Speaker 1: I want you to imagine, just for a second, that
Speaker 1: you are walking through the really, the rugged, incredibly remote
Speaker 1: wilderness of Montana.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. That is a serious landscape. Right.
Speaker 1: Like, picture the West Fork Ranger District. It's out in
Speaker 1: the Bitterroot National Forest. And honestly, the scale of this
Speaker 1: place is almost impossible to wrap your head around if
Speaker 1: you haven't physically been there.
Speaker 2: It really is. Yeah. I mean, we are talking about 1.6
Speaker 2: million acres. Yeah. Just vast land. Quiet terrain.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah. 1.6 million acres. The pine trees just seem
Speaker 1: to go on forever, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They create this dense canopy that basically filters out the sun.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful, but it's very isolating.
Speaker 1: Very isolating. So you are navigating the Flat Creek Trail.
Speaker 1: You're miles away from any major highway, surrounded by nothing
Speaker 1: but like the ambient sounds of nature. And then completely
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, you trip over a 19-year-old secret.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that jarring contrast, it just cannot be overstated. I mean,
Speaker 2: you were in this pristine, seemingly untouched ecosystem, and suddenly
Speaker 2: you were confronted with this stark reminder of human mortality.
Speaker 1: Just a mystery left right there in the dirt. So,
Speaker 1: today's deep dive is focusing on a very specific case
Speaker 1: from our sources. We are looking at the 2007 Bitterroot
Speaker 1: Forest John Doe.
Speaker 2: And this is such a fascinating case to dig into.
Speaker 1: It really is. It's a single, decades-old cold case. But
Speaker 1: it serves as this perfect lens to examine a massive
Speaker 1: collision that's happening right now in the investigative world.
Speaker 2: Right. Because we have this unforgiving reality of outdoor mysteries. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And they are slamming headfirst into cutting edge private DNA technology.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, perhaps the most surprising element of
Speaker 1: all this, the power of public crowdfunding actually stepping in
Speaker 1: to foot the bill.
Speaker 2: Which is just wild to think about.
Speaker 1: It's totally wild. For this deep dive, we're pulling directly
Speaker 1: from a really comprehensive publication. It was put out on
Speaker 1: June 1st, 2026 by Dan Miller.
Speaker 2: He's the director of customer service at Othram.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. Dan Miller at Othram. And his publication details
Speaker 1: this incredible collaborative effort between the Missoula County Sheriff's Office
Speaker 1: and Othram to finally identify these remains that were found
Speaker 1: way back in 2007.
Speaker 2: It completely dismantles the traditional narrative we have about, you know,
Speaker 2: How cold cases are solved.
Speaker 1: Right, because you might think you know how this works,
Speaker 1: but the landscape has completely shifted.
Speaker 2: Totally. The expectation is usually this linear progression, right? Like
Speaker 2: an investigator finds a physical clue, that clue points to
Speaker 2: a witness, and then the witness provides a name.
Speaker 1: A straight line.
Speaker 2: Exactly. But when someone vanishes into the sheer immensity of
Speaker 2: the American wilderness, that linear trail of breadcrumbs, It doesn't
Speaker 2: just go cold. I mean, it is completely obliterated by
Speaker 2: the elements.
Speaker 1: So to solve a case like that, it requires a
Speaker 1: complete paradigm shift, both in science and, well, economics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the money side of it is huge.
Speaker 1: So let's get into the physical reality of what actually
Speaker 1: happened on that trail before we even touch the high-tech solutions.
Speaker 2: Right, we have to understand the mystery before we explore
Speaker 2: the cure.
Speaker 1: Exactly. So the date was May 11, 2007. A group
Speaker 1: of hikers were out navigating the terrain of Ravalli County, Montana.
Speaker 2: And this is southwest of a small community called Connor, right?
Speaker 1: Yep, Connor, Montana. They were off a road in this
Speaker 1: extremely remote West Fork area, and that is where they
Speaker 1: discovered the skeletal remains.
Speaker 2: You know, the specific geography of that discovery, it changes
Speaker 2: the entire investigative approach. How so? Well, the remains were
Speaker 2: found near camping equipment. And that is a massive divergence
Speaker 2: from the typical ways unidentified remains are discovered in rural areas.
Speaker 1: Right, because usually, like, if someone is found off a
Speaker 1: rural road, there's a vehicle involved somewhere.
Speaker 2: Precisely, yeah. A vehicle is an anchor to the bureaucratic world.
Speaker 2: It has a license plate, a VIN stamped on the dashboard,
Speaker 2: a registration sitting in the glove box.
Speaker 1: It ties them to society.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Even an abandoned car links directly back to our
Speaker 2: modern infrastructure. But finding a skeletal structure just sitting next
Speaker 2: to a scattered campsite That implies a profound level of isolation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were completely separated from that infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Right. This person was out there attempting to exist in
Speaker 2: the elements, completely detached from all the systems that normally
Speaker 2: track our movements.
Speaker 1: It really makes me think about those hikers on that
Speaker 1: May afternoon. I mean, like walking through a museum of
Speaker 1: natural history, you know, taking in the untouched geology and
Speaker 1: the ancient forests.
Speaker 2: Oh, for sure.
Speaker 1: But then suddenly you stumble over an artifact of the
Speaker 1: modern world that just doesn't belong there. A piece of
Speaker 1: a human story that abruptly ended.
Speaker 2: And that abrupt end, it triggers a highly complex logistical
Speaker 2: response from the authorities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the jurisdictional stuff here is fascinating.
Speaker 2: It is. Because when a discovery like this happens in
Speaker 2: a national forest, you are instantly dealing with this tangled
Speaker 2: jurisdictional web. The land itself is federal, so it's overseen
Speaker 2: by the West Fork Ranger District.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And their personnel, they know the topography, the access roads,
Speaker 2: the seasonal trail conditions, but... A death investigation. That falls
Speaker 2: under the authority of the local county sheriff.
Speaker 1: So in this instance, that's the Revali County Sheriff's Office.
Speaker 2: Exactly. With Sheriff Chris Hoffman initially leading the charge and
Speaker 2: issuing the news releases.
Speaker 1: So they had to merge their operations immediately, right? Just
Speaker 1: to secure the scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It demands this immediate, seamless joint operation. You have
Speaker 2: federal forestry experts and local law enforcement trying to preserve
Speaker 2: a scene that nature has already, well, Severely compromised.
Speaker 1: No, because it's been out there for a while.
Speaker 2: Right. They have to meticulously document the placement of every
Speaker 2: single bone, every piece of fabric. And then they have
Speaker 2: to coordinate the physical transport of those remains out of
Speaker 2: this remote forest all the way to the state crime
Speaker 2: lab in Missoula.
Speaker 1: Which our source says they actually managed to do that
Speaker 1: very same evening.
Speaker 2: Which is incredibly impressive logistics for that terrain.
Speaker 1: Definitely. But, you know, there is a detail in the
Speaker 1: timeline that initially had me completely confused.
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 1: Well, the hikers found him on May 11, 2007. Now,
Speaker 1: if this person was out there living in a tent
Speaker 1: trying to camp, why did it take until May for
Speaker 1: someone to stumble across the site?
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
Speaker 1: I mean, May doesn't really sound like the dead of winter,
Speaker 1: but it also doesn't sound like peak summer hiking season,
Speaker 1: you know? Right.
Speaker 2: Well, forensic anthropologists and medical examiners, they look at the
Speaker 2: state of skeletal remains. They factor in things like insect
Speaker 2: activity or the lack of it and weather patterns just
Speaker 2: to establish a post-mortem interval. And they estimated this man
Speaker 2: had died several months prior to his discovery in May.
Speaker 1: Several months prior. So we are talking about late 2006
Speaker 1: or maybe very early 2007.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Which places his death squarely in the middle of
Speaker 2: a brutal Montana winter.
Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2: A winter in the Bitterroot National Forest is entirely unforgiving.
Speaker 2: We are talking about heavy snowfall. that measures in feet,
Speaker 2: not inches, sub-zero temperatures.
Speaker 1: Just totally impassable.
Speaker 2: Right. The roads and trails become completely impassable for the
Speaker 2: average person. So the reason it took until May for
Speaker 2: him to be found is that the environment itself entombed him.
Speaker 1: The snow basically buried the site.
Speaker 2: Yes. The freezing temperatures halted the typical decomposition process, and
Speaker 2: that heavy snowpack hid the site entirely. It wasn't until
Speaker 2: the seasonal spring thaw finally melted that snowpack that the
Speaker 2: area became accessible to those early season hikers.
Speaker 1: He was just frozen in time, basically waiting for the
Speaker 1: earth to tilt back toward the sun. That is a
Speaker 1: deeply haunting visual.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: And it brings us to the overwhelming hurdle the medical
Speaker 1: examiner in Missoula faced. Once they finally got those remains
Speaker 1: onto a stainless steel table in the crime lab, they
Speaker 1: had to start trying to reconstruct an identity from a
Speaker 1: body that nature had already reclaimed.
Speaker 2: And this is where the physical reality of the elements
Speaker 2: actively fights against the forensic process.
Speaker 1: Because they didn't have much to go on.
Speaker 2: No, the parameters they were able to establish were just
Speaker 2: tragically broad.
Speaker 1: Right. Like the demographic basics were limited to an estimation.
Speaker 1: They determined the victim was a white man. But the
Speaker 1: age range they provided, it was anywhere from 35 to
Speaker 1: 60 years old at the time of his death.
Speaker 2: Think about the biological markers used to determine age, though.
Speaker 2: In younger individuals, forensic anthropologists can look at epiphyseal union.
Speaker 1: Epiphyseal union.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's basically how the ends of our bones fuse
Speaker 2: to the shafts as we grow up. But in adults
Speaker 2: who are between 35 and 60, those bones are fully fused.
Speaker 2: So you are forced to look at degenerative changes instead.
Speaker 2: Wear and tear on the joints, changes in the pubic symphysis,
Speaker 2: dental wear. But when remains have been subjected to the
Speaker 2: extreme freeze-thaw cycle of a Montana winter... The bones themselves
Speaker 2: can weather, crack, and degrade.
Speaker 1: So it erases the wear and tear they'd normally look for.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It makes those subtle degenerative markers incredibly difficult to
Speaker 2: read with any precision. Hence, you get a massive 25-year
Speaker 2: age gap.
Speaker 1: 25 years is a huge window. And it wasn't just
Speaker 1: his age, right? His height was estimated to be between
Speaker 1: 5'5 and 5'11. That's a full 6-inch variance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and height estimation usually relies on measuring intact long bones,
Speaker 2: primarily the femur or the tibia. You run those measurements
Speaker 2: through mathematical regression formulas.
Speaker 1: But if they are broken or damaged.
Speaker 2: Right. If those long bones are fragmented, weathered, or if
Speaker 2: the articulation of the joints is completely lost to decomposition,
Speaker 2: you just lose the ability to give an exact number.
Speaker 1: You're just guessing at that point.
Speaker 2: Pretty much. You are left with a massive moment of error.
Speaker 2: I mean, a six inch variance is the difference between
Speaker 2: a relatively short man and an above average height man.
Speaker 1: It is the ultimate erasure of physical identity. Nature just
Speaker 1: wiped the slate clean. But nature didn't erase the synthetic
Speaker 1: materials he brought with him?
Speaker 2: No, it didn't.
Speaker 1: And this is the aspect of the case that is
Speaker 1: so hard to shake for me. We have this list
Speaker 1: of personal items recovered right there with the remains.
Speaker 2: The clothing tells a really specific story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's look at the list. A blue-black medium zip-up jacket.
Speaker 1: windbreaker-style pants with a black elastic waistband, and then a
Speaker 1: turquoise glacier's edge sleeping bag.
Speaker 2: It tells a story of acute vulnerability.
Speaker 1: How do you mean?
Speaker 2: Well, if we recall that he died in the dead
Speaker 2: of winter, a medium zip-up jacket and windbreaker pants, are
Speaker 2: categorically insufficient for survival in the Bitterroot Mountains. Those are
Speaker 2: light layers meant for like an auto breeze, not subzero exposure.
Speaker 2: It suggests someone who was either deeply unprepared for the
Speaker 2: environment they walked into or someone who found themselves trapped
Speaker 2: out there without the means to secure proper gear.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah. The turquoise sleeping bag is the detail I
Speaker 1: keep circling back to, though.
Speaker 2: It stands out.
Speaker 1: It really does. It's such a vivid, hyper-specific item in
Speaker 1: a case that is otherwise just a massive gray area.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like with a 25-year age gap, you don't have much
Speaker 1: to go on. But a bright turquoise sleeping bag.
Speaker 2: You'd expect someone to recognize it.
Speaker 1: Exactly. You would think a detail like that usually cracks
Speaker 1: a case wide open. You broadcast that on the evening news.
Speaker 1: And you expect a clerk at a sporting goods store
Speaker 1: or a friend or a family member to call in
Speaker 1: and say, hey, I know who owned that.
Speaker 2: Right. But the expectation of a witness coming forward assumes
Speaker 2: that the victim was actually tethered to a social network.
Speaker 1: Ah, I see.
Speaker 2: Physical clues in a vast transient space, they frequently lead
Speaker 2: to dead ends because the isolation of the forest often
Speaker 2: mirrors the social isolation of the individual.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And a turquoise sleeping bag is mass-produced. There are
Speaker 2: likely thousands of them in circulation. Furthermore, someone who perishes
Speaker 2: alone in a freezing forest camp may have been living
Speaker 2: a highly transient lifestyle. They may have been estranged from
Speaker 2: the very family members who would otherwise recognize their belongings
Speaker 2: on a local news broadcast.
Speaker 1: So the physical clues require a social connection to actually
Speaker 1: mean anything.
Speaker 2: Precisely.
Speaker 1: And without a witness to bridge that gap, a turquoise
Speaker 1: sleeping bag is just synthetic fabric in the dirt.
Speaker 2: And this strips the individual down to the barest, most
Speaker 2: dehumanizing level of bureaucracy. He really does. Because without a name,
Speaker 2: without a family member to claim him, his entire life,
Speaker 2: whatever choices led him to that mountain, is reduced to
Speaker 2: strings of database numbers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was entered into the National Missing and Unidentified
Speaker 1: Person System. We know that as NAMUS. He was entered
Speaker 1: as UP7458.
Speaker 2: Just a code.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the state crime lab assigned him the medical
Speaker 1: examiner case number 070511. Those numbers became his entire existence
Speaker 1: in the eyes of the system.
Speaker 2: A placeholder identity, basically. Just waiting for science to catch
Speaker 2: up to the mystery.
Speaker 1: And wait, he did. We are looking at a 19-year
Speaker 1: wait here. For nearly two decades, the physical evidence, the windbreakers,
Speaker 1: the sleeping bag, the scattered remains, they all just sat
Speaker 1: in an evidence locker.
Speaker 2: The trail hit an absolute wall.
Speaker 1: A brick wall. But the passage of those 19 years
Speaker 1: is exactly what allowed the technology to evolve into the
Speaker 1: savior of this case desperately needed.
Speaker 2: It's incredible. The stagnation of the physical evidence is a
Speaker 2: stark contrast to the aggressive acceleration of genomic science during
Speaker 2: those same 19 years.
Speaker 1: Right. So let's fast forward to 2026. The Missoula County
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Office is still trying to figure out who UP
Speaker 1: 7458 is. And they decide to partner with a private
Speaker 1: laboratory called Offram, which is based down in the woodlands, Texas.
Speaker 2: Othram has been doing some amazing work.
Speaker 1: They really have. Now, Othram was founded in 2018, so
Speaker 1: the specific technology they're utilizing literally did not even exist
Speaker 1: when this man was found frozen in the woods back
Speaker 1: in 2007.
Speaker 2: To really appreciate the leap in capability here, we have
Speaker 2: to look at what investigators were working with back in 2007.
Speaker 1: Okay, set the scene for us. What did they have?
Speaker 2: Well, law enforcement relied almost entirely on databases like CODIS.
Speaker 2: That's the Combined DNA Index System.
Speaker 1: Right, you hear about CODIS on TV all the time. Exactly.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Now, CODIS looks at short tandem repeats, or STRs.
Speaker 2: Think of STRs as these small, repeating chunks of DNA.
Speaker 2: The FBI requires a standard set of 20 core, loci,
Speaker 2: or specific locations on a chromosome to make a match.
Speaker 1: So it's basically checking 20 specific boxes to see if
Speaker 1: they line up with someone.
Speaker 2: Yes. But there are two massive flaws with STR testing
Speaker 2: when it comes to cold cases. First, it requires the
Speaker 2: unknown DNA to match a profile that is already in
Speaker 2: the criminal database.
Speaker 1: So if our John Doe never committed a felony, he
Speaker 1: isn't in CODIS at all.
Speaker 2: Exactly. He's invisible to the system. The second, and honestly
Speaker 2: more devastating flaw for this specific case, is that STR
Speaker 2: testing requires relatively intact strands of human DNA.
Speaker 1: Which our John Doe absolutely did not have. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was out in a Montana winter. And this is
Speaker 1: where Althrim steps in. Because their specialty is utilizing what
Speaker 1: they have trademarked as Forensic-grade genome sequencing. Our sources highlight
Speaker 1: that they focus specifically on extracting human DNA from trace
Speaker 1: quantities of degraded or contaminated materials.
Speaker 2: Degraded is the key word here. We really have to
Speaker 2: visualize what happened to this man's cells.
Speaker 1: Yeah, walk us through that biological process.
Speaker 2: Okay, so when a human body freezes in a Montana winter,
Speaker 2: the water inside the cells turns to ice.
Speaker 1: Makes sense.
Speaker 2: Ice crystals expand, and they become sharp. They physically puncture
Speaker 2: the cell membranes from the inside out.
Speaker 1: Oh, wow. I never thought about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's microscopic destruction. Then, when the spring thaw hits,
Speaker 2: those damaged, punctured cells are flooded with moisture. That accelerates
Speaker 2: bacterial growth from the forest soil.
Speaker 1: So the soil basically invades the cell.
Speaker 2: Exactly. The bacteria begin consuming the biological material, and their
Speaker 2: microbial DNA mixes with the human DNA.
Speaker 1: So by the time the crime lab gets to it,
Speaker 1: the human DNA is not only shattered into microscopic pieces...
Speaker 1: but it's also swimming in a sea of forest bacteria.
Speaker 2: It is a genetic disaster zone. Older CODIS technology looks
Speaker 2: at that sample and just fails because it cannot find
Speaker 2: those intact 20-core loci. The strands are too short. They're
Speaker 2: too fragmented.
Speaker 1: But Othram's tech is different.
Speaker 2: Very different. Forensic-grade genome sequencing doesn't look for 20 large chunks.
Speaker 2: It utilizes massive parallel sequencing to read single nucleotide polymorphisms,
Speaker 2: or polymorphisms. SNPs.
Speaker 1: SNPs.
Speaker 2: Got it. Yes. Instead of looking at just 20 locations,
Speaker 2: parallel sequencing can read hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of
Speaker 2: individual markers across the genome simultaneously.
Speaker 1: Millions.
Speaker 2: Millions. And it filters out the bacterial contamination algorithmically. It
Speaker 2: focuses only on the human fragments, no matter how ridiculously
Speaker 2: small they are.
Speaker 1: It sounds to me like trying to read a book
Speaker 1: that was left out in the rain for an entire winter.
Speaker 1: Like the pages are rotting away, the ink is bled
Speaker 1: into massive stains, and mold is growing on the spine.
Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy. Right.
Speaker 1: So a traditional reader, or the older CODIS technology, looks
Speaker 1: at that smeared, moldy mess and says, I can't read this.
Speaker 1: The words are gone.
Speaker 2: Because they're looking for whole sentences.
Speaker 1: Exactly. But Othram's sequencing technology acts like a hyper-advanced digital scanner.
Speaker 1: It doesn't need to see the whole word. It looks
Speaker 1: at the individual paper fibers. It maps the microscopic traces
Speaker 1: of pigment left behind by the ink, and it uses
Speaker 1: incredibly complex algorithms to cross-reference those microscopic fragments until it
Speaker 1: reconstructs the missing sentences, paragraph by paragraph, until you have
Speaker 1: the entire story back.
Speaker 2: The algorithm is the crucial part of that analogy. It
Speaker 2: is taking billions of data points, the fragmented ink in
Speaker 2: your example, and computationally stitching them back together into a
Speaker 2: comprehensive DNA profile.
Speaker 1: It's basically digital magic.
Speaker 2: It feels like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But as miraculous as that reconstructed profile is, a string
Speaker 2: of genetic code still doesn't give you a name.
Speaker 1: Right. It's just raw data at that point.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It just gives you the raw data needed for
Speaker 2: the next phase.
Speaker 1: Which is where the biological science gets handed off to
Speaker 1: the archival science.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Because Othman has an in-house genealogy team that takes this
Speaker 1: newly built profile and uses it to generate investigative leads.
Speaker 2: This is forensic genetic genealogy in action. The lab scientists
Speaker 2: hand the completed genetic profile over to the genealogists.
Speaker 1: And what do they do with it?
Speaker 2: Well, they upload that data into specialized law enforcement approved
Speaker 2: genetic databases.
Speaker 1: But they aren't looking for the John Doe himself in
Speaker 1: these databases, right? Because he wouldn't have tested himself.
Speaker 2: No, no. They are looking for shared DNA. They measure
Speaker 2: the genetic distance in units called centimorgans.
Speaker 1: Centimorgans?
Speaker 2: Yes. The higher the number of shared centimorgans, the closer
Speaker 2: the relationship between two people. So they might find a
Speaker 2: third cousin or a great aunt who willingly uploaded their
Speaker 2: DNA after taking one of those consumer ancestry tests.
Speaker 1: Right, like the ones you get for the holidays.
Speaker 2: Exactly. And once the genealogist identifies those distant relatives, the
Speaker 2: biological work stops and the grueling historical work begins.
Speaker 1: So they have to reverse engineer a family tree.
Speaker 2: Exactly. They build out massive interlocking family trees starting from
Speaker 2: those distant cousins. They comb through digital archives, census records
Speaker 2: from the 1940s, Birth certificates, marriage licenses, obituaries.
Speaker 1: That sounds incredibly tedious.
Speaker 2: It is hundreds of hours of work. They build these
Speaker 2: branches forward and backward through time until they find the intersection.
Speaker 2: They look for a specific branch of the family where
Speaker 2: someone simply vanished.
Speaker 1: A missing piece of the puzzle.
Speaker 2: Right. A male who stopped renewing his driver's license, who
Speaker 2: stopped showing up in public records, and who matches the
Speaker 2: estimated age and physical description of a man found in
Speaker 2: the Bitterroot Forest....
Speaker 1: I really want you to consider the personal implication of
Speaker 1: this workflow. Think about your own public ancestral data. Like
Speaker 1: if you have ever taken a DNA test to find
Speaker 1: out where your great grandparents immigrated from and opted into
Speaker 1: these public databases, your genetic code might be the anchor point.
Speaker 2: It absolutely could be.
Speaker 1: A distant cousin you don't even know exists could be
Speaker 1: the key to giving UP7458 his identity back. simply because
Speaker 1: you share a fraction of a percent of that reconstructed sequence.
Speaker 2: It bridges the utter isolation of a death in the
Speaker 2: wilderness with the vast, inescapable interconnectedness of human genetics.
Speaker 1: We are all walking puzzle pieces for one another.
Speaker 2: We really are. But this profound marriage of laboratory science
Speaker 2: and historical research... introduces a very modern, very grounded obstacle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the obstacle of money. Because none of this is free.
Speaker 2: Not at all.
Speaker 1: The reality is that parallel genome sequencing and hundreds of
Speaker 1: hours of professional genealogy research are extraordinarily expensive. We have
Speaker 1: to pivot from the miraculous science of Othram to the
Speaker 1: economics of how these cold cases are actually being funded
Speaker 1: in the modern era.
Speaker 2: The financial logistics of law enforcement are often the most
Speaker 2: overlooked aspect of cold case investigations.
Speaker 1: People just assume the police have the money to solve crimes.
Speaker 2: Right. But a sheriff's office operates on a strictly constrained
Speaker 2: municipal or county budget. Every single fiscal year, they have
Speaker 2: to allocate funds for active patrols, new cruisers, tactical equipment,
Speaker 2: and immediate active homicide investigations.
Speaker 1: So a box of unidentified bones from 19 years ago
Speaker 1: is in Incredibly hard to justify at a county budget
Speaker 1: meeting when you have active crime happening in your jurisdiction today.
Speaker 2: It is the harsh reality of triage. If the county
Speaker 2: doesn't have thousands of dollars of discretionary funding to spend
Speaker 2: on experimental genome sequencing, the case remains on the shelf.
Speaker 1: It just sits there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: For decades, the available budget dictated who received justice and
Speaker 2: who remained anonymous.
Speaker 1: Which brings us to a part of this investigation from
Speaker 1: our sources that is completely reshaping that dynamic. The Missoula
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Office didn't just partner with Othram for their science.
Speaker 1: They utilized a crowdfunding platform called DNA Solves to bypass
Speaker 1: their own budget limitations.
Speaker 2: This is a huge shift in how we handle these cases.
Speaker 1: It really is. And as of June 2026, the Revali
Speaker 1: County case is officially listed as funding complete.
Speaker 2: It represents a structural bypass of local government funding. They
Speaker 2: are taking the financial burden directly to the public.
Speaker 1: The mechanics of the DNA Solves platform are fascinating. Anyone
Speaker 1: can go to the website and choose to contribute toward
Speaker 1: the costs of lab supplies and research tools. You can
Speaker 1: make a one-time contribution of $ 25, $ 50, $ 100, or a
Speaker 1: custom amount.
Speaker 2: And there's a monthly option, too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can check a box to become a monthly contributor.
Speaker 1: It functions almost like a subscription service for cold case justice.
Speaker 1: And you get to see exactly which investigations your money
Speaker 1: is activating.
Speaker 2: It is an incredible democratization of forensic science. Law enforcement
Speaker 2: agencies are essentially saying, We possess the evidence and private
Speaker 2: labs possess the capability, but the bridge between the two
Speaker 2: is entirely financial. Will the community step in to build
Speaker 2: that bridge?
Speaker 1: I have to admit, when I first read about this,
Speaker 1: my immediate reaction was a mix of awe and, well,
Speaker 1: deep skepticism.
Speaker 2: Skepticism?
Speaker 1: Why? Wait, we are essentially running GoFundMe campaigns for homicide
Speaker 1: and missing persons investigations. Like, It is undeniably empowering that
Speaker 1: a citizen can ship in 25 bucks and directly contribute
Speaker 1: to identifying a John Doe.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: But doesn't this run the risk of turning criminal justice
Speaker 1: into a popularity contest? If a case sounds mysterious or sensational,
Speaker 1: it gets fully funded in a week. But if a
Speaker 1: John Doe has a less intriguing backstory, does he just
Speaker 1: sit on a shelf forever because his crowdfund couldn't go
Speaker 1: viral on social media?
Speaker 2: That is the immediate glaring concern with any crowdfunding model
Speaker 2: applied to the justice system.
Speaker 1: It feels like it could be really unfair.
Speaker 2: It threatens to amplify the disparities that already exist in
Speaker 2: media coverage of missing persons. We already know certain cases
Speaker 2: get way more airtime than others.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: However, if we examine the specific architecture of the DNA
Speaker 2: Solves platform, we see a systemic safety net designed specifically
Speaker 2: to neutralize that popularity contest dynamic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is hidden in the details of the monthly
Speaker 1: contribution option.
Speaker 2: Correct. The platform explicitly guarantees that monthly contributions will be
Speaker 2: evenly divided between all unfunded cases.
Speaker 1: That evenly divided clause is the crucial mechanism here.
Speaker 2: It acts as a rising tide that lifts all ships.
Speaker 2: If you subscribe to the platform, your $ 25 isn't diverted
Speaker 2: solely to the case that just secured a prominent true
Speaker 2: crime spotlight. Your money is algorithmically distributed across the entire
Speaker 2: database of unfunded profiles. This ensures that the quiet cases...
Speaker 2: The individuals found in mundane circumstances who never generate a
Speaker 2: headline are steadily pushed toward their funding goals by the
Speaker 2: collective pool of monthly subscribers.
Speaker 1: It is a financial equalizer. And we get a very
Speaker 1: clear picture of what that equalized financial goal is by
Speaker 1: looking at the broader ecosystem of the platform. Because our
Speaker 1: sources show three similar unfunded cases highlighted alongside our Montana
Speaker 1: John Doe. And they all share the exact same financial target.
Speaker 2: Which is $ 7, 500.
Speaker 1: Right, $ 7, 500.
Speaker 2: That $ 7, 500 figure establishes the baseline cost for this specific
Speaker 2: tier of forensic intervention. It is the standardized threshold required
Speaker 2: to cover the extraction, the massive parallel sequencing, the algorithmic reconstruction,
Speaker 2: and the subsequent hours of genealogical database research.
Speaker 1: Let's actually break down those three similar cases because they
Speaker 1: perfectly illustrate how resilient the $ 7, 500 process is against completely
Speaker 1: disparate environmental factors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the environments are wildly different.
Speaker 1: First, we have the 2023 Lake Bellevue John Doe. Investigators
Speaker 1: in Waterbury, Connecticut, are attempting to identify a man whose
Speaker 1: remains were discovered floating in a lake. They have currently
Speaker 1: crowdfunded just under $ 3, 900 of their goal.
Speaker 2: The environmental variables there are vastly different from a frozen
Speaker 2: Montana forest.
Speaker 1: I mean, water has to be terrible for DNA.
Speaker 2: Oh, water submersion is one of the most destructive forces
Speaker 2: on biological evidence. It accelerates a process called hydrolysis.
Speaker 1: Hydrolysis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it actively breaks the chemical bonds of DNA molecules. Furthermore,
Speaker 2: the bacteria present in a freshwater lake will rapidly consume
Speaker 2: soft tissue and penetrate the porous structure of the bone itself.
Speaker 1: So it basically washes away the evidence from the inside out?
Speaker 2: Exactly. It washes away the very cells the author needs
Speaker 2: to sequence. Wow.
Speaker 1: Okay, then you look at the total opposite end of
Speaker 1: the climatological spectrum. We have the 2024 Pima County John Doe.
Speaker 1: In Green Valley, Arizona, investigators are seeking funding to identify
Speaker 1: remains that were discovered out in the remote desert mountains.
Speaker 1: And they sit at roughly $ 3, 340 raised.
Speaker 2: Extreme heat presents a completely separate avenue of biological destruction.
Speaker 1: Right, because it's baking instead of freezing or soaking.
Speaker 2: Exactly. In a desert environment, the remains are subjected to
Speaker 2: intense UV radiation. And UV acts like a microscopic laser,
Speaker 2: severing the DNA strands.
Speaker 1: Just chopping them up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You also have rapid extreme desiccation. The moisture is
Speaker 2: aggressively pulled from the cellular structure, basically baking the genetic
Speaker 2: material and rendering traditional SDR testing utterly useless.
Speaker 1: It just destroys the integrity of the sample.
Speaker 2: Completely.
Speaker 1: And finally, we have a scenario devoid of extreme weather entirely.
Speaker 1: The 2022 Fairfield County John Doe in Norwalk, Connecticut. This
Speaker 1: involves remains found inside a house. They're the closest to
Speaker 1: the finish line, sitting at nearly $ 6, 300 raised.
Speaker 2: An indoor environment shields the remains from UV radiation and
Speaker 2: freezing temperatures, sure, but it introduces its own problems.
Speaker 1: Like what?
Speaker 2: Well, you have heavy insect activity, localized microbial environments, and
Speaker 2: the long-term slow degradation of natural mummification or decay in
Speaker 2: a temperature-controlled but stagnant setting.
Speaker 1: So we have four John Does in total here. One
Speaker 1: frozen in a forest. one submerged in a lake, one
Speaker 1: baked in a desert, and one decaying inside a house.
Speaker 1: The biological locks have all been mangled in completely different ways.
Speaker 2: Radically different ways.
Speaker 1: Yet the DNA solves methodology that $ 7, 500 goal to unleash
Speaker 1: forensic-grade genome sequencing remains the universal key to bypassing every
Speaker 1: single one of those environmental factors.
Speaker 2: It positions the technology not as a situational tool, but
Speaker 2: as a foundational equalizer in forensic science.
Speaker 1: It levels the playing field.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Regardless of how violently nature attempted to erase the individual,
Speaker 2: the microscopic architecture of their DNA remains readable to the algorithm.
Speaker 1: It is a stunning realization. We are witnessing the systematic
Speaker 1: dismantling of geographical and environmental barriers through this unprecedented synthesis
Speaker 1: of private lab technology and public generosity.
Speaker 2: It forces a total reevaluation of what constitutes a dead
Speaker 2: end in an investigation.
Speaker 1: It really does. I mean, we started this exploration deep
Speaker 1: in the Bitterroot Forest, A man died alone in the
Speaker 1: freezing temperatures of a Montana winter with nothing but a
Speaker 1: turquoise sleeping bag that could offer no clues to his identity.
Speaker 2: A total mystery.
Speaker 1: For 19 years, he was trapped in the system as
Speaker 1: Yuki 7458. His biological reality was just too shattered for
Speaker 1: the science of 2007 to comprehend.
Speaker 2: He was a victim of terrible timing, both in his
Speaker 2: death and in the technological limitations of the era he
Speaker 2: was found in.
Speaker 1: But the science accelerated. The parallel sequencing algorithms learned how
Speaker 1: to read the shattered fragments of degraded DNA. The genealogists
Speaker 1: built the interconnected maps of our public genetic data. And
Speaker 1: most importantly, the public stepped up, utilizing micro donations to
Speaker 1: fund the $ 7, 500 required to actually activate that science.
Speaker 2: It's a beautiful collaborative effort.
Speaker 1: Today, in 2026, his genetic code is being reconstructed and
Speaker 1: his family tree is being climbed.
Speaker 2: The silence of that 19-year gap is finally being filled
Speaker 2: by the hum of sequencers and the methodical search for
Speaker 2: a missing branch on a family tree.
Speaker 1: The ultimate takeaway here is that justice and closure are
Speaker 1: no longer confined behind the yellow tape of a crime
Speaker 1: scene or buried in the budgetary constraints of a municipal ledger.
Speaker 2: No, the barriers have come down.
Speaker 1: The public is now fundamentally structurally integrated into the resolution.
Speaker 1: of cold cases. We are participating with our DNA and
Speaker 1: ancestral databases, and we are participating with our wallets on
Speaker 1: crowdfunding platforms, supplying the very tools needed to pull these
Speaker 1: identities back from the void.
Speaker 2: It is a radical democratization of identification. It's granting society
Speaker 2: a direct... actionable mechanism to actually care for its unknown dead.
Speaker 1: Which leaves a lingering almost unsettling thought for you to consider.
Speaker 1: As this sequencing technology continues to sharpen becoming capable of
Speaker 1: reading ever smaller more damaged fragments of genetic material.
Speaker 2: And it will keep getting sharper.
Speaker 1: Right. And as the global databases of our interconnected DNA
Speaker 1: continue to swell with millions of new profiles we are
Speaker 1: rapidly approaching a monumental threshold.
Speaker 2: We're looking at a philosophical and biological frontier that humanity
Speaker 2: has never faced before.
Speaker 1: If the barriers of extreme degradation can be bypassed by
Speaker 1: an algorithm, and the barrier of cost can be bypassed
Speaker 1: by a crowd of people chipping in 25 bucks, will
Speaker 1: it soon become biologically impossible to remain anonymous after death?
Speaker 2: That is the ultimate question this technology poses.
Speaker 1: Is the very concept of the John Doe on the
Speaker 1: verge of complete extinction?
Speaker 2: The era of the permanent unknown may simply be coming
Speaker 2: to a close.
Speaker 1: It fundamentally changes how we view those murky waters of
Speaker 1: cold cases. We always assumed the breadcrumbs left in the
Speaker 1: wilderness were blown away by the wind, but perhaps they
Speaker 1: were always there, frozen in the soil, waiting for us
Speaker 1: to build a lens powerful enough to see them and
Speaker 1: a community willing enough to fund the search. Thank you
Speaker 1: for walking through this incredible forensic landscape with us today.
Speaker 1: Keep asking questions and keep looking closely at the mysteries
Speaker 1: left behind.