Thank you for being willing to consider uploading your DNA to GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA, the two companies that assist with the valuable work of identifying victims, etc. If you have already tested at one of the major companies, it is FREE to take the next step and upload to those 2 sites. See below for instructions. The Bear Brook Case (behind the scenes) Step 1: Download your DNA from whichever company you tested at (see below for DOWNLOAD directions for doing this at 4 major companies) and  save it to your computer.   Step 2: Upload your DNA from your computer to GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA (see bottom of page for UPLOAD directions) These instructions were updated January 2021 and written while using a laptop. The process may look slightly different on other devices.                                    DOWNLOADING  Downloading from Ancestry: 1. Sign in to your account at ww...

Unfortunately due to NamUs changing their settings and barring the public from now seeing the status of DNA testing on cases in their database, this page cannot be updated. Although we think it is unlikely that the Allenstown victims (and the mother of Rasmussen's child in the barrel) appear on any official missing persons lists, we are interested in the women/girls who went missing during the 1970s. This page lists all of the woman/girls in NamUs who went missing between January 01, 1970 and December 31, 1979 whose DNA status are other than "Sample submitted - Tests complete" as of December 10, 2017.  Listed on this page are those whose DNA status falls into these categories: Samples submitted - Tests not complete Sample available - Not yet submitted   Initial inquiry underway Sample is currently not available     Samples submitted - Tests not complete  Agnes Shoe, Anna Amici, Arilla Webb-Vaul, Barbara Fogle, Catherine Davidson, Donna Larrabee, E...

Steven Howard Oken (more articles to be posted on Oken who was executed in 1987 in Maryland) Kittery killer on death row by Amy Wallace Posted Jan 23, 2003  Updated Dec 17, 2010 Seacoastonline.com KITTERY, Maine -- Whether serial killer Steven Oken will die by lethal injection this year remains to be seen. Oken, 40, was convicted in Maine and sentenced to life in prison for the brutal murder of Lori Ward at the Kittery Coachman Motor Inn on Nov. 16, 1987. He was extradited to Maryland, where he was sentenced to death by lethal injection for the torture, rape and murder of 20-year-old newlywed Dawn Marie Garvin. He was also convicted of killing his own sister-in-law, Patricia Hurt. When the Maryland House of Delegates placed a moratorium on the death penalty on March 24, 2001, Oken’s death sentence was put on hold. And although the moratorium was lifted last week by Robert Ehrlich, the state’s new governor, it may be a while before Oken’s execu...

The unlikely crime-fighter cracking decades-old murders? A genealogist.  The Washington Post   By  Justin Jouvenal   July 16, 2018 The young couple set out on a trip in 1987, speeding toward Seattle in a gold van, when they crossed paths with a killer. The man raped Tanya Van Cuylenborg and shot her in the head. Jay Cook was beaten and strangled. The killer left a pair of plastic gloves inside their vehicle, a gesture one detective interpreted as a taunt: You’ll never catch me. That was true for more than three decades. Investigators spent thousands of hours sifting leads and probing suspects with little to show. But in late April, a former musical theater actor with no background in law enforcement took over the case. CeCe Moore and her team cracked it in three days. Moore put the killer’s DNA profile into a public genealogy website to find relatives and then built a family tree that led to a suspect, William Earl Talbott II. The truck driv...