in 2018, the suspect for a notorious serial killer in california, the golden state killer, was arrestedrampage in the late �*70s and �*80s, the hunt for the killer had gone cold. that was until an unusual technique was used to find him, involving genetic ancestry. ancestry websites are designed for people to find their genetic relatives through dna links, but the police realised if they put the golden state killer's dna into one of these websites, they could find the killer's relatives — a crucial clue. most ancestry websites don't allow law enforcement checks, but a few do. the one the police chose to use was a company called gedmatch. the golden state killer is almost a halo case for the success of the technology. so you upload the profile, gedmatch will give back a series of matches. and it basically says it will give you a name, an e—mail address and how much dna you share with that profile. so effectively, what they're doing is building family trees. so you have to build back far enough till you reach what they call a most recent common ancestor, and then figure out where the trees