How Private DNA Data Led Idaho Cops on a Wild Goose Chase and Linked an Innocent Man to a 20-year-old Murder Case
By Jennifer Lynch,
Electronic Frontier Foundation
| 05. 01. 2015
Untitled Document
The New Orleans Advocate recently published a shocking story that details the very real threats to privacy and civil liberties posed by law enforcement access to private genetic databases and familial DNA searching.
In 1996, a young woman named Angie Dodge was murdered in her apartment in a small town in Idaho. Although the police collected DNA from semen left at the crime scene, they haven’t been able to match the DNA to existing profiles in any criminal database, and the murder has never been solved.
Fast forward to 2014. The Idaho police sent the semen sample to a private lab to extract a DNA profile that included YSTR and mtDNA—the two genetic markers used to determine patrilineal and matrilineal relationships (it’s unclear why they reopened the case after nearly 20 years). These markers would allow investigators to search some existing databases to try to find a match between the sample and genetic relatives.
The cops chose to use a lab linked to a private collection of genetic genealogical data called the Sorenson Database (now owned by Ancestry.com...
Related Articles
By Claire Robinson and Jonathan Matthews, Guest Contributors
| 08.25.2026
This is an excerpt of an article originally published on August 1, 2026 at GMWatch.
A six-year-old girl has died in a gene editing gene therapy trial in China that went wrong, the journal Science reports. Seven days after the girl's medical team infused trillions of viruses carrying the recipe for the gene editing tool – in this case a base editor – into her spinal fluid, she died of a severe immune reaction linked to the therapy.
Just...
By Dhruv Mehrotra , Wired | 08.03.2026
On March 13, 2025, Hugo Moreno-Mendez arrived at the McLennan County Probation Department in Waco, Texas, expecting a routine probation check-in. Instead, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were waiting to arrest him.
According to a criminal complaint reviewed by WIRED...
By Julianne McShane, MS NOW | 07.23.2026
With their sights set on winning control of Congress in November, Senate Democrats are reviving a legislative effort to dramatically expand access to in vitro fertilization. The move comes nearly two years after President Donald Trump pledged that he would...
By Abigail Ruhman , Association of Health Care Journalists | 07.10.2026
The words reporters use and how publications tell stories can play a significant role in challenging ideas that are harmful to people with disabilities, according to a panel at HJ26.
Leading journalists and disability advocates said reporters and editors...
