Regarding DNA, what I'm learning today -
Familial DNA: LE looks at a database of past offenders to see if there is a family match, with the theory that offenders tend to run in families. If they get a close match to a known offender, they then look at that person's family.
Genetic DNA: LE looks at private databases containing DNA info that individuals voluntarily upload after taking a DNA test like for ancestry or other personal reason.
It looks like Indiana doesn't allow familial DNA in investigations? "But Indiana is one of dozens of states whose state police labs don’t conduct familial DNA searching."
The article I'm reading is dated Feb 2021. Here it is: Delphi deaths, 4 years later
This is an important point you're making. What a lot of people (including some MSM articles) are calling "familial" DNA searches, are actually properly termed "genetic genealogy." This is what we are talking about when Parabon or another analyst looks at a DNA sample from a crime scene and uses GEDMatch - or, more likely, proprietary DNA databases - to do family tree research that results in a lead that investigators can follow. Genetic genealogy IS allowed in Indiana (it's also how April Tinsley's murder was solved).
Familial DNA searches are a different thing. This is, as @Inthedetails noted, when LE uses databases like CODIS (or state DNA databases) that contain the DNA of past offenders to search, not for exact matches, but for similar DNA profiles that, by virtue of their similarity, may be presumed to be close relatives. Not every state allows this type of DNA database search (Massachusetts passed a law allowing it just last year.) I think there are about 13-15 states that allow familial DNA searches and Indiana is not currently one of them, as was linked upthread.