Special Ep 176: Ancestry: Protecting Criminals, Denying Justice: Jennifer Bucholtz joins Jill!

About this episode

Who wouldn't want to help identify unknown human remains and restore the names of the deceased? Who wouldn't want to solve a cold case? Would anyone act to prevent this? Evidently, yes! Effective November 2025, Ancestry.com 's new policy prohibits anyone from using its databases for investigative purposes. While Ancestry has long banned law enforcement's use of genetic genealogy for identifying suspects, this policy expands the ban to all investigations. This change has had a devastating impact on cold-case and missing-persons investigations. Furthermore, this policy also applies to Newspapers.com and Find-A-Grave.com , both of which are critical resources for various types of…