Last week, law enforcement officers in California arrested former cop Joseph James DeAngelo and charged him with committing a series of rapes and murders in California in the 1970s and 1980s known as the work of the “Golden State Killer.” The case has generated enormous attention beyond the public’s typical fascination with serial killers because of the unusual way the police caught DeAngelo: through his great-great-great-grandparents’ DNA.
DeAngelo isn’t the first alleged serial killer caught by his own family’s genetic code: In 2010, after a man was arrested on a weapons charge, his DNA profile was submitted to California’s criminal DNA database (which contains profiles of more than 2 million felons) and yielded a match to a family member who turned out to be his father—as well as a serial killer known as the “Grim Sleeper.”
