JMO, a theory - feel free to remove. I don’t think it violates anything, just an idea.
In March 2024, Scott Kay Bridge in Baltimore port collapsed with six victims whose bodies were recovered slowly. I noticed that at one point, the name of one victim was withheld from the public per family request (see Wikipedia), but now we know all six.
They were from different countries, Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, but as I imagine, you can live in Honduras and have a second cousin in El Salvador, like you can live in the US and have a second cousin in Germany, for example.
The way genetics works, you may have a second or third cousin who you have no idea about, you may be the most law-abiding citizen ever and have a cousin who spent years in jail (welcome to my tree; an unexpected discovery), you can be absolutely unaware of the person. All that criminology needs is a close enough match to find a common ancestor (2-3 cousin is great!) or two more distant matches to find a CA and build a tree. After that, you go down and look at potential suspects - ages, genders, place of living. Usually you don’t get one, you get several and work with their stories. So maybe when they traveled to El Salvador, it was to rule out other suspects, not rule anyone in.
What i am thinking of: there is going to be a lawsuit against Dali, and of course the names of the victims had to be confirmed by DNA tests.
Could it be so that in the process of confirming the victims, LE unexpectedly found the DNA of a close enough relative of the rapist/murderer that they could work with to build a tree?
The last victim was found on May 4th, but of course, DNA tests take much longer. Maybe everything was finished by May 20 and this is how LE got a hit?
Two clues: one, the withheld name of the third victim that is now known, and, the location, Maryland…
BTW, two of the victims have Hernandez as part of their name, but that is not indicative of anything as the name is super common, so I don’t think that should be paid attention to. Plus, naming convention differs between Spain and Portugal (order reversed), and here, people from Mexico/Central/South America would simply drop one of their family names not to confuse us. It is that piece of DNA. Moreover, I suspect LE might have already had one hit in their system, and what they got could be the remaining piece of the puzzle.
Again, a hit says nothing about yourself, your moral qualities or whether you are a law-abiding taxpayer. Genealogy just needs: either one or better, two close enough matches that could be traced up to common ancestors and build a tree; and, the hits need to know their family history well enough.