How Familial DNA Helped Solve the Murder of a Teen Girl and Identify a Serial Killer

On February 24, 1999, Minerliz Soriano, a 13-year-old who wanted to be an astronaut, went missing after school. Her body was found four days later in a dumpster behind a video store in the Bronx, N.Y., a couple of miles away from her home. She'd been sexually assaulted and strangled.

Investigators discovered two semen stains on Minerliz's sweatshirt. Despite testing samples from several potential suspects, including Minerliz's stepfather, they weren’t able to get a match. Years later, police returned to a theory that Minerliz, who'd sold candy door to door, might have encountered her killer in her apartment building. Yet nearly two decades after her murder, Minerliz’s case remained unsolved.

In 2018, Bronx police decided to try a new approach: familial DNA. This search identified a genetic relative of the man who'd left semen on Minerliz's sweatshirt. The information helped police track down Minerliz's killer, marking the first time familial DNA was used to solve a case in New York City.

Kelly Knight, a professor of forensic science at George Mason University's College of Science, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that familial DNA searches are only conducted at the state level and must follow individual state guidelines. New York didn't allow familial DNA testing until 2017.

Dr. Christina Lane, a criminologist who co-founded the Criminal Investigation Resource Center at Russell Sage College, says that investigators who want to conduct a familial DNA search in New York must apply through the Division of Criminal Justice Services. Police made this request in Minerliz's case in 2018, but it took time to go through the process. Two years later, the state crime lab gave investigators the name of a man who was genetically related to the suspect in Minerliz's case.

Police then began investigating this man's five sons. Two were too young to have been Minerliz's killer. Of the remaining three, one had lived in Minerliz's apartment building when she was murdered: Joseph "Jupiter Joe" Martinez.

Martinez was nicknamed "Jupiter Joe" because he was known for teaching kids about astronomy. He was 27 when Minerliz was killed. He had no criminal record, but had been on the list of men police wanted to interview due to where he'd lived.

Police needed more than a familial DNA link to make an arrest. In January 2021, a Bronx detective arranged for a police officer posing as a parent interested in tutoring for her child to meet Martinez, who’d moved to nearby New Rochelle, N.Y., at a local diner. Afterward, Martinez’s used straws were collected and tested. His DNA was a definitive match to the sample from Soriano's sweatshirt.

Martinez was arrested in November 2021. He pleaded not guilty and went to trial. In November 2025, he was convicted of murdering Soriano. He received a sentence of 25 years to life in March 2026.

After Martinez was sentenced, ABC 7 reported that Minerliz's best friend, Kimberly Ortiz, said, "I thank everyone. The detectives, the attorneys, I thank you so much just for never giving up on her and keeping her memory alive." After sentencing, Minerliz's father, Luis Soriano, told CBS News in Spanish, "I am grateful from the bottom of my heart as a father."

Criminal forensic DNA analysis uses short tandem repeats (STRs), which are genetic markers that vary between individuals. Dr. Sara Huston, a professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that when there isn't enough DNA from a case to get a complete STR profile, it's still possible to look for a partial match in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database.

Huston says that in the 2000s, researchers noticed some of these searches showed results indicating a parent-child relationship between the unknown sample and a person in the database. The realization that it was possible to look for close genetic relations in CODIS led to familial DNA searching.

Knight explains that standard familial DNA testing "is going to limit you to matches of first-degree relatives (parents, siblings, children)," and adds, "You won't match to more distant relatives."

Knight says that while familial DNA isn't a regular tool in investigations, and processes vary by state, police may use these searches in cases with no investigative leads, particularly when dealing with unsolved homicides, sexual assaults or other violent crimes.

In 2008, California became the first state to officially adopt familial DNA searching. The technique has been successfully used multiple times in that state, notably leading to the arrest and conviction of a California serial killer dubbed the Grim Sleeper, who killed at least nine women and one teenager between 1985 and 2007. However, an initial familial DNA search in the Grim Sleeper case didn’t succeed in 2008. It was only after the killer's son was convicted and his DNA collected that a search in 2010 provided a lead.

Outside of California, familial DNA helped police arrest a man known as the East Coast Rapist and a killer in Arizona.

Given that familial DNA searches rely on databases having DNA from close genetic relatives, Lane explains that the technique is of limited use in some cold cases. "The age of the database [CODIS began as a pilot program in 1990] and the age of your cold case will tell you the likelihood that that method will work," she says, adding that she wouldn't expect familial DNA searches for cold cases from the 1950s and '60s to find a match.

Yet Huston notes that familial DNA searches are still relatively inexpensive and easy to perform: "If you've already done your short tandem repeats, all you have to do is meet your state policy and have permission to do the search."

And for Minerliz, familial DNA provided the lead needed to bring her killer to justice.