WICHITA, Kan.—Police in Kansas have arrested and charged a man in a 2007 sexual assault by matching a DNA sample to data submitted to genealogy websites.
Ted Foy, 52, of Augusta, is jailed on $500,000 bond after he was charged last week with rape, aggravated sexual battery, and aggravated criminal sodomy. His attorney, public defender Sonya Strickland, didn’t respond to an Associated Press email seeking comment Monday.
The Wichita Eagle reports that it was the Wichita police department’s first arrest using investigative genetic genealogy. The process received widespread attention after it was used in 2018 to track down a California serial killer who was responsible for at least 13 killings and dozens of rapes in the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, the method has led to the identification of dozens of suspects in cold cases, though some critics have voiced privacy concerns….