Sherri Papini case: With DNA science booming, could genealogy help solve kidnapping mystery?

Matt Brannon | Redding

Show Caption Hide Caption Sherri Papini church video Sherri Papini is seen on this video running outside a church in Yolo County.

The Sherri Papini case has gone cold. Three years after the Redding-area mom vanished and re-appeared, officials say they have no identifiable suspects except for two sketches of Hispanic women Papini says held her captive for three weeks.

"When you say something’s cold, (it means) we just don’t have an active lead to work on at the moment," Shasta County sheriff's Capt. Pat Kropholler said. "But it doesn’t mean the case is closed."

But as the sheriff's office continues to investigate Papini's disappearance, some experts believe the truth could be hiding in DNA samples collected from her clothes and body.

After Papini turned up on Thanksgiving Day 2016, authorities said they found male DNA on her clothes and female DNA on her body. They ran both profiles through the FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) in 2017 but found no matches, according to sheriff's Lt. Brian Jackson.

But investigators could be limiting themselves to a relatively small pool of matches by relying on the CODIS system rather than a newer tool. Genetic genealogy websites, typically marketed toward ancestry fans and family-tree makers, have emerged as a way for law-enforcement officials to cast a wider net of DNA searches, according to University of Illinois-Chicago forensic scientist Ashley Hall.

Whereas CODIS needs past DNA from a perpetrator to make a match, consumer websites can crack a case as long as someone in the perp's family (third cousin or closer) has tried the tech.

"Our technologies have greatly improved, and we now have the ability to generate a massive amount of sequence data," said Hall, an assistant professor with 20 years of forensic experience.

Hall noted that's how authorities nabbed the Golden State Killer in 2018. A detective uploaded decades-old crime-scene DNA into the consumer website GEDmatch, and the website produced a list of thousands of relatives.

With the help of a genealogist and some old-fashioned police work, investigators narrowed their pool of suspects to just two, eventually arresting Joseph James DeAngelo.

UPDATE: Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko reflects on career after announcing retirement

"You can identify fairly distant relatives because even distant relatives will share some stretches of DNA in common," said Stephanie Malia Fullerton, who studies bioethics for the University of Washington. "Then, a trained genealogist needs to put that shared genetic heritage in a broader genealogical project, and that invariably involves doing a lot of hard detective work."

That detective work could involve analyzing vast amounts of public records to eliminate random relatives, Fullerton said.

Curtis Rogers, co-founder of GEDmatch, believes his website is a more effective tool than CODIS. In an email to the Record Searchlight, he wrote that CODIS is useful mainly if the person of interest has been previously arrested on a felony charge. Otherwise, there's not much to compare the sample to.

"Genetic genealogy has a record of solving more than 70 cold cases in the past year and a half," Rogers wrote. "Not one of these cases could be solved using CODIS."

Of course, it's possible authorities in Shasta County have already tried using genetic genealogy to solve the Papini case. When asked whether they've tried the tactic, Shasta County sheriff's Sgt. Jesse Gonzalez declined to answer, citing the fact that the investigation is still open.

In a 2017 press release, the sheriff's office wrote that it was the California Department of Justice that examined the DNA evidence collected from Papini.

But genealogical searching is typically a last resort by investigating agencies, according to an email from the state Attorney General's press office.

Sherri Papini update: Kidnapping case unsolved two years later; 'I wouldn't say it's cold'

But why wait? Hall said the popularity of the consumer-driven websites is growing, adding more potential DNA sequences for sleuthing scientists to compare.

Researchers found over 10 million people have had their DNA analyzed by companies like 23andMe or MyHeritage. And according to a study by the latter organization, if 2% of a population gives DNA to an ancestry service, nearly 99% of that population will find a relative who is a third cousin or closer on the site's database.

Joe Giacalone, an ex-New York police sergeant who was quoted in the Record Searchlight during Papini's disappearance, thinks genealogy might be officials' best bet at this point.

"It doesn’t seem as if they have any viable leads other than the DNA," he said, speaking from what he's seen publicly.

Papini, then a 34-year-old from Mountain Gate, vanished on Nov. 2 while her husband said she was jogging. On Nov. 24, she turned up alongside a rural road in Yolo County bruised and bound by restraints.

In October of 2017, the sheriff's office said Papini had not been able to provide a "complete, detailed statement due to her poor recollection."

Officials continue to ask anyone with information about the suspects in the drawings to call the FBI at 916-746-7000 (option 1). There's a $10,000 reward for anyone with information leading to the identification of the two people depicted in the sketches.

More: 100-year-old Shasta County dam creating conditions of 'extreme peril'

Matt Brannon covers politics, the criminal justice system and breaking news for the Record Searchlight. Follow him on Twitter @MattBrannon_RS. Support local coverage and keep up with the North State for as little as $1 a month. Subscribe today.