Capital murder trial underway for defendant linked to Dallas victim by forensic genealogy

Closing remarks are expected today in the capital murder trial of a man accused in a killing 35 years ago.

David Rojas was linked to the murder by forensic genetic genealogy. It's the first murder case tried in Dallas County based on that technology.

If convicted, Rojas faces an automatic life sentence without the possibility of parole because Dallas

Decades after Mary Hague Kelly's murder in Oak Cliff, advances in DNA forensics helped identify her suspected killer.

Rojas was arrested in 2022 after Dallas County's Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences matched DNA from the crime scene with user-submitted genealogy databases, like ancestry.com or 23 and me.

Former Dallas County Chief Medical Examiner Jeffrey Barnard helped match the DNA.

"The cause of death was — I had no question about," he said. "But in terms of did it. So once our DNA got to where you actually can do database and [Combined DNA Index System] database, I went back through the logbooks trying to find cases that maybe we could solve and we solved a bunch."

Barnard testified in the trial this week.

Kelly was 78 and had been strangled and raped in her home.

If convicted of capital murder, 55-year-old Rojas would get an automatic life sentence. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.

His family had lived next door to Kelly when she was killed in 1989.