CeCe Moore (born January 16, 1969) is an American genetic genealogist best known for being the genetic genealogy expert for Finding Your Roots and being the head of Parabon NanoLabs's genetic genealogical unit. She has appeared on American TV shows such as 20/20, Dateline NBC, 48 Hours, The Doctors, The Dr. Oz Show, CBS This Morning, The Today Show, Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, and CBS 60 Minutes. She has reportedly helped law enforcement agencies in identifying suspects in over 300 cold cases using DNA and genetic genealogy. In May 2020, Moore began appearing in a prime-time ABC television series The Genetic Detective; each episode recounts a cold case she helped solve. In addition to television work, she is known for pioneering the genetic genealogy methodologies used by adoptees and others of unknown origin for identifying biological family.
Background
Moore was born in 1969 to Anthony Michael Moore (1935–2008) and Janis Proctor. She studied theatre, film, and vocal performance at the University of Southern California and appeared in commercials and professional musical theatre shows, and, later, directed and cast advertising campaigns.
Moore became interested in DNA genealogy in about 2003. In 2009 while she was developing an advertisement for the company Family Tree DNA, she met genealogist Katherine Borges who was director of International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG). Borges introduced Moore to rival consumer DNA company 23andMe and made Moore a leader of a forum for people who wanted to know more about DNA genealogy. Moore became fascinated by the subject, taught herself about it, passed her business projects over to her husband Lennart Martinson and worked full-time on DNA genealogy. In 2012 she approached 23andMe to ask if she could put crime-scene DNA into their DNA databases. 23andMe refused, but later in 2018 she began to use the DNA databases of GEDmatch and Family Tree DNA.
She has appeared on TV shows such as Finding Your Roots, 20/20, Dateline NBC, 48 Hours, The Doctors, The Dr. Oz Show, CBS This Morning, The Today Show, Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, and CBS 60 Minutes. She has been the genetic genealogy expert for Finding Your Roots since 2012 and heads the Parabon NanoLabs genetic genealogical unit.
In 2024, she was presented with the Daughters of the American Revolution Medal of Honor by DAR President General Pamela Rouse Wright.
Human identification cases
Moore has been a key player in a number of human identification cases. In 2012-2014, she was the genetic genealogist who worked with the Branum family on the Thomas Ray Lippert University of Utah artificial insemination sperm swap case. Paul Fronczak was a newborn who was kidnapped from his mother's arms by a woman posing as a nurse in a Chicago hospital in 1964 and believed to have been returned to his natural parents in 1966. In 2015, Moore's team of genetic genealogists uncovered the true identity of the man raised as Paul Fronczak. Using the methods Moore developed for birth parent search in adoption, it was discovered that his real name is Jack Rosenthal and that he has a missing twin named Jill. The real Paul Fronczak was found living in Michigan in 2019.
In 2015, Moore led a team of researchers that established the true identity of amnesiac Benjaman Kyle as William Burgess Powell. In 2004, Kyle had been found outside a Burger King in Georgia; doctors determined he suffered from dissociative amnesia. For 11 years neither Kyle nor law enforcement assisting in his case knew his true identity. Moore works extensively with adults who were abandoned as babies to identify their biological identities. The birth parents of California foundling Kayla Tovo were identified through Moore's work, as were the birth parents of the Los Angeles-area three half-sibling foundlings who were featured on 20/20 in May 2016, and the birth parents of the Tulsa Fairgrounds foundling "May Belle" aka Amy Cox, as featured on The Dr. Oz Show in October 2016.
As the genetic genealogist for the PBS series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in 2015 Moore made the discovery that LL Cool J's mother was adopted. Through analysis of his DNA, she was able to identify his biological grandparents and introduce him to his 90-year old biological maternal grandmother.
Projects
Family research In February 2015, Moore founded a Facebook group called DNA Detectives that guides adoptees and others of unknown parentage to DNA to identify birth family. In 2024, this Facebook page had 208,000 followers and is the largest online genetic genealogy group.
Criminal investigations In 2018, Moore joined Parabon NanoLabs as head of their genetic genealogy unit and hired three female genetic genealogists to work with her. Parabon investigates cold cases using genetic genealogy. In February 2019, she was optimistic that most cold cases could be solved using public DNA data in a few years. However, in May 2019, GEDmatch, the DNA database that she had mostly used to solve cold cases, changed its privacy rules so that it became much more difficult to solve cold cases. Moore said "Whatever one thinks about this decision, it is inarguable that it is a setback for justice and victims and their families." By January 2024, Moore's team reportedly had solved more than 300 cases.
Case results
2018 Moore's first case led to the arrest in 2018 of William Earl Talbott II for the murder of Tanya Van Cuylenborg in Snohomish County, Washington in 1987. He pled not guilty; but in June 2019, he was convicted of two counts of aggravated first-degree murder and sentenced to two life sentences. In December 2021, Talbott's conviction was overturned by an Appeals Court because one of the jurors was biased. The genetic genealogy was not questioned. His conviction was later upheld. In 2018, she helped the police arrest Raymond Rowe for the 1992 sexual assault and murder of 25-year-old schoolteacher Christy Mirack in East Lampeter Township, Pennsylvania. Rowe confessed and was sentenced to life without parole. Moore also led the police to arrest Gary Hartman, a suspect for the 1986 rape and murder of a 12-year-old Michella Welch in Tacoma, Washington. In 2019, Washington state passed "Jennifer and Michella's law" named after Welch and Jennifer Bastian, a 13-year-old girl also murdered in 1986. This law allowed police more latitude in taking DNA samples from convicted sex offenders. Hartman was convicted and sentenced to 26 years in prison in March 2022. She also identified the murderer in a 1981 stabbing and strangulation of 40-year-old realtor Virginia Freeman in Brazos County, Texas as James Otto Earhart who had been executed in 1999 for the murder of nine-year-old Kandy Kirtland in 1987. Earhart's body was exhumed, and a DNA match made between evidence at the crime scene and between him and his son. Earhart was also suspected of having murdered 51-year-old Ruth Richardson Green in 1986. In 2018, Moore helped police identify John D. Miller, the murderer of April Marie Tinsley, an eight-year-old girl who was raped and strangled in 1988 near Fort Wayne, Indiana. Miller confessed to the crime after he was arrested and was sentenced to 80 years in jail. In 2018, Matthew Dusseault and Tyler Grenon were arrested as suspects in the 2016 murder by stabbing of Constance Gauthier, an 81-year-old woman in Woonsocket, Rhode Island in a case Moore and Parabon assisted in. The charges against Grenon were later dismissed. In 2018, Moore and Parabon helped police identify Spencer Glen Monnett, who was arrested and charged with the rape, burglary and assault of a 79-year-old woman in St. George, Utah in 2018. Monnett pled guilty and was sentenced to a minimum of six years in jail, although the Board of Pardons could require he serve his entire life as the maximum sentence. She also helped the police with the 2018 arrest of Darold Wayne Bowden in connection with the six rapes in Fayetteville, North Carolina from 2006 to 2008 (called the Ramsey Street Rapist). Bowden was also a suspect in two other rape cases from 1998 to 2012. Bowden Pled guilty in February 2022 and was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Moore helped with the arrest of Michael Henslick in 2018 for the murder of 22-year-old Holly Cassano in 2009 in Champaign, Illinois. Henslick was convicted and sentenced to life without parole. She also assisted with the identification of Marlon Michael Alexander for a series of rapes that took place from 2007 to 2011 in Montgomery County, Maryland. Alexander confessed and was sentenced to life in jail. Moore helped with the arrest and conviction of Luke Fleming for the 1999 rape and murder of 47-year-old Deborah Dalzell in Sarasota, Florida. Fleming was given two life sentences. Moore identified Robert Eugene Brashers (who committed suicide in 1999) as the man who raped and murdered Genevieve Zitricki, then 28, in Greenville, South Carolina in 1990 and murdered Megan Scherer, 12, and her mother, Sherri Scherer, 38, in Portageville, Missouri in 1998. Moore helped police with the arrest in October 2018 of Michael Wayne Devaughn for the 1990 "Labor Day Murder" of 65-year-old Betty Jones, and the rape of 81-year-old Kathryn Crigler in Starkville, Mississippi. In November 2020, Devaughn pled guilty and was sentenced to life without parole. In October 2018, Winston Corbett was arrested for the murder of Professor James Miller and attempted murder of Linda Miller in October 2011 in Elkhart, Indiana. Moore's team at Parabon helped police identify Corbett with genetic genealogy. Corbett was convicted in November 2020 and was sentenced to 115 years in prison. In November 2018, she helped the Fulton County, Georgia police with the arrest of Jerry Lee in Alabama for the 1997 murder of 28-year-old Lorrie Ann Smith. Moore helped the Orlando, Florida police with the arrest of Benjamin Holmes for the 2001 armed robbery and murder of 25-year-old college student Christine Franke. Eleanor Holmes, the suspect's mother, complained that police had obtained her DNA by deceit. In December 2018, Moore's genetic genealogy unit was instrumental in the arrest and conviction of Jerry Lynn Burns for the murder by stabbing 39 years earlier of 18-year-old Michelle Martinko in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Burns was sentenced to life without parole.
2019 In January 2019, Moore's group at Parabon identified William Louis Nichols as the violent rapist of a 12-year-old girl in Hernando County, Florida in 1983 using genetic genealogy. Nichols died in 1998. Shane Boice was arrested for raping a 33-year-old woman in 2012 in Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Moore's team at Parabon had helped identify Boice. In September 2020, Boice pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to 45 years in prison. Moore's genetic genealogy group at Parabon also helped with the arrests in January 2019 of Russell Anthony Guerrero for the murder of 30-year-old Jack Upton, 28 years earlier in Fremont, California. She helped with the arrest of Zachary Bunney for the murder by stabbing by machete of Scott Martinez in 2006 in La Mesa, California. Bunney was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in jail. In January 2019, Moore's group identified Jerry Walter McFadden as the murderer and rapist of 20-year-old Anna Marie Hlavka in Portland, Oregon in 1979. However, McFadden had already been executed for murder and rape in Texas in 1999. In February 2019, Moore's team helped the Alaska police with the arrest of Stephen H. Downs in Maine for the murder of 20-year-old University of Alaska student Sophie Sergie in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1993. Downs was convicted in February 2022 and was sentenced in September to 75 years in prison. In February 2019, Moore's team helped Virginia police with the arrest of Jesse Bjerke for the rape of a 24-year-old female lifeguard at gunpoint in Alexandria, Virginia in 2016. Bjerke confessed to the rape and was sentenced to 65 years in jail.