Speaker 1: Imagine keeping a secret for thirty four months. Wow, right,
Speaker 1: I mean one fifty four days to be exact.
Speaker 2: That is a long time.
Speaker 1: It is. That is over a thousand days of you know,
Speaker 1: waking up, going to work, maybe even driving past a
Speaker 1: very specific stretch of rural.
Speaker 2: Road and knowing exactly what is out there, yes.
Speaker 1: Knowing exactly what is buried out there in the dirt.
Speaker 1: You were just living your life, going about your routine
Speaker 1: in this small Midwestern.
Speaker 2: Town, right, blending in exactly well.
Speaker 1: Simultaneously, like an entire state's law enforcement apparatus is slowly,
Speaker 1: methodically and invisibly closing in.
Speaker 2: On you, which is just a terrifying thought for the suspect.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, So today we are going to look at
Speaker 1: the exact machinery that finally caught up to that secret.
Speaker 2: Because it is a profound psychological burden for the suspect,
Speaker 2: you know. But on the other side of that equation
Speaker 2: you have the relentless, just unyielding mechanism of the state,
Speaker 2: and that is what makes our focus today so compelling
Speaker 2: for you, the listener. We aren't looking at like a
Speaker 2: narrative true crime book.
Speaker 1: Here, I know, dramatic reenactments, no.
Speaker 2: We are looking at the raw architectural blueprint of an investigation.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. Our mission on this deep dive
Speaker 1: is to deconstruct a single primary source.
Speaker 2: Document, just one document, just one.
Speaker 1: It is a press release issued on May eighteenth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six, by the Iowa Department of Public Safety the DPS.
Speaker 2: And on its surface, I mean, if you just glance
Speaker 2: at it.
Speaker 1: On your phone, yeah, it looks like nothing.
Speaker 2: Right, It's maybe a four paragraph announcement of an arrest.
Speaker 2: It's sterile. It's totally bureaucratic, it really is.
Speaker 1: But when you look at the structure of this document,
Speaker 1: you know, the organizational footprint of the massive state website
Speaker 1: it lives.
Speaker 2: On, oh yeah, the menus, the.
Speaker 1: Links exactly, and the very deliberate legal language it employs.
Speaker 1: I mean, it becomes this high resolution window into the
Speaker 1: life cycle of a tragedy.
Speaker 2: It really does. This document represents the exact bureaucratic and
Speaker 2: forensic machinery required to her a local missing person report
Speaker 2: filed in the summer of twenty twenty three into a
Speaker 2: highly complex state level homicide arrest in the spring of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: So let's set the stage for you. The case center's
Speaker 1: on Jesse George. He's a thirty five year old man
Speaker 1: living in Missouri Valley, Iowa. Right, And on June twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, he vanished, just gone, just gone. A
Speaker 1: missing person report was filed with the local police, and
Speaker 1: then a massive gap, a huge gap. Yeah. Now fast
Speaker 1: forward to May eighteenth, twenty twenty six, the date of
Speaker 1: our source document, and we are suddenly looking at the
Speaker 1: arrest of Joseph Langford, a fifty two year old man
Speaker 1: also from Missouri Valley.
Speaker 2: So the genesis of this case is that initial report
Speaker 2: to the Missouri Valley Police Department on June twenty ninth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. Right, someone realizes Jesse George is gone
Speaker 2: and they make the call. That is the starting line,
Speaker 2: the very beginning. But it's the gap between that date
Speaker 2: and the arrest that tells the real story of this investigation.
Speaker 1: And I want to pause on that exact gap, because
Speaker 1: this is where the reality of missing person cases totally
Speaker 1: collides with the television version we all have in our heads.
Speaker 2: Oh, for sure, TV makes it look so fast.
Speaker 1: Right, we were talking about June twenty twenty three to
Speaker 1: April twenty twenty six, That is when the text states
Speaker 1: his remains were.
Speaker 2: Finally found nearly three years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, almost three full years. We always hear that statistic, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first forty.
Speaker 2: Eight hours the critical window.
Speaker 1: Exactly. If you don't find someone in those first two days,
Speaker 1: the probability of a positive outcome just drops off an
Speaker 1: absolute cliff.
Speaker 2: It becomes a cold trail very quickly.
Speaker 1: So you might be thinking, how on earth does investigation
Speaker 1: sustain momentum for thirty four months without a body, without
Speaker 1: a defined crime scene, and without any physical starting point.
Speaker 2: This raises an important question about the mechanics of a
Speaker 2: long term investigation, because the answer is actually hidden in
Speaker 2: a very specific, deliberate phrase in the press release. The
Speaker 2: state rights that since the report was filed, law enforcement
Speaker 2: continued to work on the investigation.
Speaker 1: Continue to work yes.
Speaker 2: Now, in bureaucratic speak, that is a massive distinction. It
Speaker 2: does not say the case was you know, reopen.
Speaker 1: Right, or like a cool case, squad took a fresh look.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It implies a continuous, unbroken chain of investigative effort
Speaker 2: over three.
Speaker 1: Years, which requires a staggering amount of resources and discipline,
Speaker 1: massive amounts, because think about it, To keep a case
Speaker 1: active without physical remains means you aren't like dusting for
Speaker 1: prints or taping off a room.
Speaker 2: No, you have no physical room to tape off.
Speaker 1: Right, You are chasing digital ghosts. You are tracking financials
Speaker 1: to see if a bank account is touched.
Speaker 2: You're monitoring social media for any sign of life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pulling phone records, just waiting for a pin.
Speaker 2: And you are dealing with the reality of negative evidence.
Speaker 1: Negative evidence. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: Well, when a person vanishes, the investigation initially focuses on
Speaker 2: proving they are still alive. Oh, I see, Yeah, So
Speaker 2: you check hospitals, you check jails, you check mortar crossings.
Speaker 1: Right, try and find a heartbeat somewhere in the system.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And when all of those come back negative month
Speaker 2: after month, the absence of data becomes the data.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's a really haunting way to put it. The
Speaker 1: absence becomes the data.
Speaker 2: It does. The lack of a digital footprint slowly confirms
Speaker 2: the worst case scenario. But maintaining that level of vigilance.
Speaker 1: Reinterviewing associates who might have changed their stories a.
Speaker 2: Year later, Yes, all of that requires a structural endurance
Speaker 2: that most local departments simply do not have on their own.
Speaker 1: They just don't have the manpower. No, and that endurance
Speaker 1: finally hits a breakthrough in April twenty twenty six. The
Speaker 1: text tells us that law enforcement found human remains in
Speaker 1: a rural location four miles northwest of Missouri.
Speaker 2: Valley, which is very specific.
Speaker 1: It is I want to zero in on that geographic specificity,
Speaker 1: four miles northwest right. In a place like western Iowa,
Speaker 1: a rural location is not just you know, a quiet park, No,
Speaker 1: not at all. You were talking about a landscape that
Speaker 1: actively fights against an investigation.
Speaker 2: That is a crucial point. A rural environment in the
Speaker 2: Midwest is highly dynamic. You are dealing with hundreds, if
Speaker 2: not thousands of acres of agricultural land. Timber ravines and
Speaker 2: changes constantly exactly. You are dealing with a landscape that
Speaker 2: completely transforms every few months.
Speaker 1: It's like trying to read a book where the pages
Speaker 1: are being ripped out every time it rains or every
Speaker 1: time a tractor drives over it. That's a great analogy, right,
Speaker 1: because the environment is actively erasing the text. You have
Speaker 1: the spring planting season where massive machinery churns.
Speaker 2: Up the earth, totally destroying any surface evidence exactly.
Speaker 1: Then you have the summer canopy of corn that makes
Speaker 1: aerial searches by drons or helicopters almost entirely useless.
Speaker 2: You can't see a thing from the air in August,
Speaker 2: and then the.
Speaker 1: Autumn harvest, and then the deep winter freeze where the
Speaker 1: ground turns to concrete.
Speaker 2: Which means to find remains in a rural setting after
Speaker 2: three years of those seasonal cycles. They didn't just stumble
Speaker 2: upon them, right.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a casual walk through the woods, No, they
Speaker 1: were lead there.
Speaker 2: That geographic precision exactly four miles northwest tells us that
Speaker 2: the continuous investigation finally yielded a highly specific data point.
Speaker 1: What kind of data point, like a tip?
Speaker 2: It could have been an informant finally, they're silent, sure,
Speaker 2: but more likely given modern forensics, it was a piece
Speaker 2: of historical cellular data, oh, like a phone ping exactly,
Speaker 2: data that placed the suspect exactly four miles northwest of
Speaker 2: town on the night of June twenty ninth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Wow. So once they dig into that earth and find
Speaker 1: those remains, the entire legal machinery shifts gears practically overnight.
Speaker 1: It has to The source notes that the remains were
Speaker 1: positively identified as Jesse George, and then the Iowa office
Speaker 1: the State Medical Examiner officially ruled his death a homicide.
Speaker 2: The medical examiner's role is really the pivot point of
Speaker 2: the entire document. Also, well up until that ruling, law
Speaker 2: enforcement technically just has a missing person who was found
Speaker 2: to cease, right, which isn't inherently a crime exactly. There
Speaker 2: are many reasons a person might pass away in a
Speaker 2: rural area, exposure, a medical event, an accident while hiking. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: But the moment the medical examiner applies the legal and
Speaker 2: medical term homicide, the whole game changes fundamentally. The framework
Speaker 2: of the state's response alters completely.
Speaker 1: But how does a medical examiner look at remains that
Speaker 1: have been exposed to Iowa winters and summers for three
Speaker 1: years and definitively say, you know, this is a homicide.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly complexing.
Speaker 1: Because you don't have soft tissue to show a clear
Speaker 1: stab wound or a ligature mark from strangulation anymore, right, right.
Speaker 2: It requires forensic anthropology and pathology working in tandem, because
Speaker 2: even after three years, bones tell a very detailed story.
Speaker 2: The medical examiner is looking for blunt force trauma.
Speaker 1: For instance, like broken bones.
Speaker 2: Yes, but even microfractures in the skull that indicate a
Speaker 2: strike rather than say a fall.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: They are also looking for tool marks on the bone,
Speaker 2: perhaps from a blade, and.
Speaker 1: They could tell that apart from animal.
Speaker 2: Marks, absolutely a bladely the very specific microscopic striations that
Speaker 2: differ entirely from animal scavenging marks. That's why they are
Speaker 2: also looking at the hyoid bone in the neck.
Speaker 1: The hyoid bone, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's a small U shaped bone in your neck. If
Speaker 2: that is fractured, it is a very strong indicator of
Speaker 2: manual strangulation, even years later.
Speaker 1: So the bones literally provide the narrative of the violence
Speaker 1: they do, and that narrative culminates. On May eighteenth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six, agents with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation
Speaker 1: the DCI, arrests Joseph.
Speaker 2: Langford, the culmination of three years of work.
Speaker 1: Let's look at the charges leveled against him, because they
Speaker 1: are incredibly telling about the nature of this crime.
Speaker 2: Yes, the specific charges are very important here.
Speaker 1: He is charged with murder in the first degree, which
Speaker 1: the text explicitly notes is a class A felony right,
Speaker 1: and he is charged with abuse of a corpse, a
Speaker 1: class E felony.
Speaker 2: First degree murder is of course the apex charge. It's
Speaker 2: a big one, right. It requires the state to prove
Speaker 2: not just that Langford killed George, but that he did
Speaker 2: so with malice, of forethought and premeditation.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't an accident exactly.
Speaker 2: It was planned and executed. But it's the second charge,
Speaker 2: abuse of a corpse, that provides a grim context to
Speaker 2: the entire three year timeline we've been discussing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was really turning this over in my head.
Speaker 1: When we hear abuse of a corpse, Yeah, the mind
Speaker 1: naturally goes to something like ritualistic.
Speaker 2: Or macab sure, Hollywood stuff.
Speaker 1: Right, But in the context of a thirty four month
Speaker 1: missing person's case, hiding those remains in a rural location
Speaker 1: directly correlates to this specific class C felony.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 1: The abuse, in a legal sense is the ultimate form
Speaker 1: of concealment.
Speaker 2: Precisely, the legal definition of abusing a corpse often encompasses
Speaker 2: the intentional hiding, burying, or concealment of the deceased. To
Speaker 2: Swart Discovery, Hi, the evidence yes, by burying Jesse George
Speaker 2: four miles northwest of town. The suspect wasn't just committing
Speaker 2: a murder, right, they were committing an ongoing daily act
Speaker 2: of psychological cruelty against the victim's family and actively subverting
Speaker 2: the justice system.
Speaker 1: It's the state saying you didn't just take a life,
Speaker 1: you stole the truth for three years, and there's a
Speaker 1: specific legal penalty for that theft.
Speaker 2: The state tax on that class C felony. To acknowledge
Speaker 2: the specific severity of the.
Speaker 1: Cover up, Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: It ensures that the act of hiding the body is
Speaker 2: punished independently of the active murder itself.
Speaker 1: So we have a clear picture of the timeline, the environment,
Speaker 1: and the charges we do. But what really fascinates me
Speaker 1: about this primary source document is the interagency web.
Speaker 2: It reveals the bureaucracy of it all.
Speaker 1: Yes, because this wasn't just a couple of local deputies
Speaker 1: solving a three year old murder in a vacuum. The
Speaker 1: press release explicitly lays out a chain of collaboration.
Speaker 2: If we look at the text, it lists a very
Speaker 2: specific jurisdictional hierarchy it does. It begins with the Missouri
Speaker 2: Valley Police Department, the agency that took the initial.
Speaker 1: Report right the locals.
Speaker 2: Then it mentions the Harrison County Sheriff's Office the county level,
Speaker 2: and finally the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation the DCI
Speaker 2: the state level.
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? When I see a
Speaker 1: case jump from a municipal police department up to the
Speaker 1: county sheriff and then all the way to the state level,
Speaker 1: it tells me the local guys hit a wall. Usually yes,
Speaker 1: not because they aren't capable, but because the logistics of
Speaker 1: a weal to year manhunt simply break a local budget.
Speaker 2: It is entirely an economy of scale. Yeah, think about it.
Speaker 2: A local municipal department in a town like Missouri Valley
Speaker 2: might only have a handful of sworn officers, a few
Speaker 2: guys on patrol. Right. Their primary function is immediate response,
Speaker 2: domestic disputes, traffic enforcement, immediate canvassing for a missing person,
Speaker 2: the day to day stuff. They can handle the first
Speaker 2: forty eight hours brilliantly, But when a thirty five year
Speaker 2: old man vanishes without a trace and the hours turn into.
Speaker 1: Weeks, the budget just evaporates.
Speaker 2: The required resources rapidly outstrip what a town budget can support.
Speaker 1: You can't have your only two detectives chase down cell
Speaker 1: phone warrants for three years while the rest of the
Speaker 1: town still needs policing.
Speaker 2: Exactly, So jurisdiction expands. The county sheriff steps.
Speaker 1: In because they have more money.
Speaker 2: More money, more manpower, and broader territorial authority, which is
Speaker 2: vital when a body is dumped in a rural area
Speaker 2: outside city limits.
Speaker 1: Oh right, jurisdiction literally ends at the city.
Speaker 2: Line, exactly. But when a case stretches into years, requiring
Speaker 2: deep forensic analysis of degraded remains, cyber tracking, and coordination
Speaker 2: across state lines, you need the big guns you have
Speaker 2: to bring in, the heavy machinery you have to bring
Speaker 2: in the state.
Speaker 1: And the state in this context is the Ioad Department
Speaker 1: of Public.
Speaker 2: Safety the DPS.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the press release actually includes an about section for
Speaker 1: the DPS at the very bottom. Now, normally I think
Speaker 1: people just skip right past the about section of a
Speaker 1: press release.
Speaker 2: It's usually boilerplate text right.
Speaker 1: But here it is incredibly eliminating. It states flat out
Speaker 1: that the DPS is the largest law enforcement agency in.
Speaker 2: The state, which is saying something.
Speaker 1: And their mandate is to work in conjunction with local, state,
Speaker 1: and federal government agencies, and importantly, the private sector.
Speaker 2: That combination of public and private sector cooperation is key.
Speaker 1: Why is that so important, Well.
Speaker 2: A local police department might not have the high level
Speaker 2: security clearance, or the dedicated legal teams, or the specialized
Speaker 2: software to demand and decode massive tranches of telecommunications data
Speaker 2: from a private cellular giant.
Speaker 1: Like getting records from Horizon are At and t right.
Speaker 2: It's a huge legal lift. The DPS has those teams.
Speaker 2: They act as the central nervous system for the state's
Speaker 2: law enforcement.
Speaker 1: The sheer scale of this organization is staggering when you
Speaker 1: look at it. If you look at the navigation menu
Speaker 1: included in this source document, it lists six main divisions
Speaker 1: within the IOWADPS.
Speaker 2: Six massive divisions.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You have the Division of Criminal Investigation, which actually
Speaker 1: made the arrest. You have Narcotics Enforcement, you have the State.
Speaker 2: Patrol the highway guys, right, the State.
Speaker 1: Fire Marshalls Division, Yeah, the Division of Intelligence and Fusion Center,
Speaker 1: and the Administrative Services Decision.
Speaker 2: It's huge.
Speaker 1: That is a massive, multi tentacled umbrella overseeing the safety
Speaker 1: of millions of people.
Speaker 2: And if you look closely at the text in that
Speaker 2: about section. They explicitly list the core values driving all
Speaker 2: this machinery.
Speaker 1: Oh I saw that.
Speaker 2: Leadership, integrity, professionalism, courtesy, service, and protection. Right, It's fascinating
Speaker 2: how a clinical legal press release about a horrific murder
Speaker 2: arrest is anchored by these philosophical pillars.
Speaker 1: Like they're making a statement.
Speaker 2: It is. It's the state publicly declaring that behind the badges,
Speaker 2: behind the crime labs and the guns, there is a
Speaker 2: guiding democratic.
Speaker 1: Ethos, which is vital because that ethos is ultimately directed
Speaker 1: by the commissioner, who the text notes is appointed.
Speaker 2: By the governor, right, the civilian leadership.
Speaker 1: So there is a direct line of democratic accountability from
Speaker 1: the dirt of that rural field in Harrison County all
Speaker 1: the way up to the governor's office in Des Moines.
Speaker 2: The chain of command is what gives the entire operation
Speaker 2: its legal legitimacy.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: But to understand how they actually process a crime scene
Speaker 2: like that after three years, yeah, the actual mechanics exactly.
Speaker 2: To understand the mechanics of how they caught Joseph Langford,
Speaker 2: we have to look inside the DCI itself.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 2: The press release mentions the DCI made the arrest, and
Speaker 2: the medical examiner made the ID. But how how do
Speaker 2: you extract evidence from a rural landscape thirty four months
Speaker 2: after the fact.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. This is the part
Speaker 1: that completely blew my mind.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: If we use the provided website structure in our source
Speaker 1: document as a map, we can literally see the internal
Speaker 1: layout of the Iowa DCI Criminalistics Laboratory.
Speaker 2: It's all right there on the page.
Speaker 1: It's like they've handed us a blueprint of their forensic arsenal.
Speaker 1: Under the crime lab section they list all these specific units.
Speaker 2: Let's hear them.
Speaker 1: The crime scene section, DNA casework, DNA profiling, fort defenders,
Speaker 1: drug identification, firearms and tool marks, fire and explosives, impression evidence, photography, toxicology,
Speaker 1: and trace evidence.
Speaker 2: It represents the complete, uncompromising scientific breakdown of a crime.
Speaker 1: It really does.
Speaker 2: Let's walk through how this actually deploys in the real world. Okay,
Speaker 2: when human remains are found after three years, the local
Speaker 2: deputies don't just dig them.
Speaker 1: Up, right, They don't just grab a shovel.
Speaker 2: No, they secure the perimeter and the DCI's crime scene
Speaker 2: section is deployed.
Speaker 1: Right because at that stage. It's not just a recovery,
Speaker 1: it is an archaeological excavation exactly.
Speaker 2: They treat the site like a fragile historical dig.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: They use grid systems. They might use ground penetrating radar
Speaker 2: to understand how the soil was.
Speaker 1: Disturbed without even touching it yet.
Speaker 2: Right, They sift the dirt through screens to catch a
Speaker 2: fragmented tooth, a button, or a piece of jewelry, just
Speaker 2: meticulous very and once that material is secured, the evidence
Speaker 2: diverges and travels down these highly specialized lanes in the
Speaker 2: DCI menu.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about it like a forensic assembly line,
Speaker 1: but one where the workers are all PhDs.
Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.
Speaker 1: Think about it. You pull dirt, debris, and remains from
Speaker 1: a rural field. That material gets passed from one extreme
Speaker 1: specialist to another.
Speaker 2: From lab to lab.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's take the impression evidence section listed in the source.
Speaker 1: You might think after three years of rain and snow,
Speaker 1: there wouldn't be any footprints or tire tracks left.
Speaker 2: You'd assume it would all be.
Speaker 1: Washed away, right, But what if the suspect threw a
Speaker 1: heavy tarp over the burial site, or what if a
Speaker 1: tire track was compressed deep into clay soil and then
Speaker 1: baked hard by the summer sun before being buried under leaves.
Speaker 2: That is exactly where impression evidence comes in.
Speaker 1: How do they handle that?
Speaker 2: They don't just take a photo of a tire track.
Speaker 2: They use specialized dental stone to cast the physical imprint
Speaker 2: of that track. Oh, like dentists used for teeth exactly.
Speaker 2: Then they use oblique lighting back in the lab to
Speaker 2: highlight the microscopic wear patterns.
Speaker 1: What oblique lighting?
Speaker 2: It's shining a light at a very low angle to
Speaker 2: create shadows that reveal depth. It can show a specific
Speaker 2: nick in the rubber of a tire that makes it
Speaker 2: totally unique to Joseph Langford's truck.
Speaker 1: Wow. And what of the trace evidence section? How does
Speaker 1: a fiber survive three years outdoors?
Speaker 2: It depends entirely on the material. Okay, Natural fibers like
Speaker 2: cotton degrade quickly in acidic.
Speaker 1: Soil, so a cotton t shirt is gone.
Speaker 2: Likely, yes, But synthetic fibers like the polyester carpeting in
Speaker 2: the trunk of a car or the nylon from a
Speaker 2: windbreaker can persist for years to sit there in the
Speaker 2: dirt exactly the trace evidence lab will take microscopic debris
Speaker 2: found on the remains and put it under a polarized
Speaker 2: light microscope.
Speaker 1: And what did that do?
Speaker 2: They measure the exact refractive index of a single microscopic fiber,
Speaker 2: how light bends through it, and they use that to
Speaker 2: match it back to the suspect's vehicle.
Speaker 1: Or home from a single fiber after three years. That's incredible.
Speaker 2: Science is amazing.
Speaker 1: But the absolute heavy lifter in a case like this
Speaker 1: has to be the DNA casework section.
Speaker 2: Oh, without a doubt.
Speaker 1: In a case where remains have been exposed to the
Speaker 1: elements for thirty four months, traditional identification methods like fingerprints
Speaker 1: are impossible, completely impossible. Visual identification is impossible. Extracting usable
Speaker 1: DNA from weather bone to make that positive identification of
Speaker 1: Jesse George requires immense technical capability.
Speaker 2: It is an incredibly delicate process, I bet, because when
Speaker 2: DNA is exposed to UV, light, moisture, and soil bacteria,
Speaker 2: it degrades, it breaks down. Yeah, the long strands of
Speaker 2: DNA break down into tiny fragments. So to get a profile,
Speaker 2: forensic geneticis in the DCI lab have to extract marrow
Speaker 2: from the deepest most protected part of a dense bone,
Speaker 2: like the femur Di bone.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Then they use a process called polymerous chain reaction or PCR.
Speaker 1: PCR. Okay, that's essentially a molecular photocopyr right.
Speaker 2: That is a perfect way to describe it.
Speaker 1: Because there isn't enough DNA left.
Speaker 2: To test directly exactly. PCR takes those time heiny degraded
Speaker 2: microscopic fragments of surviving DNA and copies them millions of
Speaker 2: times over.
Speaker 1: Just replicating them again and again, right.
Speaker 2: Until the sample is large enough to be analyzed and
Speaker 2: compared against a family member's swab.
Speaker 1: And that is how the state can confidently issue a
Speaker 1: press release stating the remains were positively identified. Exactly Behind
Speaker 1: those two words is weeks of intense biochemical engineering.
Speaker 2: Weeks of work, easily.
Speaker 1: And if we look further down that menu, there is
Speaker 1: the toxicology section, uh the source even less toxicology instrumentation.
Speaker 1: When I see instrumentation, I immediately think of the big
Speaker 1: machines mass spectrometry, gas.
Speaker 2: Chromatographer, YSI stuff, Right, But how do you.
Speaker 1: Run toxicology on a skeleton?
Speaker 2: It's a challenge, definitely, But bone, bone, marrow and hair
Speaker 2: are remarkable biological.
Speaker 1: Hard drives or drives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because even after three years, if a victim was
Speaker 2: poison or heavily sedated before they were killed, traces of
Speaker 2: those chemical compounds can become trapped in the calcium matrix
Speaker 2: of the bone or the keratin of the hair.
Speaker 1: That is wild. So how does the mass spectrometer actually
Speaker 1: find it?
Speaker 2: Well, the toxicology lab will essentially dissolve a tiny sample
Speaker 2: of that bone or hair into a liquid. They inject
Speaker 2: that liquid into a gas chromatograph, which heats it up
Speaker 2: and turns it into a gas.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: I see, as the gas travels through a microscopic tube,
Speaker 2: different chemical compounds separate based on their size and structure.
Speaker 1: They sort themselves out right.
Speaker 2: Then they enter the mass spectrometer, which bombards the molecules
Speaker 2: with electrons, breaking them apart.
Speaker 1: And that tells you what it is.
Speaker 2: Yes, the machine measures the mass an electrical charge of
Speaker 2: those broken pieces, creating a unique chemical barcode a bar code.
Speaker 1: Wow. And if that barcode matches, say a fatal dose
Speaker 1: of fentanyl or a specific agricultural.
Speaker 2: Chemical, suddenly the medical examiner has the crucial data they
Speaker 2: need to definitively rule the death a homicide rather than
Speaker 2: just exposure.
Speaker 1: Which shifts the whole investigation exactly.
Speaker 2: The physical forensics are vital, but you know the forensic
Speaker 2: arsenal isn't just physical anymore. No. No, if we look
Speaker 2: at the other specialized bureaus listed in the DCI structure,
Speaker 2: we see the cyber Crime Bureau.
Speaker 1: Oh right, I was really struck by that.
Speaker 2: It stands out.
Speaker 1: It does. When you think of a body buried in
Speaker 1: a rural Iowa field, you think of muddy boots and shovels.
Speaker 2: You don't necessarily think of cybersecurity.
Speaker 1: Exactly. How does cybercrime fit into a rural missing person's case.
Speaker 2: Well, in a modern investigation, the digital footprint is often
Speaker 2: much more permanent than the physical one.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: Yes, we talked about how the environment erases physical evidence,
Speaker 2: the rain, the tractors, but the digital environment remembers forever.
Speaker 2: Over those three four months, while the physical trail was cold,
Speaker 2: the Cybercrime Bureau was likely analyzing cellular data, financial transactions,
Speaker 2: social media logins, and GPS history.
Speaker 1: And they aren't just looking at the victim, Jesse Jordan.
Speaker 2: No, they are mapping the suspect, Joseph Langford.
Speaker 1: Because if Langford had his phone in his pocket on
Speaker 1: June twenty nine, twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Three, which most people do.
Speaker 1: That phone was constantly pinging cell towers to maintain a signal,
Speaker 1: even if he wasn't making a call.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's called Cell Site Location information or CSLI CSLA. Okay,
Speaker 2: getting historical CSLI years after the fact requires massive legal maneuvering.
Speaker 1: You can't just ask nicely.
Speaker 2: No, the state has to prove probable cause to a
Speaker 2: judge to force the telecom companies to hand over that data.
Speaker 2: And once they get it, once they get it, the
Speaker 2: Cybercrime Bureau uses specialized software to map out exactly which
Speaker 2: tower Langford's phone connected to and at what specific angle
Speaker 2: and distance.
Speaker 1: So if his phone pinged a rural tower exactly four
Speaker 1: miles northwest of Missouri Valley at like two point zero
Speaker 1: am on the night Jesse George vanished.
Speaker 2: That digital echo is what likely guided the physical search
Speaker 2: team to that exact field in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: It's incredible the digital ghost leads the physical excavation precisely.
Speaker 1: But I have to push back here for a second,
Speaker 1: looking at the sheer scale of this list in the source.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's hear it.
Speaker 1: We've got the DCI, the Cyber Bureau, Field Operations, the
Speaker 1: Special Enforcement Operations Bureau, and then the text mentions the
Speaker 1: Iowa Division of Intelligence Infusion Center.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of bureaus.
Speaker 1: It is when I see this many divisions, this many
Speaker 1: acronyms and bureaus, is there a risk of bureaucratic overload?
Speaker 2: That's a fair question.
Speaker 1: I mean, can a local case from Missouri Valley get
Speaker 1: lost in this massive state apparatus? We all know that
Speaker 1: large bureaucracies naturally form.
Speaker 2: Silence, absolutely do so.
Speaker 1: Does having the state Patrol, the fire Marshal, and narcotics
Speaker 1: all under one roof actually help or does it slow
Speaker 1: things down with red tape.
Speaker 2: It's a highly valid concern, and honestly, it's the exact
Speaker 2: reason many historical investigations failed because of the silos, bureaucratic silos,
Speaker 2: turf wars, a failure to share information. These are the
Speaker 2: enemies of effective law enforcement. But if you look closely
Speaker 2: at the bureaus listed in the source, the State of
Speaker 2: Iowa has actively built technical infrastructure to counteract that exact
Speaker 2: human flaw. They have yes, specifically, look at the Interoperability
Speaker 2: Communications Bureau Okay, I.
Speaker 1: See that on the menu and messed it under that
Speaker 1: there is something called the ISIS network. What exactly is that?
Speaker 2: ISIX stands for the Iowa Statewide Interoperable Communications System.
Speaker 1: Okay, quite the mouthful. It is.
Speaker 2: Historically, if a Missouri Valley police officer was pursuing a
Speaker 2: suspend and crossed into the next county, their VHF radio
Speaker 2: might not be able to talk to the State Patrol's
Speaker 2: UAHF radio system.
Speaker 1: Wait. Really, they literally couldn't hear each other.
Speaker 2: They were literally speaking different technical languages. Major national tragedies
Speaker 2: like nine to eleven exposed how deadly these communication silos
Speaker 2: could be when firefighters couldn't talk to police.
Speaker 1: Wow, So the state builds a unified network exactly.
Speaker 2: The ISIX network is a massive state funded digital radio
Speaker 2: architecture that covers the entire state, ensuring seamless communication.
Speaker 1: So everyone is on the same channel.
Speaker 2: Basically, it guarantees that a local deputy standing in a
Speaker 2: muddy field in Harrison County can key their radio and
Speaker 2: talk directly to a DCIS special agent in Des Moines
Speaker 2: or requests data from the Intelligence Fusion Center without hitting
Speaker 2: a bureaucratic wall.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: They even list an ISI's network operation Center to actively
Speaker 2: maintain this flow of information.
Speaker 1: So the bureaucracy is undeniably large, but the communication architecture
Speaker 1: is specifically designed to flatten it out when a crisis occurs.
Speaker 1: And what about that intelligence and fusion center. That sounds
Speaker 1: like something out of a Spine novel, not a Midwestern
Speaker 1: police department.
Speaker 2: Fusion centers were largely developed post nine to eleven as well.
Speaker 2: Oh really yeah, there are centralized hubs where analysts aggregate
Speaker 2: information from local, state, and federal databases, as well as
Speaker 2: public records and sometimes private sector data.
Speaker 1: So they just hoover up data.
Speaker 2: Basically, if a local officer stops Joseph Langford for a
Speaker 2: broken taylight in twenty twenty, that data point goes into
Speaker 2: the system. The fusion center analysts look for patterns that
Speaker 2: a single local officer would never be able to see
Speaker 2: on their own. They fuse the intelligence together.
Speaker 1: So all of this incredible effort, all of this high
Speaker 1: level science, from extracting bone marrow DNA to pinging historical
Speaker 1: cell towers to the seamless digital radio networks of the
Speaker 1: fusion Center, it all culminates in this single surprisingly brief document.
Speaker 1: We're looking at the May eighteen press release.
Speaker 2: Just those few paragraphs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which brings us to a really fascinating aspect of
Speaker 1: this deep dive. How does this state communicate a major
Speaker 1: breakthrough to the public while protecting the integrity of the courts.
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the delicate, often frustrating balance of
Speaker 2: the public record.
Speaker 1: It's a tightrope walk, it really is.
Speaker 2: The state has an absolute duty to inform the public
Speaker 2: that a suspected murderer has been apprehended.
Speaker 1: Right. The community of Missouri Valley needs to know that
Speaker 1: an arrest has been made.
Speaker 2: People need to feel safe, exactly. But the state has
Speaker 2: an equal and arguably more vital constitutional duty to protect
Speaker 2: the due process rights of the accused.
Speaker 1: And you can feel that tension in the actual anatomy
Speaker 1: of the press release itself.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's palpable.
Speaker 1: The language is incredibly sparse, it's clinical. It gives the names,
Speaker 1: the dates, the locations, and the specific felony charges, just
Speaker 1: the bare minimum facts, right, But just when you think
Speaker 1: they are going to explain how they caught him, it
Speaker 1: drops this heavy, impenetrable door. This is an ongoing criminal investigation.
Speaker 1: No further details are being released.
Speaker 2: The restraint of the state is what stands out as readers,
Speaker 2: as consumers of news, we inherently want the narrative.
Speaker 1: We want the story, We want the true crime podcast version.
Speaker 2: We want to know the motive. We want to know
Speaker 2: exactly how Jesse George died, what the murder weapon was,
Speaker 2: and how the Cybercrime Bureau tied it to Joseph Flangford.
Speaker 1: But the state must legally withhold those details.
Speaker 2: Because if they release the methods, the motives, or the
Speaker 2: exact caut of death and a press release now, they
Speaker 2: risk tainting the jury pool.
Speaker 1: Oh right, because eventually this has to go to trial.
Speaker 2: Precisely, in the legal process of wardre jury selection, the
Speaker 2: defense and the prosecution need to find impartial jurors.
Speaker 1: Right, people who haven't made up their minds.
Speaker 2: If the state broadcasts all their forensic evidence in a
Speaker 2: press release, every potential juror in Harrison County will have
Speaker 2: already formed an opinion for stepping into the courtroom.
Speaker 1: They'd read it on Facebook and assume he's guilty exactly.
Speaker 2: The press release is designed to provide only the foundational facts,
Speaker 2: not the narrative. The narrative belongs exclusively in the courtroom,
Speaker 2: where it can be vigorously tested and cross examined by
Speaker 2: the defense.
Speaker 1: Which perfectly explains the disclaimer at the very bottom of
Speaker 1: the document.
Speaker 2: Yes, that tiny font at the bottom.
Speaker 1: It's just a single sentence tucked away at the end,
Speaker 1: but it carries the weight of the entire American justice system.
Speaker 2: It's the most important sentence on the page.
Speaker 1: It says, note, a criminal charge is merely an accusation,
Speaker 1: and the defend is presumed innocent until and unless proving guilty.
Speaker 2: It is absolutely vital that we underscore the importance of
Speaker 2: this impartial constitutional reminder. Yes, absolutely, While you the listener
Speaker 2: are hearing about first degree murder charges and abuse of
Speaker 2: a corpse and a massive three year interagency manhunt, we
Speaker 2: must formally acknowledge that it is purely an accusation.
Speaker 1: At this stage, the state itself is mandating that impartiality. Right.
Speaker 1: They are putting out this pressfully saying we used our
Speaker 1: massive crime labs, our cyber bureaus, and our interagency networks
Speaker 1: to make this arrest, but we do not have the
Speaker 1: final word. The jury does.
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate check and balance on the immense
Speaker 2: power of the state. Apparatus We've just spent all this
Speaker 2: time analyzing.
Speaker 1: Now, if we pan out from this single murder press
Speaker 1: release and look at the rest of the Iowa DPS
Speaker 1: website menu provided in our source, it completely recontextualizes this
Speaker 1: entire document for me. Oh so well, because while solving
Speaker 1: a twenty twenty three murder is obviously paramount to the DCI,
Speaker 1: this agency is simultaneously handling the every day, mundane realities
Speaker 1: of public safety.
Speaker 2: Ah. Yes, the bureaucracy of a state is relentlessly dual nature.
Speaker 1: Dual nature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has to manage the extremes of human behavior
Speaker 2: alongside the utterly routine.
Speaker 1: Let me give you an example from the text for
Speaker 1: the listener. Just look at the I need to drop
Speaker 1: down menu listed right there on the same page as
Speaker 1: the murder press release.
Speaker 2: Right at the top of the site.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have find a missing person, which is the
Speaker 1: tragic catalyst for the Jesse George case. But right beneath it,
Speaker 1: you have request criminal background checks, you have acquire a
Speaker 1: weapon permit, repaired school safety concerns, access crash reports, view
Speaker 1: the Iowa sex offender registry.
Speaker 2: It perfectly illustrates the daily reality of law enforcement.
Speaker 1: It's crazy to see them side by side.
Speaker 2: They are deploying the crime scene section to meticulously excavate
Speaker 2: human remains in a freezing rural field, while simultaneously, in
Speaker 2: a different office, a clink is is processing the paperwork
Speaker 2: for someone who wants to buy a hunting rifle. They
Speaker 2: are tracking a suspected murderer using historical cell site location data,
Speaker 2: while another division is running the Governor's Traffic Safety Bureau.
Speaker 1: It's almost jarring to read. Further down in the division's list,
Speaker 1: you see the Administrative Services Division managing the Peace Officer
Speaker 1: Retirement System pensions. Yeah, you see links for winter driving
Speaker 1: tips and crash statistics, living right alongside the Clandestine Labs
Speaker 1: section of the Narcotics Enforcement Division.
Speaker 2: It is the mundane civic duty running perfectly parallel to
Speaker 2: the macabre exactly.
Speaker 1: But that is the requirement of a functioning society.
Speaker 2: It has to be.
Speaker 1: The state must be capable of confronting the absolute darkest
Speaker 1: aspects of human behavior, like a first degree murder concealed
Speaker 1: for over one thousand days, without dropping the ball on
Speaker 1: everyday civic order.
Speaker 2: They still have to issue winter road safety warnings. Yes,
Speaker 2: they still have to ensure retired officers get their pensions
Speaker 2: on time. The architecture of the DPS website site is
Speaker 2: a direct reflection of the architecture of society itself.
Speaker 1: So to bring this all together, look at the incredible
Speaker 1: journey we've taken on this deep dive for you today.
Speaker 2: It's been quite a ride.
Speaker 1: We started with a simple, tragic missing person report in
Speaker 1: the small town of Missouri Valley in June twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Right we explored the statistical cliff of those first forty
Speaker 1: eight hours and what it actually means to maintain a
Speaker 1: continuous investigation for thirty four months.
Speaker 2: We followed the trail as the local police hit their
Speaker 2: resource limits and handed it up to the county sheriff
Speaker 2: and eventually to the massive state apparatus of the Iowa
Speaker 2: Division of Criminal Investigation.
Speaker 1: We unpack the physical reality of an Iowa rural search,
Speaker 1: where the environment actively fights the investigation, the seasons, the tractors,
Speaker 1: the weather.
Speaker 2: We dove into the literal dirt of that crime scene,
Speaker 2: moving through the high tech impression evidence labs casting tire tracks, and.
Speaker 1: The toxicology labs using mass spectrometry to find chemical compounds
Speaker 1: in weathered bone.
Speaker 2: We explored the extraction of from bone marrow. To make
Speaker 2: a positive identification using PCR, we looked at.
Speaker 1: The digital tracking of the Cybercrime Bureau, mapping out historical
Speaker 1: cell tower pings and the seamless radio communication webs of
Speaker 1: the ISIS network.
Speaker 2: And finally we landed right here on the desk of
Speaker 2: Special Agent in Charge Daryl Simmons, whose contact information sits
Speaker 2: at the bottom of a formalized, highly restrained public record
Speaker 2: announcing and arrest. It's a lot to take in if
Speaker 2: we connect this to the bigger picture, it serves as
Speaker 2: a profound reminder. Behind every brief, hundred word headline you
Speaker 2: scroll past on your phone while waiting in line.
Speaker 1: For coffee, which we all do every day.
Speaker 2: Behind every sterile boilerplate press release issued by a government agency,
Speaker 2: there is an absolute mountain of forensic science, interagency friction,
Speaker 2: and human perseverance.
Speaker 1: A thirty four month investigation doesn't just sustain itself.
Speaker 2: No, it requires investigators, lab technicians and analysts who simply
Speaker 2: refuse to let a file stay closed.
Speaker 1: Which brings us back to where we started, the burden
Speaker 1: of the secret versus the relentless machine of the state.
Speaker 2: The machine always grinds forward.
Speaker 1: The truth of what happened to Jesse George was obscured
Speaker 1: in a rural field for three years, but the machinery
Speaker 1: of investigation, the forensics, the cyber tracking, the inneragency cooperation
Speaker 1: eventually brought it into the light and put it on
Speaker 1: the public record.
Speaker 2: The machine did exactly what it was designed to.
Speaker 1: Do, and that leaves you with a final thought to
Speaker 1: mull over long after you finished listening to this deep
Speaker 1: dive today.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's hear it.
Speaker 1: Look at the sheer volume of data, physical evidence and
Speaker 1: public records generated by just this one case.
Speaker 2: The DNA swabs, the gigabytes of cyber data points.
Speaker 1: The interoperable communications logs, the crime scene photos, and this
Speaker 1: exact press release. Now multiply that immense digital footprint by
Speaker 1: every single case handled by the state across all those
Speaker 1: divisions we listed.
Speaker 2: It's unfathomable.
Speaker 1: It is when a case is finally closed, when the
Speaker 1: trial ends, and the press release is permanently archived in
Speaker 1: the state's database, what happens to all that data?
Speaker 2: It just sits there forever.
Speaker 1: How does a society balance the permanent archival of a
Speaker 1: tragedy with the necessity of the public record. We demand transparency.
Speaker 1: We demand these press releases so we know our communities
Speaker 1: are safe, but in doing so, we permanently etche a
Speaker 1: family's darkest day into the digital bedrock of the Internet.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate paradox of the information age. The relentless
Speaker 1: pursuit of justice guarantees that the trauma is never truly deleted.