Last week a reader sent a link about an apparent hack of the DNA analysis service, 23andMe. The details remain murky. There were two articles in the WAPO last week about the hack:
GEDmatch was hacked in July 2020:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/hackers-gedmatch-dna-privacy
As another reader pointed out this morning, law enforcement has a back door to some of these databases. https://theintercept.com/2023/08/18/gedmatch-dna-police-forensic-genetic-genealogy/#:~:text=In July 2020, GEDmatch was,280,000 profiles had opted in. This will no doubt lead to legal challenges in criminal cases.
The law takes forever to “catch up” with technology and the related issues of privacy, internet crimes and the Constitution. GEDmatch and 23andMe could go away tomorrow. Literally. That’s why these cold case teams need to get a move on.
I get why L. Brooks Patterson and Richard Thompson didn’t care about the dead kids turning up in Oakland County. They needed to sweep that shit under the rug as fast as possible in the face of their superiority complex over Detroit. No talking about pedophiles and dead kids in their neck of the woods. I believe they took steps during the OCCK investigation that should have landed both of these evil, self-serving attorneys in prison. Decades later, the possibility of DNA testing in the OCCK case made their blood run cold. Sophisticated DNA testing gets better by the month.
What I don’t understand is now, with Patterson dead and Thompson facing his own mortality, and with a state lab no longer populated with hacks, decisions keep being made that the lives of Mark, Jill, Kristine and Tim matter far less than those of homicide victims in the many cold cases that are solved on almost a weekly basis around the country (and in Michigan!) using third-party labs and genetic genealogists.
If the failure to even try is due to internal knowledge that all of the evidence in this case was mishandled and improperly stored, the state must disclose this mis or malfeasance to the public. How do the MSP and the state lab get to hide behind their self-created clusterfuck for all these decades?
You have been gaslighting us, telling us to be patient, telling us to shut up, to sit tight for almost 50 years. If Patterson were still around, he’d tell you to keep the brakes on and foot drag until these DNA databases get shut down one way or the other. But he’s not, and your failure to act is so glaring it is appalling. It long ago morphed into complicity. Patterson would be proud.
**A reminder: All comments are read, but not all comments are posted. There is often a delay before they post. I read all the emails sent to OCCKtruth@protonmail.com but I cannot respond to or acknowledge all of them.