FIGG

Thank goodness for acronyms.  The long name is forensic investigative genetic genealogy, a huge mouthful.  This is a comparatively new tool  (developed in 2018) for solving crimes such as homicide or sexual assault, or for finding missing persons.  In the same way that we can search fingerprint databases for a match to identify someone, we can now search commercial DNA databases to find a genetic match for a missing person, or for a criminal or victim.  Just as a fingerprint is a unique identifier, so too is a person’s DNA.

There are two databases available for this forensic work — GEDmatch PRO and FamilyTreeDNA, each containing between 1-2 million profiles.  Australians are an estimated 5-10% of these databases.  A match provides a starting point for genealogical research using historical and government records to find the most recent common ancestral couple, and from that point family trees are developed down to arrive at the present day.  This usually provides a pool of candidates who then have to be checked individually for confirmation that they are the person being sought.

In Australia FIGG has been used to identify the Somerton Man in South Australia, a case that had been a mystery since his body was discovered on the beach at Glenelg in 1948.

More recently it has been used to identify a body found on Kangaroo Island in 1983. In this case the ancestral couple had 40 grandchildren (it was hypothesised that the victim was a grandson based on the years between the ancestors and the victim) so a good deal of work had to be done to narrow down the possibilities. Finally the police took over again to contact the remaining descendants and found that one of them had a brother who had gone missing.