Speaker 1: What's up everyone, and welcome back to the program. In
Speaker 1: this episode, we're going to head back out to Moscow
Speaker 1: and we're going to pick up where we left off
Speaker 1: with the IgG transcript hearing, and once again we have
Speaker 1: Leah Larkin doing the answering and the questions are being
Speaker 1: asked by Ann Taylor. Question, all right, let's talk about
Speaker 1: this case. Were you brought on to help us.
Speaker 2: In this case? Answer?
Speaker 1: Yes, I was brought on to help you interpret and
Speaker 1: understand what was done in terms of the genetic genealogy
Speaker 1: for this case. Question what did you look at to
Speaker 1: do that? Answer? Well, it's been a bit of a
Speaker 1: struggle getting all of the material I would like to
Speaker 1: look at. So I have seen basically photos of a
Speaker 1: giant kind of posters scroll of a family tree that
Speaker 1: I believe the FBI built at ancestry dot com. I've
Speaker 1: seen pictures of whiteboard in which they have which they
Speaker 1: sort of like hand wrote on the whiteboard a descendant tree,
Speaker 1: so basically looking at some ancestors and mapping out the
Speaker 1: descendant lines leading to certain DNA matches. I've seen communication
Speaker 1: between In some cases, I can see who the recipients are.
Speaker 1: In some I can't, but I've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: email communications about the case. Do you want me to
Speaker 1: go on question No, In the course of your work,
Speaker 1: you try to help us understand what happened here. Did
Speaker 1: you learn that first Authrum worked on the case and
Speaker 1: then the FBI took it over.
Speaker 2: Answer?
Speaker 1: Yes, so, Authorum, I believe they were contracted, based on
Speaker 1: the invoice I've seen, they were contracted to do the
Speaker 1: lab work, so to actually generate an SMP profile, upload
Speaker 1: it to gd match pro and family Tree DNA presumably
Speaker 1: through the approved portals, and then I believe they were
Speaker 1: contracted to do the genetic genealogy. But they were told
Speaker 1: to stop work. I believe on December tenth, and I've
Speaker 1: seen the preliminary report. They wrote question, all right, have
Speaker 1: you had a chance to look at what happened after
Speaker 1: December tenth?
Speaker 2: Answer?
Speaker 1: So after December tenth there were some email communications between
Speaker 1: The one I think was the most interesting to me
Speaker 1: had the names redacted and it contained screenshots. So, just
Speaker 1: to backtrack a little bit, the Authoram report reported two
Speaker 1: main DNA matches, one of them shared seventy point seven
Speaker 1: sent the morgans of DNA. The court reporter I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: seven point seventy. The witness seventy point seven sent the morgans,
Speaker 1: do you know how to spell that? Ce NTI m
Speaker 1: r GA N and we just abbreviated CM the other
Speaker 1: I think it was sixty and Authoram's report specifically said
Speaker 1: those are low matches. Authoram figured out how those people
Speaker 1: were related to one another. I believe they were third
Speaker 1: cousins to one another, and based on how much DNA
Speaker 1: they shared with the crime scene profile, they thought that
Speaker 1: the individual who contributed the crime scene profile was descended
Speaker 1: from the second great grandparent of those two matches, a
Speaker 1: man name redacted and his wife redacted. I believe their name,
Speaker 1: and they were born in the redacted. Question when Authroam
Speaker 1: quit work, were they following a family tree that they
Speaker 1: could have led to come to Brian Colberger answer, yes, so,
Speaker 1: based on my initial review of what they did, the
Speaker 1: crime scene profile was most likely descended from redacted and redacted,
Speaker 1: or perhaps one of their siblings. It's hard to tell
Speaker 1: with DNA because it's not not all third cousins share
Speaker 1: exactly the same amount of DNA. Some share more, some
Speaker 1: share less. It's just kind of a statistics game.
Speaker 2: You play.
Speaker 1: The couple had redacted children, and so there as conceivably
Speaker 1: could have been hundreds of descendants of this couple. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen the full tree. I've just seen that there
Speaker 1: redacted children. Authorm chose one of those children and had
Speaker 1: tracked down I believe grandchildren, and there were four brothers.
Speaker 1: They recommended testing one of the brothers to get more
Speaker 1: DNA to get a closer handle on where their crime
Speaker 1: scene profile might fit into the family question. So, when
Speaker 1: Authrum stops there and the FBI takes over, you told
Speaker 1: us you saw something from ancestry dot com. Would you
Speaker 1: have expected to see any other kind of file with
Speaker 1: that file?
Speaker 2: Answer?
Speaker 1: So this was basically like a giant poster sized printout
Speaker 1: of information from that family tree. A family tree, when
Speaker 1: you build one at ancestry, is stored in a specific
Speaker 1: kind of data format, or more precisely, you can download
Speaker 1: the file in a specific type of data format called
Speaker 1: a getcom and it's a universal file format for genealogy trees.
Speaker 1: So you could take a getcom file and you could
Speaker 1: open it up in a standalone software on your laptop.
Speaker 1: You could upload it to a different genealogy company. I
Speaker 1: have jetcom file for every single client case that I do.
Speaker 1: When I'm finished with an adoptee case, I basically give
Speaker 1: my client the getcom file, so they have a record
Speaker 1: of all the work that I did, and I would
Speaker 1: have expected the FBI to have that as well, but
Speaker 1: they did not turn that over. Question you didn't see
Speaker 1: one of those? Answer? I did not see one of those,
Speaker 1: No question, knowing that Authrum finished their work on December tenth,
Speaker 1: and then the FBI took over, and we've heard that
Speaker 1: by decemb nineteenth, nine days later, they made an identification.
Speaker 1: Is that significant to you?
Speaker 2: Answer? Yeah? Question?
Speaker 1: Why answer? Because Othrom's matches were, as in their own
Speaker 1: words and their report, those matches were low. They were
Speaker 1: recommending testing these four redacted brothers to get more information.
Speaker 1: If you went out and you approached those men, and
Speaker 1: even if one of them said yes, you can test
Speaker 1: my DNA, the testing itself would have taken some time,
Speaker 1: getting a kit to a person, getting the spit, sending
Speaker 1: it into the lab, having it analyzed, and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have led to the crime scene profile because it was
Speaker 1: the wrong family branch. So going from low matches to
Speaker 1: an ID or at least a tip whatever they were
Speaker 1: calling it within nine days, That right there told me
Speaker 1: they had gone into a database they were not supposed
Speaker 1: to be in question. Were there other ways that you
Speaker 1: were able to confirm your beliefs?
Speaker 2: Question?
Speaker 1: Yes, answer? What was that answer? So one of them
Speaker 1: in one of those email communications, I believe this is
Speaker 1: the one that had both the and recipient redacted. There
Speaker 1: were screenshots from ged match, and I believe it said
Speaker 1: so there were screenshots, how do I pull this in
Speaker 1: ged match? Gd match has a very open system. So
Speaker 1: if you were in gdgd match and I am in
Speaker 1: ged match, and let's say where we were cousins, I
Speaker 1: could go in and look at my kit and I
Speaker 1: would see you in my match list, but I could
Speaker 1: also go into your kit and see me in your
Speaker 1: match list. Ged match is just a super open database
Speaker 1: in that way. Any kit the system has is that
Speaker 1: as public you can search the matches. The one exception, however,
Speaker 1: is that if there are forensic kits in the database
Speaker 1: and I am a layperson and I'm looking at a
Speaker 1: layperson kit, I can't see the forensic kits. They're invisible
Speaker 1: to me. But there is an email communication that has
Speaker 1: a match list from the perspective of somebody who only
Speaker 1: used the initials SC. I have no idea what this
Speaker 1: person's real name is in the database, they are called SC.
Speaker 1: This screenshot is taken from the perspective of AS and
Speaker 1: there is no match to the forensic profile from SE's perspective.
Speaker 1: That tells me that the forensic profile was uploaded through
Speaker 1: the regular ged match portal and not the gd match
Speaker 1: Pro forensic portal because it should not have been visible
Speaker 1: to SC. And the email says this one's ours. And
Speaker 1: the other thing is that ged match will also tell
Speaker 1: you how many days a kit has been in their system,
Speaker 1: and for that kit, for that match to the SC,
Speaker 1: it had been in the database for one day, but
Speaker 1: AUTHORAM had uploaded it. I'm not sure exactly when, but
Speaker 1: I would say six to seven to eight days prior,
Speaker 1: so it should not have said the kit was only
Speaker 1: one day old.
Speaker 2: Question.
Speaker 1: So, based on that email and what you saw, it
Speaker 1: confirmed your belief that the FBI used a non allowed
Speaker 1: answer right, So that one. There was several lines of evidence.
Speaker 1: That was one of them that stood out to me
Speaker 1: early on that they had uploaded through the layperson portal
Speaker 1: of ged match so that they could see all the
Speaker 1: people that were opted out.
Speaker 2: There were a couple of other matches.
Speaker 1: One of them was actually two hundred and fifty center Morgans,
Speaker 1: which is something we got excited about in genealogy, and
Speaker 1: one of them I think was closer to seventy that
Speaker 1: were not in the authoram report. If AUTHORM had seen
Speaker 1: the one who shared two hundred and fifty cent a Morgans,
Speaker 1: that would have been in their report. Like their genealogists
Speaker 1: are good, they know what they're doing, they would not
Speaker 1: have ignored a two hundred and fifty cent a Morgan match.
Speaker 1: And based on those other two matches, at that point,
Speaker 1: I was pretty sure they had gone into my heritage database.
Speaker 1: Question while you were reviewing this information so you could
Speaker 1: learn and try and figure out what happened here, did
Speaker 1: you have any ability to call anybody from the FBI
Speaker 1: and say, hey, what's going on?
Speaker 2: Answer?
Speaker 1: I don't know who did the genealogy work at the FBI.
Speaker 1: Question why is that answer it's not in the information
Speaker 1: we received. Question is that part that was redacted?
Speaker 2: Answer?
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was redacted or if we
Speaker 1: just never got it. So there was one email that
Speaker 1: was redacted, A dacted sender and our adacted recipient. Presumably
Speaker 1: those were the people doing the genealogy work. But other
Speaker 1: than that, I have no idea who did the genealogy
Speaker 1: work at the FBI question and there are other ways,
Speaker 1: you know, the FBI went where they were not supposed
Speaker 1: to go. Answer. There was one piece of information in
Speaker 1: the discovery material that I did review. I believe we
Speaker 1: asked them to turn over the match list and they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, we can't turn over the whole match
Speaker 1: list because it was twenty thousand people. And that actually,
Speaker 1: right there was a big tip off because if they
Speaker 1: had only used gd match Pro and only use Family
Speaker 1: Tree DNA, I think at most they could have gotten
Speaker 1: to about ten thousand. So that right there tipped me
Speaker 1: off that there were in a database that they should
Speaker 1: not have been able to be in question during the
Speaker 1: course of our work to try and understand what happened here,
Speaker 1: did you assist us with reviewing documentation and teaching us
Speaker 1: what else should have been there that we needed to
Speaker 1: ask for? Answer what specifically question well about the databases
Speaker 1: they went into and the match list and answer right. So,
Speaker 1: we've talked about what you see in a match list.
Speaker 1: We've talked about the fact that you can download the
Speaker 1: match list at family Tree DNA. There is just a
Speaker 1: click button to download it and you'll get a CSV
Speaker 1: file which you can open in a word processor or
Speaker 1: you can open in a spreadsheet program. At ged match,
Speaker 1: you can also get the whole match list, so you
Speaker 1: would have gotten that. I tend to do that for
Speaker 1: my clients, just so if I'm not online, I can
Speaker 1: still work through their materials and I can report that
Speaker 1: back to them. Question and did you testify an emotion
Speaker 1: to compel hearing to try to get this information so
Speaker 1: we could tell and confirm that you believed about the
Speaker 1: FBI going into a non allowed database. Answer yes, question
Speaker 1: and do you know if sometime after that we received
Speaker 1: confirmation that they did answer. We did finally get a
Speaker 1: letter from the FBI in which so we specifically asked
Speaker 1: to know which of the matches were in which of
Speaker 1: the databases, and they did not tell us that, but
Speaker 1: they did give us a list of the databases they
Speaker 1: had uploaded to, and it included family Tree, DNA, ged
Speaker 1: match Pro, and there are the two databases they're allowed
Speaker 1: to use, but it also listed gd match, not ged
Speaker 1: match Pro, but gd match they're not allowed to go
Speaker 1: into the regular gd match portal. And then finally they
Speaker 1: admitted they had uploaded to my heritage. Miss Taylor, your honor,
Speaker 1: I am at D twenty six, and I could pass
Speaker 1: this copy to the court, I would ask that it'd
Speaker 1: be shown to the witness first, the court, what's the
Speaker 1: red number on it, Miss Taylor, your honor? The red
Speaker 1: number is nine to nine to nine the court notice
Speaker 1: of an in camera submission, Miss Taylor. Yes, Court, all right,
Speaker 1: go ahead, Miss Taylor. Doctor Larkin, will you thumb through that.
Speaker 1: It's towards the back answer?
Speaker 2: Okay? Question do you recognize that? Answer? Yes?
Speaker 1: The second to last page, it says, below are the
Speaker 1: genealogy services utilized by the FBI. Question and what does
Speaker 1: it tell you? Answer? It says family tree, DNA, ged match,
Speaker 1: pro ged match, and my heritage.
Speaker 2: Question.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Miss Taylor, Was your honor like the copy
Speaker 1: they have there? I think it's part of the record
Speaker 1: you submitted, So I have a copy, Miss Taylor. Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you. Give me just one more minute to check
Speaker 1: with my team. I do have another question the court,
Speaker 1: all right, go ahead, Miss Taylor. Question what is Prometheus?
Speaker 1: Prometheus is a third party site. So it's not part
Speaker 1: of ancestry, not part of my heritage. Actually my heritage
Speaker 1: owns it. It's a site where you can take the
Speaker 1: SNP profile that you get from any of the companies
Speaker 1: and upload it to the site and it will produce
Speaker 1: It will basically look for medically informative SNPs in your
Speaker 1: profile that will do reports on them. I think it's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's like a nominal fee, like twelve
Speaker 1: dollars or something, and it will do a report of
Speaker 1: all of the SNPs that you have in your profile.
Speaker 1: Question if you had my SNP you could do that
Speaker 1: and find out answer, Yes, I could do it on
Speaker 1: if somebody has done a genealogy test.
Speaker 2: For twelve dollars, I can.
Speaker 1: Put it into the Prometheus system and get trade reports
Speaker 1: and health reports.
Speaker 2: Question.
Speaker 1: How extensive is that information that you could get? Answer?
Speaker 1: It's pretty comprehensive. I mean you will get reams and
Speaker 1: reams of reports. I should say that some how do
Speaker 1: I put this? There are lots of traits that are
Speaker 1: controlled by multiple genes, and so if a trade is
Speaker 1: controlled by multiple genes, I can't say for certain, yes,
Speaker 1: you're going to get Alzheimer's. No, you're not going to
Speaker 1: get Alzheimer's. It's more of a risk factor. But you
Speaker 1: can look at the multiple reports and see if they're,
Speaker 1: for example, giving you an increased risk of Alzheimer's or
Speaker 1: whatever other traits are in the system, if you have
Speaker 1: an increased risk of breast cancer, prostate cancer, or anything
Speaker 1: else out there. Question for twelve dollars. Answer yes, question,
Speaker 1: Thank you. That's all my questions. Hold on a minute,
Speaker 1: the prosecutor might have one for you. All Right, we're
Speaker 1: going to wrap up right here, and in the next
Speaker 1: episode we'll finish this bad boy off. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to contact me, you can do that at Bobby Kopuchi
Speaker 1: at proton mail dot com. That's b O B B
Speaker 1: Y c A p U C C I at proton
Speaker 1: mail dot com. Or if you prefer, you can find
Speaker 1: me on x at B O B B Y on
Speaker 1: your score C A p U C C I. All
Speaker 1: of the links that go with this episode can be
Speaker 1: found in the description box.