Nanos said yesterday that “partial DNA” from Guthrie’s home will be analyzed using genetic genealogy and that authorities believe they have “some DNA there that may be our suspect.”
The potentially mixed DNA makes CeCe Moore, the chief genetic genealogist at Parabon, a Virginia lab specializing in forensic genetic genealogy, “extremely hopeful.”
“The fact that it may be a [DNA] mixture, to me, is even more compelling, because that is so common in violent crimes, and we know there was some type of altercation that caused Nancy to bleed,” Moore told NBC News today.
Genetic genealogy — a process that analyzes a person’s DNA and genealogical records for family history — has cracked major cases, including that of the Golden State Killer in 2018, and it led to the arrest of Bryan Kohberger in connection with the 2022 University of Idaho murders.
However, the process could take mere minutes or potentially weeks based on the kind of DNA, Moore said.
First a profile is created for genetic genealogy, then bioinformatics scientists work on the file to extract a potential suspect’s DNA, she said. Once the DNA is extracted, it can be tested against CODIS — the FBI’s DNA profile database — or used in genealogy, Nanos said yesterday.
“If the person of interest, in this case, has deep roots in the U.S. and is a white person, they could be identified in minutes or hours,” Moore said. However it’ll take longer if the person has recent immigrant ancestry or was born outside the U.S., because there’s far less representation among those populations in databases, she added.
Moore said such was the case in identifying Kohberger — it took several weeks because he had recent ancestors from Italy.
