Free Republic

Investigators from the FBI linked a New Jersey attorney to a series of violent rapes in Boston after tracking down his relative's DNA on a commercial genealogy database. Matthew Nilo, 35, was arrested last week on suspicion of raping three women and sexually assaulting a fourth in 2007 and 2008. Police took samples from the three women who were raped in Terminal Street, in Boston, at the time of the incidents and processed the glove of a fourth victim who poked her assailant in the eye while wearing the garment. All three matched the same profile, leading officers to believe...

The Jane Doe, known only as "Blue Pacheco" by authorities, has now been identified as Patricia Skiple of Colton, Oregon. On June 3, 1993, Skiple's body was found on the side of California state Route 152 in unincorporated Gilroy. She was 45 years old at the time of her death. In 2019, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office partnered with the DNA Doe Project to attempt to identify the body via investigative genetic genealogy. “This case was exceptionally challenging due to recent Norwegian ancestry which resulted in very distant DNA matches on GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA,” said DNA Doe Project team...

A family's nearly two-decade wait to find out who killed their beloved daughter came to an end this month, as investigators announced an arrest in the cold case. The Orlando Police Department said Monday that 38-year-old Benjamin L. Holmes was arrested in the murder of Christina Franke. Franke was 25 and a student at the University of Central Florida majoring in education when she was found dead in her Audubon Park apartment in October 2001, according to FOX35. The college student had been robbed and assaulted, and her killer had left a large amount of DNA at the scene, police...