Since DeAngelo’s 2018 arrest, genetic genealogy has solved more than 200 U.S. homicides and s***** assault cases, many of which had long gone cold. Now, police are increasingly using the technique to identify the mothers of infants who were killed or abandoned years ago. In 2020, police across the country announced that they solved several such “Baby Doe” cases with genetic genealogy, including one this month in Michigan, where a 41-year-old woman was charged with murder in the deaths of her twin newborn sons in 2003.
But some feel that its use in identifying the mothers of these newborns takes the technique too far. Research suggests that most mothers who murder babies within the first day of birth — known as neonaticide — do not premeditate the crime and aren’t violent. Instead, these girls and women, who are often unmarried, scared, and without the resources to care for a child, act out of impulsive panic after they deliver the baby. Experts estimate that a few hundred neonaticides occur in the United States each year, but the true incidence is unknown.
On one hand, genetic genealogy is a way to bring justice to the babies who never got the chance to live out their lives. But the growing use of the technique could also mean imprisoning women who may pose no threat to society.
“If you develop the atom bomb, do you have to drop it?” says Michelle Oberman, a law professor at Santa Clara University who has written two books about mothers who kill their children. “It’s really tempting, once you have the technology, to run through every cold case that you’ve ever had and see what turns up.”
The New York Times