The ethical framework for forensic genealogy use by law enforcement has continued to develop since 2018. Questions about consent — whether people who submit DNA to consumer testing services for genealogical purposes have implicitly consented to its use in law enforcement investigations involving their relatives — have been addressed in different ways by different jurisdictions and different database operators. The Chandler case predated many of these policy developments but contributed to the context in which they were debated.
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## The Unresolved Core
The case of Robert Ivan Nichols is, in one sense, resolved: the identity of the man who lived in Eastlake as Joseph Newton Chandler III is confirmed, established through multiple lines of genetic and genealogical evidence and confirmed by a direct DNA match with a biological relative. There is no serious dispute about who the man was.
In another sense — perhaps the more human sense — the case is not resolved at all. The question that gave it its character, the question that investigators asked and that Phil Nichols and his family have lived with for decades, is why.
Why did Robert Ivan Nichols leave his wife and children in 1964 with a cryptic promise of a future explanation that never came?
Why did he sever contact with his family entirely after 1965, maintaining an apparent existence under his real name through 1976 without ever reaching out?
Why did he formally assume a false identity in 1978, changing his administrative existence from informal to fully constructed fraud?
Why did he tell co-workers, over and over, that “they” were getting close?