Inside Investigative Genetic Genealogy - Interview with Cairenn Binder

True Crimecast

Stove Leg Media

Society & Culture, Documentary, True Crime, Personal Journals

4.7 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2026

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cairenn Binder is the Assistant Director of the IGG (Investigative Genetic Genealogy) Center and the Director of the IGG Certificate Program. Cairenn has been at the forefront of IGG since its inception, applying genetic genealogy to identify human remains with the nonprofit organization DNA Doe Project from 2018 through 2023. In 2022, she co-founded Coast to Coast Genetic Genealogy Services to fulfill the need for additional IGG practitioners to generate leads in violent crimes. She began working at Ramapo in October of 2022, helping to launch the IGG center in December 2022. Her casework has been featured on BBC news, ABC, NBC, Fox, Oxygen, and CourtTV, in addition to podcasts and digital media. Cairenn joins True Crimecast today to talk about the work of investigative genetic genealogy, give insight to how it helps solve crimes, and share information about how YOU can contribute directly to the great work being done in investigative genetic genealogy. Support IGG work being done at Ramapo: https://www.ramapo.edu/igg/how-you-can-help/ Follow Cairenn on IG: @cairennoid

Transcript

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0:00.0	Stoveleg Media, Igniting Conversation. We are thrilled to be joined today by Karen Binder, an investigative genealogists.
0:33.2	I messed it up.
0:34.2	Genetic genealogists.
0:35.7	I practiced that before we came on the air and still mess it up. Karen, thank you so much for hanging out with us for a little bit. Of course. You're not the only one. And the title's a bit of a mouthful. And I, honest to goodness, it sounds when I, because we, when we cover cases, we talk about your work, not yours individually, which we're going to get into today, but the field itself.
0:58.4	It sounds redundant genetic genealogists.
1:02.2	Yeah, a lot of people say that.
1:04.4	And the distinction is made with genetics.
1:09.2	So I know that, you know, like, if you think about genealogy, genealogy is a field that's been around a really, really long time.
1:15.0	You know, you probably have grandparents, great-grandparents who did genealogy where they're documenting their family history research.
1:21.7	And then genetic genealogy is adding DNA into that.
1:25.1	And so that's a relatively recent development because we've only had access to direct
1:29.3	to consumer DNA testing for, you know, a couple of decades at this point.
1:34.1	So a newer field.
1:36.4	So it does sound redundant, but what it means is adding in the DNA piece to genealogy.
1:41.5	Awesome.
1:41.9	And then when you add investigative, then we're talking about solving crimes with DNA and genealogy. That sounds really, really awesome. Could you walk us through
1:50.4	what a typical day for you looks like? You know, if I walk through my typical day, you might
1:55.9	fall asleep because since I have more of a leadership role in my organization, I spend so much time answering
2:02.7	emails and, you know, doing admin work. But the fun part of my job is when we get to work on cases.
2:11.7	So we use public DNA databases called Jedmatch, Family Tree, DNA DNA and DNA Justice, where samples from violent
2:21.4	crimes, so DNA profiles from violent crimes or unidentified human remains can be uploaded to these
2:27.5	publicly available DNA databases. That gives us a list of genetic relatives to the subject that we're
	...

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