Lydia thinks her great-grandfather was murdered–perhaps even by her grandfather! Here’s some advice for her and everyone researching “cold cases” for criminal ancestors on your family tree.
I heard recently from Lydia with these intriguing questions:
My great great grandpa William John Gabriel Nelson disappeared one day, never coming home from work. It was family lore that he had been “shanghai’d.” But even as a child the story didn’t add up. [Through a] few other mentions of the account throughout the years, and recently reconnecting with cousins through Ancestry.com/DNA and your advice to just email DNA matches, I have a growing reason to believe my great-grandfather was murdered. An even bigger fear is that my grandfather may have been the one to do it.
All parties involved with this are now dead, so follow-up is impossible with them. But I’m wondering about contacting the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) or the library to determine if indeed there was a cold case, missing persons report or John Doe. Since this happened in the mid 1940’s, would I contact the LAPD or is this now a job for a historian?
As a citizen, Lydia can certainly contact the LAPD here. It might take a bit of persistence to get to the right person or resource. I would start by asking for how you can find out the status of a cold case from the year in question.
Here are 4 ways to follow up on your own criminal ancestors’ cold cases:
1. Look for cold case files online.
As I often say, all good searches start online because they will help you prepare to go offline. In other words, not everything is online, but searching online first will give you a lay of the land, revealing what is available, who to contact, and where to go in person. Start with a Google search such as LAPD cold cases. The search results include several good leads:
With a case like Lydia’s that is over 70 years old, I wouldn’t expect to pull it up in an online database (though you never know!) But I do see several sites here that provide phone numbers to gain access to those who can lead you in the right direction.
2. Search Google for clues.
Use Google’s powerful search technology to look for online mentions of the names, places, and dates of your particular case.
In Lydia’s case, she might begin with keywords relating to her great-grandfather’s disappearance, with his name, year, and the place he was last seen. Including descriptive keywords such as disappear, mystery, vanished or murder might also yield helpful results.
Newspapers in your ancestor’s hometown (or further afield) may have mentioned the incident. With a common name like William (or Bill) Nelson, you may need to weed out the overabundance of unwanted results you get. Let me show you how I did this in GenealogyBank, a popular genealogical newspaper website:
The initial results of searching GenealogyBank (above) for the terms William Nelson and Los Angeles brought up over 1,000 search results! (The red arrow points to the tally.) Since I don’t like wasting valuable research time on irrelevant results (who’s with me?!), I refined the search. I specified Nelson as a last name, William as a first name, Los Angeles as a keyword, and I added a date range: the decade during which he disappeared. Next, I limited my search to Los Angeles-area newspapers, shown below:
This search narrows results down to under 200: a robust number, but at least manageable to look through for relevant material.
I want to be able to use these same search parameters in the future, so I click Save My Search. The search now appears in My Folder for future reference.
4. Look for criminal records.
If you knew (or suspected) that a relative was prosecuted for a crime, it’s time to start looking for records relating to the criminal case. There may be several kinds:
In cases of suspicious death (where there was a body, unlike Lydia’s case), look for any surviving coroner’s records.
If a trial may have occurred, research the jurisdiction to find out what court would have handled it, and then look for files relating to the case.
If an ancestor may have served time, look for prison records. Genealogy GemsPremium podcast episode 29 is devoted to the topic of prison records.
Get inspired!
Read this article about a woman who was researching not one but two mysterious deaths on her family tree.
Want to help investigators lay to rest their own cold cases?
Click here to read about the Unclaimed Persons Project and how you can help.
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Listener Questions and Comments
From Beverly W.: On Thursday, Oct. 14, you mentioned in the Elevenses episode that you don’t sync your online tree but add little bits to it. However, you do keep everything on your computer, as do I. Can you tell me why you don’t sync? The last time I tried to sync my Family Tree Maker with Ancestry, it was taking forever but did not finish uploading. If I don’t sync it, how can I save sources that I find on Ancestry to my program? I love the show and it has helped me tremendously. Even though I have been working on my tree for 25 years, there is still so much that I do not know.
I don’t sync with an online tree for a few reasons, but mainly because my genealogy software is my “brain” of the operation and I don’t want to run the risk of syncing inaccurate information. By downloading documents and entering the information into my software, I’m doing a double-check that it’s the right document and the right ancestor and I have created exactly the source citation I want. Automation can introduce errors, and sometimes, as you mentioned, doesn’t work that well. I also don’t maintain a tree online that covers every single person in my database. My trees (multiple) are for targeted research on particular branches.
Another reason is that software and websites continually evolve and release new versions. That has the potential of a bug or inconsistency to be introduced where all of a sudden sync isn’t working the way you thought it was. I don’t want to run the risk of discovering it after much damage has been done.
In the end it’s a personal choice. The most important thing is to do whatever you’re going to do accurately and consistently 🙂
From Cindy G.: Hi Lisa. I was with you last night at your speaking to TVGS. I wanted to share with you but wasn’t sure of the appropriateness since my share did not focus on google. On one of your past podcasts you and a guest talked about theancestry.com CARD CATALOG, so I bit-the-bullet and went in! And it was there during my first try that I broke through to my 4x great grandfather Samuel Cunningham on the western frontier of Pennsylvania and that crazy county Yohogania. Using PA archives of land records and wills and collaboration/FAN and ‘county genealogies’ of their formations, I was able to put the puzzle together. I was so proud of myself for listening to you two, that in my writing of his Life Story I included my journey to locate him. And of course I shared it with my three kids and everyone I bumped in to. I’m sure that there are a fist full of people out there who shook their heads as I did my Proudly Happy Dance!! By the way, I’m also the editor for the TVGS newsletter . I listen to you at FTM podcast as well as Gen Gems podcast. I have become a more efficient and more rewarded genealogist because if you.
From Lisa: Wow, that’s fantastic!! I’m so glad the podcast played a small part in helping you bust that brick wall! Thank you so much for writing in and sharing.
From Rebecca C: This morning I was watching your Elevenses with Lisa program. It was the episode about using Google books and as I was listening I was trying a couple of searches just to see what I could find. You mentioned looking for county histories, so I typed in ‘Goroke’ (a small town in Victoria, Australia). This is the town that my grandfather’s family came from. On the weekend I had been entering some data into my software program about a wedding in Goroke and I was having difficulty reading the name of one of the witnesses. So, I was going through the list of books that came up from the search and the very first book I opened was a gazetteer and went straight to a list of the councilors for the county that Goroke is in. You wouldn’t believe it but the man whose name I had been unable to read was one of the councilors! I know you probably get lots of emails like this but I just wanted to share. Thanks for your show. I love all the little (and big) treasures of information you share.
From Lisa: Thanks for sharing a great example of how we don’t have to have famous ancestors for them to appear in books and other print publications. Learn more about using Google Books for genealogy with this Premium video: Google Books: the Tool You Should Use Every Day
Use Google’s powerful search technology to look for online mentions of the names, places, and dates of your particular case.
If you knew (or suspected) that a relative was prosecuted for a crime, it’s time to start looking for records relating to the criminal case. There may be several kinds:
