WA Police warns criminals to start ‘looking over their shoulders’ after DNA breakthrough in Kerryn Tate murder

A police officer behind the DNA breakthrough that identified a suspect in the 1979 unsolved murder of Kerryn Tate has warned criminals in hiding they should start “looking over their shoulders”. Senior Constable Lisa Rosenberg was in the team that helped pinpoint Terence Fisher as a suspect in the 45-year-old case by using investigative genetic genealogy to match DNA found at the scene to data on ancestry websites. Speaking at a mobile police facility in Karragullen, near where Ms Tate’s body was found, Sen-Const. Rosenberg revealed the team had solved about 10 cases over the past two years. While refusing to say which cases being worked on right now, Sen-Const. Rosenberg confirmed they were focused on solving “numerous” unsolved homicides and sexual assaults. She said criminals who think they may have got away with serious crimes should be concerned after the latest breakthrough. “I feel like finally (the criminals) are looking over their shoulder instead of the victims and their family. So if someone knocks on your door or pulls you over, we’ll be coming for you,” she said. “It is evolving rapidly, worldwide, it’s incredible the changes — we were doing full profiles, but it looks like we might be able to do partial profiles down the track as well.” Ms Tate’s body was found slumped over a smouldering tree stump in bush about 800m south of Brookton Highway, on December 30, 1979. In 2023, detectives revealed they had discovered the DNA profile of an unknown man on evidence linked to the scene before revealing they had linked it to Mr Fisher on Thursday. It involved investigators sifting through 10,000 DNA profiles dating back as far as the 1700s before identifying a number of Mr Fisher’s genetic relatives. “You’ve got all the public genealogy databases worldwide, and there’s two databases that allow people to opt in to allow law enforcement to compare samples — we use GED match and Family Tree DNA at the moment,” Sen-Const. Rosenberg said. “We upload the DNA data file of our unknown person, whether it be from a crime or an unidentified human remains . . . and from that we get the matches that every other person who’s put their DNA on the databases see. “We start trying to identify any relatives that we can, and once we identify some people, we build their trees. “The thing is to view as many trees of our genetic matches and try and find where they all intersect, and from that, we try and pull it down to one family branch, or sometimes just to an actual one branch.” Sen-Const. Rosenberg said the team were “ecstatic” when they narrowed the sample down, before cold case detectives investigated Mr Fisher. “It was out of hours, we worked on it for 12 months, we were working it on the train, in our evenings, and talking at home (about the case) to each other. “We narrowed it down and came up with the family, and we came in very early the next morning to present it to the detectives.” Mr Fisher died from cancer. He was never questioned over the death of Ms Tate — who died aged 22. “Unfortunately, of course, we would, as investigators, would (have liked the case to go to trial), but at least . . . we’ve got those answers for the family,” Sen-Const. Rosenberg said. Police opened a mobile police facility on Brookton Highway near the scene on Friday as they encouraged the public to provide information about the case. Sen-Const. Rosenberg said the public could help solve more cold cases by opting in to share their DNA profile with law enforcement. “Australians on the databases is a very small percentage (compared to) these international databases, so if we can encourage more Australians to upload their DNA from whether they’re on Ancestry or MyHeritage, we can’t see the DNA or look at the DNA on those sites, so we’re just asking members of the public to upload to GEDMatch or FamilyTreeDNA,” she said. “We believe it’s about five to 10% of the total amount of people on these database, and of those, probably only 10% of opt in for law enforcement access.” “If you’re allowing all of these millions of strangers around the world to look at your DNA data, it’s not a big question for me to tick that box and allow law enforcement to solve serious crimes. If Mr Fisher was alive, investigators said they would have interviewed him about the unsolved murders of Barbara Western in 1986 and Kerry Turner in 1991. Acting Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Coombes said on Thursday the “prima facie evidence” police had gathered supported a charge of murder against Mr Fisher over the death of Ms Tate. A bloodstained piece of wood recovered near her body indicated she had been beaten to death. She was last seen alive, in Mount Lawley, on the morning of December 29. The DNA sample linking him to Ms Tate’s death was located on evidence found at the crime scene. The sample, which had been stored since the 1979 murder, contained both his and the 22-year-old’s DNA. Police conducted a search warrant and Mr Fisher’s old family home, in Manning, this week. Detective Senior Sergeant Dion Selby, the lead investigator, said Mr Fisher had “minor traffic offences” but was otherwise not known to police before the DNA result linked him to the scene. Det. Sen. Sgt Selby said Mr Fisher was a “quiet person” and a “heavy drinker” who spent lots of time at the Fremantle sailing club. Police are investigating whether he picked up Ms Tate — who was known to be a frequent hitchhiker — from the Mount Lawley area before she was taken to Karragullen, where she was housesitting.