A man has been arrested in the 1993 rape and murder of his 19-year-old neighbor in Indiana after he was linked to the case through genetic genealogy, authorities said.

On March 24, 1993, Carmen Van Huss' father went to her Indianapolis apartment to check on her after she didn't show up for work. He found his daughter dead on the floor, according to the probable cause affidavit.

She was naked and had multiple puncture wounds to her head, face and body, the document said.

PHOTO: An undated photo of Carmen Van Huss who was killed in Indianapolis in 1993 was released by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. (Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department)

"There were obvious signs of a struggle, including a knocked over table, clothing thrown on the floor, a large pooling of blood near the victim’s head, and blood spatter around the victim’s body," the probable cause affidavit said.

A resident in the apartment directly below Van Huss told police that, in the early hours of March 23, he heard screams, crying, slamming, banging and "noises and voices of a male arguing that lasted approximately 30 minutes," the probable cause affidavit said.

In the years that followed, police said they interviewed dozens of people and followed up on hundreds of leads. But the case went cold.

In 2013, the unknown suspect's DNA was uploaded to CODIS -- the nationwide law enforcement DNA database -- but there wasn't a match, according to the probable cause affidavit.

Then, in 2018, police said they submitted a DNA sample from the crime scene to Parabon NanoLabs to try to solve the case with forensic genetic genealogy -- a new investigative tool that takes unknown DNA and identifies it by comparing it to family members who voluntarily submitted their DNA samples to a database.

In 2023, police said "various investigative methods and lead information from the genetic genealogy analysis" led to a suspect's name: Dana Shepherd.

Police determined Shepherd was Van Huss' neighbor in 1993. Their apartment buildings were connected internally by a shared common area, according to the probable cause affidavit.

In February, police were granted a warrant to obtain DNA from Shepherd, who was now living in Missouri and working at the University of Missouri, the probable cause affidavit said.

When police showed Shepherd the warrant, he "was visibly shaking," the document said.

In June, testing determined that Shepherd’s DNA matched the DNA on Van Huss' body and at the crime scene, police said.

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Shepherd, 52, was arrested in Missouri last week on charges of murder, felony murder and rape, police said. He has not yet been extradited to Indiana, police said.

The following is a press release issued by the (U.S.) National Archives and Records Administration:

To celebrate Constitution Day (September 17), the National Archives is hosting a naturalization ceremony at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, September 17. The ceremony, held in the historic National Archives Rotunda, will see 25 people sworn in as new U.S. citizens in front of the Constitution and our nation’s other founding documents. Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan and special guest Gary Vaynerchuk, known as “GaryVee,” will provide remarks.

The press is invited to cover the ceremony. Accredited media representatives should use the Constitution Avenue special events entrance, at 7th Street, NW, and set up by 9:45 a.m., as the ceremony begins promptly at 10 a.m. RSVP by September 13, to public.affairs@nara.gov.

This year’s Constitution Day marks the 237th anniversary of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Learn more online about the U.S. Constitution through our public programs, family activities, and online resources.

The September 17 ceremony will be hosted by Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan.

“It is an honor to naturalize new citizens at the home of the United States’ founding documents,” said Dr. Shogan. “The National Archives serves as a resource for people to learn about our country, and therefore themselves. The naturalization papers from this ceremony will eventually become a part of our holdings. Welcoming these citizens into our nation adds their rich stories to our shared history.”

The Honorable Judge Randolph D. Moss, District Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, will preside as the petitioners take the oath of citizenship. 

Gary Vaynerchuk and his family immigrated to the United States from Belarus in 1978. Known as “GaryVee,” he is a serial entrepreneur and serves as the Chairman of VaynerX,  the CEO of VaynerMedia, and the Creator & CEO of VeeFriends. He is considered one of the leading global minds on what’s next in culture, relevance, and the internet.

This program is presented in partnership with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The use of flash and additional lights is prohibited in the Rotunda.

On Sunday, the Johnson County Coroner’s Office (JCCO) said human remains that were found in Indiana in 1993 were identified as South Carolina native Michael Benjamin Davis.

JCCO says Davis’s remains, which were found near I-65 (what is now Otte Golf Course) in Greenwood, Indiana, were identified following months of DNA and genealogy work.

“This case had remained cold with no leads until our Coroner’s Office revisited it using updated DNA and genealogy procedures. Significant progress was made with the help of the Greenwood Police Department, The University of Indianapolis, and the Othram Forensic DNA Testing Laboratory.” JCCO said.

The office says after months of emails, phone calls, and assistance from other law enforcement agencies across the U.S. and Canada, they were able to locate potential family members who received DNA kits.

“The field was narrowed, and positive DNA results and genealogy tracking located immediate family members who reported losing track of their family member in the late 1980s,” said JCCO.

According to JCCO, although the case has long been suspected of having been a homicide, the cause and manner of death have been ruled undetermined unless more information is discovered.

The family will be going to Indiana to claim the remains of Davis, who was born in Richland County, South Carolina, according to JCCO. 

JCCO says Davis would have been in his mid-20s at the time of his death.

After Tennessee passed the ELVIS Act this past winter to protect an artist’s name, image and likeness from being used by digital replicas, other states are considering similar legislation.

While many states were focused this past legislative session on creating regulatory frameworks or guardrails around the development and use of artificial intelligence, Tennessee had a different focus when it passed the ELVIS Act in February. 

The first-in-the-nation law, which prohibits people from using AI to mimic a person’s voice without their permission, was aimed at protecting one of the Volunteer State’s biggest industries.

The music industry, Tennessee estimates, supports more than 60,000 jobs and contributes $5.8 billion to its gross domestic product. Given the importance of music to the state’s identity and economy, state leaders argued that it made sense to protect that sector first.

“While we support the responsible advancement of this technology, we must ensure we do not threaten the future livelihood of an entire industry,” House Majority Leader William Lamberth said at the bill signing ceremony. “This legislation is an important step in maintaining public trust and advancing ongoing efforts to protect and inform Tennessee consumers.” 

You can read more in an article by Chris Teale, published in the route-fifty web site at: https://shorturl.at/e3DJk.

The following is an announcement written by TheGenealogist: 

TheGenealogist is excited to announce the release of nearly 300,000 historic landowner records. The new additions consist of Feet of Fines, Index of Sasines, and the Scotland Record Office Index to Register of Deeds, offering a wealth of information for those delving into their ancestry.

Feet of Fines: These documents provide insights into land transactions, usually involving the transfer of property rights, and were commonly used in English legal proceedings from the 13th century onwards. The Feet of Fines contains detailed information about the parties involved in the transactions, property descriptions, and the dates of agreements, serving as a vital resource for researchers tracing their family land ownership or exploring the economic history of a region.

Index of Sasines: The release of the Index of Sasines marks a significant addition to TheGenealogist's Scottish records. Sasines are legal documents that confirm the possession of land and property, reflecting the transfer of ownership in Scotland from the 16th century onwards. This index allows users to quickly locate and access critical details surrounding property ownership, making it an essential tool for genealogists looking to understand their ancestral ties to land in Scotland.

Scotland Record Office Index to Register of Deeds: This comprehensive index opens the door to a vast array of legal documents relating to property and inheritance in Scotland. By providing easy access to this substantial resource, TheGenealogist allows users to uncover their family histories and gain a deeper understanding of the social and legal contexts in which their ancestors lived.

These new records are now available on TheGenealogist, providing an unparalleled opportunity for researchers to deepen their exploration of family histories and connect with their pasts.

In this release are: Berwick, Index to Register of Sasines Volume I. A-H 1617-1780; London and Middlesex, A Calendar to the Feet of Fines 1179 - 1485; Yorkshire Feet of Fines 1327-1614; Huntingdon Calendar of the Feet of Fines 1194-1603; Scotland, Index to Particular Register of Sasines for Sheriffdom of Dumfries and Stewaertries of Kirkcudbright and Annandale 1617 - 1732; 

Scotland Record Office, Index to Register of Deeds, 1661 - 1679

Read the feature article ‘The Scottish Rebel Who Defied the Crown: Andrew Fletcher's Fight for Independence’ at TheGenealogist here:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2024/the-scottish-rebel-who-defied-the-crown-7584/

To celebrate this release you can Save Over £50 on our Diamond Package here: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/basket/?discount_code=MGBLWR824

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections. 

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

####

The following Plus Edition article is written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

What does a library look like anymore? 

When Egyptian King Ptolemy I built the Library of Alexandria nearly 2,300 years ago, the great library became the intellectual center of the ancient world. Ptolemy hoped to gather as much human knowledge as possible. Even ships anchored in the port were impounded until all the manuscripts they contained could be copied. World leaders lent their scrolls for duplication, and library officials traveled far and wide to purchase entire collections. Meanwhile, dutiful scribes hand-copied the library's awesome collection, which eventually grew to as many as 700,000 scrolls.

NOTE: Books with bindings and covers had not yet been invented. 2,300 years ago, “books” were available only as long scrolls of parchment. 

Brewster Kahle is a modern-day Ptolemy: he wants to ensure universal access to all human knowledge. And now he thinks that goal is within our grasp. In fact, his web site, called The Internet Archive, has already stored billions of web pages. Yes, that's BILLIONS of web pages. However, this online archive has a lot more than just web pages. It serves as an online library, the largest such library in the world. It also has 20 million books and texts, 4.5 million audio recordings (including 180,000 live concerts), 4 million videos (including 1.6 million Television News programs), 3 million images and 200,000 software programs, all available at no charge to you. In fact, this online library gets more visitors in a year than most other libraries do in a lifetime. 

Kahle is no stranger to the Internet. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982. He studied artificial intelligence with Marvin Minsky and W. Daniel Hillis. In 1983, he helped start Thinking Machines, serving six years as a lead engineer for the parallel supercomputer maker. In the late 1980s, he pioneered the Internet's first publishing system, known as WAIS (Wide Area Information Server), which was sold to AOL in 1995. He then co-founded Alexa Internet, which was sold to Amazon.com in 1999. 

The Internet Archive is Kahle's most ambitious project. He founded it in 1996 as a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, California. It started as a few servers running in Kahle's attic. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Today the Internet Archive includes texts (including complete books), audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in its collections. It also provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities. 

The Internet Archive now includes several divisions: The Wayback Machine, Open Library, Audio Archive, and more. The web site proudly proclaims, “Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge.” Web pages are normally found at http://www.archive.org while books and many other materials are found athttp://www.OpenLibrary.org. Both of those addresses link to different parts of the Internet Archive. 

Brewster Kahle latest organization is working on digitizing and storing the entire World Wide Web and making what has been digitized so far freely accessible at http://www.archive.org. If a bit of genealogy information was published on the web in the past but has since disappeared, there is an excellent chance that you can find an old copy of the information on Archive.org. Six hundred thousand people use the Internet Archive every day, conducting two thousand searches a second. 

The Internet Archive is physically located at 500 Funston Avenue in San Francisco. It looks like a Greek Revival temple. There is a good reason for the similarity: it was built in 1923 by the Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist, and remained a church until Brewster Kahle bought the building. He wanted to move the Internet Archive out of his attic and into a much larger facility that could hold rows and rows of servers and disk arrays containing petabytes of data. 

Brewster Kahle also is working on making all the stored material available in many different places. The information is available on desktop computers, laptops, tablets, eBook readers, cell phones, and most anyplace else there is a demand. Many libraries around the world also have “print on demand” printers that will download a book from The Internet Archive/Open Library, print it, bind it, and make it available to a patron whenever requested. These books are actual digital images of the original books.

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/13401000 (A Plus Edition password is required to access that article.)

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077. 

The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. Please do not forward this article to others without the author’s permission.

NOTE #1: 

This is part #2 of a 2-part article.

Last week's article introduced the concept of Boolean search terms for use on Google. That article is still available at https://eogn.com/page-18080/13400854. You might want to read that article again now to refresh it in your mind before proceeding with new topics. This week I will describe several advanced topics.

Quotation Marks
Last week's article described the use of the Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT (minus sign), and the concept of placing terms inside parenthesis. These search terms work well for single words, but you may find you need to include multiple words or phrases. For instance, you might be searching for an ancestor with an unusual name but perhaps not as unusual as you first thought. Perhaps there were two or more men of the same name who lived in different places at different times. For instance, as mentioned in last week’s article, I frequently search for the name of Washington Harvey Eastman. I have found two men of the same name. If one of them has many online references and the other has only a few, finding the person with fewer references can be problematic.
Let's make a hypothetical assumption: two men of the same name are listed in Google's indexes. We will assume that one man lived in Maine and is rarely mentioned on Google while the other lived in North Carolina and has dozens, perhaps hundreds, of references on the search engine. Of course, I am interested in the rarely-mentioned man, the one in Maine. I might be tempted to specify the following search:
Washington Harvey Eastman -North Carolina
Notice the minus sign in the above search, signifying NOT.
The above search will not accomplish what I want. Keep in mind that, unless specified otherwise, Google parses the search terms, one word at a time. The above search says to look for all pages that have the words Washington, Harvey, Eastman, and Carolina on the page but NOT the word North. The reason here is that the only word immediately following the minus sign is the word North. Every other word in this string – including Carolina – is taken as a word to search for. This is not going to work. The better solution is to eliminate both the word North and the word Carolina. Your better solution is to specify:
Washington Harvey Eastman -North -Carolina
The above will indeed eliminate any references to North Carolina found on a web page; but, it also eliminates any references to the single word North as well as eliminates any references to Carolina. It might even eliminate references you want, such as a reference to Washington Harvey Eastman and his wife Carolina Eastman who lived in North Bangor. In other words, the above search term is still too broad to accomplish what you seek.
In fact, this example needs to eliminate a phrase, not individual words. You specify phrases by enclosing them in quotation marks. The better method is to specify a search of:
Washington Harvey Eastman -“North Carolina”
This eliminates the phrase of North Carolina but does not block access to pages containing references to South Carolina or to a woman's name of Carolina or to any reference to the word North. Again, the dash, or minus sign, is immediately preceding the word(s) I do not want to search for with no space after the dash.
Of course, you can combine quotation marks and other Boolean search terms, such as parentheses. Let's use a new example. Perhaps I want to find information about a man named William or John Smith who lived in Denver, Colorado. One method of specifying the search is:
"John Smith" OR “William Smith” AND "Denver, Colorado" 

Even though I have capitalized the proper names here, capital letters are not necessary. This example will work the same with the word AND omitted. However, we can refine it still more. Since the search looks for the exact string of characters that is enclosed in quotes, this search specifies that the state name of Colorado must be spelled out, not abbreviated, and there must be a comma immediately after the word, Denver. The search terms are correct technically but may not accomplish what you wish.
A better approach is to specify a search of:
(john OR william) AND smith AND denver AND (colorado OR co)
This will find all the commonly-used variations, including: 

John Smith of Denver, CO
John Smith in Denver, Colorado
William Smith Colorado Mining Company in Denver, Texas

Of course, even more complex variations may be specified, such as:
“John Smith” OR “William Smith” NOT Denver NOT (Colorado OR CO)
The above will find references to either of the two men's names as long as Denver and either Colorado, or CO are not mentioned on the web page.
Wildcard searches (*)
The asterisk (*), or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown word(s) and then find the best matches. For example, the following search will find variations of my mystery ancestor:
Washington * Eastman

The above will find Washington Harvey Eastman, Washington Eastman, Washington H. Eastman, as well as Washington Williams Eastman 
I am not looking for that last example but Google doesn't know that. Google searches for whatever I specify, not what I am thinking.

Note #3: the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.

Note #4: Using an asterisk between numbers may not work the way you expected. If the asterisk is between two numbers, it is interpreted as a mathematical symbol for “multiplied by.” A search of:
32 * 65 Will return “2080”

Search exactly as is (+)
Google employs synonyms automatically so that it finds more pages than you want. For instance, a search for the word genealogy also finds pages that specify “family history.” Sometimes this is a bit too much help. By attaching a + immediately before a word (remember, don't add a space after the +), you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it. Putting double quotes around a phrase after the + sign will do the same thing. For instance:
+genealogy
or
+”family history”

Non-Boolean Considerations
Punctuation
Generally, punctuation is ignored.
Special Characters
Special characters are generally ignored, including @#$%^&*()=+[]\ and other special characters. 


Search within a specific website (site)
Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For example, to search for past articles about MacFamilyTree software on the www.eogn.com web site, specify a search of:
site:eogn.com Macintosh
http://www.google.com/advanced_search

The above search specifies to search only the eogn.com web site for the specified search terms.

NOTE #4: The prefix of the web site should not be specified unless you wish to narrow the search to only a subset of the site. Generally speaking, do not specify www or similar letters before the site address of eogn.com unless you have a specific reason for doing so.

NOTE #5: You should not enter a space after the colon.

Advanced Search, the user friendly method of searching for information

Many of the above tips have been captured in a “fill in the blanks” menu to be found at Google Advanced Search:. 

Most of the search terms mentioned in this article are included in the Advanced Search menu. There are a few exceptions, however. Even more help information can be found by going to the Advanced Search Tips. 

Google used to have a link to Advanced Search displayed on its home page. However, that link was removed some time ago. So, how would you find Google’s Advanced Search? Yes, that’s right: search for it in Google!

Enter the following:
Google Advanced Search
That should show you a link to: https://www.google.com/advanced_search
The Google Advanced Search page displays a user-friendly method of performing all the items I have described previously, along with even more. For instance:
"Find pages with... all these words:" works exactly the same as AND that was described earlier.
"Find pages with... this exact word or phrase:" works exactly the same as the quote marks explained earlier.
"Find pages with... none of these words:" works exactly the same as the minus sign explained earlier.
"Find pages with... site or domain:" works exactly the same as searching within a specific website as explained earlier.
You can find numerous other capabilities as well in the Google Advanced Search page. You do not have to memorize cryptic commands!
Finally, take a look in the lower left corner of the Google Advanced Search page. To find even more commands
Yes, there are even more options available!
The best way to learn Google’s powerful search capabilities is to dive in and experiment. Try one thing. If that doesn’t work, try another. If that also does not work, try a third, fourth, fifth variation or even more. You cannot break anything so just experiment with all the options you can think of.
Google is your friend
Google is a very powerful tool, useful for finding genealogy information as well as for a myriad of other uses. By investing a bit of time now to learn a few of Google's capabilities, you will receive “paybacks” of more information found about the topics you seek and fewer false hits to wade through. All of this and much more is available at your fingertips at http://www.google.com

During the remodeling of John McIntire Library, MCCOGS Genealogy Library will move to the Ohio University Zanesville Library in Herrold Hall.

The last day the Genealogy Library will be open is Saturday, September 14.

We can not take all of our collection because of the space available to us. So we will be focusing on the materials that apply to Muskingum County, including the yearbooks, and family histories.

We do not have a date set for reopening at OUZ. Once we unpack, we will need some time for the volunteers to familiarize themselves with the new location. We will announce on Facebook, local media, etc.

The Genealogical Society is having a book sale during their normal hours of operation that will consist of duplicate materials and historical literature that has less to do with local genealogy.

Thank you for your patience during this time.

Studies that try to replicate the findings of published research are hard to come by: it can be difficult to find funders to support them and journals to publish them. And when these papers do get published, it’s not easy to locate them, because they are rarely linked to the original studies.

A database described in a preprint posted in April1 aims to address these issues by hosting replication studies from the social sciences and making them more traceable and discoverable. It was launched as part of the Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training (FORRT), a community-driven initiative that teaches principles of open science and reproducibility to researchers.

The initiative follows other efforts to improve the accessibility of replication work in science, such as the Institute for Replication, which hosts a database listing studies published in selected economics and politics journals that academics can choose to replicate.

The team behind the FORRT database hopes that it will draw more attention to replication studies, which it argues is a fundamental part of science. The database can be accessed through the web application Shiny, and will soon be available on the FORRT website.

Nature Index spoke to one of the project’s leaders, Lukas Röseler, a metascience researcher and director of the University of Münster’s Center for Open Science in Germany.

Why did you create this database?

We’re trying to make it easier for researchers to make their replication attempts public, because it’s often difficult to publish them, regardless of their outcome.

We also wanted to make it easier to track replication studies. If you’re building on previous research and want to check whether replication studies have already been done, it’s often difficult to find them, partly because journals tend to not link them to the original work.

We started out with psychology, which has been hit hard by the replication crisis, and have branched out to studies in judgement and decision-making, marketing and medicine. We are now looking into other fields to understand how their researchers conduct replication studies and what replication means in those contexts.

Who might want to use the database?

A mentor of mine wrote a textbook on social psychology and said that he had no easy way of screening his 50 pages of references for replication attempts. Now, he can enter his references into our database and check which studies have been replicated.

The database can also be used to determine the effectiveness of certain procedures by tracking the replication history of studies. Nowadays, for instance, academics are expected to pre-register their studies — publishing their research design, hypotheses and analysis plans before conducting the study — and make their data freely available online. We would like to empirically see whether interventions such as these affect how likely a study is to be replicable.

You can read the rest of this article by Dalmeet Singh Chawla in an article published in nature at: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02598-w.

Thanks to our partner Edgecombe County Memorial Library, Magazine Club of Tarboro yearly programs dating from 1910 to 1984 are now online. The Magazine Club is a literary club in Tarboro and each year they created a program that showed their monthly meeting topics, who was hosting, and what they were going to discuss. It was a wonderful way to see the various cultural topics being discussed by women in eastern North Carolina throughout the 20th century. 

We also digitized two panoramas of Main Street in Tarboro, one of each side of the street, that were done in preparation for remodel work being done to the facades along the streets. 

To view more materials from our partner Edgecombe County Memorial Library, visit their partner page or their website here.