A major first for CMPD: Genealogy research just solved a decades-old rape case
An online genealogy search led to a man’s arrest in a nearly 30-year-old rape, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police said Wednesday.
In a first of its kind for Charlotte authorities, CMPD officials say they tracked down a man connected to a sexual assault case by identifying people with similar DNA — his relatives —found in a national database.
It’s one of about 500 cases solved by CMPD’s sexual assault cold case detectives since the unit’s founding in 2006, said CMPD Capt. Rob Dance. New DNA testing in older cases has often helped detectives make arrests in cold cases.
But this case, from 1991, is the first the unit has solved through genealogy research, CMPD Sgt. Darrell Price said.
Detectives worked with a research lab that uses a database where people have shared their genetic information.
Intruder attacked woman in home
The investigative case began after a 24-year-old woman was raped by a stranger in her home on Runaway Bay Drive, between East Independence Boulevard and Monroe Road in east Charlotte, police said.
The woman was treated at a hospital and investigators obtained a sexual assault kit with DNA evidence, police said. More evidence was collected from the home, according to CMPD.
In 2005, after more testing, a DNA profile was obtained and entered into a DNA database, police said. And just last month, additional testing (thanks to a sexual assault kit initiative grant and use of genealogical research) identified Kevin Patrick McNamee, now 59 and living in Indian Trail, as a person of interest, police said.
Police said they then matched McNamee’s DNA with evidence from the case and arrested McNamee on Dec. 12 on warrants charging him with first-degree burglary, second-degree rape, second-degree sex offense and second-degree kidnapping.
“McNamee’s criminal history includes 19 separate charges for burglaries and break-ins which occurred in 1984, several for which he was convicted and incarcerated for between 1984 and 1990,” according to the CMPD release.
Most famous genetic data case
In perhaps the most famous case involving police use of genealogy research, California investigators in 2018 identified the suspected “Golden State Killer” using information from the popular genealogy website GEDmatch, The (San Jose) Mercury News reported.
People share their genetic data for free on GEDmatch.
But law enforcement’s use of the genetic data is not without controversy.
Privacy experts and some customers expressed alarm in February when FamilyTreeDNA, the popular at-home DNA testing company, said it was allowing police to search its database of genetic data — “just as customers do when looking for family members,” ScienceNews.org reported.
Dance said the lab that identified the 1991 Charlotte rape suspect used a database on which people voluntarily uploaded their genetic data.
He complimented CMPD’s sexual assault cold case officers for their work on the case and the hundreds of others they’ve solved.
“The closure we’re bringing to the victims and their families I think is exceptional work,” Dance said.