Forensic genetic genealogy has become an important tool for law enforcement agencies across the country, including Cincinnati Police. Now, more local, state and federal investigators are being trained to use the tool. 

The forensic tool garnered national attention in 2018, when an investigator used it to identify the Golden State Killer, decades after he had committed dozens of rapes and murders in California. 

Investigators from numerous agencies, including Cincinnati Police, the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, Forest Park Police, Independence, KY Police, the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office, Dayton, Ohio Police, and the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office attended a free training on forensic genetic genealogy last month. 

Retired Cincinnati Police Captain Steve Saunders, who is now a Law Enforcement Fellow with Othram, said the first part of the training focused on the process of getting DNA evidence. 

“Room full of investigators, some that work sexual assault cases, some that work with homicides, some investigators that work unidentified human remains cases, and they’re looking at this new technology and finding a way that they can utilize this in their job to help find answers,” Saunders said. “[Learning the] DNA basics - here’s the workflow of when you collect the DNA, the samples, whatever that process is, whether it’s body fluids, blood evidence, hair with rooted hair shafts from a location, and then taking that and how you submit from the coroner’s lab and BCI.”

Cincinnati Police Specialist Jeff Smallwood, who has a background in biology, has used forensic genetic genealogy and was one of the people who presented during the training. He says the investigative method is incredibly useful when you have DNA, but it does not match any profiles in national databases. 

“If there is a good DNA profile that we have, that just isn’t identified through the traditional methods, we can send it off to a private lab, get it converted to a different type of file, and then use that file in some open genealogy databases, and then we kind of do the work of building trees and looking for that offender in and among those relatives,” Smallwood said. 

One of the private labs that can be used for that is Othram, the company that sponsored the free forensic training at the Hamilton County Coroner’s office. With 14 genealogists on staff, Othram specializes in using DNA to build family trees. 

“They want to get to an investigative lead that gives the detective or the investigator, coroner’s office, medical examiner, and say this is who we think it is, or these few people we think this person might be in the family tree,” Saunders said. “It’s up to the detectives and the investigators to determine through confirmation testing, through getting samples of the DNA, whether that’s through a search warrant or surreptitiously, to determine is that person the person who was identified through this process.”

Saunders joined Othram after retiring from CPD because he says he was inspired by the work the company does. He has seen them solve homicides dating back to the 1980s, identify Jane and John Does and help track down suspects in sexual assaults. 

Othram was involved with two cases that have local ties. Company genealogists helped Boone County investigators identify the person who raped and murdered Carol Sue Klaber in Boone County in 1976 as Thomas Dunaway. 

They also helped Las Vegas police ID a Jane Doe who was found there in 1979 as Gwenn Marie Story from Cincinnati. 

Smallwood says Cincinnati Police investigators have been using forensic genetic genealogy to solve cases too. 

“Serial rape investigations that had kind of always haunted our unit,” he said. “The original investigators did a tremendous amount of legwork, sent things up for DNA, and we had profiles of the offenders, but those guys had never gotten in trouble for anything else. They were very good at what they did and stayed out of trouble.”

DNA evidence, coupled with ancestry websites, led police to believe Stoney Brown was responsible for multiple rapes in the 1990s. On a search warrant, they took Brown’s DNA from his trash, confirmed it was a match to the crimes and arrested him in 2020. 

He is now in prison for sexually assaulting four women, three of whom were University of Cincinnati students at the time of the rapes. 

Forensic genetic genealogy also led to police and prosecutors putting William Blankenship behind bars, a man who terrorized women for three decades. DNA connected him to three home invasion sexual assaults that happened in the Mt. Washington area in the early 2000s and another string of rapes reported in Northern Kentucky beginning in 1987. 

“It shows kind of what you can do when state, local and federal agencies kind of work together,” Smallwood said.

In 2023, it helped with a homicide, when CPD detectives made an arrest in the 2003 murder of Herman Brown. Using DNA found on cigarettes at the scene, genealogy helped them narrow in on Robert Stewart as the suspect. 

Stewart is currently sitting in jail, awaiting trial. 

It is because of those success stories that both Smallwood and Saunders are encouraging investigators who have not learned about forensic genetic genealogy to undergo training. 

“It’s so important that we get more people on board with this and get people to understand that this is a new tool for your tool belt that you can use to get closure on not only cold cases, but also current cases,” Smallwood said.