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GOLDEN, Colo. – For decades, the evidence in Jeannie Moore's murdersat in a storage vault at the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.
Leads fizzled out, one after the next. Investigators retired. A DNA sample, taken from the clothes the teenager was wearing when she was killed in 1981, was uploaded to a national criminal database, but no matches were found.
The investigation had gone almost nowhere until May of this year, when Elias Alberti, the lead cold case detective in the sheriff's office, posed an idea to his bosses.
What if the missing link in the investigation – the evidence that would connect the DNA sample on Moore's clothes to the suspect who killed her – was already out there?
What if it was sitting in a public database?
Over the summer, a murder investigation that had gone cold for nearly 38 years was solved in three months: The sheriff's office last week announced that Donald Perea, who died in 2012 at the age of 54, was identified as Moore's killer. She was last seen alive while hitchhiking to work in August 1981. Picnickers found her body five days later in Genesee Park.
"There's 456 months it's been working and literally the case was solved in 90 days, from start to finish," Alberti said. "Finding the suspect and closure in this case happened in weeks. That's how quickly these cases can be solved with this technology. And that's what makes it phenomenal."
Authorities connected Perea to Moore's murder through an emerging type of DNA testing known as genetic genealogy, in which investigators use databases on ancestry websites to identify relatives of a suspect.
Moore's case isn't the only one in Colorado that could benefit from the technology. In June, Colorado Springs police announced an arrest in the 1987 killing of Darlene Krashoc , a Fort Carson soldier. Detectives had investigated Krashoc's killing for years, conducting hundreds of interviews and even creating a composite image of a suspect through a DNA phenotype.
When the detectives submitted the DNA for genetic genealogy testing this year, police said the results pointed to Michael Whyte, a 58-year-old man living in Thornton. Whyte was arrested on a murder charge and his case is pending.
In Jefferson County, investigators are reviewing several other cases to learn if genetic genealogy testing could help, Alberti said. United Data Connect, the forensic DNA company that helped with the Moore case, is working with Metro Denver Crime Stoppers on six additional cases that could benefit from genetic genealogy, said Mitch Morrissey, the former Denver District Attorney who founded the company.
Morrissey said two of those cases "look really promising."
The technology of genetic genealogy is nothing new; genealogy databases and ancestry websites have been around for years, a wealth of knowledge for curious researchers trying to piece together their family tree. But it wasn't until about 18 months ago that investigators began using the databases to solve rapes and murders, in particular cases that had long gone cold.
The first heavily publicized case involving genetic genealogy testing was the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, the alleged Golden State Killer, who authorities say is believed to be linked to more than a dozen killings and at least 50 rapes in California dating back to the 1970s.
DeAngelo, a former police officer, was living in the Sacramento area when he was arrested in April 2018 . Investigators had plugged DNA from one of the decades-old crime scenes into a genealogy website and used a pool of DNA matches to build a family tree for the unknown suspect. When they narrowed their search to DeAngelo, they took a piece of his DNA from a tissue in the trash outside his home. The DNA matched the DNA found at the old crime scene.
Other cases of genetic genealogy testing have popped up over the last year, including the first conviction involving the use of the technology this summer. A Washington state jury found William Earl Talbott guilty in the killings of a Canadian couple in 1987.
A Colorado teen's murder was cold for 38 years. This cracked the case in weeks.
For decades, the evidence in Jeannie Moore's murder sat in a storage vault at the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. Then detectives to tried their luck with a genealogy website and traced the killer’s family tree to solve the case.
www.thedenverchannel.com