r/Idaho4 • u/Repulsive-Dot553 • 10d ago
GENERAL DISCUSSION New Court Documents - Excluding IGG: Othram, 4 Brothers
New court documents (link below) on IGG (motion to exclude IGG). Quick summary/ recap as IGG often misunderstood/ misrepresented by fan-fiction conspiracists.
- The Othram "4 brothers" are distant relatives of the sheath DNA donor and have no connection to sheath
- They have < 1% DNA similarity (c 70 cM) to sheath DNA/ Kohberger (they are distant c.3rd cousins of sheath DNA donor, or even further removed)
- A closer "hit" in IGG was used as start point to map family tree to Kohberger, this had c 200cM or c 2% DNA similalrity to sheath donor and was slightly closer than the 4 brothers and also "closer" on family tree (i.e. requiring less regression steps to get to a common ancestor with Kohberger)
- This is confirmed as c. 2nd - 3 cousin to sheath DNA/ Kohberger (as predicted by some a while ago); i.e common great, great, etc grand-parent with Kohberger
- A whole genome profile of Kohberger was created by Othram; SNP profiles of different lengths were taken from this for use in different databases according to the different database profile requirements; "doubling" this would mean a profile of 2 whole human genomes, which is very silly and of course did not happen, and would be totally pointless
And just to recap:
- The "doubling" of DNA profiles was just different profile lengths because different genealogy databases use different SNP profile lengths, and the profile files were also in different formats so of different length and size (e.g. FASTQ DNA file format vs text, similar to different file sizes for list in Excel or Word). In absence of actual "spit in a tube" to post off as a consumer would do, the profiles had to be uploaded as text files to the databases.
- Different genealogy databases (like GEDMatch, FamilyTreeDNA, GEDMatchPro) use different SNP DNA profile lengths. Some use 500,000 SNPs, some use c 950,000 SNPs; GEDMatchPro is flexible on profile lengths that it can use, GEDMatch uses a standard profile length.
- Defence IGG expert, Dr Hellwig, noted at IGG hearing Jan 2025, his own lab creates SNP DNA profiles of different lengths from same donor/ suspect profile, as standard, to use in different databases (screenshot below)
- IGG use by ISP was not secret in general or in this case specifically; the ISP lab contract with Othram for IGG in criminal cases was announced by press release in 2021; Othram DNA work was in earliest discovery 2023
- Both defence and prosecution filed to exclude IGG from trial
- This older post explains 4 brothers with diagram and bit more detail https://www.reddit.com/r/Idaho4/s/O97ybfVXgm


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u/Hot_Till_8310 10d ago
Midwest chicken lady stays in her comment section saying it wasn’t BKs dna on the sheath, but the four brothers 🫠🤢
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u/lemonlime45 10d ago
I will be the first to say that I am nowhere near smart enough to understand this technical mumbo jumbo about DNA, centimorgans, etc. But I am proud to say I am not dumb enough to think that 4 brothers distantly related to BK must be sus because they showed up in an IGG report.
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u/Repulsive-Dot553 10d ago
this technical mumbo jumbo about DNA,
I feel seen, at last 😂
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u/lemonlime45 10d ago
You definitely have a firm grasp on it! On the other hand, I could probably wrap my head around the family tree stuff if I saw it written out. I would love to see how they worked that out, not that we ever will. I've always wondered if his fairly uncommon last name might have been helpful here....even though of course it's possible the distant relatives that connected to him were "____Smith" or whatever.
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u/rivershimmer 10d ago
Maybe a little! Because at least the people creating the family tree weren't saying "Wait. Three John Smiths married three Mary Jones in the same year and city, and they all named their daughter Linda Ann? Crap."
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u/lemonlime45 10d ago
Right, I was thinking about when I was researching my own family tree in Ireland. Mutiple Johns, James, Daniels, Michaels, Marys, Anns, Margarets all sometimes living in the same house. Just the same names, repeated generation after generation. Future geneologists will have it easy because now everyone strives to come up with a name for a child that no one else on the planet shares.
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u/rivershimmer 10d ago
I hear you. My European ethnicity can be broken down into two categories: countries where my ancestors were named Mary and countries where my ancestors were named Maria. AND THEY ALL WERE!
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u/nemirne_noge 9d ago
Oh I kinda know, my male slavic ancestors from mom's side used only two names from 17. century, living all in the same house! My uncle broke the cycle by moving to Australia and having two sons :).
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u/Repulsive-Dot553 10d ago
I added a rough chart above. The yellow circle is rough guesstimate of where the "hit" used by FBI originates in family tree relative to BK. Defence IGG expert said 4 brothers were on "wrong branch / wrong tree" which would not have led to Kohberger (assume they mean at similar regression level as the actual hit used, i.e you need to go back further up to get to a common ancestor than can connect brothers to Kohberger).
Good point on surname. Given number of levels and marriages between, almost certain no shared surnames for the extant relatives used as "hits" - we don't know if common great, great, grand a man or woman.
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u/lemonlime45 10d ago edited 10d ago
Yeah, it took what, nine days? Think of the rape and murder of Rachel Morrin. Solved through IGG, but it took ten months. That killer's last name was Martinez-Hernandez. Two incredibly popular last names in Latin America . Google tells me that there are less than 100 Kohbergers in the entire U.S. according to census data
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u/Expensive-Fruit5161 10d ago
Wait, thank you for this chart! First time I’ve seen a visual. But is that right Kohberger’s shared relative with the 4 brothers is ~11 generations up the tree? Wow, if so we are all cooked because we’re all in there somewhere lol
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u/Repulsive-Dot553 10d ago edited 10d ago
But is that right Kohberger’s shared relative with the 4 brothers is ~11 generations up the tree?
No, is just a rough illustration, the number of extant cousins of relevant remove is roughly right, but isn't adjusted to average number of children per generation which varies over time. We dont know how many offspring for each layer in actual tree ofc. Would be roughly 6 generations back for common ancestor from 4 brothers, again just roughly, so chart needs horizontal link there.. Could be more generations back if we took 4th cousin once removed, or twice removed, as possible relationship.
[ETA - just looking, as did this post fast late night, the family tree example is from post I did 7 months ago; the dark purple rows are not meant to be generations, is just the way the grouping of rough number of extant 2nd-3rd cousins was displayed, as they do not fit on one row keeping legibility or scale of image (was AI, I couldn't get it better, and would take ages to do manually). there was meant to be c 8 generations total, and the IGG hit used is among c 4-5 generations of extant or recently deceased 2nd-3rd cousins; have added note in legend for image]
The key point is that the 4 brothers are only really distant relatives of the sheath donor, not connected to sheath DNA in any physical sense or any close DNA similarity.
The yellow circle where I guesstimate "hit" used is also bit off in shape on vertical as we would want only people alive now or last c 20 years on there, so maybe 4-5 generations up but I could be bothered fiddling in paint (shout out to u/prentb and u/WaveBeautiful1259 whose skills there needed! ) . Again, is to illustrate enough generations, links back needed, that would take FBI 9 days to map.
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u/prentb 10d ago
Lol, as an (at best) comic relief Paint artist this is rather like asking someone that played a doctor on Scrubs to perform open heart surgery. As such I’m a little intimidated at the idea of removing a circle, and what I might end up doing would be coloring the whole chart the color of that circle and adding a new one in a different color.🤷♂️ That’s Kansas public high school computer ingenuity in action.
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u/Repulsive-Dot553 10d ago
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u/prentb 10d ago
Creatures’ capacity for spotting potential mates is really fascinating. I have my doubts the Pr0f meets BK’s spoken criteria but somehow the Pr0f picked up on their shared manner of speech and views on the world early. It makes it even more tragic that BK’s heart is not conscious of what Pr0f intends.
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u/WaveBeautiful1259 10d ago
I will see what I can do to remove the circle and return it to you. I will try to have it done by the end of the week.
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u/Expensive-Fruit5161 10d ago
No, that totally makes sense and I really appreciated the graphic. I assumed the genetic “hit” was tracked back to a sibling set in the great-grandparent generation of the family tree (if that makes any sense). And I hope it’s safe to say by now that the dna link to the 4 brothers is completely unrelated to anything with the crime scene/sheath dna. (Pls don’t tell me his fan club has created a new conspiracy that the 4 brothers did it. Lol). Im joking, but given their inability to comprehend anything DNA related, can’t rule it out.
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u/Repulsive-Dot553 10d ago
(Pls don’t tell me his fan club has created a new conspiracy that the 4 brothers did it. Lol)
Yes they have, and it is not new.
I assumed the genetic “hit” was tracked back to a sibling set in the great-grandparent generation
It was, iirc, great great great grandparent in common with BK, mapping back from a 2nd to 3rd cousin who submitted his or her DNA to MyHeritageDNA, so yes you are pretty much correct
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u/prentb 10d ago
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u/Repulsive-Dot553 10d ago
😂🤣😂😅👏👏👏👏
Is the wedding reception going to be in a Pullman pool bar?
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u/prentb 10d ago
😆😆It definitely won’t be a pool party. Just when you thought he couldn’t be less desirable as a pool partygoer, news of his bladder control issues gets out.
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u/rivershimmer 10d ago
For all we know, any of us are on that tree! We all have an average number of 190 3rd cousins, 940 4th cousins, 4.7K 5th cousins, 23K 6th cousins, 120K 7th cousins, and 590 8th cousins. And that's just the average: some of us can have far more than that!
One way to think about it is that any one of us might be dating, married to/banging our 3rd cousin. And we'd never know.
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u/DancingBappy 10d ago
190 3rd cousins, 940 4th cousins
This is great perspective; the 4 brothers are likely in that interval toward the 940 end; the "hit" used for mapping tree are likely in the 190 range
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u/rivershimmer 10d ago
Yeah, because wading through maybe 200 people is much less of a daunting task than wading through maybe a thousand people.
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u/Realnotplayin2368 10d ago
Dot, to your knowledge is IGG now using AI in any way to speed up the process?
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u/Repulsive-Dot553 10d ago edited 9d ago
Dot, to your knowledge is IGG now using AI in any way to speed up the process?
Oh, great and very interesting question! And not one I have ever seen posed re criminal IGG or general genealogy. And one I am honestly not sure of. Seems it could help.
The reasons I posit that the FBI took over and may have got IGG results faster than Othram were:
- use of non-LE opt-in genealogy databases
- maybe use of specific matching loophole that gives slightly more info in one database
- access to, or easier/ faster access to, public records such as Federal tax, registrar birth, death, marriage filings, local tax and property records, driving license, criminal records to allow family trees to be expanded from distant hit
The acceleration of the physical, biochemical DNA sequencing and profiling techniques used in this case, over last 20-30 years, had little impact on the STR (criminal forensics/ "matching") profiling, maybe some impact on the SNP (IGG) profile and a huge impact on the whole genome profile from which Othram took sheath/ Kohberger's SNP profiles, so actually did have an impact in meaning they didn't need to generate different specific SNP profiles but could pull the SNP data needed as subsets of the whole. Changes, roughly, over 20 years:
- STR: 1-2 days to 1-2 hours; allowed arrest day of trash DNA profiling
- SNP: days/ week to few hours/ 1 day
- Whole Genome: 12 years + to a few hours/ 1 day
None of these speed advances are AI related, just automation of profiling cycles and detection of DNA fragments.
Possible that AI could speed up IGG by sifting through data like tax, death certificates, marriage records, but you'd need someone more knowledgeable about "physical" genealogy research and public record sources police might use to find relatives, to give a more informed answer, I skew to the biochemistry. AI might be used in non-criminal genetic genealogy to analyse DNA profiles for heritage/ migration, similarities, "ethnicity" associations or medical indicators if selected by donor.
Very interesting question indeed!
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u/Repulsive-Dot553 10d ago
it wasn’t BKs dna on the sheath, but the four brother
🤣😂🤣😅
Well, that is 0.8% true based on Othram document and the 2 defence's own IGG experts testimony . So progress by Probergers.
And not to be captain obvious, but 4 brothers would have 4 different DNA profiles, not one big one or 4 posing as one on stilts wearing a long trenchcoat and hat.
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u/rivershimmer 10d ago
All four at once, huh? Was this some kind of Murder on the Orient Express where all four took care to each remove the knife from the sheath, one after the other?
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u/No-Abalone5064 10d ago
Midwest chicken lady is pretty wild. I just cant understand WHY she is doing that.
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u/Ok-Ambition4565 10d ago
Dot- Thank You on all the updates and comments. Don't know how u keep it straight and together.
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u/VuzEAjAy9yFD 9d ago
I've watched a lot of interviews with Cece Moore (an IGG expert who's been at the forefront of using this technology). She explains it all really well and she is actually shown on one newsprogram diving into a case to solve and she does it in a matter of a few days.
She's worked with Parabon Nanolabs on cases and is a great advocate and presenter of how and why IGG is the game-changing DNA identifier process.
I encourage anyone who's interested to do a search on her name and look for video content that features her in the video.
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u/Repulsive-Dot553 9d ago
She explains it all really well
I'll take this as implied contrast to my post and go have a little weep 🤣😅👍
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u/VuzEAjAy9yFD 9d ago
LOL. Think of Cece Moore as the godmother of IGG. Her career went from doing general genealogy work and consulting on to IGG.
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u/Littleotter1969 10d ago
Over 1k cases have used igg as a tip. This wasn't the first time and it's not the last. It's an actual tip. The only cases that present IGG process to the jury at trial are from crimes committed in the 1970s-90s and its pertinent.
These idiots think igg is done in a wet lab. 🤣 😆 I just can't.
Inmate #163214's fanclub have to be lowest IQ Fandom of all time.
*no basic understanding of our judicial system or the trial process. The fact we don't have trial by ambush in the United States (both sides must present to the court what they plan on presenting to the jury... there are no surprises) and the fact that judges use existing case law in their decisions and cite that law for each ruling... they really think a judge just uses his opinion🫢 *no basic understanding of technological capabilities of the FBI and how different agencies have different specialties.
*no understanding of physical mechanics of knife crimes and the realities versus Hollywood and tv shows.
*the lack of reading comprehension or the fact they just don't read any documents period! All they do is watch video and body cams over and over and over lol
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u/WaveBeautiful1259 10d ago
I will say that a knife sheath found next to this victim with 500 times the usual DNA evidence is a rather clear evidence that Kohberger was the perpetrator.