DNA testing kits such as 23andMe can tell you all about your family's ancestry… but they can also potentially catch a serial killer.
The notorious "Golden State Killer," known for a series of rapes and murders in California in the 1970s and 1980s, evaded capture for decades, but his genes finally caught up to him. Armed with DNA that the killer left behind at various crime scenes, investigators used a shot-in-the-dark method to track him down: They painstakingly searched through numerous genetic profiles on popular genealogy websites to see if they could find DNA that matched that of the murderer's — and they just about did, according to the Sacramento Bee. In fact, the investigators homed in on the genetic profile of someone who appeared to be related to the killer.
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