How DNA Evidence Helped Police Arrest Idaho Murder Suspect Bryan Kohberger

Bryan Kohberger, the 28 year old murder suspect accused of murdering four University of Idaho students, has arrived back in Moscow, Idaho to face a judge. The suspect is a Ph.D. student at Washington State University's Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology in Pullman, police said. Pullman is about a 15-minute drive from the rental home where the four students were stabbed to death. He was recently arrested thanks to a DNA sample from a genealogy testing website that was submitted by a family member. While many DNA testing websites have policies that do not allow them to share information with law enforcement, some, like GEDmatch, do allow it in certain instances if the user opts-in to allow their information to be accessible to police.

Other websites, such as Ancestry.com and 23and Me, do not share genetic information with law enforcement unless required by a valid legal process like a subpoena or warrant. FamilyTreeDNA provides access to DNA matches from users who have opted to participate in its Investigative Genetic Genealogy Matching program on a case-by-case basis for certain crimes, but requires law enforcement to follow a thorough vetting process and obtain a court order.