Does anyone know if any more information other than the Howell family has been revealed?
I do genealogy in my spare time. I mainly dug into this because at first glance, I thought I could be related to Lilly Mae, as I am a Wiggins with family in the area, but a quick look over her records indicated we only shared a last name and nothing more. I dove into this case with the available information, and I am wondering if they have explored *all* avenues, like I would like to know what specifically points at Mr. Howell. Here is why I question this: half siblings can really mess up the perceived results. I wonder, since there is such far relatives like 4th cousins, the percentage and perceived relations are off. For example, you share 25% of DNA with your half sibling, but you also share that much with a niece or nephew, or a grandparent.
Theres so many holes to fill, that it would not surprise me if certain percentages lead towards the wrong sibling. I found that Mr. Howell comes from a huge family, and his grandmother was married before she married his grandfather. I will keep names to myself but I found that Mr. Howells father had at least 3 half siblings from this previous marriage. I noticed that at least two of these siblings have mixed-race grandchildren, mixed with Caucasian as Peaches is seemed to have. Several of these children and grandchildren moved to places close to the locations of interest - a few hours away from the tattoo shop in which she allegedly got her peach, and some moved to New Jersey.
In this search, I have found at least 5 living grandchildren of about 3 or 4 siblings of Mr. Howells father, Sid, and reached out to them about the story of Peaches. I know as of right now they have located the granddaughter of one of Mr. Howells brothers.
Just my two-cents. Hopefully now that more relatives are being found, her identity will come about very soon. Heres hoping!!
Great work!!!
I, myself, haven't heard of any further information other than the Howell family being revealed, that could help trace lineage.
I'm a fellow genealogy enthusiast, and good points, I agree it's possible half siblings could alter results. It's going to be a bit of work, to be sure--I hope anyone who is notified they are linked by DNA is able to start working on their line and get birth/death cert. info and work with the FBI to help solve in the very least, "Peaches" and her daughter's identity.
I was wondering to myself, and if anyone knows--please chime in, are we dealing with an actual 4th cousin, or estimate of 4th cousin(?) I'm guessing an estimate(?)
From my personal experience, I get estimates of "3-8th cousin" with a verified relative who is my third cousin, and "4th-9th cousin" with some others, on a particular genealogy site. I submitted my DNA years ago to research projects and genealogy DNA databases. My personal matches are ranked along with probability of relationship as defined by percentage of shared DNA, lengths of DNA segments shared, and longest segment shared. I have no idea of what way the FBI estimates relationships or consanguinity, perhaps they have specialized programs not available to the public.
Frustratingly, the way genealogy works, if we knew who Peaches and her toddler were, had the name and info, it would be a lot easier to get back to Mr. Howell, than the opposite. A database would have to be built up around Mr. Howell, and every possible relation a little up the tree, and all the way down and to the side to hopefully get an identity for Peaches and her toddler.
I hope some are working on this, and I'm sure they are--not only the FBI, but amateur and professional genealogists, too. LDS at Familysearch.org have probably the largest amount of records available, worldwide.
I would add whatever help I could, at least for the older generations of the tree. I think the family would need to be involved in more recent generations, due to living persons/privacy concerns. Even when we are trying to work on helping identify someone, there are cousins, etc. who probably do not want their identity publicly posted in a database available to the public for research.