But this was new territory for Headley, so he emailed DNA Adoption<\/a> for help and found Barbara Rae-Venter. Asked why she agreed to collaborate, Rae-Venter replied, \u201cIt was a puzzle!\u201d<\/p>\n She began the laborious process of building family trees to find Lisa\u2019s real family, which involved more than just looking at DNA: \u201cThe DNA is just the jump-off point. You\u2019re doing census records, you\u2019re doing birth, death and marriage records. My favorite is probably Facebook. I\u2019ve actually built trees from the amount of stuff people have put in their Facebook pages.\u201d<\/p>\n Researcher Barbara Rae-Venter, who has used investigative genetic genealogy to crack cold cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n CBS News<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Headley helped by coaxing distant relatives to take DNA tests. \u201cPeople were skeptical, thought it was a scam,\u201d he said. \u201cOne lady thought I was going to clone her.\u201d<\/p>\n And DNA tests are expensive. Headley and Rae-Venter reached into their own pockets to help subsidize the costs.<\/p>\n I asked, \u201cSo, you\u2019re not only not getting paid to do this work, you\u2019re actually paying for these tests?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe probably each spent a couple of thousand dollars on kits,\u201d Rae-Venter said.<\/p>\n It took nearly a year, but in 2016, the DNA trail led to New Hampshire, and the case of a missing young mother, Denise Beaudin. She and her infant daughter had vanished from her home, along with a man named Bob Evans, which turned out to be yet another alias of that serial killer, Terry Rasmussen<\/p>\n Investigators believe Rasmussen killed Denise and kidnapped her little girl. For the first time, Lisa Jenson was about to learn her real name: Dawn Beaudin.<\/p>\n Headley said, \u201cI called Lisa up and I asked her if she wanted to know her real name, we had figured it out. And she just got real quiet, and very quietly said yes.\u201d<\/p>\n Lisa has asked for privacy, but, in a phone call told Rae-Venter that she could finally move on in her life, including getting married.<\/p>\n \u201cShe just said it didn\u2019t feel right when she didn\u2019t really know who she was or where she\u2019d come from,\u201d said Rae-Venter. \u201cAnd now that she knew that, she felt comfortable now going forward and getting married. I just thought that was so special.\u201d<\/p>\n Building the Family Tree of a Killer<\/p>\n It was one of the first times that genetic genealogy was used to solve a criminal case \u2013 and word spread fast. In 2017, Rae-Venter got a call: Could she use the same technique to find the Golden State Killer? At the time, there were six full-time investigators and three FBI agents on the case, and they couldn\u2019t find him. Rae-Venter thought the DNA would tell her who he was. \u201cI was absolutely certain of that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Investigators provided a DNA profile left at a California crime scene, and Rae-Venter uploaded it to GED Match<\/a> and Family Tree DNA<\/a>. This time, she was building the family tree of a killer.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n CBS News<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Sixty-three days later, she said, \u201cI\u2019m sitting there at three in the morning all by my little lonesome staring at my computer. I know who you are: You\u2019re Joseph DeAngelo.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked, \u201cAt that moment, were you the only person in the world who knew who the Golden State Killer was?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBesides him? Probably,\u201d Rae-Venter replied.<\/p>\n It was an astonishing breakthrough. But Rae-Venter\u2019s word was not enough to make an arrest. \u201cI\u2019m providing an investigative lead. You still need some old-fashioned detective work,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n So investigators got to work getting a DNA sample from DeAngelo himself to confirm he was the right guy. Within days, the brutal killer who had evaded law enforcement for decades was finally behind bars.<\/p>\n In 2020, DeAngelo was sentenced to 13 consecutive life sentences. After DeAngelo was locked away, Rae-Venter decided that it was time to share her incredible story in a book, \u201cI Know Who You Are.\u201d<\/a> She has been profiled in The New York Times<\/a>, and appeared on Time Magazine\u2019s list of the most influential people<\/a>.<\/p>\n And she\u2019s come out of retirement. Her group, Firebird Forensics<\/a>, works with law enforcement agencies nationwide to solve cases using genetic genealogy, and has solved approximately 60 cases. She even travels around the country teaching others her technique.<\/p>\n In 2023 she described the process of using genetic genealogy as \u201cvery addictive, because you know you\u2019re hot on the trail and you just know if you just keep going a little bit longer, you\u2019re going to find the connections you\u2019re looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n But her line of work has also raised concerns about privacy. More than 53 million people have already uploaded their DNA profiles to public databases. Should police be able to use that information to track down the users\u2019 criminal relatives? \u201cWell, unfortunately, I think that horse left the barn a long time ago,\u201d Rae-Venter said.<\/p>\n And the trade-off may be worth it, says Rae-Venter and others, if it means getting killers and rapists off the streets. Michael O\u2019Malley, the prosecuting attorney in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, said, \u201cThere was a lot of light bulbs going off across the country saying, \u2018What great technology! How do we bring it to our community to solve violent crimes?’\u201d<\/p>\n Watch Part Two of Erin Moriarty\u2019s report:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Cracking the Code: The hunt for sexual predator John Doe #147<\/p>\n 08:43<\/p>\n Who is John Doe #147?<\/p>\n O\u2019Malley is a witness to a sad statistic in this country: more and more serious crimes are going unsolved. \u201cI get violent crime reports that come across my desk every day, and only a fraction of those are solved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In 2020, O\u2019Malley\u2019s office set up the G.O.L.D. Unit<\/a>, a team of prosecutors who use the latest forensic tools to find criminals and get them off the streets. It\u2019s run by supervising assistant prosecuting attorney Mary Weston. \u201cWe review cases, mostly sexual assaults and homicides at this time, that can be re-investigated using perhaps updated technologies,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Among them, cases involving sexual predators, like John Doe #147. \u201cThat\u2019s all we knew him as,\u201d said Weston.<\/p>\n On a hot afternoon in August 1997, a man grabbed a nine-year-old boy in the woods behind a school in the Cleveland suburbs, and sexually assaulted him.<\/p>\n The nine-year-old victim is now a thirty-seven-year old man, who asked us to call him \u201cMichael,\u201d and not show his face. Describing the years since the assault, he said, \u201cIt\u2019s just been a lot of ups-and-downs, you know? I had doubts, thinking, \u2018Would I ever, would we ever find the guy?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI remember running to my dad, him taking me to the hospital,\u201d Michael said. \u201cBut the most I could remember is my mom. She was just crying hysterically on the front porch, just blaming herself, and the neighbors are trying to calm her down.\u201d<\/p>\n Investigators knew little about the predator back in 1997, according to O\u2019Malley: \u201cThe young boy gave a description, roughly, of his age, and his body build. But really that was it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n![\"barbara-rae-venter-at-work.jpg](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/barbara-rae-venter-at-work.jpg#.jpeg\")
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![\"map-dna-privacy-laws.jpg](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/map-dna-privacy-laws.jpg#.jpeg\")
Only three states have set limits on how law enforcement may use genetic genealogy.<\/p>\n