Family Ties

I went down a rabbit hole. Deep, deep down a rabbit hole. (and for the life of me I can’t change this font).

I read a wonderful new book, I Know Who You Are: How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever, by Barbara Rae-Venter. It seemed like it would be interesting. Earlier this year, I’d read a book on cold cases, and not very long ago I’d read another one on solving cold cases, so this just seemed like it was destined to be. I sort of remembered the guy being mentioned as one that no one had a clue on, and then they suddenly solved it, and I’m interested in DNA science, so what the hell, let’s read it.

Now, let’s remember some easy facts here: California spent FORTY YEARS and $10 million to hunt this guy down, and really didn’t have a lead. He was a criminal of the most heinous kind.

Rae-Venter, a retired Patent lawyer who had dabbled in helping adopted people find their birth parents from her kitchen table, spent $217 and it took her 63 days to figure this guy out. Her methods changed the way law enforcement looked at cases, and suddenly all these cold cases started being solved.

I finished the book in two days. I could not put it down.

The book does not go into excessive gore or details, which was good, because I can’t handle that crap. I have kids. And even though you’re a woman, and thoughts about danger flick through your head every time the dog barks for no reason, it doesn’t come close to the worries about danger if you have kids. If there’s any chance of real danger, it doesn’t matter if it’s 2500 miles away, you’ll sit up all night with a shotgun just to be sure. And I need to sleep at night. One major horrific psycho murder in my town was enough.

Yes, DNA profiling has been used for a while, but in the form of “The FBI has this guy’s profile, and we think it matches with the one we just got.” Venter didn’t do that. Unless the killer’s DNA was already on file, which, in the 80’s and 90’s, it probably wasn’t, certainly not the 70’s, you were out of luck. What Venter did was take any samples and run them through on-line data bases (Ancestry, 23&Me, etc) as a person looking for relatives. If she could get a hit that was as far back as Great-Grandparent, or best yet, cousin or sibling, she could work the chain forward or backward, zeroing in through old-fashioned sources like birth and death certificates, prison records, taxes, etc. By eliminating suspects who were no match at all, they got closer and closer to the probable suspect, locating and testing illegitimate children, cousins, and more. After picking through the main suspect’s trash for items he’d touched, they had a perfect match. The killer had been found.

Of course, that process, which solved a large number of cold cases in a very short time, set off a huge outcry – how dare they use people’s DNA to find killers!  Some relatives refused to give a sample, because they knew they had siblings who were wanted by the police. All the ancestry sites had to let people opt in or out on their DNA being used for police purposes. The truth, however, wasn’t as frightening: your DNA was probably never going to be used. By law, DNA couldn’t be used to track down Johnny for stealing a Baby Ruth from the Kwiki-mart. DNA was only an option for the hardest crimes: murders, rapes, kidnappings, missing children, etc.  You shot your neighbor in an argument and fled to Montana? Cousin Betty was probably safe from having to rat on you.

The book was fascinating, utterly fascinating, easy to read, and focused on the methods, not the gore. Of course, I’m reading the book, and she’s in contact with Paul Holes, one of the leading cold case investigators. Yep, read his book. Holes talks about how he learned it all from John Douglas – yep, read his book, too, outdated as it was, and I started to feel weird, since I’d already read all the source material….  Rae-Venter’s book is new – this year – and she talks about wishing they’d been able to solve the Long Island murders, and of course, just a few months later, they did solve it, through her methods.

Uncle Art

So, having a family that’s fairly deep into genealogy, and can theoretically trace back (on one quarter) to the Mayflower and Nathan Hale (who left no descendants, so it had to be through a sibling), I thought, well, what can I find out, then? I still have not even a birthdate on Uncle Laurie, and though my family DNA tree has a hundred hits that branch off my great-grandmother Madeline LaPointe, I know NOTHING about her. Absolutely nothing. We have a vague idea of when she died (on-line sources give a 5 year range, but we’re pretty sure of the year), but not where she’s buried. Nothing.

Great-Grandpa Art, who died of prostate cancer when I was 3

Rae-Venter talks about research being a rabbit hole, and three hours, six hours, nine hours can pass without you realizing it. And yep, that happened. I started with my Great-Uncle Arthur, since he was a WWII vet and would have a better shot through military records. Yep. Here was a photo of his grave (I know where it is. I went to his funeral. He’s buried with my grandmother. I can find it on Google Maps). The site was Find a Grave. It listed his father. Hm. I know some about Great-Grandpa Kathan – he didn’t die until I was 3, though I don’t ever remember meeting him. Clicked on that. Wow! Here was HIS father and mother listed, and THEIR parents and all siblings, and then THEIR parents… I wound up going back EIGHT generations, more or less, to 1795. They all seemed to be clustered around Dummerston VT, a town in New Hampshire, and a county in NY State. So I’m like, what did they do, have a gypsy caravan that drove around in circles?  No. Turns out Dummerston and Chesterfield NH are directly across the river from each other, so they were literally neighbors. Issue solved, except for the New York crew. I see a road trip in my future. Like Rae-Venter said, time stops, and three hours passed in about 10 minutes.

But Great-Grandma La Pointe remains a mystery. I know she died in 1923, not immediately but not long after Uncle Art was born. I found out when and where she was married (Portland, Maine), and a possible birthdate, but there are two different months given. What I need to do is waddle my backside down to New Haven records and do some digging. I know that’s where they were living when she died, I do have the address, and my grandmother actually graduated from Hill House High in New Haven, around 1933? We have her yearbook somewhere. Maine is a closed-records state, so I will just cough up the $15 for them to ship me a copy of the marriage certificate, and maybe it will list her dates on that.

And I had to laugh, at how times have changed. There’s a book that traces the lineage of Captain John Kathan, who founded Dummerston, Vermont in the early 1700’s. He is my direct ancestor on my mother’s side. The book was written in 1902, and of course there are few surviving copies. In the late 70’s, early 80’s, my great-uncle acquired one, but would not copy it for my grandmother. My grandmother borrowed it “to read,” and instead, my mother sat and typed an entire copy, by hand, on a manual typewriter, so my grandmother could get her copy of an out of print book. She typed 8 hours a day or more, for more than a week. So, while I’m doing all this accidental research, I come across the book, and its history. I’m like, Could it be?  And son of a bitch, there’s a button on it that says, Do you wish to download a PDF of this book? So of course I click YES.  And just like that, in a millisecond, I have a copy of the book for myself, no copying involved. One of his children married the first white child born in Dummerston. Or Vermont, I don’t remember. Still, weird stuff.

Mae Ellen Kathan, Daughter of the American Revolution

So I haven’t made it as far back to the Mayflower yet, but I’m within a hundred years,and that’s in just 3 hours. I think my grandmother had that all written down. I’ll have to compare notes. She would have cried to see the ease in which I did all this from my own chair, photos and all. Still haven’t pinned down the LaPointe side, or Aunt Grace, who died around the age of 2, but what year, I don’t know. My grandmother swore she could remember the funeral, but Grace was older, so we’re all confused. If her parents married in 1913, and Grandma was born in 1915, Grace had to be pretty close in age. I found a relative who must have died in childbirth – married the year before, at 17, baby born and mother died the same year. Another who had twins, and one died, and another who lost 4 of their 7 kids in a month – three in one week. I’m betting on diphtheria, since that wiped out families more often than any other disease beyond flu. 

I highly recommend the book – so far one of the two best books I’ve read this year. And while you’re at it, try Find a Grave. It was a wild ride.