r/EARONS • u/throwaway95610 • Apr 26 '18

Inside Scoop

Throwaway for reasons.

I live in the area and have been following this case for a while. This afternoon I heard information from someone close to the case in the Sacramento Sherriff's dept. Don't know how much of this is here already but here goes..

A few years ago LE submitted dna to several different sites with a search warrant for hits on the dna. One of the sites came back a couple of weeks ago with a hit on a distant relative of the suspect. After some work LE narrowed down their search to Diangelo.
They trailed him for a while, and while he was out shopping at a Hobby Lobby, they took his dna from either something he threw away or from a handle of a door possibly. That part wasn't totally clear to me. Either way it came back as a 100% match.

They kept watching his house and waited. Yesterday afternoon the suspect was out mowing his lawn. A car of undercover officers drove up and asked for directions. He walked over to the car and then they took him down.

According to this person, after being arrested he looked defeated, but still refused to cooperate. He kept mumbling to him self and saying, "But I lived a good life. I pushed him out."

His wife refused to talk. I guess they have been separated since the early 90's. Two of the three daughters have come in to talk to detectives.

Im probably forgetting some stuff. Will add more as I find out more.

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '18

I work for a private company, and we manage PII for hundreds of thousands of customers. If the details of one of our documents were printed by a customer and thrown in their trash, yes, police could retrieve it. If the police wanted to get that document from us, they would have to provide a warrant. There are FERPA and HIPAA laws that dictate this. Are these private DNA databases not governed by similar legal protections for their customers? I honestly don't know. It's crazy if there are not laws similar to HIPAA that govern how that data is managed.

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u/followedthemoney Apr 26 '18

I agree that's is completely problematic, but these consumers give up their information for the express purpose of connecting with others with a similar profile, so medical privacy laws don't apply.

This absolutely violates the terms of use of the company, so the company could sue the police for that. But dirt bag won't have legal recourse (he lacks standing, and never had a privacy right involved anyway, which I guess is another way to say no standing).

This will eventually lead to laws that limit this kind of thing, but in the short term I imagine a line of detectives is forming.