After 31 years of eluding the Wichita, Kansas police, Dennis Rader was arrested in 2005 and charged with ten counts of murder. Rader, otherwise known as the serial killer BTK (for bind, torture, kill) became a suspect when he began corresponding with the police through discs that contained metadata identifying a computer he had been using at his church. Even though this indirect evidence pointed to Rader, his daughter’s medical records ultimately sealed the deal. The police subpoenaed his daughter’s pap smear from a local clinic and compared DNA from the sample to semen found at BTK’s first crime scene. There was a familial match. The police finally had enough to make an arrest.¹

This case presents important questions for those of us concerned with the privacy protections surrounding stored genetic samples. As individuals consider contributing their specimen to a bio-repository, or unveiling their medical records for research purposes, they should know what downstream privacy protections exist to protect their personal genetic and medical information. We focus here on genetic samples contained in blood or saliva, but many of the same privacy concerns would attach to other types of biological materials.