Benjamin Holmes.
Genealogy websites have helped solve a lot of old murder cases recently, and the culprits always end up being black.
Could these websites be… racist?
An arrest has been made in a 17-year-old murder case after police matched DNA samples found at the crime scene to those of the suspect’s relatives through a genealogy website.
Benjamin Holmes, 38, was arrested on Friday for the 2001 murder of Christine Franke in her Orlando apartment. The 25-year-old college student was shot dead during a burglary at her apartment.
For years, her case remained unsolved despite numerous attempts by police to crack it.
Those attempts included teaming up with Parabon Nanolabs, a DNA testing website who were given a sample of DNA found at the crime scene.
In May this year, they found a match with three people on the website GEDMatch, an open data personal genomics database and genealogy website, and notified police who contacted the people who had submitted the samples.
After ruling those relatives out, police narrowed their search to Holmes and his brother.
After taking samples from both men, they arrested Holmes for the murder last week.
Christine Franke.