Colleen Fitzpatrick, forensic genealogy

Colleen Fitzpatrick, forensic genealogist and author

On 20 April, 2015, we were extremely fortunate to have Colleen Fitzpatrick PhD, visiting forensic genealogist and author from the US, come and speak for us at Central City Library.

Colleen is a nuclear physicist, who is a consultant in some high profile cases that involve using both genetic and forensic genealogy to solve a case.

She has a really impressive CV.

Colleen is also the author of:

• Forensic genealogy,  
• DNA and genealogy, and  
• The dead horse investigation: forensic analysis for everyone. 

Colleen is a talented researcher and an excellent speaker with a wide choice of subjects to choose from and has a real talent for making the complicated and the technical both easily understood and entertaining.

Fortunately, her visit to us coincided with our "pilot" scheme and we were able to video her talks which you can find on the Auckland Libraries YouTube channel.

The presentations she gave us were:

CSI meets Roots

Forensic genealogy has established itself as the modern approach to family research. Reference materials such as photographs, databases, and DNA can provide much more information than you ever dreamed. But are you really using your genealogical materials to your best advantage? The goal of this talk is to spark your imagination to discover new ways of looking at your family mysteries.

Adoption searches

This talk will give you insight into adoption searches – how to use explicit and implicit information in conjunction with DNA to locate someone even if don’t know his or her name.

The "Unknown Child" of the Titanic - identified?

Of the 328 bodies recovered by the salvage operation of the SS Titanic, just one was that of a child. His identity was unknown for nearly a century until 2002, when Dr. Alan Ruffman and Dr. Ryan Parr announced that they had identified the remains of the "Unknown Child". But was this identification correct? How was the controversy resolved so that the Unknown Child of the Titanic was unknown no longer.


So make yourself a cup of tea, sit down for an hour or two and enjoy!

Happy watching

Seonaid