Authorities collected 113 pieces of physical evidence at the scene for testing by Idaho State Police Forensic Services, which have been "working 24/7 in the lab" to try to get results as quickly as possible.
Investigators typically will first compare unknown DNA samples from the crime scene to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), a database that contains genetic samples of known offenders, using traditional STR DNA analysis.
"It's pretty quick to compare against CODIS. Had they gotten a match, I think they probably would have arrested by now, so I think we can assume that they are at least looking at using investigative genetic genealogy," CeCe Moore, the chief genetic genealogist at Parabon NanoLabs, told Fox News Digital.
"It just depends how quickly they learned they didn't have a match in CODIS as to when that would have been done."
If the traditional STR DNA analysis doesn't come up with a match in CODIS, then investigators can analyze more than half a million DNA single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, to identify possible distant relatives of the unknown suspect.
Genetic genealogists can then reverse engineer the unknown person's family tree using traditional genealogy and narrow it down to a potential suspect.
Once law enforcement has identified a suspect using genetic genealogy, it will generally try to secretly obtain a fresh DNA sample to confirm a lead.