Sometime between 10:30 p.m. and 3:30 a.m. on the night of July 6-7, 1985, someone entered the house she was staying at and stabbed Jane 54 year old Jane Hylton 29 times. Police set their sights on the most likely suspect – another resident of the house, 20 year old Ricky Davis. It was just too far-fetched to believe that someone else random had come along and killed Jane, and Ricky was arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to prison. But when the Northern California Innocence Project took up his case, they found untested DNA evidence. And this evidence would change everything. Forensic genealogy showed that Ricky was innocent – and someone else entirely was to blame for Jane’s vicious murder.

On Valentine's Day, February 14th, 1982, the body of a young woman was discovered by a worker along interstate 40 in Williams, Arizona. It became clear quickly to investigators that she had been murdered, and her body dragged out of sight of the road. She was given the moniker 'Valentine Sally' An autopsy revealed that she had died from suffocation or asphyxiation. One potential clue found by the ME, was that Valentine Sally had recently had a tooth drilled in preparation for a root canal, and baby aspirin remnants were found packed into the open hole in her gum. Police were able to find multiple witnesses that they were confident had interacted with Valentine Sally in the days before she was killed. One of them gave her a ride and recalled her talking about a toothache. The other witness, a truck stop waitress, was the one who provided Valentine Sally with the baby aspirin for her gum. This waitress was able to describe an older man in a cowboy hat who was with Valentine Sally, and a sketch was made of him

In April 1987, Cathy Sposito was brutally killed on a popular, scenic hiking trail in broad daylight in Prescott Arizona. Despite multiple earwitnesses to her murder, her killer eluded police. A massive investigation turned up two prime suspects, but there was no smoking gun. Then, a 1990 sexual assault on the same trail mirrored the MO, and again, the killer escaped. This time, the survivor was able to describe her attacker, but his identity remained unknown. The two crimes were linked only theoretically until DNA evidence connected them, and tied them to the same man. And that man was given a name by forensic genealogy, which solved the two cases at once.