SOLVING THE FIRST MURDER CASE IN ROMANIA USING FAMILIAL SEARCHING

F. Stanciu, E. Dragomir, T. Bratu

Abstract: The DNA of each of us is made from parts of our biological family: we share half of our autosomal DNA with our fathers, mothers, sons and daughters; we share a quarter of our autosomal DNA with our grandfathers, grandmothers, nephews and nieces; we share a variable proportion of autosomal DNA with our brothers and sisters; we share the same Y chromosome with our paternal lineage, if we are men, or we share the same mitochondrial DNA with our maternal lineage, if we are women. Those are our close kinship ties, but at some level all humans are related to each other. These biological rules allow today forensic specialists to find the author of an unidentified DNA profile based on its relatives DNA. This article presents, on short, the story of the first murder case solved in Romania using Familial searching and CODIS.
Keywords: forensic DNA databases, routine searching, familial searching, CODIS, National Judicial Genetic Data System