One of our long time volunteers has written a great article called How Misattributed Parentage and Other Challenges Can Complicate Your Investigative Genetic Genealogy Case for ISHI.
The article describes a case, anonymized for privacy of the family, involving a young female homicide victim who had remained unidentified for many years. Initially, her DNA matches indicated that the case would be straightforward and quickly solved. Her top match was 1,710 centimorgans – later revealed to be a full aunt. However, the top match’s sibling, a male – now deceased, had never acknowledged paternity of a child born at the time that our Jane Doe would have been born. This was our first dead end of the case – we knew who Jane Doe’s father was, but had no way to identify her mother.
The DNA Doe Project is honored to have such amazing talent help with our cases.