GEDmatch addressed this by updating its terms of service after several high-profile forensic genealogy cases to require users to opt in to law enforcement searches rather than opting out. The default, before the policy change, was that profiles were available for law enforcement comparison unless the user specifically chose otherwise. After the change, profiles were unavailable for law enforcement comparison unless the user specifically chose to make them available.
The Chandler case predated the GEDmatch policy changes, which means the work was done under the earlier default. This is relevant historical context, not a criticism of the investigation: at the time the work was performed, the relevant conditions were met.
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## The Remaining Witnesses to a Life
When Robert Nichols died in July 2002, the people who had known him as Joseph Chandler at Lubrizol and in Eastlake were the only living witnesses to the life he had built under a false name. The co-workers who had noted his eccentricities, his intelligence, his cryptic warnings — they were the primary human record of his Ohio years.
They remembered a man who was remarkable mainly for what he withheld. In a workplace context, people are accustomed to colleagues who keep their personal lives private, who don’t socialize extensively, who focus on the work rather than the relationship. But the degree of Nichols’s social withdrawal went beyond ordinary privacy. He had no one. He maintained a fictional family structure when forms required a next of kin. He treated his co-workers as emergency contacts not because he trusted them but because he had no one else.