http://digbig.com/4hpee
Gareth Cook
"Boston researchers said yesterday that police could identify many more rapists, murderers and other criminals by expanding the use of DNA databases to find close relatives of suspects whose DNA is recovered from a crime scene. If there is only a near match, the researchers suggest, that person is likely to be a sibling, parent, or child of the suspect, providing detectives with a lead. The technique has been used in a handful of cases, in which identifying a relative was the crucial break that allowed detectives to focus their investigation on a particular suspect and solve the crime. The new research, published in today's issue of the journal Science, concludes that familial searching could be a broadly effective tool for law enforcement. One computer simulation shows it would increase the number of times DNA would point to a suspect by 40 percent."
