A Kansas man has been sentenced to 310 months in prison for rape prosecutors solved using genetic genealogy.
Ted Foy, 54, was sentenced to nearly 26 years in prison from the November 13, 2007 rape of in the Harry and Greenwich section of southeast Wichita. Foy pled guilty to the crimes in March.
Foy, of Augustus, Kansas, was originally arrested in May 2023 and charged with rape, aggravated criminal sodomy, aggravated sexual battery and attempted rape. Foy allegedly wore black clothing and a black mask and broke into the victim's apartment through the downstairs window. The victim's husband was not home at the time due to military service.
However, police were unable at the time to piece together a suspect for the crime.
“Investigators worked to identify a suspect but were unable to despite exhausting all available resources at the time,” the Wichita Police Department said in a statement.
The arrest represents the first time the Wichita Police Department used investigative genetic genealogy to make an arrest, where police matched a DNA sample left on the victim's body to DNA data derived from a genealogy website. Since 2019, investigators began to be trained on how to utilize genetic genealogy to investigate older crimes without an obvious suspect.
“This is where we are developing a suspect where we have no suspect before,” Wichita Police Department Investigations Captain Christian Cory said in a statement. “We are able to take DNA samples and develop leads based on using public databases, and we can build out these family trees.”
The use of genealogy has been a priority in recent years in the Wichita area as investigators are looking at closing the book on various older cold cases
“I've had detectives in multiple other states tracking down distant family, relatives, closer family, relatives, just trying to get down to a potential family tree where we may have leads or potential suspects in a crime," Cory said.
In the guilty plea, there were also other stipulations placed on Foy.
“The plea agreement also called for Foy to disclose how he chose his victim and how he knew where she lived,” the DA’s office said in a release.
The victim's identity has not been released by police.