Lisa Holstead vanished sometime between 2:30 and 3:30 a.m. on the night of August 12th-13th, 1986. Her boyfriend told the police Lisa had jumped out of his car after an argument, and he never saw her again. Police were skeptical of this story, even after two witnesses said they saw Lisa getting out of the vehicle at a stop light. Lisa was found the next day in a nearby marsh. She’d been strangled by her own braided hair. Her boyfriend became the target of the family’s suspicions and the police investigation for years to come. Not until forensic genealogy pointed modern investigators in another direction altogether was Lisa’s case finally cracked, and her real killer brought to justice.

In September, 2002, a man using the name 'Edward C', checked into the low budget Time motel in Nogales, Arizona. He claimed to the hotel manager that he was there to get surgery in Mexico. Just days after checking in, the mysterious Edward C was found dead in his hotel room. An autopsy determined that the guest had died of an apparent accidental overdose. When the authorities tried to notify the man's next of kin, they discovered that he was using a false identity; one that had been stolen from a real Edward C, and he was alive and well in Florida. That began a years-long search for the man's identity.

The 1993 stabbing murder of 35 year old Jeanne Childs was just one of the many homicides Minneapolis investigators had to deal with during the “Murderapolis” era. But crime scene technicians did a thorough job, and carefully preserved many crucial pieces of evidence from the bloody scene in the apartment Jeanne shared with her boyfriend and alleged pimp, Arthur. Several potential suspects emerged, including a man who had killed another woman in a similar fashion, and a man whose blood was found near Jeanne’s apartment. But one clue – a set of bloody male footprints, would prove to be a vital supplement to the male DNA found at the scene. Forensic genealogy led investigators to a man whose name was not on police radar – but was in Jeanne’s client list. His name is Jerry Westrom, and his footprints placed him in Jeanne’s apartment next to her bloody corpse.