One September evening in 2004, a Texas rancher noticed three buzzards circling near the road at the edge of his property. When he approached, he saw the body of an infant lying naked in the brush beside a barbed wire fence.
Wayne Springer, then an investigator with the Medina County Sheriff’s Department, was among the officers called to the scene. The infant was a newborn girl with the umbilical cord still attached.
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Forensic genetic genealogy has been used to track down serial killers, but what does it mean when it’s used to solve cases of babies who were found dead decades ago?Deputy Springer knocked on doors up and down the road, looking for witnesses. He collected cheek swabs from dozens of people, hoping to find a DNA match. He tracked down carnival workers who had been in town for the Medina County Fair. On the anniversary of the baby’s death, he staked out the cemetery in case someone stopped by her grave.
Then, one day in 2023, his phone blew up. Former colleagues at the sheriff’s department were calling to say that a 45-year-old woman, Maricela Frausto, had been identified as the baby’s mother.
Ms. Frausto, a mother of two who owned a restaurant in nearby Hondo, Texas, with her family, had been identified using a relatively new technique known as forensic genetic genealogy. Using DNA data from thousands of volunteer donors, investigators can create family trees and use them to match DNA found at crime scenes.