Barbara Rae-Venter

Barbara Rae-Venter (born July 17, 1948) is a New Zealand-born American genetic genealogist, biologist, and retired patent attorney best known for her work helping police and investigators identify Joseph James DeAngelo as the Golden State Killer. Born in New Zealand, she earned a doctorate at the University of California at San Diego and later completed law school at the University of Texas at Austin. After retirement from her law career, Rae-Venter started researching her family history as a hobby in an attempt to help a family member find his biological family. As part of this work, she was asked to help identify a woman who had been abducted as a child. Her efforts in this case eventually identified Terry Peder Rasmussen as the suspect in the Bear Brook murders in New Hampshire. In 2019 she was included in the Time 100 list of most influential people and in 2018 was recognized in Nature's 10, a list of "people who mattered" in science by the journal Nature. Early career Barbara Rae was born on July 17, 1948, in Auckland, New Zealand, and raised in Auckland's Remuera neighborhood. She moved to the United States at age 20, and has United States citizenship. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology and biochemistry from the University of California at San Diego in 1972, and received her Ph.D. in biology at the same institution in 1976. From 1976 to 1979 she was a postdoctoral fellow at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center (then known as the Roswell Park Memorial Institute) in Buffalo, New York. From 1979 to 1983 she was assistant professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. Rae-Venter focused her research career on breast and gastrointestinal cancer. She matriculated at the University of Texas at Austin Law School in May 1983 and received her J.D. in August 1985. She later worked as a patent lawyer in California specializing in biotechnology and was an assistant professor at Stanford University from 1988 to 1990. Genetic genealogy The field of genetic genealogy was developed largely by volunteer family history hobbyists, and Rae-Venter realized that the techniques used to identify family members in adoption cases could have wider uses in law enforcement and the identification of suspects and victims of crime. Some law enforcement agencies were initially dismissive of the idea.