In the manner of a thriller, Gabrielle Dréan and Jérémy Frey explore the “Cold Cases” resolved thanks to this technique.
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Mixture of genealogy, big data and DNA sequencing, genetic genealogy allowed six American investigators to stop, in only four and a half months, a serial killer, Joseph Deangelo, who was sought in Vain by the Californian police for four decades: a first, carried out on April 24, 2018. Since then, in the United States, a “Cold Case” has been resolved every week thanks to this technique, which is about to revolutionize criminal surveys, of so spectacular way that the formula may seem magic.
Also director Gabrielle Dréan conducted her own investigations, on both sides of the Atlantic. She delivers her conclusions in a documentary scripted as a thriller and particularly captivating in her first half, devoted to the emergence of genetic genealogy.
Bluff, chance, suspense … All the ingredients are present in the story of Paul Holes, the officer and former scientist who devoted his career to the case of “Golden Gate Killer”. He returns to the thirteen, atrocious murders, to the operating mode of the killer and rapist, on the failure also of his investigations, which saw an obsession. Until he meets by chance, Cece Moore, ex-genealogy, self-taught and future star of genetic genealogy. She gives him an idea.
Four months from retirement, Paul Hole sends a DNA sample harvested on one of the crime scenes and still intact in one of the kits then in vogue by post. And there Bingo: members of the suspect’s family are identified. Only the police remain in the police only to carry out a “classic” investigation.
attack on freedoms
But of course, there is a “but”. If, in the United States, genetic data is identified in files, including, for those who wish, if you have not committed an offense
– After a research in paternity for example -, in France, only DNA of the authors of offenses is recorded in the National File of Genetic Footprints (FNEG), created in 1998 and which lists 3.5 million profiles ; And the genetic genealogy is prohibited, to the chagrin of victims’ families.
Two cases are a little exception. That of “The little martyrdom of the A10 motorway” (in August 1987) resolved thanks to DNA, but by chance, in 2018. And the Elodie Kulik affair, raped and murdered in the Somme, resolved in 2017 thanks to a legal vacuum. Strengthened by these examples, Corinne Hermann, specialist in French “unclear cases”, wants to change the gaze of judges and investigators on genetic genealogy, and “norm” this technique.
Faced with her, the fear of achieving freedom remains well established in France. The documentary therefore focuses on the potential dangers of genetic files in a more agreed second part. Except when it deviates on “genetic portraits”, portraits-robots made by certain private organizations from DNA samples, and which have notably seduced the Hong Kong authorities. These have thus authorized the display in the metro of “genetic portraits” of people who threw waste or a megot on the ground. “We have all the elements to set up a totalitarian regime,” comments Elizabeth Vasquez, research director for the Science and Surveillance project in New York.