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28 Jan 2026

Why solving cold case killings just got much harder for police

Author: admintech | Filed under: Finance/ Money
Sean McCowan holds a photo of his sister, Erin Gilmour, who was murdered in 1983. Toronto Police finally cracked the case in 2022, tracking down her killer using genetic genealogy.

Police cold-case units face a new challenge in solving decades-old killings. With the world’s largest storehouse of genealogy information, Ancestry.com, now banning law enforcement from using its data without obtaining a court order, it is much harder for police to build family trees based on crime-scene DNA and zone in on suspects via their distant relatives.