SCC Crime Lab-DNA and more

Criminalist Cordelia Willis has been a forensic scientist in the Bay Area for over 20 years.  She has undergraduate degrees in music theatre and math from Nebraska Wesleyan University and a master’s degree in math and statistics from Northern Arizona University.  After teaching for a few years, she received a second master's degree in forensic science from George Washington University.  She completed internships with the Tucson Police Department Crime Lab and the NCIS Cold Case Squad and has worked as a Criminalist at the Santa Clara County Crime Lab for the last 20 years.  She is a crime scene investigator as well as an expert in such diverse areas as bloodstain pattern analysis, shoeprint comparisons, and cell phone data recovery.  She also does public outreach for the crime lab, and in her spare times performs in community theatre productions. 

 

Forensic Genealogy:  A New Way to Solve Crimes

Thanks to CSI, many people are familiar with the concept that DNA from crime scene evidence can be searched in databases in order to solve crimes.  But what if the perpetrator isn’t in the database?  Until now, the only solution has been to wait.  Recently, forensic science has teamed up with genealogists to track down killers who have, until now, evaded identification.  This talk, by Criminalist Cordelia Willis, will explain the evolution of biological crime solving, from DNA testing to the new genealogy-based searching methods, so you can understand how criminals like the Golden State Killer can finally be caught.