Christina Castiglione was last seen walking along Five Mile Road in Redford Township, MI. The date was March 19th, 1983, and it was about 8:30 p.m. Her boyfriend waited for her at a store up ahead, but she never showed. In the distance of about a half mile, she vanished. Her half nude, strangled body was found a week later, miles away in a state-owned recreation area. Her murder immediately called to mind another murder, almost exactly one year earlier. Kim Louiselle was last seen looking for a ride home in Livonia, MI, on March 20th, 1982. She, too, vanished seemingly into thin air. Her body was found a month later, nude and strangled in a different state-owned recreation area. The two cases were always considered to be connected, but two murders proved no easier to solve than one, and decades passed. Not until forensic genealogy solved Christina’s case were answers also found in Kim’s case. The same man had killed both women, and when police dug into his past, they discovered some extremely disturbing information about who Charles Shaw was.

In 1998, an unidentified victim of a brutal rape and murder who was left for dead was found by chance by a boater in a grassy area in southwest Broward County off of U.S. 27 in the state of Florida. The dead woman carried no identification, and did not match any missing women in the area. Attempts to ID her initially failed, although police suspected that she may be the victim of a serial predator in that area who had fled the United States. Years later, when DNA evidence was re-examined in an effort to ID the victim through genealogy, police caught a break. The genealogy determined that the victim was Eileen Truppner; a down on her luck woman who had bounced around the area prior to her death. But the re-examination of DNA that led to Eileen's identity, also led to that of her killer; Lucious Boyd, who turned out to be a different predator than the one police initially suspected. Boyd is on death row for his other crimes, and a case is currently being built against him in Eileen's case.

In 1991, a woman was found lying in the street near Akron, Ohio, half naked and set ablaze. She was quickly identified as Rachael Johnson, a young single mother who had last been seen walking in the parking lot of a local convenience store. A thorough investigation by Akron police looked at everyone Rachael knew even remotely – investigators were certain that she knew her killer. They were right, but it was not until decades later that forensic genealogy pointed them to someone they had never considered – someone who Rachael’s family knew all too well.