Forensic Genealogy News

Ancestry Update: Ancestry quietly updated its Terms of Service regarding forensic genealogy. Reversing the ambiguity of a November 2025 update that appeared to ban the usage of all tools requiring judicial proceedings, Ancestry modified its language to clarify exactly how the platform can be used by forensic genealogists.

Breakthrough in DNA Deconvolution: Signature Science validated a breakthrough SNP mixture deconvolution workflow. This technology successfully separates two-person DNA mixtures, enabling analysts to extract single-source SNP profiles from complex evidence that was previously deemed unusable for FIGG.

San Antonio Cold Case Initiative: The San Antonio Police Department launched a $1.03 million federal funding program to expand their use of forensic genetic genealogy. The funding allows the department to outsource advanced DNA processing to specialized private labs for hundreds of unsolved murder and sexual assault cases.

Florida AG Task Force: Florida’s Attorney General expanded its statewide cold case initiative, partnering with private forensic genomics company Othram to tackle a massive backlog of 21,000 unsolved murders.

Cold Case Resolution in Washington: Investigators officially closed a 40-year-old homicide investigation (the 1986 murder of Carol Traicoff) by using forensic genetic genealogy to identify a suspect who died in British Columbia in 2007.