A 57-year-old man has pleaded guilty to the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old girl that occurred on a beach in Bøtø in August 1999. The man had been in custody since December of last year. He was formally charged in June with the heinous crimes.

DNA evidence and kinship searches were instrumental in leading the police to the 57-year-old man after many years of investigation. Kinship searching involves analyzing DNA to determine if a trace found at a crime scene may have been deposited by a person related to someone already in a DNA database.

This case is not the first instance where kinship searching has aided in identifying a potential perpetrator. Notably, it was also used in the case of the murder of Hanne With in 1990, which resulted in a 54-year-old man being sentenced to prison last summer.

Furthermore, kinship searching has been employed in a nine-year-old rape case from Randers, leading to the detention of a 49-year-old in February. Additionally, a 40-year-old man has been charged in connection with a rape case at Roskilde Festival in 2022.

In addition to kinship searching, police have utilized other advanced DNA methods in their investigations. In the summer, authorities announced that they considered the 1995 murder of seven-year-old Roujan Ismaeel to be solved, although the perpetrator had since passed away. The method used in the Roujan case, called y-chromosomal DNA analysis, focuses on DNA found in the male sex chromosome. This method was also applied in the Korsør case.

It is important to understand the process of DNA analysis in criminal investigations. All human cells contain DNA, which forms the genetic material. Various technologies analyze DNA molecules to identify individuals for evidentiary purposes. Traditionally, this involves comparing DNA profiles, which are sets of numbers derived from the analysis of biological material. These profiles are typically compared to those of suspects or searched in a central DNA register containing profiles from charged individuals and traces from unsolved cases.

When forensic geneticists compare DNA profiles, they can either exclude the possibility that they originated from the same person or determine the probability of a match. A high degree of match indicates that it is exceedingly likely that the trace was deposited by the suspect rather than a random individual.