Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 2: And I'm Bill Thomas.
Speaker 3: And this week we have part two of our episode
with Colleen Fitzpatrick, a genetic genealogist who was our guest
last week. We had a fascinating, interesting conversation with her
and we are very much looking forward to continuing that
conversation and sharing it with you all today.
Speaker 2: And in other true crime news.
Speaker 4: C C.
Speaker 2: Moore, who is another prominent forensic genealogist is going to
be appearing on a new television series. The show is
called The Genetic Detective and tells the story about how
she and her team at Parabond have also broken a
number of cold cases. The show makes its debut next Monday,
May twenty sixth at ten pm on ABC and I
think it's on for six weeks. It's a limited series.
It should be very interesting, The Genetic Detective, so look
for it Mondays at ten o'clock on ABC.
Speaker 3: Now, we had a couple of listeners who had suggested
that we do a true crime News wrap up or
true Crime News Update, which we think is a great idea.
Whenever possible, we're going to offer some insight into the
latest news from the true Crime Escape. Today, we do
want to very quickly make a mention of the fact
that Denis Lee Bowman, you may recall, was indicted for
the nineteen eighty murder of Kathleen Doyle Kennedy in Virginia Beach, Virginia,
has now been indicted on a different crime.
Speaker 2: Dennis Lee Bowman has now been charged in the nineteen
eighty nine murder of his fourteen year old adopted daughter.
Her birth name was Alexis Badger, and after she was
adopted by Dennis Lee Bowman and his wife Brenda, her
name was changed to Andrea Bowman. This is as an infant. Sadly,
he murdered her and hid her body under concrete in
the basement of his home. As part of the exploration
of the Kathleen Doyle murder, he provided information about the
whereabouts of his missing daughter. Alexis' birth mother, Kathy Terurcanian,
has been searching for her daughter for years and has
been a tremendous advocate. And we're pleased to announce that
Kathy Turcanian will be a guest on upcoming episodes of
Mind Over Murder in a few weeks.
Speaker 3: Speaking of upcoming episodes, we are very much looking forward
to sharing a three part interview with you from David Rambo,
a writer and producer on television's hit series CSI.
Speaker 2: So thanks again for listening to Mind Over Murder and
we'll look forward to seeing you next time.
Speaker 3: Welcome to mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 2: That makes me Bill Thomas.
Speaker 3: We are back this week with part two of our
episode with Colleen Fitzpatrick, Who's going to talk to us
about forensic genealogy. Colleen, Welcome back to Mind over Murder.
Speaker 5: Glad to be here.
Speaker 3: We're talking about the Phoenix canal killer case last time
and your very successful identification of Brian Patrick Miller as
the suspect in the canal killer case. My question that
I wanted to ask is, when you receive information about
a crime such as this one, do you get the
whole entire file or do you just get the DNA profile.
I'm just very interested in whether you knew the full
scope of these crimes and you've had an idea who
the victims were. Does that affect in any way how
you approach the case.
Speaker 6: Actually, it depends on the agency. I tend to like
to have a little bit background on the case. It
really depends on the work we're doing. If it's a
Y DNA case, having the background on the case is
probably not as important. Why DNA only looking for the
last name in that case. I do produce maybe a
national perhaps an ethnicity like African American, Native American, Caucasian.
I can come up with that, But what I produce
is maybe even out of context. I can just do
it without knowing anything except that string of numbers called
a ystr profile. If it's an autosomal test like modern
we're doing now, you really have to have more of
a context because you do know who the matches are.
You do know more about the geography of relatives. You
may not know who did the crime, but from the
matches you can deduce probably where the guy was born.
Maybe if all the matches are from Louisiana, you're looking
for background, somebody with a background from Louisiana.
Speaker 2: Is it helpful to have those things? In other words,
is it helpful for them to say, Okay, we're looking
for a suspect from Louisiana, let's say, who may have
family ties to New Orleans. Let's say they won't.
Speaker 6: Tell us that because in most cases they don't know
these are coded right, And a lot of times people
will say, this was a murder of an elderly woman,
let's say. And these kind of murders are typically cause
are done by younger.
Speaker 5: Men who live not too far away.
Speaker 6: They drives, their kinds of cars, their educational level is
there's some kind of profiling on the psychology and the
kind of person that would do that crime, but typically
they would not know the ethnic bat or they may
know if it's a Caucasian or something because of an
eyewitness or something, but they don't know the guy maybe
from Louisiana or something. Police always base their investigation on
physical evidence. And if you walk up to somebody, if
you looked at me, you would I and I left
something at a crime scene. You wouldn't be able to
see from the physical evidence. I was from Louisiana. So
we're introducing another layer on top of the physical evidence,
more deeper investigative look at who may have done this crime.
Speaker 3: So were you given information about the victims in this case?
In the Canal killer case.
Speaker 6: No, whatever I read, of course I read about Angela
and Melanie, I read about him or was not given
any additional information because I didn't need it. More like,
here's some DNA from a crime scene. When this is
what happens is the crime, the police, there's no reason
to share that information with me.
Speaker 5: I don't need it.
Speaker 2: Is there any sense that having additional information like that
would interfere with your ability to be strictly driven by
science and the DNA matching and that kind of thing.
Speaker 6: I'm just it wouldn't It would be neutral if I
had it, it would be good to have. If I
didn't have it, it wouldn't make any difference to me.
It's interesting to me because it's something I'm working on
and I like to know as much as I can,
But in terms of the really method of solving it
using why DNA, I really don't need to know that.
Speaker 3: So if he does go to trial, I know he's
scheduled for trial in June, and clearly we don't really
know what's going to happen considering the COVID nineteen. But
if he does go to trial in June twenty twenty,
will you be called to testify? Have you been given
that information?
Speaker 5: I have not. Officially.
Speaker 6: I did give what's called an interview in Arizona, and
my understanding that's like a deposition, it's a form of
and I went out there to talk.
Speaker 5: To the defense.
Speaker 6: I asked the prosecution attorney some of them to be present,
and the defense asked me some questions and I answered him,
it's pretty cut and dry. I've been told I most
like you will not be called to testify, but if
I am, I absolutely have no problems. What I did
was cut and dry. It was a lead that I produced,
like all genetic genealogy stories. It's a lead that I
provided to the police department, and they ran from there.
So I think most of the trial will be concentrated
on and they ran from there rather than all the
leads that they had been developing through the years, including mine.
Speaker 2: Agreed and important for our listeners to understand that when
someone liked doctor Fitzpatrick generates this lead, that's all then confirmed.
In other words, they take a look at in this case,
suspects with the name of Miller, narrowed it down to
the person they thought was the most likely, and it's
been reported in the media and in many other cases.
They then went out and surreptitiously collected mister Miller's DNA.
And typically they'll do this with something that the suspect
has thrown away and that's already been through the court system.
It is legal for law enforcement to watch you and
then when you throw away a coffee cup, a cigarette,
but a half eaten slice of pizza, as they did
in the Grim Sleeper case in Los Angeles, which then
presents a fresh DNA sample match that DNA sample back
to the suspects DNA, thus confirming your scientific tip which
said you should be looking for an individual with the
name of Miller. That work on the back end then
confirms your reference to a potential suspect named Miller.
Speaker 5: It's a little bit more than that. You miss one step.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you tell us.
Speaker 6: In any case, no matter how this is done, I
provide a name Miller. Okay, they think they know whoever
it is. But there's two steps at that. At this point,
the police can go out and collect discard at DNA
that is legal, right, it's a collect a cigarette by
trash whatever. And they take the DNA from that sample
and they match it or they against the crime scene
evidence and it's let's say it's a match.
Speaker 5: If it's not a match, the guys rolled out.
Speaker 6: If it is a match, they have another step that
gives them probable call cause to go and make an arrest.
Because that man's DNA matched the DNA at the crime scene,
and that is a fact it matched. That gives them
probable cause. They will arrest him. They will bring him
into the and they will take another DNA sample right
there in the station. They usually videotape it, right, They
have a chain of custody, and that is a sample.
The evidentiary sample that is used in court.
Speaker 2: That's the step I overlooked because yes, that actually confirms
one hundred percent then that this individual, this potential suspect's
DNA does match suspect DNA left at the cracks.
Speaker 6: And there's even one more step after that, and that
is when it goes to trial.
Speaker 5: It is a fact that his DNA matched the crime scene.
That is a fact. The next step is to say,
what is the.
Speaker 6: Chance, the random chance that somebody out there would match
and it's also match like it's called random man not excluded,
or the likelihood ratio. What is the likelihood that his
DNA matches over everyone else.
Speaker 5: Out there that could potentially be in that.
Speaker 6: Story there, So you have statistics, yes, he did match,
but can you rule out the fact that it could
have been some other guy from another neighborhood that committed
the crime. That's where you come up with the statistics
that his DNA is one in a trillion times more
likely to match the DNA at the.
Speaker 5: Crime scene to anyone else in the world. Oh, you
have still the possibility his DNA match, but it's a coincidence.
You have to rule that out. That's the last step.
Speaker 2: And that's where we hear that numerical testimony word though.
Speaker 6: So four, there's four steps in this. They give me
a why DNA, and I come up with the NA Miller,
all right, fine, they find Brian Patrick. Miller's a suspect
on the list, all right. Step one, Step two they
collect the DNA and they find his DNA matches the
crime scene DNA.
Speaker 5: Step three is they arrest. That gives them probable cause.
Speaker 6: Step three they arrest him and in the police station
they take his DNA again and they videotape that they
chain of custody everything, and they see again that it
matches the crime scene data that is not debate. Step
four is to go to court and to determine what's
the chance that his DNA is the match over anyone
a random guy in the population. And that's where you
get those big numbers you hear sometimes. So there's four
steps to this.
Speaker 2: Now, we try to learn something in every podcast, and
I learned something just now, which is I have a
new expression, which is also going to be the name
of my new rock and roll band. Random man not excluded.
Speaker 6: That is a term in forensic DNA analysis.
Speaker 2: And we're gonna have T shirts that say random man. Yeah,
what do you think we'll give you full credit calling
it's good to me random woman, not excluding.
Speaker 5: Absolutely random person.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, random person doesn't have I'm.
Speaker 5: All about random man, random man.
Speaker 2: Random man. Especially since so many suspects are men and
not women. It seems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we've got our first piece of merchandise.
Speaker 2: Random man.
Speaker 5: That'd be great.
Speaker 2: You made a really interesting reference in last week's episode.
You talked about when you were first pursuing forensic genealogy
and starting to show results, that you were a bit tentative.
You and Andy, your partner, were a bit tentative about
putting it out there too much because you've gotten so
much pushback from genealogists.
Speaker 6: What did you mean, I'd say pushback was a kind word,
kind way of putting it. And when I did the
Sarah Yarborough case, I'm just minding my own business. I
think this is interesting to try. That was the murder
of a young woman, a high school student in Federal Way, Washington,
and I think it was ninety one. I have to check,
I offered. I went to the Seattle Police Department. I said,
I have this y DNA genetic genealogy idea, and the
two detectives I would say.
Speaker 5: Were less than receptive. They almost fell asleep.
Speaker 6: They argued with me, they wouldn't give me their business
card whatever. Okay, So the DNA lady, though, understood what
I was talking about. So they wound up sending me
the Y profile, and I wound up matching it through
the method I have described with the name Fuller and
investigating where that name came from. The Y DNA profile
matched these genealogists that trace their ancestry to Robert Fuller
in Massachusetts in sixteen thirty. This gives a historical kind
for this guy. We know his name is Fuller, we
know he's connected to say possible name Fuller.
Speaker 5: I have to say that probably connected to Robert Fuller.
Speaker 6: He was not on the Mayflower, but he was related
to the Mayflower people. To add to the story, the
girl the victim had a friend in classmate named Elizabeth Fuller.
And Elizabeth Fuller didn't have a brother, She had four sisters,
so of course their father, Bill Fullerd, was a person
of interest and he was in the area at.
Speaker 5: The time of the murder. He was jogging somewhere.
Speaker 6: Bill Fuller went in and he was excluded. His DNA
did not match the killer's DNA. He was excluded from
the investigation, but his wide DNA matched the killer, and
therefore he's also a descendant of Robert Fuller from Massachusetts
in the sixteen.
Speaker 2: Thirty, the same family, although Bill Fuller, the father of
the classmate, is clearly not the perpetrator.
Speaker 5: Correct. The CODIS markers didn't match.
Speaker 2: No, but he's related to the killer.
Speaker 6: Yes, but through hy DNA, not through cotis. Cotis is
only good for a one to one or in some
states formilial matching one to almost one, a fuzzy one.
Hy DNA is non generational a y DNA anybody along
the paternal lines DNA will match each other, Like your
dad has a Y DNA, your great grandfather has the
same y DNA along the male line, it.
Speaker 5: Just carries on.
Speaker 6: So Bill Fuller is a we call it patrilineal or
male line relative. He's some kind of cousin, but considering
the connection to Robert Fuller, he could be a fifteenth cousin,
or a third cousin, or a tenth cousin. We don't
know because hy DNA can't.
Speaker 5: Tell you that.
Speaker 2: And so even though these people could be distantly related
to Fuller from the Mayflower from hundreds of years before,
they might not even know they're from.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he didn't.
Speaker 6: I just did his genealogy right because the name Fuller,
and he was in that same.
Speaker 5: Family, okay, And I knew that he didn't have any
sons that we knew about.
Speaker 6: He didn't he had one brother, I think No, he
was an only child. His father had one brother who
never married. So the relationship between the killer and mister
Fuller was not immediate, let's put it that way. When
that happened, we're in the position where we know the
killer's probable last name, we have his genealogy back to
the sixteen hundreds. We have a cousin that we know
is some kind of cousin, but we don't know who
he is. Now this is you got to go back
to twenty eleven.
Speaker 5: This is weird. This is strange.
Speaker 6: So the police department said, we can't arrest somebody because
they weren't on the Mayflower, But this makes a great
newspaper article. Would you be the point of contact? And
I said, of course, I.
Speaker 5: Would be no problem.
Speaker 6: Let me know what else I can do to help
in the spirit of civic duty.
Speaker 2: You mean, no good deed goes unpunished.
Speaker 6: Yes, it turns out that the Fuller person in charge
of that administrating that study. I emailed her and I said,
I couldn't tell you. Obviously it's police work. I'm not
going to let you go on the internet on all
the genealogists sharing the information. I said, but I want
to thank you for making that available. I want you
to know what happened. And this is great and nothing happened.
Got no answer, But of course the media is advancing.
You know that the police have their article in the
Seattle Times because they thought maybe it'll tract attention, right,
maybe somebody will come forward with some kind of clue
a tip later in the evening when the news hit.
Of course, this is flashing it.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 6: I was just flamed. I was beaten up, I was insulted.
I was unsubscribed. This person carried that hatred for me
on that for years.
Speaker 5: I saw that.
Speaker 6: I saw comments and I saw it. And at one
point there was a.
Speaker 5: Story circulated that I had hired somebody, but to say
his name was Fuller go to.
Speaker 6: The police and insist or bully my way into having
the police put that man's DNA and codis so that
I could announce I saw the case.
Speaker 2: This is insane. Police wouldn't cooperate with this, and you
didn't have to be crazy, don't.
Speaker 6: Even start right and and that's like the law enforcement
equivalent of an anti gravity machine or a perpetual motion machine.
It doesn't there's no way that can happen. And I
saw comments fly by on the mailing list on oh
my god, brig brother, has my DNA run for the hills.
Oh my god, they're gonna they're gonna interrogate all the
fullers in the Northwest.
Speaker 5: Uh huh suena DNA, the lab owners. And I'm saying, no,
they not. They just want to solve the case.
Speaker 6: One guy commented, God, you don't know how many people
have been falsely accused with DNA. And I'm like, and
I'm trying to say, come on, guys, come down whatever,
and it just I left the list. I was unsubscribed.
I was bounced off of it, but I didn't stop.
I just said I went under the radar, and in truth,
the Phoenix Police Department, when I saw that case, asked
me not to go to the media, asked me not
to say anything because it was so new. They didn't
know what to do about it either. I didn't know
how it would developed, so I was pretty quiet. And
it took a journalist doing a four year request and
getting the emails and all the backstory before she broke
the story.
Speaker 2: Do you want to say, who that wash?
Speaker 5: The journalist? I'd have to look her up. She's now
in the Bay Area, Michelle. I tell you later.
Speaker 6: When she finally broke the story, it was very well written,
and I was around Thanksgiving.
Speaker 5: I called her. I had to leave a message and
I said, I'm really relieved that this all came out.
Speaker 6: The police department said I could talk to you whatever.
I'm just relieved because I really did want to talk
to you. But I didn't know what to do either.
They told me keep it quiet, and then I had
the media, yes, and I did. The news got around
the forensic community, which kind of rallied me a little
bit because I didn't know what to do with those
people either. And I could have got front and center
stage waving flags and I'm sure the police departments, but
I really had to honor their request, right. I worked
with the agency. I don't work to get out there
on TV or the stage. That's good when it happens.
I'm really glad to get recognized. But that's not why
I did that, And I had to abide by their
wishes because now it's a death penalty case that's very serious.
And if I had come out and said something, how
are they going to find a jury? What effect is
I have on having a fair judicial process.
Speaker 3: Sure, let me go back to something that you alluded
to earlier. You used the term big brother and so,
of course, as the English teacher, I can't let that
reference to nineteen eighty four go by without mentioning without
mentioning it. But you've brought up something that I know
has come up quite a lot in the last couple
of years, which is privacy. Privacy concerns. Big brothers going
to be able to watch me. They're going to have
my DNA, They're going to have all the information about me,
They're going to do terrible things in ruin my life.
How do you respond to the concerns that people raise
about privacy that comes along with forensic genealogy.
Speaker 5: My statement is that's the world we live in, so
get used. I tell people, if.
Speaker 6: You are concerned about your privacy. You have nothing to
be concerned about because we don't have any privacy. You
walk onto those video cameras and all the grocery stores,
and the ATM picture you up on their camera, Allmark.
Speaker 5: Costco, wherever you go.
Speaker 6: You walk under twenty surveillance cameras a day, the traffic lights.
Speaker 5: You don't even see that. You don't even think about that.
Speaker 6: You use the Internet, Yeah, and you ad mint. I
log in just to look at any plane flights. I
was interested on any more planes operating. I looked at
planes in New Orleans. Five minutes later I get ads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, offering you specials to fly to New Orleans.
Speaker 5: And people say to me, oh, I don't have anything.
I'm not, Oh, and I am. I don't want people.
Speaker 6: Okay, I don't care if somebody knows I'm taking a
plane in New Orleans, but I do care.
Speaker 5: That's my business, not the Internet's business.
Speaker 2: Absolutely no.
Speaker 6: And when and even you see Cambridge Analytica leveraging their
the whole Facebook phenomenon to try and influence elections, you
can see that they have tipped elections in the Caribbean
several times and lots countries by using social media.
Speaker 2: We think they may have done that in the United
States as well.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, you look at a program called a Big
Hack and you can see.
Speaker 2: Not to mention the fact that because I wanted to
talk about this as well, all of us are carrying
around powerful computers in our pockets with GPS built in
Christen's holding up her cell phone that literally track your
every movement, and people seem to forget that when we
all got excited about all this World Wide Web stuff
way back when, and then we decided, oh, we got
to get a smartphone. And I love this convenience and
this technology, but it comes with tethers, which we don't
even think about anymore.
Speaker 6: Right, it's privacy versus convenience and efficiency. I mean, you
want your privacy, Do you want convenient convenience and efficiency?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: You know that.
Speaker 6: And you can't even avoid I could send somebody, hire
somebody to go and buy groceries for me, because I
don't want to be under any surveillance cameras.
Speaker 5: I don't want to go to a shopping mall. How
can I live in the world like that?
Speaker 2: You can't. But people flip out and my experience and
I have a lot less experience than you do, Colleen.
But in the last two years since the Golden State
killer case broke, there's been a lot of discussion about
the use of forensic genealogy. Some people now it's going
to be calling it investigative genetic penealogy, which is even
more of a mouthful. But even in my limited experience,
when I've jumped onto genealogy websites and forums and so
on in an effort to learn, I'm very upfront about
what my agenda is. I want to solve my sister
Kathy's murder together with their girlfriend, Rebecca Dowski, as part
of the Colonial Parkway murders. And I'm real upfront about that,
and I try to treat everybody with respect and hear
what they've got to say. But oh my gosh, even
in my limited experience, people attacked me on these genealogy
forums for daring to promote the idea that you understand
that there are worthwhile things that are coming out of
this kind of work. We have two hundred thousand cold
case murders in the United States, and these tools could
be used to help solve those cases. Heresy people referred
to jedmatch as their database like they owned something which
they didn't and that they hadn't even established. It went
on and on. Some people were just beyond the beyond nasty.
And then people keep insisting that somehow there's people's people
are going to be cloned without their it's you just
get into insane self involved naval gazing drivel.
Speaker 6: Why well, let's go back to the definition of a
rocket scientist. Okay, the genealogy community is not a community
of rocket scientists. I want to I do have to say,
I'm really relating to what you're saying.
Speaker 5: I get it.
Speaker 6: And even with your case, it's even more important because
that's your family, that's your sister that you're concerned about.
Go back to Sarah Yarborough. It was like nonsense, emotionalism, ignorance.
Let's say, being uninformed is a better way of saying it.
Not even wanting to be informed.
Speaker 2: No, they don't care. They don't even care to be informed.
Speaker 6: Right, it's all emotions. A big community, it's unregulated. You
can say anything you want and you and I know,
I underwent a cyberbullying campaign a few years ago by
a genealogist.
Speaker 5: That's it, that's the community.
Speaker 6: And so fortunately I have to say that The current
atmosphere of using genetic genealogy for forensic words has forced
the community in some regard to some intelligent discussions. It
has brought out the more literate, concerned, and well read
and interested people than it did before that understand issues.
These Some of us have been invited to important discussions
and meetings on what the meaning.
Speaker 5: Is, what do we do? What is privacy? What do
you think? So? I see that is.
Speaker 6: A good thing, as a good part of the evolution
here in spite of all of there and what you
call naval gazers, I.
Speaker 2: Just was shocked at the level of vitriol and nastiness
directed at the families of murder victims, and just the
dripping condescension directed it at me. And I was trying
to be respectful, and for the most part, I think
I succeeded where I was just trying to explain. You
have to understand there's a significant societal benefit here, much
in the same way searching for long lost relatives or
helping people that have been adopted find their birth parents,
and all the other sorts of mysteries and human concerns
that can be addressed through genealogy. The response that I
got from a not a majority, but a significant minority,
and boy with a vocal was that, how dare I
try to promote the idea that genealogy can also be
used to solve America's two hundred thousand cold cases murders
and two to four hundred thousand untested rape kits, and
so that there was a potential for a whole nother
aspect of good to come from genealogical databases. I was
basically treated by some people as some sort of heretic.
It was incredible, and they wouldn't even acknowledge why I
was seeking this information. In other words, very rarely would
someone say, and I'm not expecting people to cry in
my beer about the fact that my sister's a murder victim,
but you might want to at least acknowledge that this
has happened, because I brought it up repeatedly, and it
was very rare for someone to say, I'm sorry for
your loss, or I understand Bill's concern, or I understand
why the Thomas family and all of the eight families
impacted by the Colonial Parkway murders would be interested in
potentially identifying suspects through the use of forensic genealogy. That
was rare. Yeah, the fact that you've had to put
up with what you've had to put up with for
all these years. I only had two years worth of it,
and by the end of it all, I was just
rolling my eyes and I ended up being so turned
off by the vocal minority in the genealogy community. I'm
still angry thinking about it now.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I would be, because it's your sister, and there's
not even any in your case, there's not any compassion.
I really I understand where you're coming from.
Speaker 5: Bill, that's your sister.
Speaker 6: I still think there's some privacy concerns you. There's not
even any professionalism, there's not even any thought. In many cases,
it's just knee jerk reaction. Big brother has my DNA.
Oh my god, I can't get it back. Let's go
back to the fact you post something on the internet,
it is no longer yours.
Speaker 5: So if you post it, don't worry about it later.
Speaker 6: If you worry about it while you're sitting there with
your finger on the enter key or submit key, that's
your decision point. It's not later when somebody else either
uses it in some way, used for the Golden state killer,
et cetera. Don't be upset even they hack it and
they steal it. Be upset when you decide you're going
to post it on the internet. Don't even be upset.
Make an informed decision and.
Speaker 5: Go with it. But you're going to have to live
with that.
Speaker 6: If you want to use those tools, you're going to
give up something for that. And if you don't want
to use the tools, you can retain your privacy sure.
Speaker 2: And you can stay off this thing called the World
Wide Web, as you said, the convenience that is made
available to us.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's gonna be. Let me tell you I have
a story.
Speaker 6: I wind up giving participating in seminars where I'm not
the only speaker that there are other topics covered. And
there was a guy who was giving a talk on
security electronic balance.
Speaker 5: He was in the army, that was a.
Speaker 6: Specialty, and he was getting ready to get out to
his own company, and it was very fascinating talk. And
he right before I heard him. This was last year.
There was an interview on NPR with the CEO of
Ford Motor Company, and the CEO stated that Ford Motor
Company made more money on the data the.
Speaker 5: Car collects about you in the car than the car itself.
Interesting and he gave the example.
Speaker 6: He flashed to Hope. He said that I think it
was BMW and one of the American cars, maybe it
was Ford. When they download the data the car has
collected over a period of time, it takes a whole day.
Speaker 5: It's massive.
Speaker 6: And he's flashed on the screen slides just a few
pages of the data that winds up, and he stopped
for a minute. He was making a comment and was
it happened? The slide stopped on a page with just
one line on some kind of data, and it said Starbucks.
So this car had been in the Starbucks parking lot
and it had logged into the Starbucks server. It had
pinged the wireless your car pinged every wireless and it
was known that car was near that Starbucks at that time. Okay,
So he cited a case where there was a woman
who was at a bar and she claimed she talked
to a guy at the bar. They went home to
her place together, and she claimed he sexual assaulted her
and beat her up.
Speaker 5: She called the police. He was gone, call the police.
They go track the guy down.
Speaker 6: He said home, he didn't have his cell phone that night,
and he says, yes, I met her in the bar.
Speaker 5: But I didn't go to her house with her.
Speaker 6: We didn't even leave together. They went back to the
surveillance camera in the bar and they saw them talking,
but they didn't cover the door of the bar, so
they couldn't see whether they left together or not. However,
the way they caught him was that a car registered
that the passenger door and the driver door had opened
at the same time.
Speaker 2: Wow, And that's why.
Speaker 5: They confronted him with it. He confess. That was how
they solved the case.
Speaker 2: And I didn't even know a car did that? You
know me either?
Speaker 5: You do now?
Speaker 6: Yeah, make sure that you both get in the same.
Speaker 5: Side of the car.
Speaker 2: And it's funny. We have seen any number of cases
solved in recent years, including a number of prominent murders
in Virginia that we both followed, where the GPS tracking
of the cell phones and the cell phones as they move,
pinging it off the various towers, and the triangulation that's
capable as your cell phone, which is effectively a radio,
sends out signals and receives signals from the various towers.
If you're a killer, you better leave your cell phone
at home, because that is now a method by which
you can be tracked.
Speaker 6: In fact, it's called geo fencing, and there are companies
that specialize in geofencing and what you can do. This
was another seminar I talk I set in. What they
do is when you go anywhere, your cell phone pings
the wireless networks in the area. Now normally in an
urban environment, there's massive amounts of cell phones all around you.
It's very hard to decipher some of that. A company
or an agency can I don't know the word subpoena
records from Google, or ask for a search warm or
something I don't know the legal term. And if they
provide a time frame and a geographical area, they will
provide the It's almost like a real time map of
all the phones and where they were flying around in
this area at this time, so that they can trace them.
He gave the example of a case where a woman
had a farm, and she had several houses on the farm,
and she opened like a play where brides could come
and get married in one of the big houses, and
the outlying houses were for the family of the bride,
the family of the groom, and the wedding party. So
this woman, the bride, goes eight o'clock in the morning
the day of her wedding. He goes to the main
house to make sure everything's set up, and she finds
that the owner is murdered in the house. The owners
not there, but there's blood all over the houses in chaos.
She calls the police. This is not a very urbanized area.
So what they do is they subpoena the records from
Google the cell phones, and they wind up finding the
owner of a cell phone that appeared on the porch
of that house at one o'clock in the morning, and
they follow him and he's a construction guy.
Speaker 5: They trace him for three days. They found out that
the owner of the phone.
Speaker 6: Was a construction guy, and he would get up in
the morning, he'd go to his storage shed look at
his supplies. He'd go to a home deep pick up
a few things, and then go do a job all day,
go home, he'd eat dinner, he'd watched TV, and he
pretty much that was his routine. So in the night
of the murder, he dave the murder. He did all that,
but then after dinner he went to go to a
friend's house.
Speaker 5: They probably watched the movie, and then he drove in
the direction of this compound and he stopped, actually stopped
at a church parking lot for about ten minutes, and
then he proceeded to the woman's house and wound up
on her porch.
Speaker 6: So that doesn't mean he killed her, but he's a
person of interest. They didn't tell him that that. They
pulled him in for questioning and they played up. They said,
if you really did this, you're a Christian, you really
need to come clean and confess and make things right.
And over a period of time he did. He confessed
to the point he wanted to meet the family and apologize.
So they said that's probably not a good idea, but
why don't you write a letter to him and explain
and tell how sorry you are. Of course that's a
written confession. And then her body wasn't there, and they said,
to make it all right, you're going to have to
show us where the body is. And he had driven
some distance and dumped her in the But that was
geo fencing, and of all of the phones, wasn't so
crowded like where I am now. There's probably so many
phones it's not funny, but'd be hard to deal with that,
but in this area where it.
Speaker 5: Was crowded enough but not too crowded.
Speaker 6: And she lives on a big farm. So there was
the cell phones of the wedding party. But he was
the only one that wanted up at the house at
an unusual time that he.
Speaker 5: Shouldn't have been there.
Speaker 6: He had painted the house two weeks earlier, so they
realized he had a connection to the victim for some reasons.
Speaker 3: Right, So, in a nutshell, we have more privacy concerns
associated with our cell phone and all of its tracking
technology than we should have with genetic genealogy or any
associated type of technology. It sounds like.
Speaker 6: You can say that DNA spelled it's special, right because
it's part of me, it's my But DNA to the
world out there is data. It's just more different kind
of data. So how are you going to protect DNA
data from everything else, put it aside and treat it
as special. While I'm driving down the street and my
cell phone pings everything in the area. How are you
going to corral DNA and make it sacred and so
that nobody touches, especially since you put it on the internet,
especially since you chose to give that DNA to a company.
You chose to download it, you chose to put it
on jed match, and you expect it to be kept
completely confidential.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one always floored me, and I tried to
make this argument in a respectful way. You put your
DNA on an open source database with over a million
other people, so potentially millions of people could have looked
at and used your DNA in an effort to find
long lost loved ones, et cetera. You put that out
there voluntarily, and now you're complaining because someone utilized your
DNA which you put out there voluntarily. And it isn't
like they're doing something nefarious with this. They are helping
to solve cold case murders and sexual assaults, some of
the most heinous crimes ever, many of which have gone
decades without being solved. Yeah, so, why is it okay
for someone to find long lost relatives using your DNA
that you put out there voluntarily, and it's not okay
for someone else to find out who killed or rape
their relatives.
Speaker 6: Let's go back to the definition of rocket scientists.
Speaker 2: This is one of your favorites. We can tell just.
Speaker 5: Let's say this.
Speaker 6: It's come up twice in this discussion. It probably hasn't
come up in a couple of years, but it so happens.
Speaker 5: It's appropriate.
Speaker 6: I'm saying that it's not supposed to make sense. Don't
try and make it make sense. This is emotionalism. When
I did the back to the Fuller situation, that data
was publicly accessible, I didn't crack into the Fuller DNA study.
Speaker 5: Put Yeah, I was right.
Speaker 6: There in front of me, and I could even visually
see that it all matches in this corner of the
Fuller study. The owner of that study suddenly made it private.
You had to contact her to get access to that day.
Speaker 5: What do you expect that she's.
Speaker 6: Going to put an electronic gate around her data? Public
data displayed on the Internet with a little disclaimer. If
you law enforcement, please click away from my website, then.
Speaker 2: Don't put it out there on the world Wide Web.
Speaker 6: Police use Facebook, police use Instagram. I saw that I've
been sitting in remember all these seminars.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, so you want.
Speaker 6: To take away Facebook because the police are using it.
Tell the police don't go on Facebook, but they do.
Speaker 2: We both know from cases that we've worked on that's
one of the first places they go is does someone
have a social media platform?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 2: Are they on Facebook, Twitter, you name it? And what
does their Instagram profile look like? And all of us
put up more information? And Kristin and I are as
guilty of this as anybody. Oh yeah, for sure, we
put up a ton of information about ourselves. There's no
such thing as privacy. There hasn't been anything called privacy
for decades.
Speaker 5: Right, if you're worried about your privacy, you have nothing
to worry about.
Speaker 2: You can go live in the woods like Ted Kaczynski
and try to live off the grid and then maybe
you'll have some privacy there.
Speaker 6: And going back to my original statement, this is the
world we live in. Why are you worrying about it now?
We're way downstream now with the Internet and the convenience
and the emails and the Facebook, Instagram, even jedmatch. Why
are you concerned now?
Speaker 5: Why? Now? Sure, the DNA has come up to the forefront, but.
Speaker 6: The DNA is only like the I'd say, the one
of the more obvious cooks into this argument.
Speaker 5: This world we live in, this light, we lead.
Speaker 2: And my response is self involvement and arrogance in the extreme,
because that was the kind of reaction I got how
dare you? I do want to switch gears for a
second here, We've only got a couple of minutes left,
and we failed to ask you about the DNA dope project,
which is another really worthwhile endeavor. Tell us about the
DNA dope project please.
Speaker 6: That project was formed with Margaret Press and I in
early twenty seventeen. Margaret approached me saying, why can't we
use autosomal snip testing to identify John and Jane does
At first I had the knee jerk Ancestry won't work
with forensic cases, but after considering it, the wait, maybe
there is a way to do this, and we eventually
worked out a way through an independent lab. Everybody knows
that now we couldn't go to Ancestry to get Ancestry
data done. So we got DNA sent to an independent
lab saying, we know what Ancestry twenty three. We know
what the data looks like because we downloaded our own data.
We own it, So could you take DNA, convert it or.
Speaker 5: Process it so that you can get data to look
like Ancestry data? And of course it's doable.
Speaker 6: That technology is full of readily available, and so we
managed to do a couple of cases. The real challenge
first working out how to get those jet match kits
done independently. Also, you had to understand this we were
a different environment. Then we had to go to law
enforcement agencies that had no idea what we were talking about.
Here's two little old ladies approaching agency and Jusley saying,
we can.
Speaker 5: Solve your thirty year old case. Just give us your.
Speaker 6: DNA and we're going to do like ancestry and find
the relatives and okay whatever. We have no idea what
you're talking about, but it sounds good.
Speaker 2: One of the little old ladies was a rocket scientist
though to be fair.
Speaker 6: Yes, correct, to be fair, and I had been through
the y DNA you know, the people that didn't know
what I was talking about, but took a risk because
they really wanted to solve their case and they were.
Speaker 5: At a dead end. One of those was Pete Elliott.
Speaker 6: The US Marshall from Northern Ohio. Fabulous guy, and I
had worked with him on the y DNA on the
Joseph Newton Chandler case. So that became our first case
and he trusted us with There was almost no DNA
left in the entire world for that mister X it
was a fraud case, and he trusted us with that,
and for months all we said we could say is, yeah, Pete,
we're doing We're going to get him.
Speaker 5: Don't worry. We're working hard.
Speaker 6: And if we even said, hey, we just found a
pair of third cousins, he would have absolute blank Okay,
I'm really glad he didn't get it. So we also
went to the Marriage and Police Department because I had
been working on them on the David Paul case.
Speaker 5: It was a baby case, and.
Speaker 6: I knew that Margaret and I put our funds together
to finance these pilot studies, so we knew that would
be more than happy to risk something. Eventually we realized
baby cases were not might lead to criminal charges. We
wanted to shy away from that. With DNA DOE, we
wanted to position that as a more humanitarian effort getting
back to the reaction of the genogenic genealogy community. So
I wound up doing that one under Identifyinders.
Speaker 5: We solved it last year.
Speaker 6: Going back, Margaret and I had several challenges we had
to meet, and as we developed it, we had to
be very careful about who knew what we were doing
and why we were doing it, and occasionally we'd have
to ask if it was a distant cousin. We never
asked immediate relatives on any of the JED match kids.
Speaker 5: It was very distant.
Speaker 6: Would say, we're trying to reunite somebody with their family,
would you mind sharing your ancestry with us, your JED
match kit, your family tree with us? And we were
very careful and so people were okay with that. And
then as this kind of got more and more known,
we were asking and they were going They started answering.
Speaker 5: Oh, you must be from the DNA dough project. How
do I volunteer?
Speaker 2: Ah, your fame preceded you. Yeah.
Speaker 6: So we kind of turned the corner with that attitude
because we did not do suspect cases, criminal cases. We
were doing John and Jane Doe cases. And when we
started solving them that it gained momentum. And of course,
when Barbara did the Golden State Killer, that's the one
that really hit the news, and of.
Speaker 5: Course that hell us.
Speaker 6: We all advanced at that point and that's the beginning
of where we are now, the real splash and the
real all the discussions about concerns with privacy and where
are we going with this? And that really triggered that
discussion the beginning of the revel We were there beginning
the revolution, but it got.
Speaker 5: Known through the Golden State Killer. In Barber's work.
Speaker 2: It's amazing all the work that you've done is really
only in the last decade, and then it's only the
last two years since the Golden State Killer case pushed
this kind of discussion, if you will, to the forefront.
But it's actually been a good thing in your opinion.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I asked Barbara. I said, Barbara, when you did
the Golden State Killer, were you how did you feel?
Speaker 6: Were you afraid you'd be attacked or something? And she said, yeah,
I was afraid gangs or something would come after me.
Speaker 5: I said, no, I'm not.
Speaker 6: Interested in the gangs and stuff like that. I'm interested
in the genealogists attacking it.
Speaker 2: Those violent Yeah, genealogists.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I laughed.
Speaker 6: I said, I've never really been concerned with personal safety.
Should I be, thinking it's too late now? But that
being said, I was more concerned with the ongoing genealogy attitude.
Oh my god, big brother has my DNA? You wicked person?
How could you do this?
Speaker 5: Whereas and betray you.
Speaker 2: When I met with Barbara ray Venner a few years
ago in northern California, she actually told me one of
the reasons why she had maintained the low profile was
when this was so new, she actually was concerned. She
didn't want to really be identified as the person, single woman,
no less, who helps catch serial killers. Yeah, that initially
was a kind of a frightening concept. And I think
it's Paul Holes, who was on the team that helped
break the GSK case, eventually convinced her to come forward
and accept credit for the good work that she and
the team of volunteers had done.
Speaker 6: And doing that really I think helped. It helped the
whole community.
Speaker 5: I think it was good that she did that.
Speaker 6: It's not good to live in fear and you have
to protect yourself. But I think doing that was really
gotsy and she got the credit. She does deserve the
credit for what she did, and it helped, but helped
with all these issues we're discussing with the privacy and
the attitude, and even though let's say it's uncomfortable, we
have a long way from resolving it, it helped.
Speaker 2: So will you come back and talk with us again.
We've believe it or not, we've actually run out of time.
Speaker 5: I'm just getting started.
Speaker 2: With your permission.
Speaker 6: We'd love to have you back absolutely anytime. And I've
never really been asked some of these questions, so I
appreciate them. I've thought a lot about it, and I
never really have shared a lot of those thoughts, so
I would more than welcome being on the show again.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Forward to having you one again.
Speaker 5: Yes, thank you guys so much.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
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Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl Space Media.
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