Status Updates From I Know Who You Are: How an ...

Perhaps we are only ever truly home when we stand on the land on which our ancestors roamed. As a genealogist, I had spent hours tracing my family roots all the way back to these ancestral lands, to the ancient hills and mountains and moors and deserts from which we all have sprung.

When you are deep into a genealogical search, it can be a completely immersive experience. Time disappears, appointments are forgotten. Even those genealogists just starting out fall into this trap and sit glued to their computers for hour after hour, skipping dinners and other social events, secure in the knowledge that building trees and finding new relatives will prove more exciting than any dinner or party could.

In 1985, seven years after her family last saw Marlyse, the remains of a woman and three children were found in two metal barrels in Bear Brook Park—victims who, more than thirty years later, I identified.This marked the first time in the history of U.S. law enforcement that autosomal DNA from rootless hair samples helped solve a crime–the first time genetic genealogy had to obtain the true identity of a criminal.