You're listening to the Mind over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly. My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social media
manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner in
crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind of a Murderer. I'm Kristin Dilly
and I'm Bill Thomas, and we're joined today by Lindsay Wade, author of
In My DNA, My Career Investigating Your Worst Nightmares. Lindsay, thank you
for being here today. Thank you so much for having me back. Before
we get into our discussion on the reason we wanted you to speak with us
today, which is the Codis Gap, we wanted to go ahead and extend
our congratulations on the fact that your book has been nominated as one of the
best true crime books of the Year at the Crime con Clue Awards. Thank
you so much. I'm very excited about that. I was very surprised to
receive that nomination. Yes, I'm just happy to be in good company.
So how did you find out that in My Dna was named one of the
top true crime books of the year. Now by the time we air this
episode, they will have announced who won the grand prize. It is truly
an honor to be nominated. So how did you find out about it?
I got an email, and yes, got an email from Crime con or
I guess actually from the Clue Awards technically letting me know that my book was
one of five finalists for the category Book of the Year. Yeah. I
was pretty blown away. And they want to be like frantically reading all the
other books in the group, because I want to read everybody's book before I
get there. Sorry, no, I'm dealing with it. We're very excited.
You know that you're in that amazing group of people because it is a
pretty heady category and lots of really wonderfully accomplished people and of course my most
important question at the moment is what are you planning to wear to the Clue
Awards? Because we've all been invited, So what are you planning to wear?
Funny you should ask, because I have no idea. I probably have
a couple of different things that I'm going to bring, But I guess I'll
just depend on how bloated I am or whatever that day as to what This
is such a women's discussion. Like Kristin asked me earlier today what I was
wearing to the Clue Awards, and I did ask you, Yes, I
did. Quite frankly, being a guy, I hadn't thought about it in
the least. Yes, women have to do. There's a lot more of
a process into it for the ladies. Yeah, but I'm also I probably
will wear a dress of some kind nice. Yeah, bring a couple.
I had a couple with me last year and I finally decided on my favorite.
But Bill, I gotta tell you, you know that Paul Holes and
Matt Murphy have put a lot of thought into what there were into the Clue
Awards, So you're gonna have to step up your game a little bit.
I'm not even attempting to compete at the level of Paul Holes or Matt Murphy,
who are both of whom are big time true crime sex symbols. If
we're still allowed to use that expression, lindsay, before we get started talking
about the Codis gap, very quickly, remind our listeners a little bit about
your background as an investigator. Sure, so, my background is law enforcements.
I'm a retired detective out of Washington State. Spent twenty one years with
the Tacoma Police Department. Fourteen of those years I spent as a detective,
primarily worked sexual assault pieces, missing persons, homicide cases, child and bease
cases, and then when I retired, I was the cold case detective when
I retired from my agency, and then I went to work for the Attorney
General of our state for just under five years, just under five years as
an investigator, working on a sexual assault kit initiative and then worked on some
other We have a unit within the Attorney General's office which is called HITS,
which is the Homicide Investigation and Tracking System Unit, and that was actually started
by Bob Keppel. For any true crime fans that name, so Bob started
that unit. Now I'm just in the private sector, still keeping my finger
on the pulse of what's going on in the world of crime. So how
did you get your start with the Tacoma Police Department. Is this something when
you were a kid you thought, I want to be an investigator, I
want to be a detective. I actually knew when I was in high school
that I wanted to be a detective. And I actually was inspired by reading
and We're book The Stranger Beside Me as I think I was a sophomore in
high school and I was hooked at that point, and I guess I was
a true crime nerd before that was the thing when it was still really weird
and awkward and you didn't talk about that kind of stuff. I knew from
that point on. And I had a friend in school her dad was a
police officer, so I was exposed on the periphery, so to speak to
a little bit of police work, police life. I had another friend,
family friend who was a police officer. Then I did an internship with the
police department when I was in college with a female sergeant. Yeah, like
everything I did along the way, it was like it just made me more
and more certain that this was what I wanted to do, and this was
the job I wanted. And then when I was in college, I was
actually in my junior year of college and I got hired by the police department.
I had taken the written task and gone through the whole process of the
physical and the psychological and the medical and everything you have to do, and
they offered me a job. And so I ended up putting school to go
work for the police department at the ripe old age of twenty one, and
went to the police academy, And luckily, the police department actually did tuition
reimbursement, so I was able to go back and finish my degree later on
after I was a detective. Very cool. So you wrote a really fascinating
article called DNA's Delayed Justice, the fight to fill the gaps in Codis,
which really resonated with the two of us in light of our own interests both
within the crime and justice space and of course the Colonial Parkway murders. What
prompted you to sit down and write this particular article at this particular time.
Wow, there was a recent cold case that was solved as a result of
getting DNA into Codis from a long forgotten, really bad guy who was executed
in Washington date back in nineteen ninety four. As a result of finally getting
his DNA into COTIS, a cold case from nineteen seventy five was resolved.
This is a topic that I've been very interested in and I would say slightly
obsessed with since about twenty eleven when I first stumbled across this issue. Over
the years have found example after example of really scary guys, really violent offenders,
who for one reason or another, slipped through the cracks and were not
ever in the DNA database for the purpose of solving cases. Most recent example
just it's like a culination of many years of all these different cases and then
here's this latest example, and I thought it was definitely worthy of getting the
word out to law enforcement, specifically to hopefully make people take notice and take
a look at what's going on in their own jurisdictions. That this particular case
would not have been solved without changing legislation in Washington State, and so that
was necessary to even get this person's DNA into CODIS. So that was one
of the piece of it. There were just so many factors and so much
work over many years to get the but I think it's just a really great
example of what can be done and hopefully a model that other states could use
to do the same kind of thing. Let's tell me about the case a
little bit first, before we get to the long and very worthwhile effort that
you and others put into actually changing the law in Washington State. So tell
us a little bit more about the case itself and how this ended up moving
on to your radar as an investigator. Really, I knew about the offender.
I didn't know about the victim. So it's like a backwards way of
working the case. That's really how it happened in this instance, because I
became aware of the offender in this case many years ago, and he was
like my poster child for Hey, everybody, pay attention. We need to
make some changes in codis because this is a problem. So when I would
go down to Olympia, our state capital, and testify in front of various
committees about changing our DNA law, I would always use him as my primal
example of this really heinous offender that slipped through the cracks and is currently not
in cotis. Knowing about him, and this is what I learned about him.
I was reviewing. Actually, I was working on a cold case,
and I was reviewing a list of convicted offenders that were not in Cotis and
he was one name on that list. And what really caught my attention initially
was that when I looked in the status column, this is like an Excel
spreadsheet that I was reviewing, and the status column that said executed, And
so I was like, that's interesting. And I could see that he had
three convictions for aggravated first degree murder, which is the highest level of murder
that you could be convicted of in my state. And so I thought,
this is interesting. I really I want to dig into this guy and find
out what he actually did, because this is scary that he's not in co
And so I went down the rabbit hole looking at his criminal history, googling,
looking at basically anything I could get my hands on to try to get
a handle on who this person was. And what I came to learn was
that he was a career criminal. He had committed a stranger sexual assault back
in nineteen seventy four, he had gone to prison, and even though he
was sentenced to thirty years in prison, he was out in less than six
years. Wow. Yeah, we both were just like horrified when we read
that, like, how in the world does a thirty year sentence turn into
six years and the guys out on work release. Yeah, and unfortunately that
was not uncommon during those times. Back in the seventies and eighties, it
was not uncommon for people to get sentenced to really long sentences and be out
in five years or less. But that's a different matter. Nevertheless, he
was released, the victim wasn't notified that he was released from prison, and
he actually was being in a halfway house very close to where she lived.
And so within less than a year of him being on work release, he
returned to her home and murdered her, her eight year old daughter, and
her neighbor. It was probably one of the most outrageous and shocking crimes that
really ever occurred in Washington State. It really just horrified people. He was
arrested very soon after. I don't think it took a rocket scientist to figure
out who did it. He was ultimately convicted of the three murders and he
was put to death. He was actually the last person in Washington State to
be hanged in nineteen ninety four. So learning all of that history, I
thought, Okay, this is a really dangerous predatory offender. He's not in
COTIS. So I thought, Okay, I'm going to start I'm going to
find a sample for this guy, and he needs to be in the system.
And part of my thought process when I would look at these cases was
maybe this will solve the cases that I'm working on. Maybe person's DNA will
help solve these other cases. So that was always in my mind when I
was looking at these kinds of offenders. And I knew that this particular offender
was not going to be responsible for the two cases that I was investigating from
eighty six because he was already in custody by that point, but I still
thought he could be responsible for other BOLD cases, so he really needs to
be in the database. So I started doing some checking and was really excited
to find out that there actually was either a blood card or a tissue block
available at the Medical Examiner's office from his autopsy, and so I got all
excited. I called a time lab just to be told that he didn't qualify
to go into Cotis. Now let's just stop for a second. We're both
like making the OMFG face here. How in the world does someone this heinus
who's already been convicted of rape and now gets out of prison on work release,
tracks down the woman that he attacked before brutally kills her, her eight
year old daughter, and their neighbor who was also a witness. How in
the world is that guy's DNA not in the system in Washington State. The
reason he wasn't in the system already is because he was convicted before there were
even DNA laws. He was convicted before anybody was using DNA and criminal investigations.
However, the real issue was that he didn't qualify to go in in
twenty eleven or whenever it was that I found his name. He didn't qualify
to go into the database for the same reasons. He was convicted before the
law went into effect, he died before it became retroactive for inmates, and
so basically he fell into this loophole or gap in the system. So yet
another example of the CODIS gap. If you don't mind spend a minute or
two explaining for us, were civilians right and what the CODIS gap means?
Yeah, And unfortunately there's not just one gap. There are lots of different
reasons why offenders are missing from the database. Some of those are legislative issues
that have to be corrected. Some of them are policy issues. Some of
them are just because they were just missed and no one has gone back and
taken a look at who actually owes DNA and their jurisdiction and how do we
get it collected. For a lot of states, the way that the law
is written for DNA collection is extremely convoluted. Sometimes I think it was written
that way on purpose so that there could be lots of different ways to get
that DNA into collected and into the system. But when you do that and
you don't lay out a specific path that needs to be taken, any specific
person who's responsible, then what happens. Everybody points the finger at somebody else
right now their responsibility, No, your responsibility to do it. You will
collect it when they get to prison. Oh no, you'll get it at
the jail. Oh I thought you were to collect it in the courtroom.
And these are all places where people's DNA theoretically could be taken, and oftentimes
everyone assumes somebody else did it, and then it doesn't get done. Is
there some reason why they can't take it in all three places? Just to
make sure that they've covered their bases. I feel like there needs to be
a flow chart here. But I'm also wondering, why don't we have multiple
redundancies worked into the system just in case I forgot it at the courtroom.
Don't worry. We've got it at the jail cell and we've got it elsewhere
too. That's a good question, and I would say that the reason not
that I agree with this, but the reason that most jurisdictions wouldn't want to
collect it multiple times is because it's the drain on resources. Even the collection
kits to collect the sample. You would think it's just like a cute tip,
and that's not actually what happens when you collect a convicted of fender sample.
There's a bit more that goes into it, to include taking fingerprints,
documenting what the qualifying offense was. There's a little bit more that goes into
it, and there's a cost associated with those kits. I think that's part
of the issue. But bigger problem, in my opinion, is that we
just have too many points along the way where someone can be missed. As
you said, there needs to be a flow chart, and unfortunately everybody in
the criminal justice system doesn't follow the same path. When they are convicted,
right. Some people, when they are convicted for qualifying events, go to
jail. Some people go to prison, some people get home monitoring, some
people get probation. So depending on what their path is will oftentimes dictate when
and if their sample is collected. One of the things that really shocked me
in the article, which and will include a copy of your link to your
article in the show notes for this episode, was the fact that in some
jurisdictions there seems to be a policy that offenders only give their DNA when they're
being released from prison. So they've gone in, they've served their sentence,
they're being released back out into the community, hopefully not to reoffend. Yet
that's the time their DNA is often taken. And that seems completely backwards to
us. Oh yeah, do you want to go track somebody down after you've
released him if you get a hit and now we'll find them again. No,
And that is an old school mentality, and that's an old school policy
to collect DNA upon release. I hope that most correctional facilities are not doing
that any longer, but that certainly was the standard and the norm back earlier
on when DNA laws were first being implemented, and I don't really coming from
a cold case investigator perspective, I don't understand what kind of sense that makes.
Just like you pointed out, I think their thought process was we'll get
it before they leave, and they're not hurting anybody while they're in here,
so it doesn't really matter. And I push back on this a lot as
the family of a murder victim. Right, it isn't just about he's about
to re enter society, hopefully to be successful and not be continuing his criminal
ways. But for you, as an invent investigator, to find out that
he's already out back in the community, possibly reoffending, versus when you're working
in an investigation actively and going through a cold case. Wouldn't it make a
heck of a lot more sense if you said, I think my guy is
Joe Smith, and Joe Smith is at such and such prison, and I
can go visit with him and reconfirm via DNA that I've got the right guy,
or maybe I should be looking for another Joe Smith. Correct. Yeah,
A controlled environment is definitely the better solution there. Once someone is released,
you don't know where they're going to go or what's going to happen or
what they're going to do after their release. Collecting at the time of release
is not a great solution, in opinion. One of the things I was
really interested in when I read your article is the fact that Ted Bundy's DNA
isn't in cotis. That kind of blew my mind? How did that happen?
He is probably one of the most notorious serial killers of our times.
Does he not have his DNA and codis? That really just clowsed my mind?
Yes, so that blew my mind as well, And that was another
For some reason, twenty eleven was the year for me to learn about all
these crazy things happening, and Ted Bundy was at the top of the list
that year of shockers. I think before that I just assumed that if you're
a serial pillar, your DNA is going to be in the national database for
the purpose of linking cases together. But that's not necessarily the case. Really,
it goes back to a lot of these guys that were operating in the
seventies, eighties, even the nineties. They probably were convicted before a DNA
law was even on the books in their jurisdiction, and depending on the state
and depending on what their policies and procedures were and what their DNA statute says.
The prison officials may not have ever gone back and collected from these guys
if they were already locked up when the prison started routinely collecting samples from inmates.
And this is this is very common to see offenders that went in before
the DNA laws even went into effect. They just got forgotten about. Now.
There are even some states that actually are not allowed to go back and
collect DNA samples from individuals today who were locked up before the DNA law went
into effect, you know. And so unless there's specific language in the statute
about retroactivity, they don't qualify. This is the sort of thing that makes
me insane. Oh yes, I know, and I've talked to law enforcement
officials about this. This isn't just about convicting people. This is also about
providing answers. And I know how victim centric you are and how family focused
you are. The fact that there are offenders, including people that are rapists
and murderers and multiple offenders and serial killers whose DNA is not in the KODA
system, Kristen said. Ted Bundy obviously is the super high profile example,
but you actually worked to get his DNA Bundy's DNA into the system even though
he was in Florida and you're all the way in Washington State. How did
that work? Believe it or not. Our oldest cold case on the books
in Tacoma is the nineteen sixty one abduction of Anne Marie Bird. She was
an eight year old who went missing from her home in the middle of the
night in Tacoma. If her case is still unsolved today, she's never been
found ted Bundy came onto the scene as a suspect in her case after he
was revealed to be who he was. He was also born and raised in
Tacoma. He also lived in the North End of Tacoma, and there were
lots of wild rumors he was her paper boy, they knew each other.
I don't know. None of that stuff is true. But the fact of
the matter is he was a high profile serial killer living in Tacoma at the
time this went missing. He of course was a suspect in her case.
Now, he was only fourteen at the time that she went missing, and
there's lots of debate about whether or not he actually could have done it.
But aside from that, I thought, Okay, we're going to be re
examining this cold case. We're going to be sending things out to the crime
lab for testing. Do we even have anything to compare too if we get
some DNA evidence from this crime scene, from these crime scene items that were
collected in nineteen sixty one. And so I started making calls again and quickly
found out No, Ted Bundy's DNA is not in CODIS in Washington because he's
not been convicted of any crimes in Washington. Even though he confessed to eleven
murders in Washington, he was never convicted for any in Washington, so he
doesn't qualify for CODIS in Washington. But he was convicted in Florida, and
that's where he was ultimately executed. So I ended up contacting authorities in Florida.
Contacted a medical examiner's office where he was had his autopsy for he was
executed. They had tried to do DNA testing at one point, but it
was the old style RFLP DNA testing, which does look back to COTIS.
It's a different type of testing, and they didn't have anything left to do
current DNA testing using STRs. So then it was like Okay, who else
can I call? So I ended up calling the Florida State COTIS administrator,
so, like every state has basically a manager of their CODIS database. So
I call him and he tells me that he gets called several times a year
from detectives asking him the same question from all over the country. Is Ted
Bundy's DNA and CODIS? His answer was no, it's not. And so
I'm like, Okay, this is the problem. So how do we fix
this? How do we find a sample? So we put our heads together
and came up with basically some a strategy for locating a sample. I decided
that I was going to reach out to Ann Rule here in Washington, because
had of course had read her books, and I knew that she had written
Bundy in prison and he had written her, and I knew that she kept
the letters that he wrote her with stamp Oh wow. Interesting, thought,
wow wow, And so I was like, I don't know, it probably
won't qualify for CODIS, but even if we could get a profile to do
a keyboard search or a one to one comparison, we can be better than
the things that. So I met with Ann Role, got to have lunch
with her, wow, which was really cool. She signed my book The
Stranger Beside Me, which you go which is one of the reasons why you
got into the field in the first place. And then she handed me multiple
letters and envelopes that she had been keeping in her safe for all these years,
and so I took those back to the police department, and my intent
was to send those out to the crime lab. At the same time,
the CODIS administrator in Florida had located these wax molds of Bundy's teeth. So
after he got arrested for the Kyomega murders, they took wax molds of his
teeth because he had those unusual He had very unusual teeth, but there were
bite marks on at least one of the victims. They still had the wax
molds of his teeth at the crime lab. Apparently they have like a Bundy
museum of sorts. At the crime lab. They had these wax molds.
He attempted to swab those and potentially get a profile from the wax molds,
but he didn't get enough of a profile to develop for CODIS. But he
was able to somehow locate a vial of Bundy's blood that had been collected in
nineteen seventy eight at the time of the rest in Pensacola, and it was
in a safe in a clerk's office at a room temperature. I was going
to say, this was sitting in a refrigerator somewhere, right, refrigerator,
a room temperature safe in Florida since nineteen seventy eight. Oh my gosh,
let's me an ideal. Yeah, so that's not going to be good at
black is going to be completely broken down. So he wasn't hopeful that he
was going to be able to get anything from it. But miraculously, while
the blood itself in the bile was not going to be worth anything, there
was dried blood on the lid of the vacuue tanner. He was able to
flake off a couple of little pieces of dried blood. Wow, there's enough
there to get a full profile. It worked, surely, Cow. Then
the profile was entered into Florida's database and that's where it was going to stay
because he didn't qualify to go into the national database. Wait a minute,
yeah, this makes no sense. We're both looking at each other like what
Yeah, that's what I said. So I'm like, this is good I'm
glad that he's in Florida's database, but that doesn't go if he's not in
the national database. Let's say he committed a homicide or sexual assault in Washington
and we've got evidence on a case in Washington that doesn't meet the criteria to
make it up to the national database, will never get a match. And
basically, after some legal wrangling with the INDUS Custodian and US IS the national
D and DA database, it was decided that the sample would go into the
national database in the legal index. So he is not in the offender index.
He's in the legal index. However, he's still the legal index still
searches against the crime scene or forensic index. So that's basically what we need.
We need his profile to be searching against crime scene profiles. And it
is now as of twenty twelve, you're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll
be right back after this word from our sponsors, we're back here at mindover
Murder. Before we get back to the podcast, just wanted to remind you
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link is in the show notes and in our social media pages. As always,
thanks for your support. Now back to mindover Murder. So I don't
understand why do CODIS laws and policies vary from state to state. Wouldn't it
just make more sense. Do you have one set of national policies and that
way we are all on the same page one hundred percent of the time or
I don't know. Am I thinking about it too simplistically? It just it
seems like the obvious answer would be yes, it's better to have one set
of policies. Why are we doing fifty states fifty policies. I think the
reason is because every state gets to make their own laws, and CODIS rules
are directly related to the laws in that particular state. One state can do
certain things, another state cannot. Some states take DNA upon arrest, and
some states like mine do not. Every state because they all have different laws
with regard to who owes a DNA sample. That makes it very convoluted and
very complicated because every state then has a different standard for who can be entered
into the database. I'm going to chime in here and say, this is
insane, the fact that we have allowed this system to develop. This makes
no sense whatsoever. Offenders offend all over the place. And the Bundy example
that we just spoke about, which was fascinating, but I had forgotten that
he had lived in Tacoma, Washington, and yet I associate him with offenses
in other parts of the country. And of course we know the story about
Florida because we've talked with Kathy Klina Rubin about surviving Ted Bondy's attack when she
was a college student in Florida. This makes no sense. And I'll go
a step further. Now. I'm not a professional, and Kristen isn't either,
but I am the brother of a murder victim. It's my intention to
pivot. When we solve the Colonial Parkway murders, it's my intention to pivot
to this larger issue of two hundred and fifty thousand cold case homicides across the
United States. This is so so half asked as to not be believed.
We're not running the country like a real country. You can't have fifty different
sets of rules. We need one set of rules for the entire country.
And quite frankly, I think the databases should all be shared as well.
I thought that was the idea of CODIS. It feels to me like we
need to revamp this entire system. I can't believe that every single state Virginia
in the Colonial Parkway murders example, every state has a different set of rules
and parameters. As Kristin was saying, this is insane. It's very complicated,
and I completely understand your frustration because I've lived at I can't even tell
you how many times I just felt like banging my head against a wall because
things that seem like constants are not necessarily and unfortunately, what it's going to
take is legislation. That's the bottom line is it's going to take either some
type of federal legislation to mandate that all the states have the same rules,
or it's going to each individual state is going to have to amend their DNA
collection statutes so that everyone's on the same page. And honestly, you can't
even get all the states to agree on collecting DNA upon arrest. So I
think we need one set of rules, and I think the lack of leadership
by the Department of Justice here is shocking. For God's sake, develop one
set of parameters and these will oversee what should be a federal system. You
can't have one set of rules in Oklahoma and a different set of rules in
Tennessee or Washington State and Florida. It just doesn't make any sense. Unfortunately.
Yeah, every state has their own DNA database, and so I don't
know if you're really familiar with how cotis works, but cotis is a software
That's what cotis is. It's a software program the DNA database itself. There
are multi levels of what we call codis, So there's oftentimes states will have
local levels of cotis where maybe their individual crime labs have a database within the
state, and then they've got their ESTIE database, which is their state database,
and then there's the national database. And so the samples that are in
the state database, if they meet their criteria, they can be uploaded to
the national database and then they can be searched against other profiles that are in
the National database, so that the only DNA database that the FBI controls is
the National DNA database. The other ones are controlled by the states. Now,
they still have to abide by COTIS rules which are set forth by the
FBI, but again they have to abide by their own state laws as to
whose DNA can go into the system. And I mentioned earlier that there are
samples that don't meet the requirement to go into the national database. That's something
that I don't think most people know. We're understand there are some cases,
both offender samples and crime scene evidence samples that don't make it into the national
database. And this is because the sample may they may not have obtained enough
core low side or locations on the genome identified when they did the DNA testing
to upload it to the national database. Most state DNA databases have a lower
threshold and a lower number of core low side that they have to obtain in
order to enter that profile into their state level. But once you go up
to national the standard is higher, right because you have more profiles, so
you have to be more discerning with those profiles. That's something that even a
lot of investigators don't understand when they're working cold cases is when someone tells you,
oh, yes, the profiles and code is, you should be asking
where one level lindsay, I feel like we need to sit down at crime
kind and come up with a flow chart that shows all of these different levels
of it, because even now you've just explained and it's so beautifully, but
it's I'm not going to be able to retain this because there's not because of
the way that you've explained it or anything like that, but just because it
is head spinning. It just seems so counterintuitive. It really does feel like
it should be the national database and the state databases feed into it. You're
saying that it doesn't work like that, and that's making me go, but
why it's I'm sure that's very frustrating. It is, and it's I would
say more than I think at this point. As a as an investigator,
you just have to really educate yourself. If you're going to work cold cases,
you better understand how CODIS works and understand that just because you have a
suspect that's in prison doesn't mean they're in CODUS. Just because your suspects in
CODIS doesn't mean they're at the national level of CODIS. Just because your crime
setne evidence is in CODIS, it doesn't mean it's at the national level of
CODIS. They need to understand, like how do I confirm that? How
do I find this out? And then if it's not, how do I
what do I do about it? So theoretically, is there a way to
get one hundred percent of all offenders currently incarcerated into CODIS. Is there a
way to do this or is it just not going to work the way that
we optimistically want it to. That's a trick question, Chris, because not
intentional, not intentionally at all, Like this is from a civilian standpoint,
someone who wants the best for victims. That my question is, why can't
we go through and just swab everybody and toss them all in there? I'm
guessing that isn't the answer, though theoretically we should be able to do that.
It really depends and I hate to go back to the state, but
it depends on that particular state's law if their laws retroactive. So that's one
hurdle, and then two is actually getting somebody to go back and count doesn't
take legislation, it doesn't take anything special. It just takes someone to go
back and actually do a census or a survey to identify. Okay, I
want a list of everybody in prison in our state, and then we're going
to cross reference that against the code of database and find out who's in there
and who's not. That's not rocket science. Yeah, but I can tell
you that that's not happening. This has not yet been identified as a major
issue nationally. I'm making the aha face because I actually think we've talked with
you about this before, We've talked with Rock Harmon and other experts about this.
I actually think we need to steer this in a direction where this becomes
a national conversation. The other thing is I've said on Mind over Murder and
Kristen has two the fact that there are two hundred and fifty thousand cold case
homicides, which maybe a conservative number, even that is not something that's well
known in our opinion, and it should be a national scandal because we've all
watched these procedurals on TV, which are fun to watch, but as we
all know, not terribly realistic. We've all been sold a bill of goods,
which is that we think that crimes are solved quickly and easily in state
of the art labs with lots of colored water or something going up and down
with bubbles, and exceptionally well dressed and often quite lovely people, both women
and men, solving all of these cases in forty eight minutes or less.
And yet you're here to tell us that's not the reality. No, I
fully understand where you're coming from. On the cold cases. Why do we
not have a national cold case database? Yeah, yes, yes, great
question. We agree, and I will give Virginia mad props here. Virginia
just started a cold case database. Hats off to them for doing it.
The issue that I have found, though, is someone who goes scrolling through
the cold case database here in Virginia on the regular is it is almost impossible
to use. It is very hard to search. It is even when you
put in the names of people that you know to be victims, they don't
always come up. Not every cold case is in there, and we don't
have a really good explanation for why that might or might not be. I
love the idea of a national cold case database, but if it is done,
boy, I hope it's going to be managed a little bit better and
made a little more user friendly than some of the ones that I know were
at the various state levels, but honestly waiting to get Amazon to build it,
right, because all you have to do is just look at your Amazon
car and it knows what you're searching for. So basically you just have to
talk about Amazon, and now you've got all these these suggestions about things you
might like. That's basically what you need your cold case database to do.
Right. Yeah, you're searching for this person that's going to give you a
list automatically of other cases that potentially might be associated. Yeah, seriously,
the people who run Amazon need to be doing all of this stuff like.
They've clearly got it together. They have somehow managed to optimize it. We
need this as well. Yeah, that's because our phones listen to our conversations
and then suddenly start suggesting things. Yes, but perhaps we should talk more
loudly in the kitchen sometime about the fact that we need a national cold case
database. Yes, exactly, and maybe that's a good I was trying to
think. I don't know who else going to be at crime con but there
have to be some movers and shakers and people there that can make something like
this happen. I don't know, and it doesn't seem like rocket science.
We do have name this which is great. Namous is for unidentified and missing
persons. It is not cold case homicides. I don't want to let you
off the call without asking you a little bit about the SAKI grant program,
Sexual Assault Kit Initiative program, because the SAKE program here in Virginia is actually
what led to the recent identification of an offender in three of the cases associated
with the Colonial Parkway murders. Let me just ask one generalized question, why
are the numbers so low of the number of law enforcement agencies that are utilizing
the SAKI grants here? As Christen said, just a moment ago, the
folks at the Virginia Department of Forensic Science applied for SAKI grants, which we
totally supported, and that led directly to the identification of an offender after thirty
seven years of waiting for answers. So we're thrilled and we really appreciate the
work that's being done. Do you know have any sense of how could we
make the SAKE program more widely used? Is that a fair question and one
you could answer. You know, it's available to any law enforcement agency that
applies, not that everyone would get it if they apply. It's like it's
a federal grant. You have to apply and you have to respond to a
solicitation that comes out annually, and it's a standard federal grant. And I'm
pretty sure most law enforcement agencies are well aware of the federal grants that are
available. Yeah, I'd love to see it more widely used. And of
course we're an example of here's a case now that's very near and dear to
our hearts that's moving forward again because Virginia applied for and got ZACKI grants and
they're out there working it. Our understanding is they're continuing to do so,
and this gives families like mine and folks across the country will hope that their
cases are going to be solved. And we understand that in a case like
ours that's thirty seven years old, there was a real good chance that this
offender and perhaps others. We understand they may be dead. It's been a
long time. But at the same time, those answers that I mentioned a
few minutes ago are so important and they're inquity meaningful to the family. Yeah,
and I'm a really big proponent of evaluating deceased offenders for DNA locily DNA
collections for that very reason, because I've taught classes and given presentations on collecting
DNA samples for offenders who have slipped through the cracks, and oftentimes people will
say, why does it matter? Why do you care about collecting samples from
somebody who's dead, Just exactly as you just stated, because someone out there
is waiting for an answer. Someone wants to know what happened to their loved
one. Victims want answers, And frankly, do you really want your law
enforcement agencies spending time and resources investigating cases and spinning their wheels when the answer
could be sitting right in front of them. Yeah, exactly, And as
you were saying at the top of this conversation, in the example that you
walked us through, that was a situation where the offender had been put to
death by the State of Washington years before, and yet answers were provided as
a result of your and your teams working together to look for these answers.
The offender dispatched, but the answers for those families were incredibly important and meaningful.
That's why I reminded everybody in law enforcement. It isn't just about putting
offenders away or appropriate levels of punishment. It's also for answers for those families
that are waiting, sometimes for decades. Absolutely, this most recent case was
almost fifty years old, forty nine years old. That victim's family for forty
nine years had no idea who was responsible. I don't know if that helps
them to know who did it. I don't know that I can say that.
I hope it gives them at least some peace of mind that law enforcement
didn't forget about them, and that someone still cared enough to still work on
it, and that Charles Campbell was never a suspect in that case. He
was not on the radar for that case at all, in any way,
shape or form, never would have been linked to that case otherwise had it
not been for the DNA. I can say for sure that in the Colonial
Parkway murders, we've spoken to those other family members who received this news,
and Kristin and I talked about this times recently. I hope people can understand
that you've been looking for answers for that long. It's actually good news to
have a question that's been hanging over your family for decades, have an answer.
The answer was never going to be a truly satisfying one, but at
least they know what happened to their loved one and they have a somewhat better
understanding of how and why this happened. It was never going to make complete
sense, and it wasn't going to be acceptable to them, but they have
answers that they've been seeking for more than thirty years exactly well, for a
lot of victims and survivors and family members of victims, I don't know if
satisfied is the right word, but they are pleased with just receiving news that
someone is working on the case and that someone cares and that they haven't been
forgotten, even if at the end of the day they don't get what they
ultimately wanted, or maybe they don't get the the sentence that they ultimately wanted,
or maybe the of vendors dead, and so they don't actually get punished.
As you said, sometimes it's just having the answer. And I just
from my experience working with victims and with family members of victims, a lot
of I've had people tell me that it really just changed a lot of things
for them, just knowing that someone actually cared about them enough to pick up
the phone or drive to their house, sit down with them and talk.
And not everybody wants that, but some people do, and people just they
want to know that the police or the law enforcement agency is still actually cares
about them and that they're not just a number or a statistic or that they
have been moved to the side to handle current cases that are coming in.
Very well said, so, Lindsay, we will put a link to your
article in our show notes, but tell everybody where they can find your book
in my DNA. My book is available anywhere you can buy books Amazon,
Barnes and Noble, Target, Walmart, or you can buy it directly from
the publisher's website, which is actually better for me. So if you just
spe you can order it from one Idea at press dot com. Lindsay,
thank you so much for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you
at Crime Con in just a couple of days. Me too. Thanks for
having me. That is going to do it for this episode of Mind Over
Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time.
Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and another Dog Productions. Our
executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our logo art is by Pamela
Arnois. Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud. Mind Over Murder is distributed
in partnership with crawl Space Media. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter,
or Instagram. You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway Murders
on Facebook, and finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at Bill
Thomas five six. Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.