Kansas man sentenced to prison after police use genealogical records to solve 2007 rape case

A 54-year-old Augusta man was sentenced to 25 years in prison for raping a woman in 2007 at her southeast Wichita home, the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office said Thursday.

The man’s arrest last year was the first time Wichita police used a genetic genealogy technique that involves trying to match a DNA sample from an unsolved case to data uploaded to genealogy websites, according to a news release from the district attorney’s office.

Ted Foy was sentenced Friday to 310 months in prison after pleading guilty March 20 to charges of sodomy, rape, sexual assault and attempted rape, according to a news release.

According to a press release, on November 13, 2007, Foy entered a woman’s home through a first-floor window while her husband was away on military duty.

Details of the case have not been publicly released. A Wichita police officer interviewed by The Eagle after Foy’s arrest in May 2023 said forensic genetic genealogy has been used to solve other unsolved cases in Wichita.

This practice has come under criticism as the sharing of DNA with genealogy companies has become popular in recent years.

Using the databases to launch an investigation is “blatantly unconstitutional,” said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a privacy and civil rights organization.