Speaker 1: I really want you to picture a freezing winter morning
Speaker 1: back in nineteen seventy six. You know, just put yourself
Speaker 1: there for a second.
Speaker 2: Oh man, winter in the seventies.
Speaker 1: That hits different, It really does. You were standing in
Speaker 1: Carbon County, Pennsylvania. It's December twentieth, and the air is well,
Speaker 1: it's that brutal, biting kind of cold, the kind that
Speaker 1: instantly turns every single breath into this thick cloud of smoke,
Speaker 1: right the.
Speaker 2: Kind of cold that just cuts right through your jacket exactly.
Speaker 1: So imagine you are a fourteen year old boy named
Speaker 1: Kenneth Jumper Junior. You're just walking along the frozen banks
Speaker 1: of the Lehigh River. You've got your hands shoved deep
Speaker 1: into your pockets, maybe just kicking at the frost.
Speaker 2: Just being a normal kid on a winter day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But then you spot something completely out of
Speaker 1: place against all that dead winter brush suitcases. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: three of them, just lying there near the river bank.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a jarring visual right away. Luggage belongs
Speaker 2: in the trunk of a car or a train.
Speaker 1: Station, right, not a riverbank.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Seeing suitcases scattered at the bottom of a three
Speaker 2: hundred foot drop beneath Interstate eighty. That immediately signals that
Speaker 2: something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Speaker 1: It really does. And the thing is two of those
Speaker 1: suitcases had actually burst open, I mean from the impact
Speaker 1: of that massive three hundred foot fall from the bridge above.
Speaker 2: That is a massive drop.
Speaker 1: It is one was still intact, just sort of resting
Speaker 1: in the bare bushes. So young, Kenneth, he walks closer
Speaker 1: because you know, it's human nature to be curious, right,
Speaker 1: He's just a kid.
Speaker 2: He wants to see what's inside.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he sees something protruding from one of the
Speaker 1: shattered suitcases. At first glance, his brain sort of tries
Speaker 1: to protect him from what he's actually looking at. He
Speaker 1: processes it as a doll's.
Speaker 2: Head, oh god, because the alternative is just too horrible
Speaker 2: to comprehend exactly.
Speaker 1: But taking one more step, the reality sets in. It's
Speaker 1: not a doll. Terrified, he just turns and runs to
Speaker 1: get help.
Speaker 2: I can't even imagine that moment of terror for a
Speaker 2: fourteen year old boy. That was basically the inciting incident
Speaker 2: for what would become one of the coldest, strangest, and
Speaker 2: just most profoundly complex mysteries in the history of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: It really was.
Speaker 2: He had just discovered two victims who had remained completely
Speaker 2: nameless for the next forty four years.
Speaker 1: And that right there is the mission of our deep dive. Today,
Speaker 1: we are exploring this four decade mystery of Beth Dough,
Speaker 1: an unidentified pregnant teenager whose brutal murder just seemed to
Speaker 1: fall into this total systemic.
Speaker 2: Void, complete void.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we are going to unpack how a meticulously planned
Speaker 1: crime and literally a single piece of paper acting as
Speaker 1: this information firewall, along with decades of technological dead ends,
Speaker 1: were finally unraveled. And they were unraveled by a grandson
Speaker 1: who simply wanted to build his family tree online.
Speaker 2: It is such an incredible narrative, and I think the
Speaker 2: value in dissecting this case isn't just in the true
Speaker 2: crime aspect of it. It serves as this comprehensive masterclass
Speaker 2: across so many different disciplines. We are looking at the
Speaker 2: agonizingly slow evolution of friends science over half a century.
Speaker 1: Oh, the science part is mind blowing, it really is.
Speaker 2: Plus, we are examining the maddening complexities and honestly, they
Speaker 2: sometimes fatal structural flaws of the American legal system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that part is going to frustrate a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Definitely, and centrally. We are confronting the devastating impact of
Speaker 2: systemic blind spots on immigrant families in the United States.
Speaker 1: So as we walk through these events today, I want
Speaker 1: you to keep one haunting question in your mind as
Speaker 1: you listen. How does a pregnant, fifteen year old girl
Speaker 1: just vanish from a crowded, tight knit city apartment without
Speaker 1: a single missing person report ever being filed?
Speaker 2: It seems impossible, right, But the answer to that question
Speaker 2: requires us to really look at the immediate aftermath of
Speaker 2: Kenneth Jumper's discovery.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go there.
Speaker 2: When the Pennsylvania State Police arrived at the Lehigh River
Speaker 2: on that December twenties, they were met with a scene
Speaker 2: that shook even the most hardened investigators.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would think so. So inside those three
Speaker 1: very common tools, untraceable suitcases, where the dismembered remains of
Speaker 1: a young woman along with a near term female fetus.
Speaker 2: It's just horrific, it really is.
Speaker 1: Yea, And everything had been tightly wrapped in this old
Speaker 1: Shaneil blanket. And you know, a Shneil blanket is such
Speaker 1: a domestic comforting item.
Speaker 2: Right, something you have on your couch.
Speaker 1: Yeah. To see it repurpose for something so horrific is
Speaker 1: deeply unsettling. And then the autopsy details come back and
Speaker 1: they reveal this narrative of immense calculated violence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the medical examiner ruled the manner of death a
Speaker 2: homicide obviously. Yeah, but the primary cause was strangulation, Okay. However,
Speaker 2: that was accompanied by severe facial trauma, specifically a broken nose,
Speaker 2: and on top of all that, a gunshot wound to
Speaker 2: the neck.
Speaker 1: Wait, all three, that level of violence points to extreme overkill.
Speaker 1: I mean, a gunshot, blunt force, trauma, and strangulation all
Speaker 1: point to this intense, deeply personal rage. Absolutely, But then
Speaker 1: we have the dismemberment, which introduces a completely different psychological
Speaker 1: element to the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Right. The forensic time line here is critical for you
Speaker 2: to understand. The dismemberment did not cause her death. It
Speaker 2: occurred post mortem, so after the fact exactly. Investigators noted
Speaker 2: that the person responsible quote knew what they were doing.
Speaker 2: They made it clear this wasn't like a surgeon's precise cut,
Speaker 2: but it was skilled enough to efficiently break down a
Speaker 2: human body to fit into standard luggage.
Speaker 1: That is just so chilling.
Speaker 2: And furthermore, based on the condition of the remains in
Speaker 2: that freezing weather, the medical examiner determined the crime had
Speaker 2: occurred within a mirre twenty four hours before discovery.
Speaker 1: I really want to pause on that twenty four hour window,
Speaker 1: because it completely changes the profile of the crime, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: It changes everything, right, because if someone is killed, dismembered,
Speaker 1: packed up, transported, and thrown off a three hundred foot
Speaker 1: interstate bridge all within a single day, we aren't looking
Speaker 1: at a prolonged kidnapping situation.
Speaker 2: No, not at all.
Speaker 1: We can entirely rule out an extended captivity scenario, you know,
Speaker 1: where someone is held in a basement for weeks exactly.
Speaker 2: It indicates this rapid, cold premeditation followed by a highly
Speaker 2: calculated disposal.
Speaker 1: The logistics alone are staggering.
Speaker 2: I mean, think about the logistics required to commit the murder,
Speaker 2: find the space and the tools to perform the dismemberment,
Speaker 2: clean the scene, pack the suitcases, and then drive to
Speaker 2: a remote interstate bridge. That requires a chilling level of
Speaker 2: focus in control.
Speaker 1: It really does. Yet, despite having the victim's remains, the
Speaker 1: police had an absolute zero on her identity. The physical
Speaker 1: characteristics indicated she was petite. She had black hair and
Speaker 1: olive skin, which led investigators to suspect she was of
Speaker 1: Latina or Mediterranean descent.
Speaker 2: Which is a fairly broad category.
Speaker 1: Right. So they released facial sketches to the public, distributed
Speaker 1: them far and wide in newspapers, on the news, and
Speaker 1: they got absolutely nothing. No one came forward, no one
Speaker 1: claimed her.
Speaker 2: The physical evidence was entirely a dead end too. The
Speaker 2: suitcases were mass produced, the chinio blanket was completely untraceable.
Speaker 2: There was no wallet, no jewelry, no keys.
Speaker 1: So they basically had nothing to go.
Speaker 2: On, nothing except the one definitive fact they had, which
Speaker 2: was her advanced state of pregnancy, right, and near term
Speaker 2: pregnancy is impossible to hide. She had to have been
Speaker 2: seen by neighbors, family, or a doctor. Someone out there
Speaker 2: knew she was expecting a child.
Speaker 1: And this is where the logic of the situation collides
Speaker 1: with the reality. Because a crime of this magnitude, a
Speaker 1: pregnant teenager murdered and thrown off a bridge, ordinarily triggers
Speaker 1: a massive, desperate search.
Speaker 2: You would certainly think so.
Speaker 1: I think of it like an explosion going off in
Speaker 1: a crowded room, but nobody hearing the blast. Medically, socially, logically,
Speaker 1: how is there no missing person report, not from family,
Speaker 1: not from a neighbor who noticed the pregnant girl next
Speaker 1: door was suddenly gone.
Speaker 2: The silence surrounding her disappearance is arguably the most agonizing
Speaker 2: aspect of this entire case. But you have to understand
Speaker 2: that silence wasn't a failure of her community to care.
Speaker 2: It was actively engineered. The perpetrator controlled the narrative with
Speaker 2: incredible prescient decision to ensure no one would come looking.
Speaker 1: That is so sinister.
Speaker 2: To understand the mechanics of that silence, we have to
Speaker 2: shift our focus about one hundred miles east of that
Speaker 2: frozen river to a modest apartment in Jersey City.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's set the scene for that. It's nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: We are in a working class Puerto Rican immigrant community
Speaker 1: in Jersey City, New Jersey, and we are introduced to
Speaker 1: the Colon family.
Speaker 2: Yes, the Colons.
Speaker 1: They are described as incredibly tight knit, two parents, Louis
Speaker 1: Senior and Aurelia Torres, and they are raising six children,
Speaker 1: including an older brother named Lewis Junior, a younger sister
Speaker 1: named Magdalia, and our victim, Evelyn Colan.
Speaker 2: Evelyn was born on April seventeenth, nineteen sixty one. That
Speaker 2: makes for just fifteen years old in the winter of
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six. Just a kid, Just a kid. This
Speaker 2: was a household where care was expressed through constant presence,
Speaker 2: shared meals, and very close monitoring. But that dynamic really
Speaker 2: shifted when Evelyn became involved with a young man who
Speaker 2: used to live right next door to them.
Speaker 1: Okay, who was this guy?
Speaker 2: His name was Louis Sierra, though he went by the
Speaker 2: nickname Weso. He was nineteen, so four.
Speaker 1: Years older than Evelyn, and Evelyn quickly becomes pregnant. Now,
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old getting pregnant by a nineteen year
Speaker 1: old is obviously going to cause some serious friction in
Speaker 1: any family. But the family actually accepted it.
Speaker 2: They did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think this speaks volumes about the socioeconomic
Speaker 1: and cultural context of the time, because in tight knit
Speaker 1: immigrant communities in the nineteen seventies, family matters were kept
Speaker 1: intensely private, very private. He didn't broadcast your struggles, You
Speaker 1: manage them internally within the family unit. So Evelyn and
Speaker 1: Sierra end up moving into their own apartment in another
Speaker 1: part of Jersey City.
Speaker 2: But Aurelia, Evelyn's mother, she remained a constant presence in
Speaker 2: her life. She visited frequently, bringing food, just checking on
Speaker 2: her daughter's health as the pregnancy.
Speaker 1: Progressed, like any good mother would exactly, but.
Speaker 2: The environment inside that apartment was far from healthy. Evelyn's
Speaker 2: younger sister, Magdalia later detailed that Sierra was incredibly controlling
Speaker 2: and deeply jealous. Oh boy, his behavior escalated to the
Speaker 2: point where he would physically lie Evelyn inside the apartment.
Speaker 2: He completely controlled her access to the outside world.
Speaker 1: Those isolation tactics are a massive red flag. But the
Speaker 1: thing is, Evelyn wasn't blind to the danger she was in.
Speaker 1: She explicitly told her mother that she was afraid of Sierra.
Speaker 2: She did.
Speaker 1: She even went as far as to say that if
Speaker 1: anything ever happened to her, he was likely involved.
Speaker 2: In the context of domestic violence, a victim vocalizing that
Speaker 2: specific fear to a family member is a critical warning sign. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: it demonstrates that the abuser's control has escalated to a
Speaker 2: point where the victim precedes a genuine lethal threat. But
Speaker 2: we really have to remember the era we're talking about here.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy six, the framework for dealing with domestic
Speaker 2: violence was rudimentary at best.
Speaker 1: It was barely even talked about exactly.
Speaker 2: Shelters were rare. Police often treated domestic disputes as private
Speaker 2: family matters, and for non English speaking immigrant families, there
Speaker 2: was an added layer of hesitation when it came to
Speaker 2: involving authorities.
Speaker 1: Which brings us to the specific incident that sets the
Speaker 1: entire cover up in motion. It's mid December nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: Evelyn is heavily pregnant, just weeks away from her due date,
Speaker 1: very close. She called her mom, says she isn't feeling
Speaker 1: well and asks her to bring over some soup.
Speaker 2: It's such a mundane, everyday request that it really grounds
Speaker 2: the horror of what happens next. Yeah, Aurelia prepares the soup.
Speaker 2: She travels across Jersey City to the apartment and she
Speaker 2: knocks on the door. She gets no answer, just silence. Right,
Speaker 2: she knocks again. Nothing. When she finally manages to push
Speaker 2: the door open, she finds the apartment entirely empty. The
Speaker 2: furniture is gone, and the neighbors tell her that the
Speaker 2: couple moved out.
Speaker 1: Just picture that. I want you to really think about
Speaker 1: that moment you show up with a hot meal for
Speaker 1: your sick, pregnant teenage daughter and her entire life has
Speaker 1: simply vanished.
Speaker 2: It's unthinkable.
Speaker 1: The immediate reaction is going to be panic. But then
Speaker 1: a few weeks later, in January nineteen seventy seven, a
Speaker 1: letter arrives in the Callin family mailbox. Right, It's written
Speaker 1: in Spanish and the postmark indicates it was mailed from Stanford, Connecticut.
Speaker 2: The contents of that letter were a master stroke of
Speaker 2: psychological manipulation.
Speaker 1: It really was.
Speaker 2: It stated that Evelyn had given birth to a healthy,
Speaker 2: nine pound baby boy named l Sierra Junior. It assured
Speaker 2: the family that they had moved to Connecticut, that everything
Speaker 2: was going well, and requested that the family not worry.
Speaker 1: So it's just telling them to back off, basically.
Speaker 2: Exactly Crucially, it ended by saying Evelyn would reach out
Speaker 2: if they needed anything, effectively establishing a boundary that cut
Speaker 2: off further contact entirely.
Speaker 1: I viewed this letter as basically a nineteen seventies analog firewall.
Speaker 2: That's a great way to put.
Speaker 1: It, because in today's world, if someone disappears and sends
Speaker 1: a text saying you know, I'm moved. Don't look for me.
Speaker 1: We don't just take their word for it. No, of course,
Speaker 1: we look at their digital footprint. We track their phones
Speaker 1: location data, We monitor their bank accounts for activity. We
Speaker 1: check if their social media shows a new location.
Speaker 2: Right, there's so many to track someone.
Speaker 1: Now we have dozens of ways to verify proof of life.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen seventy seven, a handwritten letter with an
Speaker 1: out of state postmark was treated as an absolute truth.
Speaker 2: It was an impenetrable barrier. Without the Internet or cellular
Speaker 2: data or instantaneous communication networks, society just operated on the
Speaker 2: assumption that a letter was a definitive statement of intent.
Speaker 2: If an adult or an emancipated miner living with a
Speaker 2: partner as she was viewed, sent a letter claiming they
Speaker 2: relocated voluntarily, that was the end of the inquiry.
Speaker 1: And the tragedy here really compounds when you look at
Speaker 1: the father's actions, because Lewis Colen Senior didn't just accept
Speaker 1: the silence indefinitely.
Speaker 2: He tried, He really tried.
Speaker 1: He did. When no follow up letter arrived, when the
Speaker 1: promise of seeing his grandson, Lewis Junior just evaporated. He
Speaker 1: went to the local police. He tried to report his
Speaker 1: daughter missing.
Speaker 2: And this is where he gets so frustrating.
Speaker 1: It does because the police weaponized that fake LFE against
Speaker 1: the family. They looked at the father and basically said, look,
Speaker 1: she has her own family now. She stated in writing
Speaker 1: that she left voluntarily. There is no crime here, and
Speaker 1: they dismissed the family's concerns outright.
Speaker 2: That dismissal illustrates precisely how the perpetrator engineered the silence.
Speaker 1: He knew exactly what he was doing.
Speaker 2: He anticipated the systemic apathy. He knew that a letter
Speaker 2: establishing a voluntary departure would passify the family just enough
Speaker 2: to delay their panic and simultaneously provide the police with
Speaker 2: a perfect bureaucratic excuse to avoid launching a missing person's investigation.
Speaker 1: So, while the Colon family is sitting in New Jersey
Speaker 1: desperately waiting for a second letter that will literally never come,
Speaker 1: Evelyn's body has already been found in Pennsylvania. Right because
Speaker 1: her family was convinced she was alive in Connecticut. They
Speaker 1: never saw the facial sketches circulating in Pennsylvania. She reigns
Speaker 1: nameless and the trail goes entirely cold.
Speaker 2: For decades, the investigation into Beth Doe completely stalled. The
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania State Police kept the file open, sure, but without
Speaker 2: an identity, they were essentially hunting a ghost.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what could they do?
Speaker 2: Nothing? They were forced to wait for forensic science to evolve,
Speaker 2: hoping a new technology would eventually unlock the case.
Speaker 1: Fast forward seven years from the discovery, it's nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: The authorities in Carbon County finally recognize that no one
Speaker 1: is coming to claim her, so sad it is, they
Speaker 1: make the groom decision to bury her in an unmarked
Speaker 1: grave at a local cemetery. There is no family present,
Speaker 1: just a headstone bearing the name Beth Doo and the
Speaker 1: year she was found.
Speaker 2: The contrast is devastating if you think about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how so?
Speaker 2: Well, you have a fifteen year old girl who grew
Speaker 2: up in a vibrant, bustling Puerto Rican household in Jersey
Speaker 2: City and she ends up buried under a pseudonym in
Speaker 2: a rural Pennsylvania town she had likely never even set
Speaker 2: foot in, surrounded by complete strangers.
Speaker 1: That is just incredibly bleak. And meanwhile, back in New
Speaker 1: Jersey Evelyn's mother, Aurelia is living in this state of
Speaker 1: suspended animation right. She would sit by the window of
Speaker 1: her Jersey City home year after year, just watching the street.
Speaker 1: Whenever she thought she saw someone in a crowd who
Speaker 1: looked like Evelyn, she would frantically call her.
Speaker 2: Relatives, just holding out hope.
Speaker 1: Always holding out hope. She lived in this agonizing purgatory
Speaker 1: until she passed away in two thousand. Her final words,
Speaker 1: literally holding her son's hand in the hospital, were find Evelyn.
Speaker 2: Aurelia died believing her daughter was out there somewhere, perhaps estranged,
Speaker 2: but alive. She never knew the horrific truth of the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six murder.
Speaker 1: Thank God for that, honestly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe a small mercy. But while the family endured
Speaker 2: that psychological torture, the Pennsylvania State Police were actively trying
Speaker 2: to force a breakthrough on their end. Every time a
Speaker 2: new scientific method became available, they applied it to the
Speaker 2: Beth Doe evidence.
Speaker 1: And some of those scientific attempts are fascinating to look
Speaker 1: back on, even if they ultimately failed. Like in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, nearly thirty years after the discovery, scientists
Speaker 1: decided to try isotope analysis on Beth Doe's remains.
Speaker 2: Yes, the isotope analysis.
Speaker 1: Now, my understanding of isotope analysis is that it's essentially
Speaker 1: reading the chemical diary of someone's bones. How does that
Speaker 1: actually work mechanically?
Speaker 2: That's a really great way to conceptualize it. Let's look
Speaker 2: at how bones and teeth form. As a child grows,
Speaker 2: the chemical elements from the food they eat and the
Speaker 2: water they drink are integrated into their skeletal structure. Okay,
Speaker 2: different geographical regions have distinct isotopic signatures, basically specific ratios
Speaker 2: of isotopes like oxiden and stronium in the local soil
Speaker 2: and groundwater.
Speaker 1: So it's tied to the land exactly.
Speaker 2: Now. Teeth, once they form in childhood, they don't remodel,
Speaker 2: so they lock in the isotopic signature of where you
Speaker 2: lived during those early years.
Speaker 1: Oh, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: The bones remodel constantly reflecting where you lived more recently.
Speaker 1: So. By comparing the isotopes in her teeth to the
Speaker 1: isotopes in her bones, scientists were trying to build a
Speaker 1: map of her life journey. They is asking the bones,
Speaker 1: you know, where did she grow up and where did
Speaker 1: she move later?
Speaker 2: Precisely, and when the laboratory ran the analysis on Beth Doe,
Speaker 2: the results came back pointing strongly towards Central Europe.
Speaker 1: Central Europe.
Speaker 2: Yes, the data suggested she likely spent her early childhood
Speaker 2: in a country like Poland or maybe the Czech Republic
Speaker 2: or Slovakia before migrating to the United States.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, armed with that scientific data, the police pivot entirely.
Speaker 1: They start digging into immigration records, reaching out to European
Speaker 1: missing persons databases, and canvassing Eastern European immigrant communities in
Speaker 1: the US.
Speaker 2: They spent a massive amount of time on this.
Speaker 1: They poured years of manpower into this specific geographic profile.
Speaker 1: But it was a complete and utter misfire. How did
Speaker 1: the science get it that wrong?
Speaker 2: Well, the failure wasn't in the chemical analysis itself. The
Speaker 2: machines read the chemicals correctly. It was a massive blind
Speaker 2: spot in the interpretation of the data. The scientific baselines
Speaker 2: used for comparison were rigidly geographical. What they failed to
Speaker 2: account for was the complex cultural reality of the American diaspora.
Speaker 1: Oh I see, so a Puerto Rican fan living in
Speaker 1: Jersey City in the nineteen sixties and seventies. Isn't just
Speaker 1: eating local New Jersey produce exactly.
Speaker 2: They were eating a highly varied diet. They consumed traditional
Speaker 2: foods imported from Puerto Rico or grown in different soils,
Speaker 2: combined with local municipal tap water and mass produced American goods.
Speaker 2: This created a very chaotic, blended isotopic profile in Evelyn's bones,
Speaker 2: and by sheer coincidence, that unique amalgamation of chemicals happened
Speaker 2: to closely mimic the standard expected baseline for a person
Speaker 2: growing up in Central Europe.
Speaker 1: That is wild. It's like using a translation app that
Speaker 1: tells you a phrase is Italian because the root words
Speaker 1: are similar when it's actually Spanish.
Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy.
Speaker 1: The science hand of the detective is a highly detailed,
Speaker 1: perfectly drawn map to the exact wrong continent.
Speaker 2: It was a devastating setback that costed the investigation precious years,
Speaker 2: and it really highlights the danger of treating forensic science
Speaker 2: as infallible without considering human and cultural variables.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and that wasn't the only time they hit a
Speaker 1: wall at full s be it either. In twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: an incredibly compelling lead surfaced. A woman saw the Beth
Speaker 1: Doe sketch and immediately contacted authorities, identifying the sketch as
Speaker 1: a former classmate named Madeleine Maggie Cruz.
Speaker 2: And the circumstantial evidence aligning Beth Dough with Madeline Cruz
Speaker 2: was astonishing.
Speaker 1: It really was.
Speaker 2: Cruz had fled the foster care system in Massachusetts. She
Speaker 2: was known to be pregnant in the summer of nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six. Wow, she had reached out to a friend
Speaker 2: asking for financial help, and then she vanished completely. The timeline,
Speaker 2: the pregnancy, the physical resemblance. I mean, it was as
Speaker 2: close to a perfect match as investigators could hope for
Speaker 2: without having.
Speaker 1: DNA, and the police were so confident that they actually
Speaker 1: went public with the lead. The media picked it up,
Speaker 1: and for a brief moment, it felt like a forty
Speaker 1: three year old mystery was finally solved.
Speaker 2: It was huge news.
Speaker 1: But just weeks later, investigators located Madeline Cruz. She was alive,
Speaker 1: and well, you really have.
Speaker 2: To consider this psychological toll on the detectives here. I
Speaker 2: can't imagine you have seasoned investigators who have carried the
Speaker 2: weight of this young woman and her unborn child for
Speaker 2: their entire careers. You try cutting edge isotope chemistry and
Speaker 2: it points you to the wrong hemisphere. You get a
Speaker 2: perfect biographical match, and the person turns up alive. Every
Speaker 2: dead end reinforces this terrifying possibility that the killer had
Speaker 2: truly committed the perfect crime.
Speaker 1: But the landscape of criminal investigation was fundamentally shifting. While
Speaker 1: the police were relying on twentieth century methodologies, the solution
Speaker 1: was quietly being built by ordinary people uploading data to
Speaker 1: the Internet.
Speaker 2: The breakthrough arrives in twenty twenty. A detective named Brian
Speaker 2: Noll with the Pennsylvania State Police decides to initiate one
Speaker 2: final push.
Speaker 1: He wasn't given up.
Speaker 2: He collaborates with the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Speaker 2: Children and a specialized facility called DNA Labs International.
Speaker 1: They ultimately turned to a company called AUTHRM based in Houston, Texas. Now,
Speaker 1: DNA testing has been around for decades. Why couldn't they
Speaker 1: just run her DNA through the FBI's code A system
Speaker 1: back in the nineties or two thousands.
Speaker 2: Well, traditional DNA testing, the kind use for CODIS relies
Speaker 2: on identifying short tandem repeats or STRs. Okay, it requires
Speaker 2: relatively large in tax strands of DNA. It's great if
Speaker 2: you have a fresh blood sample or a cheek swab
Speaker 2: and you're comparing it to a known offender already in database.
Speaker 1: Which they did have here Exactly.
Speaker 2: Besto's remains have been exposed to the elements buried, exhumed,
Speaker 2: and sitting in evidence storage for over.
Speaker 1: Forty years, just degrading. The whole time the.
Speaker 2: DNA was heavily degraded, fragmented by bacteria and time. Traditional
Speaker 2: str testing simply couldn't read the shatter genetic code.
Speaker 1: So off From uses something called next generation sequencing. My
Speaker 1: understanding is that if traditional DNA testing is like looking
Speaker 1: for specific whole sentences in a book, next generation sequencing
Speaker 1: is capable of taking a book that's been run through
Speaker 1: a wood chipper, scanning every single tiny fragment, and computationally
Speaker 1: reassembling the entire text.
Speaker 2: That is an excellent analogy. Althoram specializes in exactly this
Speaker 2: kind of forensic genealogy. They extract whatever minute fragments of
Speaker 2: DNA are left in the bone, in this case her
Speaker 2: femur and sequence hundreds of thousands of microscopic genetic markers
Speaker 2: called SNPs.
Speaker 1: Single nucleotide polymorphisms yes SNPs.
Speaker 2: While computational analysis, they reconstruct a comprehensive genetic profile that
Speaker 2: older forensic techniques would consider completely impossible to salvage.
Speaker 1: So, by February twenty twenty one, authoram successfully builds this
Speaker 1: genetic profile. But a profile is useless unless you have
Speaker 1: something to compare it to, right, since her family was
Speaker 1: never in a criminal database, they upload this reconstructed DNA
Speaker 1: to commercial genealogical databases, specifically ged match and Family Tree DNA.
Speaker 2: These are the platforms where millions of everyday people upload
Speaker 2: their twenty three anity or ancestry DNA results to build
Speaker 2: family trees or discover their ethnic heritage.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean I've done it.
Speaker 2: Lots of people have, and when authorm Ranbeth Doo's profile
Speaker 2: through the system, they get a massive hit.
Speaker 1: The system flagged a match of seventeen hundred cent of
Speaker 1: morgans of shared DNA with a man living in Texas
Speaker 1: named Lewis Colan Junior. Let's break down that metric for
Speaker 1: a second. What does seventeen hundred cent of morgans actually
Speaker 1: tell an investigator?
Speaker 2: Well, a cent of morgan is a unit used to
Speaker 2: measure genetic linkage. Essentially how much DNA two people share
Speaker 2: from a common ancestors. Okay, when you see a match
Speaker 2: of seventeen hundred center morgans, it completely eliminates any ambiguity
Speaker 2: about distant cousins. That specific range points directly to a
Speaker 2: very close familial relationship, precisely the amount of shared DNA
Speaker 2: you would expect between a grandparent and grandchild, a half sibling,
Speaker 2: or crucially, in this case, an aunt or uncle and
Speaker 2: their niece or nephew.
Speaker 1: It's a direct, undeniable line into her family. And who
Speaker 1: is Lewis Colan Junior? He is Evelyn's nephew. Yes, he
Speaker 1: is the son of her older brother, Lewis Or he
Speaker 1: hadn't taken these commercial DNA tests because he suspected a murder.
Speaker 1: He just wanted to map his family tree and perhaps
Speaker 1: find the aunt who moved to Connecticut in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six and stopped writing.
Speaker 2: This illustrates the paradigm shifting power of forensic genealogy. It
Speaker 2: completely bypasses the requirement for the victim or the perpetrator
Speaker 2: to be indexed in a law enforcement database.
Speaker 1: Right, you just need a relative who's curious about their heritage.
Speaker 2: Exactly it leverages the biological curiosity of everyday citizens to
Speaker 2: bridge gaps that traditional police work simply cannot cross.
Speaker 1: So the police immediately contact Lewis Junior in Texas. He
Speaker 1: details the entire family history. He tells them about Evelyn,
Speaker 1: the older boyfriend, Luis Sierra, the sudden disappearance, and the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven letter from Connecticut, all the missing puzzle pieces,
Speaker 1: and then the emotional climax of this entire saga unfolds.
Speaker 1: Lewis Junior sends a link to the Wikipedia page about
Speaker 1: the Beth Dough case to his sister, Miriam cole velpment.
Speaker 2: Right, and without needing any further scientific confirmation, Miriam looks
Speaker 2: at the reconstructed composite sketch on that web page and
Speaker 2: immediately says, that looks like my aunt.
Speaker 1: And that's the moment the tragedy he really crystallizes. For
Speaker 1: Lewis Junior. He later said, all this time we were
Speaker 1: looking for Evelyn Colin, not Beth.
Speaker 2: Do it forces a profound psychological realignment for the family.
Speaker 1: It has to.
Speaker 2: For forty four years, two separate, completely isolating tragedies were
Speaker 2: playing out simultaneously. You had a family endlessly hoping for
Speaker 2: a missing girl to come home in a police department
Speaker 2: endlessly searching for the identity of a murdered girl, and.
Speaker 1: They had no idea they were looking for the same person.
Speaker 2: Right next generation sequencing was the bridge that finally allowed
Speaker 2: those two parallel lines to intersect.
Speaker 1: With Evelyn's identity restored, the investigation accelerates instantly because if
Speaker 1: you know who she is, the immediate logical step is
Speaker 1: to ask the family who she was last seen with, and.
Speaker 2: The family definitively points the finger at Louis Sierra. They
Speaker 2: provide investigators with the crucial context of his history of controlling.
Speaker 1: Behavior right all those red flag.
Speaker 2: They detail the jealousy, the physical isolation, and the fact
Speaker 2: that he would physically lock Evelyn inside there apart, and.
Speaker 1: There is another piece of the puzzle that finally clicks
Speaker 1: into place, the nineteen seventy seven letter from Stamford.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: Yes, the letter the family reveals to the police that
Speaker 1: Evelyn's reading and writing skills were actually quite limited. There
Speaker 1: was absolutely no way she possessed the literacy required to
Speaker 1: draft that sophisticated, perfectly structured letter in.
Speaker 2: Spanish, which solidifies the investigator's theory. The letter was a forgery,
Speaker 2: a total fake, a calculated misdirection designed solely to cover
Speaker 2: up a homicide and manipulate the family into silence. Armed
Speaker 2: with this information, the Pennsylvania State Police begin the hunt
Speaker 2: for Louis Sierra.
Speaker 1: Now you might expect a man who committed a brutal
Speaker 1: murder and dismemberment to be living off the grid.
Speaker 2: Right, you'd think so, hiding out somewhere.
Speaker 1: Hiding under an assumed name, or constantly on the run.
Speaker 1: But where do they find him? He is sixty three
Speaker 1: years old, living a completely unremarkable, quiet life as a
Speaker 1: bus driver in Ozone Park, Queens, New York.
Speaker 2: He was living just a short drive from where he
Speaker 2: committed the crime in Jersey City.
Speaker 1: It's insane.
Speaker 2: He had no criminal record. For forty five years. He
Speaker 2: operated as a normal member of society. He went to work,
Speaker 2: interacted with neighbors, and lived a life entirely devoid of
Speaker 2: consequence for his actions.
Speaker 1: And not once in those forty five years did he
Speaker 1: ever file a police report, hire a private investigator, or
Speaker 1: attempt to locate his heavily pregnant girlfriend or the child
Speaker 1: he claimed was his in that forged letter.
Speaker 2: Never so.
Speaker 1: On March thirty first, twenty twenty one, Detective Null from Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: accompanied by the NYPD, knocks on his door.
Speaker 2: In Queen's Sierra answers the door. He's an older man,
Speaker 2: now graying hair. The detectives introduced themselves, state they are
Speaker 2: investigating a historical missing person report and ask him if
Speaker 2: he knows in Evelyn Colin.
Speaker 1: His immediate reaction is denial. He claims he doesn't know her.
Speaker 2: At all, which is to be expected.
Speaker 1: But then the detectives subtly shift their tactic. They mentioned
Speaker 1: the year nineteen seventy six, and instantly his story pivots.
Speaker 2: Oh. Memory suddenly comes brushing back right.
Speaker 1: He admits they dated, He admits she was pregnant, but
Speaker 1: he adamantly insists that the last time he ever saw
Speaker 1: her was at that apartment in Jersey City before they
Speaker 1: parted ways.
Speaker 2: Consecutive. Null systematically applies pressure here. He asks the logical
Speaker 2: follow up, if she disappeared while pregnant with your child,
Speaker 2: why didn't you ever try to look for her?
Speaker 1: And Sierra has no coherent answer.
Speaker 2: For that, no answer at all. Nall then brings up
Speaker 2: the specific letter mailed from Connecticut in nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2: Right again, Sierra has no answer. Then, incredibly, after a
Speaker 2: two hour interview conducted in his own living room, Sierra
Speaker 2: just admits to writing the nineteen seventy seven letter himself.
Speaker 1: I really want to analyze the psychology of this moment,
Speaker 1: because it's baffling. You have a man who has successfully
Speaker 1: gotten away with a horrific double murder for nearly half
Speaker 1: a century. The police are sitting on his couch. Why
Speaker 1: on earth would he voluntarily admit to forging the document
Speaker 1: that served as the primary instrument of his cover up.
Speaker 1: Why hand them the smoking gun?
Speaker 2: It is crazy, but if you examine the mindset of
Speaker 2: someone who has compartmentalized a crime for forty five years, his
Speaker 2: reaction makes a twifted kind of sense. Okay, so his
Speaker 2: guard was completely down over four decades. The lack of
Speaker 2: consequences likely convinced him that he had outsmarted the system,
Speaker 2: that the body would never be identified, and the evidence
Speaker 2: was long gone.
Speaker 1: Right, he thought he was untouchable.
Speaker 2: When the police suddenly appeared, he attempted to outmaneuver them.
Speaker 2: He likely thought he could admit to a lesser, somewhat
Speaker 2: justifiable misdeed, like oh, writing a fake letter. Just to
Speaker 2: get her family office back while continuing to deny any
Speaker 2: involvement in the actual murder.
Speaker 1: So he thought he was being clever.
Speaker 2: Exactly, he failed to realize that admitting to the forgery
Speaker 2: was the lynchpin that destroyed his entire alibi.
Speaker 1: He essentially locked himself into the cover up. Detective Null
Speaker 1: immediately steps outside, contacts Carbon County, secures an arrest warrant,
Speaker 1: and Sierra is taken into custody right there in his home,
Speaker 1: just like that, charged with criminal homicide. They hold a
Speaker 1: press conference that very same day to announce the breakthrough.
Speaker 2: The emotional fought all out for the family is immense.
Speaker 2: It's a collision of overwhelming relief that the mystery is
Speaker 2: finally solved and profound fresh grief as the reality of
Speaker 2: her brutal murder actually sets in.
Speaker 1: It's a lot process.
Speaker 2: Miriam, Evelyn's niece, speaks publicly about how Evelyn's memory was
Speaker 2: a constant, haunting presence in their family dynamics. Lewis Junior
Speaker 2: is rightfully hailed as a hero for his unintentional role
Speaker 2: in breaking.
Speaker 1: The case, and the family even officially names the unborn
Speaker 1: baby Emily Grace, granting humanity to a victim who never
Speaker 1: took a breath.
Speaker 2: That's a really beautiful touch.
Speaker 1: It is at this point in the narrative, you know,
Speaker 1: it feels like the story has reached its natural conclusion.
Speaker 2: You would hope.
Speaker 1: So the villain is caught, the victims have their names back,
Speaker 1: and the science prevailed. But the American legal system is
Speaker 1: rarely a straight line, and in this case it becomes
Speaker 1: a devastating labyrinth.
Speaker 2: It really does. This is the exact moment the narrative
Speaker 2: shifts from a triumph of modern forensic science to an
Speaker 2: agonizing exposure of legal voelnerabilities. So what happens, Well, Sierra
Speaker 2: is extradited to Pennsylvania and held without bail at the
Speaker 2: Carbon County Prison in jim Thorpe. He retains a defense
Speaker 2: attorney named Robert Madden.
Speaker 1: In April twenty twenty one, the preliminary hearing takes place
Speaker 1: before Judge Joseph Amonco and Madden immediately zeros in on
Speaker 1: the prosecution's glaring, massive weakness.
Speaker 2: The fatal flaw in the Commonwealth's case against Sierra was
Speaker 2: the absolute lack of direct physical evidence connecting him to
Speaker 2: the murder. There is really nothing nothing physical. Yes, they
Speaker 2: had successfully identified the victim, and yes, they had circumstantial
Speaker 2: evidence of his controlling behavior and his admission to writing
Speaker 2: the letter. But forensically, there was nothing, no weapon, no
Speaker 2: murder weapon was ever recovered. There were no fingerprints on
Speaker 2: the suitcases, there was no trace of Sierra's DNA on
Speaker 2: Evelyn's remains, or that shinil blanket.
Speaker 1: The prosecution's entire foundation basically rested on forty four year
Speaker 1: old memories from family members, the circumstantial reality that he
Speaker 1: was the last known person to see her alive, and
Speaker 1: an admission to writing a letter that had physically been
Speaker 1: destroyed decades ago.
Speaker 2: Madden aggressively challenged the arrest, characterizing it as a huge
Speaker 2: reach by the prosecution.
Speaker 1: A huge reach.
Speaker 2: He argued that the state had ignored other possibilities, even
Speaker 2: suggesting they should investigate known serial killers who were active
Speaker 2: in the Northeast during the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: Oh trying to cast reasonable doubt exactly.
Speaker 2: And while Judge Hamanko ruled there was just enough preliminary
Speaker 2: evidence to push the case toward a trial, the structural
Speaker 2: integrity of the prosecution's case was undeniably.
Speaker 1: Fragile, and it was about to face a much more
Speaker 1: serious stress test. In June twenty twenty two, Judge Mattika
Speaker 1: hears a motion to suppress Sierra's confession regarding the letter.
Speaker 2: This is a critical legal juncture.
Speaker 1: It is Madden argues that during that two hour interview
Speaker 1: in his Ozone Park living room, Sierra was never read
Speaker 1: his miranda rights.
Speaker 2: This introduces a highly nuanced debate regarding the Fifth Amendment.
Speaker 2: The constitutional protection against self incrimination mandates that police read
Speaker 2: a suspect their miranda rights. You know, the rights to
Speaker 2: remain silent, the right to an attorney.
Speaker 1: You hear it on every cop show, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: But this requirement is only triggered during a custodial interrogation, and.
Speaker 1: The prosecution leans heavily on that exact definition. They argue
Speaker 1: that Sierra was not in custody, he voluntarily allowed the
Speaker 1: detectives into his home wish he did, he wasn't placed
Speaker 1: in handcuffs, and he was theoretically free to ask them
Speaker 1: to leave or terminate the interview at any point.
Speaker 2: However, the defense counters by analyzing the actual reality of
Speaker 2: the situation, Sierra was clearly the primary, if not the exclusive,
Speaker 2: suspect in a homicide investigation, of course he was. When
Speaker 2: two homicide detectives show up at your residence, begin interrogating
Speaker 2: you about a forty four year old murder and methodically
Speaker 2: corner you into a confession, the psychological environment becomes incredibly coercive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't feel like you can just walk away.
Speaker 2: The legal question becomes, at what precise moment does a
Speaker 2: voluntary conversation morph into a custodial environment where this suspect
Speaker 2: reasonably believes they are not free to leave.
Speaker 1: It's a fine line.
Speaker 2: If the judge were to suppress those statements, stripping away
Speaker 2: his admission of writing the letter, the prosecution's already weak
Speaker 2: case would completely collapse.
Speaker 1: But while the court is grappling with this heavy constitutional
Speaker 1: debate over miranda rights, a much larger, completely devastating flaw
Speaker 1: reveals itself, a flaw that has absolutely nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the Fifth Amendment and everything to do with geography,
Speaker 1: jurisdiction jurisdiction.
Speaker 2: As the investigation intensified in preparation for trial, a stark
Speaker 2: reality emerged. Based on the timeline, the forensic evidence, and
Speaker 2: the logistics of the crime. It became overwhelmingly clear that
Speaker 2: Evelyn was murdered inside that Jersey City.
Speaker 1: Apartment in New Jersey.
Speaker 2: That was the site of her isolation, that was where
Speaker 2: she asked for the soup, and that was the location
Speaker 2: found suddenly emptied Carbon County, Pennsylvania was nothing more than
Speaker 2: a disposal site chosen after the fact.
Speaker 1: And this is the time twist that is just so
Speaker 1: hard to swallow because in the American legal system, the
Speaker 1: concept of territorial jurisdiction is absolute. It is a state
Speaker 1: only possesses the authority to prosecute a crime that actually
Speaker 1: occurred within its sovereign borders.
Speaker 2: This is a fundamental constitutional principle tied to the Sixth
Speaker 2: Amendments vicinage clause, which dictates that a trial must occur
Speaker 2: in the state and district where the crime was committed.
Speaker 1: It isn't a minor clerical error.
Speaker 2: No or a procedural loophole. It is the bedrock of
Speaker 2: state sovereignty. Because the elements of the murder, the strangulation,
Speaker 2: the fatal violence occurred in New Jersey, Pennsylvania had absolutely
Speaker 2: no legal authority to prosecute Luisierra for homicide, regardless of
Speaker 2: the fact that the bodies were discovered within their jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: The result is just catastrophic for the prosecution. In March
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, the Pennsylvania prosecutor, Michael Greek is legally
Speaker 1: forced to dismiss all charges against Louis Sierra.
Speaker 2: All of them.
Speaker 1: Every single charge is dropped. Sierra walks out of the
Speaker 1: courtroom a freeman.
Speaker 2: The jurisdiction of the case was officially transferred to authorities
Speaker 2: in New Jersey. However, building a prosecutable case nearly fifty
Speaker 2: years after the fact in an entirely different jurisdiction is
Speaker 2: a massive, uphill battle.
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you even start.
Speaker 2: It's tough. As of June twenty twenty six, our records
Speaker 2: indicate that New Jersey has still not formally charged the
Speaker 2: sixty seven year old Sierra with the murder.
Speaker 1: It is incredibly difficult to process how a literal line
Speaker 1: on a map just the border between two states can
Speaker 1: completely dismantle forty four years of tireless investigative work and
Speaker 1: a literal miracle of genetic science.
Speaker 2: Maddening.
Speaker 1: Think about the emotional whiplash for Lewis Collen Sr. He
Speaker 1: sat in a courtroom. He stared at the face of
Speaker 1: the man accused of slaughtering his teenage sister and his
Speaker 1: unborn niece. He prepared to testify, only.
Speaker 2: To watch the legal apparatus let that man walk free
Speaker 2: based on a jurisdictional mandate exact. It exposes a profound
Speaker 2: vulnerability in how the American justice system handles crimes that
Speaker 2: cross state lines.
Speaker 1: It really does.
Speaker 2: This is particularly problematic in historical cold cases. We're definitively
Speaker 2: proving the exact timeline and geographical location of the fatal
Speaker 2: act becomes exceedingly difficult half a century later. The law
Speaker 2: requires a precision that the passage of time often just erases.
Speaker 1: While the legal system may have stalled in a jurisdictional
Speaker 1: quagmire and Sierra may be sitting in Queen's right now,
Speaker 1: the legacy of Evelyn Colan's case extends far beyond the
Speaker 1: walls of that courtroom.
Speaker 2: It really does.
Speaker 1: This deep dive forces us to confront some very tangible takeaways,
Speaker 1: concepts that directly influence how we navigate the world today.
Speaker 2: The narrative of Evelyn's disappearance highlights four critical areas of awareness.
Speaker 2: The first revolves around the fragility of communication and the
Speaker 2: danger of assumptions. If a loved one suddenly cuts off
Speaker 2: all contact, especially through an unverified medium like a letter
Speaker 2: or a text message, we cannot accept it as absolute
Speaker 2: proof of life or intent.
Speaker 1: If the Colan family or the police hadn't accepted that
Speaker 1: Stanford letter as gospel back in nineteen seven, if a
Speaker 1: missing person report had been forced through the system, Evelyn
Speaker 1: might have been identified decades.
Speaker 2: Earlier, which changes everything.
Speaker 1: Today, you don't need evidence of foul play to report
Speaker 1: a missing person. Organizations like the National Center for Missing
Speaker 1: and Exploited Children are literally designed to bypass local apathy.
Speaker 2: The second area of impact is the democratizing power of
Speaker 2: genetic genealogy. For decades, solving crimes was entirely the domain
Speaker 2: of law enforcement. Now, everyday citizens hold the keys to
Speaker 2: unlocking these mysteries.
Speaker 1: Which is amazing to think about.
Speaker 2: By choosing to upload your commercial DNA results to open
Speaker 2: source platforms like ged match or family Tree DNA, you
Speaker 2: become part of this massive collaborative biological network. Lewis Colan
Speaker 2: Junior didn't have a badge, he didn't have specialized training,
Speaker 2: just a guy with a computer. He simply had a
Speaker 2: desire to understand his family history, and that single mundane
Speaker 2: action broke a forty four year old murder.
Speaker 1: Case, which leads directly into the third crucial lesson here,
Speaker 1: recognizing an act immediately on the signs of domestic violence
Speaker 1: and isolation.
Speaker 2: This is so important.
Speaker 1: Evelyn clearly communicated her fear to her mother she was
Speaker 1: being locked in an apartment. Today, the infrastructure to combat
Speaker 1: this is vastly superior to what existed in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 2: Much better. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The recognition of isolation as a precursor to lethal violence
Speaker 1: is exactly why resources like the National Domestic Violence Hotline
Speaker 1: exist and operate twenty four to seven.
Speaker 2: Finally, the case addresses the glaring systemic blind spots that
Speaker 2: have historically marginalized specific communities.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, minority and immigrant populations, particularly in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: often fell through the cracks of the justice system due
Speaker 2: to language barriers, cultural misunderstandings, and just systemic apathy.
Speaker 1: It's a sad reality today.
Speaker 2: Specialized organizations like Natasha's Justice Project or the DNA Dough
Speaker 2: Project exist specifically to correct these historical imbalances. They focus
Speaker 2: their resources on returning identities to the nameless victims found
Speaker 2: in marginalized communities.
Speaker 1: And the technological leap made in Evelyn case cannot be overstated.
Speaker 1: What authorm achieved with her degraded DNA totally revolutionized how
Speaker 1: cold case units approach unidentified remains.
Speaker 2: It's set a new standard.
Speaker 1: The methodology they utilized to give Beth Doe her name
Speaker 1: back is now the gold standard in forensic science, actively
Speaker 1: returning names to nameless victims across the entire country.
Speaker 2: As for Evelyn herself, her family is finally able to
Speaker 2: provide the dignity that was stripped from her in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six.
Speaker 1: That's the most important part.
Speaker 2: Her niece, Miriam Colan Velman launched a campaign, the Official
Speaker 2: BESTO Evelyn Colan Memorial Fund, with the goal of exhooming
Speaker 2: Evelyn's remains from that lonely, unmarked grave in Pennsylvania and
Speaker 2: bringing her home.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful.
Speaker 2: They want to lay her to rest in a place
Speaker 2: where her family can visit, beneath a headstone that proudly
Speaker 2: bears her real name.
Speaker 1: Which brings us full circle back to the beginning of
Speaker 1: this incredibly dark journey. We started with a young boy
Speaker 1: on the Frasen banks of the Lehigh River staring at
Speaker 1: broken suitcases, initiating forty four years of profound silence.
Speaker 2: The entirety of this case forces a profound reconsideration of
Speaker 2: what justice actually means in the real world it does.
Speaker 2: As a society, we are deeply conditioned to believe that
Speaker 2: justice is a highly structured, cinematic event. We expect it
Speaker 2: to look like a judge's gavel coming down, a jury
Speaker 2: delivering a guilty verdict, and the perpetrator being locked in
Speaker 2: a prison cell.
Speaker 1: We want that need ending.
Speaker 2: And objectively in a functional system. That is exactly what
Speaker 2: should have occurred here.
Speaker 1: But maybe you know, when a case is buried under
Speaker 1: a false identity for almost half a century, and when
Speaker 1: the legal system trips over its own jurisdictional borders, justice
Speaker 1: is forced to take a different shape.
Speaker 2: Maybe true justice in this Pacific instance was simply the
Speaker 2: moment Luis Sierra had his forty five year secret violently
Speaker 2: ripped out of the shadows, right in.
Speaker 1: His own living room, just confronting the truth.
Speaker 2: Maybe justice is a family finally possessing the truth and
Speaker 2: being able to carve the name Evelyn Colin into Stone,
Speaker 2: erasing the phantom of Bethdo from existence forever.
Speaker 1: It leaves you with a deeply haunting proposition to consider
Speaker 1: long after this deep dive ends. We rely on systems
Speaker 1: to tell us the truth, to keep us safe, and
Speaker 1: to find the lost. But if someone you loved vanished
Speaker 1: tomorrow and the system explicitly told you they were fine,
Speaker 1: you know, if decades passed, the silence stretched on, and
Speaker 1: the trail went completely cold, how long would you keep
Speaker 1: the porch late on.