Forty years to the day after two boys found their mother dead in their La Jolla home, police say genetic genealogy helped them identify her killer. It is the first time San Diego police have successfully used the method to name a suspect.
With the method, expert genealogists try to match DNA from a crime scene to relatives — a third cousin will do — who have uploaded their DNA into publicly accessible databases. A hit helps genealogists generate family trees in hopes of putting a name to the mystery DNA.
San Diego police homicide Lt. Matt Dobbs said in a written statement Thursday that the team is “grateful the case has been solved. However, it is tempered by the fact it took 40 years to give Barbara Becker’s family the answers they deserved, and that Chartrand was able to avoid justice for 16 years after Barbara Becker’s murder.”
Dobbs said the Becker and Chartrand families have asked for privacy, and that the Chartrands have also “expressed their condolences.”In 1979, the San Diego Union reported that the Beckers had lived in the La Jolla home off Torrey Pines Road, not far from UC San Diego, for seven years. Barbara Becker was last seen at 8:30 a.m. on the day she died. She had failed to show up for a 10 a.m. salon appointment.Becker’s young sons found her body about 1 p.m. Terrified, they ran to a neighbor’s home for help.Advertisement
But the case went cold, and despite forensic advancements, it stayed that way. Chartrand died in 1995, before his DNA made it into criminal databases.
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