In October 1989, Krista Martin was found bludgeoned and raped in her apartment in Wichita, Kansas. Krista was a very social young woman with lots of friends and quite a bit of drama in her life – none of which led to her murder. Police investigated thoroughly, but were stumped for years. Krista’s case went cold until the WPD reopened it in 2020 with a focus on the DNA evidence. Like most of DNA: ID’s cases, this case never would have been solved without forensic genealogy – but in this case, the genealogical analysis uncovered a misattributed parentage event, and left one family relieved and thankful to have answers, and one family in complete denial and anger. We still don’t know what happened between Krista and Paul Hart on that day in 1989. But we do know the he lived just six houses away from Krista, and that he killed her.

In May, 1976, a group of boys fishing along Sessions Creek in Grand Bay, Alabama when they found what appeared to be a mannequin in the water. Closer examination told them that it was the dead body of an older woman, and they ran to get help. Police retrieved the dead woman from the water and found that she had been shot in the head. She carried no ID, and her hands and dentures were missing. Police were not able to match her to any specific women that were missing and she was cremated and her ashes place into a mass grave. That might have been the end of ever finding out who the dead woman was had it not been for a crucial piece of luck and old evidence from the case that was re-examined. Police eventually were able to get a DNA profile from the dead woman, and genealogy determined that she was Ada Fritz who seemed to drop from sight not long before her body was found. While police couldn't prove who killed her, they had a good guess.

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.