|
It seems prudent that a pedigree must be put in place to try and uncover a very long-standing misconception that there is ethnic DNA (determining race) in existence for EAR. Along with the rumor such DNA does exist there is the rumor that this had been secretly leaked from official law enforcement evidence databases some years back to a coterie of buffs who present themselves online as the center of the amateur investigation into EAR.
The first solid evidence I had was a cut and paste of an email response to a person who had a person of interest, and like others had submitted this name to a retired detective. This retired investigator was, apparently, working in tandem with one of the buffs on one of the message boards devoted to ruminating about EAR/ONS. This email is dated to December 2015. The contents of the email were disturbing. This person’s POI was “eliminated” because he wasn’t ethnically correct. The word “eliminated” was indeed used— the language of sworn officers of the law only.
In all my encounters with sworn (current) law enforcement investigators associated with the case of EAR/ONS there was nothing made of any specific ethnicity pertaining to EAR (aside from WMA). Therefore I could not understand the origins of this certainty in the email of which I saw a copy, especially since it so contradicted the words and actions of current investigators.
I was told that the first mention of specific ethnicity was by a journalist named Michelle McNamara, who had stated this on a Dork Forest podcast on July 15, 2011. “I know somewhat of what his ethnicity was because they ran it. I’m not supposed to know that but it is German/Scandinavian-English because I was told that. You can do that now. You can like send away your DNA now, so they did it for his.”
Until the recent publication of her book, any projection of McNamara’s name into the pursuit of EAR/ONS came from a small message board group. Otherwise she had a very minimal radar return on the subject— an article in La Magazine in 2011 and a defunct online blog (defunct as of late 2014). However, I was told there was a message board made up of devout devotees to her, and the pervading view, fostered by these devotees, was that she had some significant information that put her above all others. From comments on other boards, this reverence seemed to be a source of irk to others following the case. No accredited crime reporter on a major daily had ever cracked a serial killing case. Her contribution to this subject, once again, was not a very substantial one, and the anticipation of an undoubted solution forthcoming was disproportionate and without precedence.
It seemed that one of the devotees in this crowd was assisting the retired detective in “eliminating” POIs. We must deduce that this devotee accepted uncritically McNamara’s statement (or belief) and even convinced the retired detective that “German-English” was authentic.
However, with the recent publication of McNamara’s book (written by ghostwriters as she died of accidental overdose in April 2016), we are given a disturbing origin for the misconception of “German-English” from a genealogical graph presented in the book on page 306 and the surrounding dissertation. It is a graph of Y-STR DNA markers with the attendant claim that they are EAR’s “DNA profile.” Somehow the list got into the hands of McNamara, though the method is obscure for obvious reasons since this would be classified evidence reserved only for law enforcement. The preceding paragraph only thinly connects the dots. It states that Russ Oase, who is touted as a retired Secret Service agent and “amateur sleuth” bitten by the bug to solve the case, had uploaded “markers” to a civilian database. How he got this official evidence we are not told. But he uploaded it to a civilian DNA database anonymously (apparently under an alias consisting of a number sequence). It is highly unlikely she got it from him, but it got out one way or another, ostensibly to McNamara first or to a few others first and she obtained it from there. McNamara then submitted EAR’s “DNA profile” in her own name to a civilian Y-STR database in order to retrieve a list of surnames. Y Markers, of course, follow direct male heritage, and this just might reveal EAR’s surname.
This begins the domino effect of what is currently the sales and marketing hook for the book— that the book will lead to the solution of the cold case. But expounding on this is really not the object here. (A follow-up with any of the major jurisdictions involved in the crime spree will confirm the markers are inaccurate and quickly supplanted by better markers.) The object here is the origin of the belief that EAR is “German-English,” first expressed in 2011. And it seems undeniable that any list of surnames derived from this questionable venture above is the basis for that statement and subsequent affirmation by others.
(In the above Dork Forest podcast McNamara continues, saying that when a certain type of name pops up in her research, she homes in on it. Since the vast majority of American names are of German or British origin (and by no means indicate actual ethnicity), such broad ethnic names cannot possibly be of benefit in triaging. It seems obvious she was actually referring to a small list of surnames she had achieved from the Y marker submission.)
Although the list of surnames was not published in the book, the Y-STR markers were, and those who fancied they were familiar with DNA genealogy set about to use them to pick up on the surnames. (Apparently that arcane group of devotees). This list has circulated from a number of sources. The surnames associated with this Y-STR DNA are predominantly German, with 2 names in English clearly being Anglicizing of the original German name by an immigrant ancestor.
Altogether with the 5 or so other German names they give us a pedigree for the rumor that real DNA got leaked to the public (via whatever means), DNA that has specified that EAR was “German-English.” Forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick is also quoted in the book saying that from the surnames she was shown (apparently by McNamara) “EAR had a German name but was from the UK.” This is a strange way to put it until you realize that the hits on these markers are so distant that a common ancestor (and possible nearest relative) must have come here from England with the earliest immigrants. “From England” is still unlikely, as Pennsylvania Dutch were coming over direct from Germany and undoubtedly some of their names have been Anglicized. Where this Anglicizing took place, we do not know, but from the statement “German name from England” were get a peculiar flavor of “English-German.”
The entire concept that EAR was ethnically determined to be German-English seems to come not from DNA, but from McNamara’s belief these Y markers were accurate and that they identified his paternal line as carrying one of these German or Anglicized German surnames. It is incredibly simplistic exploitation of paternal markers to think they reflect ethnicity. A Schmidt might indeed marry an O’Hara, Rokovich, etc., and eventually despite the surname those carrying them might be quite an exotic ethnic mixture.
Right now the marketing hype that McNamara’s book contains the clue that will out EAR’s identity is a fairly harmless marketing stunt. It will easily fade away. The true damage that has been done was begun years ago by those who truly believed that DNA scientifically declaring EAR’s ethnicity existed and it was something as simple as “German-English.” Buffs used this to eliminate I don’t know how many persons of interest and did this completely independent of law enforcement or by forging some kind of bond with one or more retired detectives. Now with equal simplicity (or gullibility) they believe they have surnames that can lead to EAR. Considering they hide behind alias names and obsolete clipart icon profile pictures, we can only shudder at how they might construct a person of interest merely because he has one of these surnames on this antiquated list.
There is, in fact, no simple ethnic DNA on EAR. And even if those published Y markers were accurate, they do not indicate ethnicity but paternal lines. German was the prestigious language and even lingua franca of eastern Europe. Many thousands of people carried German surnames and yet were not ethnically German. When the Holy Roman Emperor issued a decree that all subjects were to take a surname, many of the subjects took German names, thinking the emperor in Vienna had meant German names. Jews in particular took German surnames. But many thousands of others in the lands of Austria-Hungary and Ukraine/Galicia/Poland took German surnames. As noted, a German with a German surname can also marry an Irishwoman— what ethnicity would the children be despite the paternal Y markers and a German surname?
Anybody who has had the Ancestry.com DNA profile done for them knows how intricate it can get. There is nothing that comes back “German-English,” and the forensic geneticist in the book speaks purely of surname, not ethnicity. Great Britain is divided by ethnicity, including commonly finding traces of Iberian. My cousin’s children are half Scottish on their mother’s side, and it is the Bruce, and they are close to the stem of Robert the Bruce and the Earls of Elgin, the chief of the Clan Bruce. My half Scottish cousins are no such thing. DNA testing proved there was a chance of 3% Scottish. They were still undeniably Norman (Scandinavian and Europe West) as indeed were their Bruce ancestors (Robert the Bruce was a Norman). Though they would appear German, Bruce is not a German surname.
There are many ways the DNA strands can be linked to Europe South, East, West, Caucasus, Middle East, European Jewish, British, Welsh, Irish, Scottish. Scots, Welsh and Irish, are all the Celts, but the strands can be singled out to reveal those peculiar to the nations mentioned.
I had an ancestor from a prestigious Italian/Swiss family who went up to the Volga land to govern it for Catherine the Great in 1786. Obviously some of his descendants married into the local German/Huguenot settler families. These would be my ancestors as well. The testing of my cousin’s children could even link them to Europe West with strands that identified the heritage as “Germans From Russia.” My cousin’s children are still 8% Italian, which astounded me.
Those that do know genealogy via DNA know that it can be used to identify your 1st to 6th cousins, the closer related to a very high degree of certainty. If the data on EAR’s accurate Y Markers were a viable way to hunt EAR, law enforcement would have been able already to identify his immediate family. Any investigator worth their salt could have exposed EAR’s identity within a week just by tracing the heritage of some close cousins— only a couple of generations need be examined. A 12 out of 12 match and a 35 out of 35 match of Y-STR markers would indicate a great grandfather in common. The less markers used (12) but the more in common between them so much the better. No such matches have obviously been made even with the correct Y-STR markers. A major reason? He is, in fact, “a loner in the genome,” as it was put to me. He has no close relatives in the databases.
Since law enforcement has not yet exposed EAR’s identity, we should believe official statements that the DNA as published is inaccurate let alone the statement they do not have sufficiently good markers yet to trace him.
Sadly, though, the belief these Y markers and surnames can identify ethnicity have been influencing buffs since 2011, more than enough time for law enforcement to have solved the identity of EAR if these Y marker results were good.
In short, German-English is too broad and unprofessional a category and no civilian DNA database separates on those merits. From the comments in McNamara’s book we know that Oase is credited with uploading “markers” and from there McNamara uploaded his “DNA profile” which obviously is not a profile but paternal Y markers. These are not ethnic strands. Since no other DNA is claimed to have been leaked, we thus should conclude that the names jury-rigged from this Y DNA, which are German with some Anglicizing examples, is the basis for the misconception EAR is German-English, and sadly the grounds used by amateurs “in-the-know” since 2011 to “eliminate” people’s suspects. This latter outrage was done by trying to trace their pedigrees on Ancestry.com and finding names that suggested another ethnicity in their heritage.
This is the true damage, not the S&M touting a sensational solution is contained in a book. Emails show that for over two years (at least) a self appointed crowd of experts were using the crude concept of “German-English” to probe into the past of EAR/ONS and even pursue or “eliminate” suspects. Their naive belief they truly had DNA markers pinched from a Federal or County authority, and their simplistic belief that paternal line surnames reflected ethnicity has left a bungling trail of obstruction of justice.
|
