October Luncheon

Thursday October 8, 2026 11:30 AM TO 1:00 PM

Peoria Women’s Club Clubhouse

Peoria Women's Club members and guests are invited to a luncheon with Moxxy Forensic Investigations, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to using investigative genetic genealogy to assist with cases involving unidentified human remains, missing persons, unsolved violent crimes, and wrongful convictions.

Moxxy combines DNA research with traditional genealogy, building family trees from genetic matches until a person who had no name can be identified and their family can be found. The organization is victim-centered and works alongside families, law enforcement agencies, and communities with a commitment to integrity, compassion, and the highest ethical standards. Its purpose is to restore identities, uncover answers, and ensure that every person's story is remembered.

Our speakers will introduce both the science and the research behind this work, and what it means for the families who have waited years for answers.

About our speakers

Kaycee Connelly is a co-founder of Moxxy Forensic Investigations, an Investigative Genetic Genealogist, and Moxxy's Marketing and Social Media Manager. She holds degrees in Corrections and Parole and Youth Supervision, and brings more than twenty years of genealogy experience to her work. Kaycee has worked on numerous adoptee and family-reunification cases using DNA and traditional genealogical research.

Kathryn "Kara" Roll is a Volunteer Investigative Genetic Genealogist with Moxxy and a high school science teacher. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Indiana University Bloomington with a Bachelor of Science in Biology, and earned a Master of Science in Genetic Counseling from Northwestern University. Before entering education, Kara worked in cancer genetics at the University of Chicago. She has taught biology, chemistry, physics, anatomy and physiology, and forensic science for twenty-five years. Investigative genetic genealogy brings together her lifelong interests in genetics, forensic science, family history, and the pursuit of justice.

Why This Program?

This is work the Peoria Women's Club has long cared about. In our early decades, club members advocated for Peoria's first woman probation officer and for a police matron at Union Station, where young women arrived in the city alone. Both positions existed so that a woman or child in difficulty would have someone whose job was to know her circumstances and look out for her. Moxxy's work carries that same purpose into a new century, using tools our founders could never have imagined.

Members of the Peoria CLSC may find this program a fitting companion to October's book selection, Anna North's Bog Queen, in which a forensic anthropologist works to identify a woman whose story had been lost for centuries.

RESERVATIONS OPEN SOON

Here is where you can find parking around the Peoria Women’s Club: