We Did It! We Identified a (fictional) Serial Killer!

Nathan Dylan Goodwin writes  excellent genealogy mysteries. Diahan Southard teaches genealogists to use DNA. They, together, created an AMAZING offering that uses Nathan's Venator series, Diahan's expertise, and Robert, their technical genius, to let us mere mortals solve a serial killer mystery. In only THREE hours. 

Here's my desk afterwards. Pencils, Post-its, computer glasses, a map showing the town, and my PC. The event was called GSI: Sawtooth Virtual Event. GSI stands for 'Genealogy Solves It'. Sawtooth is from the title of the murder mystery, "The Sawtooth Slayer" by Nathan Dylan Goodwin. It's the second in the Venator Cold Case Series. 

I know, now is where you roll your eyes and mutter something derogatory about my genealogy fetish. But, it was so much fun! If you hate mysteries and solving puzzles, skip on by.

The GSIEvents team created a masterful interactive experience. Over three hours on Zoom, with case files showing the who, when, and where of the abductions and murders, Diahan and Nathan guided us through the steps from "Okay, we have DNA" to "Hand over our suspected killer's ID to the police". There are 7 steps between those two points. Firstly, use DNA to figure out most likely hair, eye and skin colors. I got to try it out on my own DNA. The webtool thought I was blonde. Hmph. My siblings are blonde, so my DNA could give that. It thought I was blue-eyed. Hmph. Hazel was not one of the choices, so I'll let them off the hook. But they did get it right that I have light skin. Try it yourself at HIrisPlex-S Eye, Hair and Skin Colour DNA Phenotyping Webtool. You need your own DNA data.

The usual DNA tests give you estimates of ethnicity, of course, so we knew where the killer's ancestors probably came from. The police can also find out who has submitted a sample that looks like it could be from a relative, maybe at the 4th cousin level. That is, IF the DNA has been okayed for the police to use. There are only two sites that give the users the option to say, "Yes, the police can use my DNA file": GEDMatch and FTDNA. If you have taken a test, you can help a family get closure on a murdered family member. Just say "Yes, okay".

During the event, we were playing Venator, a fictional company that helps the police use the murderer's DNA to find potential relatives. That's where the event really got to be fun and challenging. Also, that's where we learned how to build out our own family trees with these skills. We had eight clusters of DNA matches. We ranked the people in cluster 3 (our team's cluster) by how close their DNA was to the killer's. We made quick family trees for the first two, using Ancestry, MyHeritage, obituaries, censuses, marriage and birth records, Facebook, Instagram, and so on. This is the part where the GSIEvents team made miracles happen! We never left the GSI website. They had copies of all those records and family trees for us to use. The process was split up, with stop signs, so we didn't have time to wander too far into the forest. We had a casebook file that we filled out at each step showing our work. Lo and behold, we found a common ancestor for those two people, way back in the 1800s in Europe! (Officially jazzed, I am, to work on building out family trees for my own clusters of DNA matches.)

The next step was to look through obituaries to find out the names of the children, grandchildren and so on of that common ancestor. We had to figure out how our two people from cluster 3 are related. Who is currently alive in the area where the abductions happened that is related to both of them? That's where all my yellow Post-its started piling up. We got down to four brothers. It was already more than two hours into the exercise. Can we pick one before he murders again? He has already abducted his next victim! The GSIEvents team showed video messages from the police detective working the case, which kept the pressure on us.

The four previous abductions gave us dates when the murderer had to be in town. Going through social media, we eliminated three of the brothers. That left one, our suspect! In order for you to figure out who it is, you have to read "The Sawtooth Slayer", by Nathan Dylan Goodwin. You'll love it. Or maybe the event will be repeated someday, and you can have as much fun as I did, saving Victim Number 5!

Thanks to Diahan and Nathan's team for creating this top of the line event.