Section V · The Index
When the public got there first.
Before investigators closed in, ordinary people were already looking. The tips, forums, and quiet obsessions that moved real cases forward.
7 cases reported in full
How investigative genetic genealogy and a citizen sleuth finally gave names to four victims found in barrels in New Hampshire's Bear Brook State Park, decades after their deaths.
The Zodiac Killer murdered at least five people in Northern California in 1968 and 1969 and taunted newspapers with ciphers. One was cracked by a schoolteacher couple in 1969; another defeated experts until amateur codebreakers solved it in 2020. The case is still unsolved.
Maura Murray, a 21-year-old UMass Amherst nursing student, crashed her car on Route 112 in Haverhill, New Hampshire on February 9, 2004, and vanished before police arrived. She has never been found, and her case became a defining early test of online sleuthing.
In 1981 a young woman in a buckskin poncho was found murdered near Troy, Ohio, and went unnamed for 37 years. In 2018 the DNA Doe Project used investigative genetic genealogy to restore her name: Marcia Lenore King. Her killer is still unknown.
How online animal-cruelty sleuths spent two years chasing the man who would murder Montreal student Jun Lin, and what their hunt did and did not accomplish.
How the public ended the Night Stalker's reign: a released mug shot, a recognized face, and East Los Angeles residents who chased down and held Richard Ramirez until police arrived on August 31, 1985.
How investigators used investigative genetic genealogy and the GEDmatch database to identify the Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo, a former police officer hidden in plain sight for four decades.
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