I Know Who You Are
How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever
1 of 1 copy available
“Barbara Rae-Venter isn’t just the genealogy expert who helped capture the Golden State Killer—she’s an unsung hero who has given murdered women and children their faces and names back.”—Maureen Callahan, New York Times bestselling author of American Predator
“Echoes the dedication displayed by such fictional police detectives as California novelist Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch.”—The Wall Street Journal
For twelve years the Golden State Killer terrorized California, stalking victims and killing without remorse. Then he simply disappeared, for the next forty-four years, until an amateur DNA sleuth opened her laptop. In I Know Who You Are, Barbara Rae-Venter reveals how she went from researching her family history as a retiree to hunting for a notorious serial killer—and how she became the nation’s leading authority on investigative genetic genealogy, the most dazzling new crime-fighting weapon to appear in decades.
Rae-Venter shares haunting, often thrilling accounts of how she helped solve some of America’s most chilling cold cases in the span of just three years, frequently starting with little more than a DNA sample. She brings readers inside her unique “grasshopper mind” as she pores through obituaries, marriage records, and old newspaper articles. Readers join in on urgent calls with sheriffs, FBI agents, and district attorneys as she details the struggle to obtain usable crime scene DNA samples, until, finally, a critical piece of the puzzle clicks into place.
I Know Who You Are captures both the exhilaration of these discoveries and the deep-rooted emotions that linger around cold cases. It is a story of relentless curiosity and reinvention, and of human beings striving to answer the most elemental questions about themselves: What defines identity? Where do we belong? And are we truly who we think we are?
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
February 7, 2023 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593668900
- File size: 241847 KB
- Duration: 08:23:50
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from December 19, 2022
Investigative genetic genealogist Rae-Venter debuts with a remarkable account of how law-enforcement tapped into her use of DNA matches “to build family trees and help solve unknown parentage issues.” Upon retirement from her career as a patent attorney, Rae-Venter dove into researching her family tree, using DNA tests to identify relatives. In 2015, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department sought her help identifying the real identity of a 30-something woman, Lisa Jensen, who was abducted as a young child. Rae-Venter’s use of Jensen’s DNA enabled her to establish Jensen’s real name, and in another case identify a serial killer. These successes paved the way for her involvement in the Golden State Killer case; her dogged research revealed ex-cop Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. to be the person responsible for dozens of rapes and murders in California during the 1970s and ’80s, crimes for which he pleaded guilty in 2020. Rae-Venter makes the science accessible and delves into the controversy that forensic genealogy has engendered because of privacy concerns. She is less bothered by those qualms, believing fears of a dystopian future stemming from law-enforcement use of genetic information are overwrought. It’s an eye-opening and thought-provoking contribution to the true crime genre. Agent: Frank Weimann, Folio Literary Management.
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