A Northern Ontario man was convicted this week of murdering two women 40 years ago, after police tracked him down with a new investigative technique that uses crime-scene DNA to close in on suspects by mapping their family trees.

The man, 62-year-old Joseph Sutherland of Moosonee, Ontario, confessed after investigators demanded a sample of his blood for genetic testing, newly released court documents show.

Mr. Sutherland pleaded guilty on Thursday to the 1983 sexual assaults and killings of the two Toronto women, Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour. He was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder and will serve a life sentence, with no possibility of parole for 10 years.

Police arrived on Mr. Sutherland’s doorstep this past November after decades of stalled progress in their investigation of the deaths. They had used a technique known as investigative genetic genealogy to determine that DNA evidence left at the crime scenes by the killer had to belong either to Mr. Sutherland or one of his brothers.

Ms. Tice, a 45-year-old mother of four, had only recently moved to Toronto when she died. She was attacked inside her home on Aug. 16, 1983. Mr. Sutherland stabbed her 13 times, according to an agreed statement of facts filed with the Ontario Superior Court.

About four months later, the 22-year-old Ms. Gilmour, whose father was Barrick Gold co-founder David Gilmour, was alone in her second-floor Toronto apartment when Mr. Sutherland broke in, bound her hands and mouth and stabbed her twice in the chest, the statement says.

His biological material was recovered from Ms. Tice and Ms. Gilmour’s bodies, but police had no way of using it to determine his identity until recently.

By the early 2000s, police had access to some DNA analytical techniques. But an analysis at that time revealed only that the two women had been killed by the same man.

The investigation stalled until police gained access to genetic genealogy. The technique involves searching databases of genetic information controlled by private corporations. These businesses build their databases by encouraging individual customers of consumer genetic testing companies, such as Ancestry.com and 23andMe, to hand over their genealogical profiles for potential use in law enforcement searches.

By comparing crime-scene DNA to the genetic profiles in these databases, authorities can find people who may be relatives of the criminals they are seeking. This can help them make powerful deductions about the identities of suspects, even in cases from long ago.

In Mr. Sutherland’s case, the agreed statement of facts notes that Toronto Police started using genetic genealogy in 2021, and turned up five brothers whom they identified as potential suspects.

“A police investigation resulted in the elimination of four out of the five Sutherland brothers as the source of the crime scene DNA,” the agreed statement says. (It does not detail how the technology picked up on the Sutherland family, nor how police concluded Joseph was the guilty brother.)

Although critics fear genetic genealogy may erode privacy, police are embracing the technique as an investigative tool.

You can read more in an article by Colin Freeze published in The Globe and Mail web site at: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-guilty-plea-in-two-40-year-old-murders-hinged-on-genetic-genealogy/. 

The new “Friends of Folkways” program allows listeners full access to the online catalog, beginning at $5 a month.

Smithsonian Folkways has launched a new program, dubbed “Friends of Folkways,” whereby fans can choose to donate to the nonprofit label in monthly increments as low as $5. In return, donors will have unlimited access to its full digital catalog—an archive of more than 60,000 recordings that includes Folkways titles, as well as those released on Arhoolie, Paredon, and others. According to a press release, the money raised from the program will be used to support the label and pay out artist royalties. Find more information here.

Moses Asch and Marian Distler founded Folkways in 1948, and the Smithsonian absorbed it in 1987 after Asch’s death. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the original label, which the institution has so far celebrated with reissues and new merchandise. Among these efforts is Matmos’ Return to Archive, arriving in November, which the duo made from Smithsonian Folkways’ non-musical collections of sounds from the animal world, the office, and everyday life.

Genetic profiling service 23andMe has commenced an investigation after private user data was scraped off its website

Friday’s confirmation comes five days after an unknown entity took to an online crime forum to advertise the sale of private information for millions of 23andMe users. The forum posts claimed that the stolen data included origin estimation, phenotype, health information, photos, and identification data. The posts claimed that 23andMe’s CEO was aware the company had been “hacked” two months earlier and never revealed the incident. In a statement emailed after this post went live, a 23andMe representative said that "nothing they have posted publicly indicates they actually have any 'health information.' These are all unsubstantiated claims at this point."

23andMe officials on Friday confirmed that private data for some of its users is, in fact, up for sale. The cause of the leak, the officials said, is data scraping, a technique that essentially reassembles large amounts of data by systematically extracting smaller amounts of information available to individual users of a service. Attackers gained unauthorized access to the individual 23andMe accounts, all of which had been configured by the user to opt in to a DNA relative feature that allows them to find potential relatives.

In a statement, the officials wrote:

We do not have any indication at this time that there has been a data security incident within our systems. Rather, the preliminary results of this investigation suggest that the login credentials used in these access attempts may have been gathered by a threat actor from data leaked during incidents involving other online platforms where users have recycled login credentials.

We believe that the threat actor may have then, in violation of our terms of service, accessed 23andme.com accounts without authorization and obtained information from those accounts. We are taking this issue seriously and will continue our investigation to confirm these preliminary results.

You can read more in an article by Dan Goodin published in the arstechnica web site at: https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/10/private-23andme-user-data-is-up-for-sale-after-online-scraping-spree/ 

The State Historical Society of Missouri received the Excellence in Genealogy & Local History Award at the Missouri Library Association Annual Conference held Oct. 4-6 in Columbia.

The award recognizes the State Historical Society’s efforts to provide free public access to more than 9.5 million pages of digitized online Missouri newspapers.

“The Missouri Digital Newspaper Project allows patrons to search online rather than doing more tedious research on microfilm. It saves a great deal of time,” according to Patsy Luebbert, who manages the project for the State Historical Society. Luebbert said the collection helps researchers learn more about the day-to-day lives of Missourians and the political, cultural, and economic events that have influenced Missouri small towns and its largest cities.

Missouri was one of the first states to begin digitizing historic newspapers through Chronicling America, a joint project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. Since 2008, SHSMO has been digitizing newspapers from every Missouri county, and the Society continues to make millions of additional pages available online.

The State Historical Society of Missouri provides the public with access to the largest collection of Missouri newspapers. The collection and preservation of Missouri newspapers has been one of the State Historical Society’s primary missions since its founding in 1898.

Today SHSMO is nearing 60,000 reels of microfilmed newspapers, and its collection ranges from the first newspaper printed west of the Mississippi in 1808 to over 240 active titles.

Support from the Missouri State Library’s LSTA grants and other donations to the project allowed SHSMO to continue to build a word searchable online resource. Due to increased demand for additional titles, SHSMO entered into an agreement with Newspapers.com to digitize eligible newspapers and improve access for researchers, whether they are working on genealogy, local history, or scholarly material.

To learn more about the Missouri Digital Newspaper Project, visit shsmo.org.

The following is a press release issued by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine:

The U.S. Census Bureau’s ability to adjust its approaches and innovate enabled it to complete the 2020 census despite the difficulties raised by the COVID pandemic and other challenges, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The report reviews the 2020 census and the quality of data collected and makes recommendations for the 2030 census.  

“The 2020 census was completed under exceptionally difficult circumstances, and many of its innovations were successful, including self-response via the internet,” said Teresa Sullivan, chair of the panel that wrote the report, and university professor of sociology and president emerita of the University of Virginia.  

Other key innovations included the reengineering of field management and case handling systems, and minor use of administrative records data — such as data collected as part of government tax programs or from the previous census — to enumerate some nonresponding households.  

However, the report also identifies several problems, including a widening gap in census coverage and data quality between different racial and ethnic groups compared to the 2010 census. In the 2020 census, net overcounts increased for White and Asian people, while net undercounts increased substantially for Hispanic people, Black people, and American Indians on reservations. These differentials in counting have adverse implications for use of the census data to equitably allocate fixed resources, such as Congressional representation, funding, and services.  

The report examines “age heaping” — unusually high levels of reporting of ages ending in 0 or 5, as occurs when roughly estimating a person’s age — as a key indicator of data quality issues. The report concludes that this age heaping was particularly pronounced in 2020 relative to the 2010 census and was largely a function of proxy reporting of census information for nonresponding households, such as from a neighbor or landlord. 

The Census Bureau’s decision to use a new and untested approach to protecting the confidentiality of census data heightened concerns regarding data quality. In the very late stages of 2020 census planning, the Census Bureau decided to replace its methods for confidentiality protection with an entirely new approach that had not been tested, prototyped, or deployed in the population census context.  

While confidentiality protection is a critically important responsibility of a statistical agency, the report says, this decision was made without appropriate consideration regarding the utility of resulting census data products to fulfill the many important functions of census data. The new methods for confidentiality protection were not ready for use in 2020 census production and substantially degraded the value of the 2020 census data products in terms of timeliness and quality. 

Looking Forward to the 2030 Census

The report recommends that as the Census Bureau plans for the 2030 census, it should focus on a small and manageable number of major innovation areas and pursue a rigorous program of testing and systems development. The report suggests the following as priority goals for research and development: 

Goals and designs for the 2030 census should be developed in true partnership with census data users and the community of myriad stakeholders and state, local, tribal, and federal government partners, the report says.  

The study — undertaken by the Panel to Evaluate the Quality of the 2020 Census — was sponsored by the U.S. Census Bureau. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, engineering, and medicine. They operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln.  

An article by Patty Taylor published in the beaumontenterprise web site contains lots of helpful hints for anyone planning to attend the RootsTech conference from February 29 through March 2. It includes hints for those planning to attend in-person as well as those attending remotely on-line.

Check it out at: https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/entertainment/article/everything-need-know-attending-rootstech-18412561.php.

A cache of mysterious Kodachrome slides found abandoned on a Mission District street corner are going to the San Francisco Public Library’s History Center — where they’ll join collections including Harvey Milk’s papers and the San Francisco Call-Bulletin photo morgue. 

More than 900 slides were found in 2020 by Donnie Weaver, a San Francisco artist and preschool teacher, who lent them to photo collector David Gallagher to scan. Gallagher began sleuthing to learn the identity of the photographer — contacting the Chronicle for help — before a story was published and the photographer’s family came forward. 

The photographer was identified as James Martin, a San Francisco Unified School District educator who took photos of San Francisco scenes as a hobby and used them for educational presentations. Martin died in 2019. The find made national news, including a story on NBC News with Lester Holt.

San Francisco History Center photo curator Christina Moretta said the gift was made jointly by Weaver, Gallagher and the Martin family, who want the images to be accessible to the public. 

Moretta said this collection is unique because it’s in color — most of the library’s 1960s images are black-and-white. 

You can read more in an article by Peter Hartlaub published in the San Francisco Chronicle web site at: https://www.sfchronicle.com/vault/article/san-francisco-mystery-photos-library-18409395.php. 

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Take it. You are free to copy my words from any Standard Edition article to any non-commercial web site or message board or printed publication you wish. Don’t bother to ask permission, just do it.

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I do ask that you credit this newsletter as the source of the words. I think it would be nice if you mentioned both my name and the newsletter’s web site: http://www.eogn.com. Copying articles from any web site or printed publication without crediting the original author(s) might be illegal and always is in poor taste. Don’t do it.

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You may not republish any articles containing words attributed to another person or organization until you obtain permission from that person or organization. While you do have permission to republish words written by Richard W. Eastman, you do not have automatic authority to republish words written by others, even if their words appear in this newsletter.

You may republish OCCASIONAL articles. Republishing two or three articles per month is acceptable. Wholesale copying and republishing of dozens of articles per month is never allowed for any purpose without advance permission.

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Anyone complying with the above does not need to ask permission in advance for non-commercial uses. Just do it.

Thank you for your cooperation.

 - Dick Eastman

The first virtual civil rights museum in Florida launched earlier this month. It features civil rights leaders from the early 1900s all the way into the early 60s.

Two Tallahassee natives, Jackie Perkins and Delaitre Hollinger, created the virtual museum. It tells the stories of what the founders call "pioneers" in both education and civil rights. Perkins says the museum includes individuals from all walks of life regardless of race, color or religion.

“It’s huge and it feels really good that were finally at this point," Perkins says. "Where other people are able to use this virtual platform to get information on individuals, especially our educational and civil rights pioneers who are local, those who are in the state of Florida, those who’s body of work, contribution, and bold courageous actions resulted in transformational change for a lot of people and not just black people.”

An exhibit called “They made a difference”features more than 30 people who led the charge for civil rights in Florida. 

You can visit it at this link: Home — Florida Civil Rights Museum, Inc.℠

Georgia Public Library Service has completed a two year-long project to digitize 214 city directories, which document 17 different Georgia communities across nearly 100 years. The directories, contributed by 12 public library systems, are now full-text searchable and freely available in the Digital Library of Georgia.

“Georgia Public Library Service is pleased to support digitizing primary source materials that document community history and culture like these city directories,” said Josh Kitchens, director of Archival Services and Digital Initiatives. “Digitization is important as it enables materials to be more widely accessible for everyone who wants to learn more about their family or community.”

City directories will prove invaluable sources of genealogical, cultural, and historical information for communities all over Georgia. In addition to basic location information, city directories frequently provide local governmental and civic information, street maps, church and cemetery information, and historical details about the city and surrounding areas. Information about individuals typically includes the resident’s name, title or salutation, home address, marital status and spouse’s name, race, occupation, and, if applicable, information about business ownership. When used in tandem with digitized Sanborn maps, city directories can mimic the experience of a stroll down Main Street to see the names of businesses and neighbors.

This digitization project is a partnership between Georgia Public Library Service, the Digital Library of Georgia, and public library systems across the state. The 17 communities included in this project are Moultrie, Swainsboro, Statesboro, Camilla, Brunswick, Austell, Mableton, Marietta, Acworth, Smyrna, Macon, Covington, Columbus, Bainbridge, Americus, Cordele, and Albany. Additional city directories digitized previously through GPLS include Albany (1922-1949), Athens(1889-1958), Atlanta (1867-1922), Columbus (1859-1912), Dalton (1940-1963), Griffin (1940-1963), and Macon (1860-1899).

Columbus, GA 1928

“We hope the digitization of these city directories encourages others to share their local and family histories, so that it can be celebrated for years to come,” said Catherine Vanstone, assistant director for management information systems at Southwest Georgia Regional Library.

Georgia Public Library Service’s Archival Services and Digital Initiatives has facilitated the addition of over 700,000 unique items to the Digital Library of Georgia allowing free, online access to primary sources on local history. This project is supported with federal Library Services and Technology Act funds administered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through GPLS.

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Georgia Public Library Service (GPLS) empowers libraries to improve the lives of all Georgians by encouraging reading, literacy, and education through the continuing support and improvement of public libraries. Our digitization initiative, Archival Services and Digital Initiatives, encourages public libraries and related institutions across Georgia to participate in The Digital Library of Georgia, which is an initiative of GALILEO. www.georgialibraries.org

Based at the University of Georgia Libraries, the Digital Library of Georgia http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/ is a GALILEO initiative that collaborates with Georgia’s libraries, archives, museums and other institutions of education and culture to provide access to key information resources on Georgia history, culture and life. This primary mission is accomplished through the ongoing development, maintenance, and preservation of digital collections and online digital library resources. DLG also serves as Georgia’s service hub for the Digital Public Library of America and as the home of the Georgia Newspaper Project, the state’s historic newspaper microfilming project.