA testing to confirm a match, the same way they would with any other good suspects. So in theory, it's not any more likely to be wrong than any other DNA testing.

The trip-up is that people do tend to put a lot of trust in DNA testing, and while the actual science part is pretty airtight (unlike with things like blood spatter, which didn't have actual science part!) - if there's a good DNA match, it's really really likely to mean the same person was the source of both samples - it's still perfectly possible for humans to fuck it up or misinterpret it - especially as we get better with testing with really small amounts of DNA, and juries come to trust it more. (Like the case of the "prolific traveling serial killer" in Europe which turned out to be the DNA of a factory worker which had contaminated a whole batch of lab equipment.)

With genetic genealogy, they're increasingly finding matches with people who have literally no other connection to the case and no other criminal history, since they aren't using anything to narrow down the matches other than the DNA itself. So I'm kind of counting down to the day we get a genetic genealogy conviction for someone who later turns out to have just, like, brushed against someone on the bus earlier in the day. (Or perpetrators who deliberately introduce strangers' DNA to crime scenes!)

[(Anonymous)]

You... really shouldn't be leaving quantifiable DNA on people that you brush against on the bus. Ew.

[(Anonymous)]

All it takes is one hair or a couple skin cells, with current technology, and I hate to tell you this, but you leave skin cells (and if you have short hair, hair) everywhere you go!

The way crime scene forensics are done makes it very unlikely that DNA from the equivalent of brushing against someone on the bush and leaving a few skin cells on their sweater will just happen to be collected in a usable way. But if it were collected, there's a chance labs could get usable DNA from it, and the more people push DNA, the more likely something like that will end up getting collected and tested and used deceptively in a court case.

And the fact that people don't realize how much DNA they leave around them and how good we've gotten at testing very, very small samples, just makes it all the more likely that juries will assume a match means something significant even if it doesn't.

[(Anonymous)]

My dude, I don't know what podcast you're getting your information from, but no one is getting reliable DNA results from a couple of skin cells or one (1) hair. Hair doesn't even have DNA unless you pull it out by the root and there's a follicle attached.

Don't pull out your hair and put it on people next to you on the bus. It's weird and creepy, even if you aren't a murderer.

[(Anonymous)]

uh, I hate to tell you this, but they are now in fact sequencing DNA from shed hair without follicles. It's not easy and it's not as foolproof as using follicles, but it can be done, and forensics people are working very hard on making it easier.

And I actually mostly got it from my ecology podcasts! The stuff they've been doing with eDNA in the past few years is fuckin' scary. I don't think anyone is doing the scariest parts of it with forensic DNA yet! But the technology is there to do it. A genetic genealogy murder case a couple years ago used a DNA sample of *fifteen cells*. But I don't think that environmental DNA contamination is a huge problem in court cases yet - but like I said, I'm counting down to when it is. And the more people are convicted on no evidence at all other than DNA, the more tempting it will be to use it.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not acceptable as court evidence, which is what we're talking about today. It won't be anytime in the near future, because as you said, it's neither easy (read: cost effective) or reliable. And DNA evidence is never the only evidence used to convict, especially in murder trials. Could this theoretical scenario be used to convict people in the far future? Possibly. But if you're counting down the days until that happens, I hope you've got good genes, because most people here today will either be dead or senile by then.

[(Anonymous)]

Those twelve cells were considered good enough in 2021 that everyone considers the case solved!

Not a lot of those DNA-only genetic genealogy cases have gone to court, but that's because they're often cold cases and the matches are either dead or serving life sentences (or recent enough that the cases haven't gone to court yet). But there's no law or anything barring any particular DNA testing from being OK in court, as long as it was constitutionally collected; all it takes is one "expert" who is willing to convince a judge, and experts have convinced judges of things with way less backing than than "a match on twelve skin cells is a scientifically valid match". If you think it'll take more than ten years for someone to convince a judge that they can show something like that to a jury, you have a way rosier opinion of our court system than I do.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Have any links to the case or the podcast in question?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know if any podcasts have covered it (I don't really do true crime podcasts much, other than Affirmative Murder) but here's an article from the company that did the matching https://dnasolves.com/articles/stephanie-isaacson.html

(It was fifteen not twelve, dunno why I couldn't keep that straight.)

In this case it was almost definitely the right guy - it was a sex assault semen sample and he has a history of violent sex crimes - but it's proof of concept that people are doing it with samples that small, and if it keeps getting hype like this some *will* do it with random dust on someone's sweater eventually.

[(Anonymous)]

Wasn't there a thing where they found DNA on JonBenet Ramsay's underwear that ended up being from a worker in the factory that /made/ them?

[(Anonymous)]

I think that's been one of several theories put forward, yeah.

The "mystery serial killer" I mentioned was the Phantom of Heilbronn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn . She worked in a factory that made DNA swabs.