Category Archives: crime prevention

Forensic Genetic Genealogy: A Crime Writer’s Field Guide

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Marcia King’s mother kept the same telephone number for thirty-seven years.

She kept the same house in Arkansas. She didn’t move. She didn’t disconnect. Marcia had hitchhiked out of town in 1980 and stopped calling, and her mother — like every mother in this position has done since the invention of the telephone — left the line open in case her daughter ever picked up on the other end.

In April of 2018, the call finally came.

It wasn’t Marcia.

It was the Miami County Sheriff’s Office in Troy, Ohio, telling a woman who had waited almost four decades that the unidentified body found beside Greenlee Road on April 28, 1981 — the young woman the press had nicknamed Buckskin Girl for the fringed leather poncho she had been wearing — was her daughter. Twenty-one years old. Strangled and beaten. Buried under a headstone that simply said Jane Doe.

The case had not been solved. Her killer was, and remains, unknown. But her name had come back.

Marcia King’s identification was the first cold case ever solved by forensic genetic genealogy. A blood sample preserved in an unrefrigerated tube since 1981 was processed, uploaded to the public genealogy database GEDmatch, and matched within four hours of computer searching to a first cousin once removed. A team of volunteer genealogists at the newly founded DNA Doe Project built the tree out from there. Two weeks later, a mother in Arkansas got the call.

Three weeks after that, on April 24, 2018, a 72-year-old former police officer named Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested in his front yard in Citrus Heights, California. The Golden State Killer. Caught the same way: GEDmatch, family tree, candidate identified, confirmation DNA pulled from his trash. I remember standing with my cohorts from the Los Angeles Forensic Science Academy and talking about this case and the validity of using discarded DNA and familial DNA databases to find criminals. It was walking a fine legal line at the time.

This case began a change in the way cold case investigations worked in the U.S.

Eventually, it seeped its way into crime fiction. I tackled the topic a few years ago when writing What Darkness Does.

If you write the genre, you can no longer write around forensic genetic genealogy. And if you’re going to write it, you have to write it right.

Why This Matters for Crime Writers

Cold case fiction used to live in a forgiving place. The case had gone cold because the science of the era couldn’t read the evidence. Your investigator’s job was to be present-day-clever about a past-tense problem.

Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (FIGG) moves the goalposts. Evidence that was useless for forty years is suddenly usable and trackable. Crimes from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s are now solvable in ways the original detectives couldn’t have imagined. Hundreds of cases have been resolved this way since 2018. The U.S. Department of Justice issued formal policy on its use in 2019. CRC Press is releasing the first comprehensive practitioner’s guide to FIGG this month.

That’s not a problem for fiction. It’s a gift. Forensic genetic genealogy gives you a mechanism that finally works the way readers want a cold case to work — the past speaking, after years of silence — without the cheap rescue of a deathbed confession or a buried diary in the attic.

It only works on the page if you understand what FIGG actually does, what it doesn’t do, and where the writer’s instinct toward speed and tidiness is going to trip you up.

What Forensic Genetic Genealogy Actually Is

Plain English: FIGG combines DNA recovered from a crime scene with consumer genetic genealogy databases — places like GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA — to find relatives of an unknown suspect or an unknown victim. A forensic genealogist uses those matches to build a family tree backward and outward until the tree narrows to one viable candidate.

That candidate is a lead. Not a defendant. Not a confirmed suspect. Just a lead.

For a suspect-identification match, investigators then need to collect what is called a surreptitious sample. This is typcially an abandoned or discarded source of DNA sample — for instance a coffee cup, a water bottle, a tissue from a public trash can. This is legal if the sample is taken from public domain. That sample is then tested and compared against the original DNA profile from the case at hand.

For a victim-identification case like Marcia King’s, a relative agrees to give a confirmation DNA sample, and the unknown person becomes a known person again.

Two distinctions matter for fiction.

FIGG is not CODIS. The Combined DNA Index System is the federal database of DNA profiles from convicted offenders, arrestees, and unsolved crime scenes. CODIS hits when your suspect is already in the system. Forensic genetic genealogy works when they aren’t. That distinction is the whole point of the technique. A writer who collapses the two will lose any reader who has paid attention to the last six years of true crime.

FIGG isn’t fast. The lab work to generate a sequenceable profile from old, often degraded evidence takes weeks to months. The genealogy work that follows takes even more time. Difficult cases take months. The famously hard ones take a year or longer. The science moves quickly. The genealogy is patient, careful, and slow.

Where Crime Writers Are Getting It Wrong

After watching the field for the last several years, here are the misnomers that show up most often regarding FIGG.

The instant match. A writer’s investigator submits DNA on Tuesday and gets a name on Wednesday. In the real world, even Marcia King’s case — which made a hit in only four hours of searching — had been preceded by weeks of lab work to extract usable DNA from a 1981 blood sample most labs had already given up on. We have to compress the timeline some, but compress the timeline that much and you lose the texture that makes cold case fiction interesting in the first place.

Skipping the confirmation step. A FIGG match is a candidate. It’s not legal proof. The story doesn’t move from genealogy hit to courtroom. It moves from genealogy hit to a separate, traditional confirmation DNA sample, almost always from something the suspect discarded in public domain. A writer who skips this step is writing a case that wouldn’t survive the first defense motion.

Using the wrong databases. Since the 2019 DOJ policy, U.S. law enforcement is restricted to genealogy databases where users have explicitly opted in to law enforcement matching. That means GEDmatch (with the right setting) and FamilyTreeDNA. It does not mean Ancestry. It does not mean 23andMe. Those companies have refused law enforcement access. A writer who has investigators pulling matches from Ancestry is writing a scene that gets the case thrown out.

Treating the genealogist as scenery. Forensic genetic genealogy is not done by detectives. It’s done by trained genealogists. Not sworn officers of the law. Many of them are civilians. Some of them are former hobbyists who turned professional after the Golden State Killer breakthrough. They are the people who actually build the tree. If your manuscript is about a cold case solved by FIGG and there is no genealogist in the story, you need to go back and add them.

Ignoring the ethical layer. Real investigators, real prosecutors, and real defense attorneys are arguing about FIGG every day. About consent. About whose DNA gets used. About what happens when one family member’s spit kit puts their cousin in prison. That tension belongs in your fiction. It’s exactly the kind of moral territory crime writers were made for.

How I Used FIGG In What Darkness Does

In What Darkness Does, a fourteen-year-old named Flora finds a bone in the woods.

Flora is sharp, stubborn, and exactly the kind of kid who doesn’t let go of a question once it’s in her teeth. The bone goes to a forensic anthropologist, Dr. Samantha Eckhardt, at the University of Michigan. Dr. Eckhardt invites Flora to a two-day workshop where she’ll learn how to use forensic genetic genealogy to try to give the bone a name.

I wrote the workshop scenes carefully. I gave Dr. Eckhardt a line I want every crime writer to internalize before they write a single FIGG scene of their own:

I want you to have realistic expectations. You may not leave here today with a candidate lead.

That’s the whole field guide in one sentence. Realistic expectations. Maybe not today.

One scene I love in that storyline isn’t the moment Flora gets a DNA hit. It’s the scene where her aunt, Emily Hartford, comes back to the lab after a break and finds Flora hunched over the keyboard, fingers moving fast, eyes locked on the screen, refusing to come up for air. Emily asks if she wants a snack. Flora doesn’t hear her. Emily asks again.

Without looking up, Flora answers: What if this were your child or sibling or best friend who had gone missing, never to be heard from again? Wouldn’t you want to know as soon as possible?

That’s the heartbeat of FIGG.

The drama isn’t the technology. The drama is the moral urgency the technology gives a fourteen-year-old at a keyboard, condensed into a single sentence by a kid who has only just learned what the work costs.

Flora’s storyline didn’t come from nowhere. It came from a real program at Ramapo College in New Jersey, the same one I credit in the back of the book — Ramapo runs an investigative genetic genealogy boot camp, and the youngest person ever to help resolve a case using IGG was a high school student who took part in it. The classrooms are real. The cases are real. The kids are real.

What I needed Flora to model — and what I want every crime writer to take with them — is that FIGG is not glamorous. It’s tedious, careful, full of stretches where the only thing happening on the page is a person staring at a screen.

The drama lives in the patience. But the reward is worth the wait. And to illustrate this I stretched Flora’s FIGG storyline into book 6, Walking On White, releasing October 20, 2026. Flora will get her answers!

The Field Guide: FIGG Best Writing Practices

Practical things to do when forensic genetic genealogy enters your story.

  • Write the timeline honestly. Give the lab time. Give the family tree time. Let your investigator be frustrated by the wait. The slowness is the realism.
  • Write the genealogist as a character. Let them have a personality, a method, a doubt. Let your reader watch them work.
  • Show the confirmation DNA moment. The discarded coffee cup, the swab from a hospital, the cigarette in a parking lot. That’s the beat where the candidate becomes the suspect. Don’t skip it.
  • Use the right databases by name. FamilyTreeDNA. Mention the opt-in setting. Get this right and the readers who care will trust you on everything else.
  • Build the family tree onto the page. A scene where your detective sees a name three generations away from a killer and starts to feel the case shift — that’s a scene that didn’t exist in the genre until 2018. It’s yours to invent.
  • Let the candidate be a real person before they’re proven guilty. FIGG often surfaces ordinary people — fathers, neighbors, retired church deacons — whose DNA matched because their nephew did a Christmas-gift spit kit. Sit with that for a paragraph. The moral weight of the technique lives in that pause.
  • Don’t forget victim identification. Most crime fiction uses FIGG to catch killers. Marcia King’s case is a reminder that it also gives names back to the dead. A novel that works the missing person’s side of the technique has a clear field in front of it.

The Ethics Seam Writers Should Rip Into

When a great-aunt sends her DNA to a consumer genealogy site to find out where her ancestors came from, she is not consenting to a future case being made against her grandnephew. The chain of relationship is invisible, intimate, and one-way. She doesn’t know who she is implicating. She can’t know.

That’s the moral seam every crime writer working in this space should put pressure on. Not to take a side, necessarily — only to acknowledge that the technique that brings closure to one family creates exposure for another. A character who has thoughts about that is more interesting than one who doesn’t. A scene where a relative is told your DNA is the reason we found him is one of the rawest moments fiction can offer right now, and almost no one has written it well yet.

That could be you.

Why This Tool Earns Its Place in the Genre

The cases forensic genetic genealogy has solved are the cases that broke families for decades. Children waited their whole adult lives to learn who killed their mothers. Parents died not knowing what had happened to their daughters. The technique can’t undo any of that. It doesn’t give back the years.

What it does is end the unknowing. And the unknowing, as I have written before, is the part of grief no one survives well.

In April of 2018, a mother in Arkansas finally got an answer about a daughter she had never stopped waiting for. The headstone in Riverside Cemetery in Troy, Ohio, that had said Jane Doe for thirty-seven years got a name carved into it: Marcia Lenore Sossoman King. The murder is still open. The killer hasn’t been caught. But Marcia is no longer Buckskin Girl. She is herself again, in death, the way she was in life.

Every crime writer who writes in cold case territory is, in some sense, writing toward that exact moment — the unknowing that finally breaks. FIGG deserves a place in crime fiction. It deserves to be written without shortcuts. It deserves to be written by people who understand that the truth at the end of the family tree belongs first to the family of the victim.

Get the science and technique right. Get the genealogy right. Get the long process right.

The story takes care of itself from there.

Want more on writing forensics that actually holds up? My Crime Writer’s Toolkit and the Master Crime Writing Course at forensicspeak.com walk through the procedures, evidence types, and craft principles that separate the novels readers trust from the ones they put down on page forty.

Jennifer Dornbush is an author, screenwriter, and forensic specialist who brings crime stories to life with authenticity and heart. With a background rooted in real-world forensics and a passion for crafting unforgettable mysteries, Jennifer offers readers and viewers a front-row seat to the intersection of science, justice, and human nature. Jennifer’s crime expertise has made her a sought-after speaker, consultant, and educator. Through her webinars and master courses, Jennifer guides writers in melding suspenseful storytelling with forensic realism to the screen and page. Meet her at www.jenniferdornbush.com

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Solo Summer Travel Tips For Females (Or Anyone!): How to Lower Your Crime Risk

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Street-smart solo female travel safety tips to lower your target risk and stay in control.

I’m going to be brutally honest here. We spend an awful lot of our time and attention on employing safety efforts and dwelling on the false belief that we can actually cocoon ourselves in real safety. Helicopter parents and people, take note: the idea of safety is a sham. There is no safe place in the world. Just look at the daily news for proof.

I’m not saying this to alarm you or grab you with a fear-mongering hook. I’m saying it because we have to call a spade a spade. Until we look this problem in the eye, we’ll be kidding ourselves (and our children!) all the way to the grave.

That said, there are ways we can keep ourselves on the low end of the risk continuum. I’m borrowing that term from FBI agent, cold case detective, and personal friend Greg Cooper, who co-authored the book “Predators: Who They Are and How to Stop Them” with Michael R. King.

The risk continuum gauges how a person’s lifestyle, choices, locations, and activities place them on a scale from low to high risk for becoming a target of a predator.

Traveling alone as a woman can push you toward the higher end of that continuum if you don’t pay attention to how you move through the world. You need to notice more. Assess more. Think a few steps ahead. Not out of fear, but so that protective behavior keeps steering you lower on the continuum. You can’t eliminate risk. That isn’t realistic anywhere. But you can be prepared and fully present, because when you understand how environments work and where criminal intent tends to surface, you don’t move through a place as prey.

How To Be More Aware: Not Anxious

Before you step into an airport, set your mind on awareness. Notice who’s moving with purpose, who’s lingering without one, who’s paying attention to you instead of their own environment. To do this well, you have to put that phone away. No eyes glued to your screen.

Pay attention to subtle movements: someone standing closer than necessary when space is available, a person who adjusts their position more than once to stay near you, attention that feels focused rather than incidental. Most of the time, everything is normal. But when something isn’t, this is how it announces itself. When you notice it, you have time to move, to remove yourself, to alert security if needed.

Airports are high-distraction spaces. People are tired and focused on boarding times, and that creates opportunity for theft and deliberate targeting. Keep your belongings close, bags zipped, phone and wallet secured. When your attention is fully on your phone, you’re completely disconnected from your environment. Your safety in a chaotic space is more important than any call, text, or email.

Transportation Safety: Control the Transitions

Some of the most vulnerable moments in solo travel happen during transitions: leaving the airport, entering a vehicle, arriving somewhere unfamiliar. Slow down, pause, keep your head up, look around, and orient yourself before moving from place to place.

Before getting into any ride, pause. Confirm the driver’s name, photo, and license plate against what the app shows before you step inside. Once inside, share your route with someone who can confirm you’ve arrived when and where you’re supposed to.

If something feels off, act early. Even a simple question establishes presence and signals that you’re paying attention. Predators in any context always prefer a target who isn’t watching. Drivers who know their passengers are alert behave differently than those who see a distracted, disconnected passenger. Don’t be that passenger.

Hotel and Airbnb Stays for Women Traveling Alone

Where you stay becomes your base of control. The moment you arrive, take ownership of the space. Check the locks. Understand entry points. Notice where the exits are and how you’d leave quickly if needed.

Airbnb safety for women starts before arrival. Review listings carefully, paying attention to access details, host reviews, and location context. A well-reviewed property in a walkable area with clear security measures is worth prioritizing over a cheaper option that introduces uncertainty.

In hotels, keep your room number private and never repeat it aloud in the lobby. Verify anyone claiming to be staff before opening the door. Use all available security features, not just the main lock. A portable door stop alarm is one of the most practical things you can travel with. You lower your risk when you understand your space and take control of it.

Navigating Public Spaces: Move With Purpose

When you’re walking through a city or using public transit, your presence communicates more than you realize. People read movement. They notice hesitation, distraction, and uncertainty. Predators specifically notice these things, because those signals tell them you aren’t paying attention.

You don’t need exaggerated confidence. You need purpose. Keep your head up. If you need to check directions, step into a store or café rather than stopping in an open area. Choose a well-lit route over a shorter one. Position yourself near others instead of in isolated areas. Create distance early if someone enters your space without a clear reason. Your posture, pace, and awareness signal that you’re engaged and alert. Predators look for the easiest path to a target. Don’t give them one.

Social Interactions: Stay Friendly, Stay Boundaried

Travel is enhanced by the people we meet along the way, and most interactions are genuinely positive. But clear personal limits are a core part of lowering your risk as a solo female traveler.

You don’t need to share where you’re staying, where you’re from, or where you plan to visit next. You don’t need to reveal that you’re traveling alone. You can be warm and engaging without exposing information that raises your risk. Pay attention to how people respond when you redirect or decline. Respect is a signal. Pressure from a predator is also a signal, and it’s one worth taking seriously immediately.

Understanding How Predators Behave in Travel Environments

Predators look for the path of least resistance. Someone juggling bags and chatting on their phone is exactly what they’re scanning for. Someone hesitating in an open area, looking unsure, is exactly what they prefer. Your physical behavior is being read and interpreted. When you move with awareness and intention, you signal that you’re confident and paying attention. It may be the difference between becoming a target and watching a predator move on to someone who isn’t watching. You can’t eliminate the predator. You can absolutely raise the cost of targeting you.

Trust Your Instincts Immediately

One of the most important things you can do for your safety as a solo traveling woman is to listen to your instincts and act on them immediately. If something feels off, it probably is. Leave. Change direction. Create space. Move away from whatever is causing that hair on the back of your neck to stand up.

Instinct is pattern recognition working beneath the surface. It draws from everything you’ve seen, experienced, and processed, and it often registers a shift before your conscious mind catches up. You don’t need proof. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for acting on a feeling that something isn’t right.

Women are trained to override their instincts: stay polite, don’t make a scene, give someone the benefit of the doubt. But that is exactly what predators count on. Trust me, as someone raised in Michigan on Midwest nice, I have to remind myself regularly that I don’t have to be nice if I’m feeling threatened. Neither do you.

Travel Prep for Solo Women

Preparation lowers your risk before you ever leave home. These habits keep you on the lower end of the risk continuum from the start.

  • Know your route, your itinerary, and your backup options if plans fall through.
  • Share your full itinerary with someone you trust, including hotel addresses and check-in times.
  • Write an emergency contact number on a card kept on your person, not just in your phone. Memorize at least three numbers in case your phone is lost or stolen.
  • Keep copies of important documents in a separate location from the originals.
  • Download offline maps before you arrive so you can navigate without cell service.
  • Research your destination before you go: which neighborhoods carry higher risk, what local scams look like, and what the emergency number is.
  • Carry a personal safety alarm that clips to your bag or keychain.
  • Don’t publish your real-time location on social media. Post the beautiful photos after you’ve moved on.

Frequently Asked Questions: Solo Female Travel Safety

Is solo female travel safe?

Nowhere in this world is safe. You have to start with that premise. Think about it: even going to school or church can end in tragedy. But we can’t live paralyzed under that fear. What we can do is increase our awareness, preparation, and situational instincts to keep ourselves on the low end of the risk continuum. Solo female travel can be both rewarding and lower-risk when you take steps to reduce predator opportunity through intentional movement, clear personal limits, and the habit of trusting your instincts the second they show up.

What are the best safety tips for women traveling alone?

The most effective solo female travel safety habits: stay aware of your surroundings without hypervigilance, slow down at transition moments, trust your instincts before you have proof, maintain personal limits in social interactions without apology, and prepare in advance so unfamiliar environments don’t require real-time decisions in the open.

How do you stay safe in hotels or Airbnbs as a solo female traveler?

Take ownership of the space immediately on arrival. Check locks and understand entry points. Know where the exits are. In hotels, keep your room number private and verify anyone claiming to be staff before opening the door. Use a portable door stop alarm. With Airbnb, review access details, host reviews, and location context before booking.

What are the most dangerous moments in solo travel for women?

Transition moments carry the highest risk: leaving airports, entering unfamiliar vehicles, arriving at new accommodations, and navigating new public transit systems. These are the moments when you’re managing unfamiliar territory, baggage, tiredness, and maybe a new language all at once. Slowing down, pausing to orient, and verifying before moving are the most effective actions at each of these points.

How do you stay safe using rideshare apps when traveling alone?

Before entering any vehicle, confirm the driver’s name, photo, and license plate against what the app shows. Don’t get in until you’ve verified all three. Once inside, share your trip with a contact. Stay generally aware of your route. Predators prefer passengers who aren’t paying attention. Don’t be one.

How do you set limits with strangers while traveling without being rude?

You can be warm and still be private. You don’t need to explain that you’re alone, share your accommodation details, or provide personal information to have a friendly interaction. Redirect with brevity: “I’m just exploring” or “I’m meeting people shortly” closes the loop without confrontation. Pay attention to whether the person respects the redirect or pushes past it. That response tells you more than the initial approach did.

What should solo female travelers do if they feel their risk is rising?

Act on the instinct immediately. You don’t need evidence or a rational justification. Leave. Change direction. Move toward more people, a lit space, or a business. The urge to stay polite or avoid making a scene is real, but it’s exactly what criminal predators count on. Your safety is more important than the social comfort of the person who raised your instincts.

Is it safe to travel alone as a woman at night?

With intentional planning, you can significantly lower your risk. Choose well-lit populated routes over shortcuts. Know your destination before you leave. Share your route with someone. Use rideshare over walking in unfamiliar areas after dark. Trust your read of the environment: your instincts will register the difference between a busy neighborhood and an empty street before your logic does.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jennifer Dornbush is an author, screenwriter, and forensic specialist who brings crime stories to life with authenticity and heart. With a background rooted in real-world forensics and a passion for crafting unforgettable mysteries, Jennifer offers readers and viewers a front-row seat to the intersection of science, justice, and human nature. Jennifer’s crime expertise has made her a sought-after speaker, consultant, and educator. Through her webinars and master courses, Jennifer guides writers in melding suspenseful storytelling with forensic realism to the screen and page. Meet her at www.jenniferdornbush.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overdoing the fear factor in real life?

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As writers and readers, we love to experience a sense of fear. But it’s a different story living in a culture of fear.

We recently moved into a new town, and I immediately noticed how security-conscious the people seem. The email welcoming us to the neighborhood included an attachment with an update on local crimes. There seemed to be a lot of property crime going on. In one incident, a young woman and her father had interrupted a burglary. The intruders tied them up and held them both at gunpoint for hours.

After reading that report, I started getting more interested in the notion of home security. First I made sure we’d covered all the the standard bases of crime prevention–keeping property lights on, having a dog, never leaving doors or windows unlocked. Our alarm system was obsolete, so I met with a series of security consultants from various alarm companies.


That’s when I began to go overboard. We needed motion detectors, I decided, plus interior and exterior video surveillance. (If someone burgles our house, by golly I want to see the guy so I can identify him.) 

So now our house is bristling with cutting edge, high-tech security gear. We have a video monitor that lets us see various angles of the property. At night, the displays are infrared. (So far the only intruder we’ve caught is our male cat on the prowl for a midnight treat.) We even have panic buttons on our key fobs.

Now I’m thinking I went too far with the whole security thing. I’ve become a regular listener to the police scanner frequency. Then there are all the alerts. Our system lets me know whenever someone approaches our front gate. It also alerts me whenever a bird,  butterfly, or errant leaf passes by. I’m collecting an impressive video library of local wildlife.

MacGregor, fearsome watchdog.



Does the new system make us feel more secure? For me, it’s had the opposite effect. Putting in all these security contraptions has actually made feel more vulnerable. It’s illogical, but I felt safer in my previous state of uninformed bliss.  

But for now, woe unto any Luna moth who strays across our portal after dark. He better smile for that camera.

“Do you feel lucky, Moth?”

Do you live in a culture of fear? Or do you still have that lovely sense of being immune from danger as you go about your daily life? I wish I had that back.