How Police Used Genetics in Idaho Murders Case, and Solving Crimes with Genealogy, with CeCe Moore | Ep. 470
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 35 minutes
Words per Minute
176.15508
Summary
Brian Kohlberger has been charged with the murder of four college students in Idaho, and DNA evidence points toward him as the most likely suspect. Could DNA evidence be the key to solving this case? And who else but genetic genealogist Cece Moore could be a suspect?
Transcript
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We like to walk that fine line between techno-thriller
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Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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Idaho murder suspect Brian Kohlberger in court just a short time ago
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waiving his right to a speedy preliminary hearing.
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He will get a preliminary hearing, but it will not be ASAP.
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This will be the point at which prosecutors can present the evidence they have
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trying to convince the court that this case should go forward.
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They will almost certainly get it, and we will go forward with a trial.
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We know that DNA played a role in helping to identify Kohlberger as the accused suspect in connection
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with the murder of these four Idaho college students on November 13th.
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They were murdered, according to the affidavit, between 4 a.m. and 4.20 a.m.
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It was basically a 16-minute window of time in which someone went into their home,
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went up to the third floor where they murdered two girls,
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and left the other two women reported to be sleeping in that house's roommates alone.
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One we now know from the affidavit says she she did see him.
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saying he had a surgical mask on, the kind we wear during COVID,
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that she remembered he had bushy eyebrows, medium build.
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And that was basically what she remembered about him, dressed in black.
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There is reporting that something called investigative genetic genealogy
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may have played a part in actually nabbing this guy.
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And today we are thrilled to have one of the world's top experts in that field join us for the show.
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What started as a hobby has literally changed lives.
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and getting violent criminals off the streets by the hundred.
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Often helping solve crimes that have baffled police for decades.
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And we will discuss some of them and how this method of crime fighting
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has become absolutely integral to putting criminals behind bars.
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CeCe Moore says there will be no more serial killers because of this.
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she had just started working on criminal cases.
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At the time, six cases she worked on had led to arrests.
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Today, that number has ballooned over 250 solves.
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About 200 of those have identified violent criminals.
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The rest involve unidentified Jane and John Doe's,
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Sometimes they find bodies, including young, young victims,
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teenagers who have gone missing, who are on milk cartons and so on.
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Well, CeCe Moore is helping put some names out there in connection with these victims
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never mind spotting the actual perpetrators of the crimes.
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CeCe Moore is a genetic genealogist and founder of DNA Detectives.
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She is also chief genetic genealogist at Parabon NanoLabs,
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the incredible lab that helps solve these crimes.
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It's been going on five years now since I first interviewed you.
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I mean, you had just joined Parabon, I think, for three months
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at that point when I interviewed you in May of 2018.
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You know, I'd been a genetic genealogist solving mysteries for many years by that point,
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but I had just started working with law enforcement.
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And so let's just give the audience, I love this piece of your story,
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Explain how you got into this and sort of help discover this.
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Well, I had always loved genetics and genealogy, two separate things.
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And I was thrilled when I found out in the year, about a little after 2000,
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that a company called Family Tree DNA was offering DNA tests for people who wanted to
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use it to learn more about their family history.
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And so I started reading about what they were doing.
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And at the time, I didn't have a lot of money to test, so I didn't start testing immediately.
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I just kept up with the brand new field and what people were learning about it.
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And I was building my own family tree using paper records, the paper trail, we call it,
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All of us who are interested in genetic genealogy started by building our own tree.
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That wasn't something I had done when I was really young.
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I was extremely busy with all sorts of different pursuits.
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It was something that I did when my niece, my oldest niece, was about to be married.
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And I was trying to think of what would be an interesting gift, a unique gift.
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And the combination of two things that I was really passionate about was so fascinating to me.
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And so that was really the beginning of my involvement in genealogy and then genetic genealogy.
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But very early on when I became involved in this, I was aware that there was a huge amount of potential.
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When we first started with genetic genealogy, we were only using more limited type of testing.
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The Y chromosome testing, which traces your father's father's father's father's line, and mitochondrial DNA testing, which traces your mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's line.
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And a few of us started asking, could we use autosomal DNA?
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So autosomal DNA is the type you inherit from both.
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So when you were just doing those two types, tracing the Y and tracing the X, how were you doing?
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Before we get to the more advanced, what were you doing?
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What kind of crime fighting or examination were you doing with those?
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So it was all about family history at that point.
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Women had to test their father for the Y chromosome to learn about their father's line, or you could test a brother or a cousin.
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I tested my mom's first cousin so I could look at her direct paternal line, my maternal grandfather's line, tested my dad.
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When you say that, forgive me for interrupting, I just want to make sure everybody understands.
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When you say test them, like I'm going to have my brother tested for his Y chromosome, what does that mean?
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What do they do, like a cheek swab or how do they test it?
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Yeah, it was a cheek swab and you have to convince one of your relatives to do it.
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And they think you were crazy, of course, back then, because no one had ever even heard of this type of testing at that point.
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So mitochondrial DNA is your mother's, mother's, mother's, mother's line.
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And both of these types of DNA change really slowly.
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You're looking at the origins of your direct paternal line and your direct maternal line.
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But you're not examining the inner parts of your family tree.
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And so autosomal DNA is a different type of DNA.
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Again, before we get to that, let me just ask you a couple more questions before we're still in the infancy stage.
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So you mail it in to some company, the cheek swab, and then when you get back, you know, generations back on the Y chromosome, the Y line on your dad's side, what are they saying to you?
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Your great, great, great, great grandpa was this guy?
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What comes back is a list of men with the Y chromosome that would have similar or identical Y chromosome signatures.
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Now, because in many societies, surnames are passed down from father to son, father to son, just like the Y chromosome, you often will see surname continuity.
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So many of us started these volunteer surname projects.
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But how do they know, like, let's say, you know, my dad, my dad's last name was Kelly, and so was his dad and so on.
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So, but how do they know whether, you know, my great, great grandfather is linked to me because my great, great grandfather wasn't putting DNA into anything and sending in a cheek swab.
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So in my case, I tested my dad's brother to make sure they have the same Y chromosome, same father.
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I tested a second cousin to make sure his Y chromosome was the same.
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And I finally tested a fifth cousin to confirm that my dad's great, great, great, great grandfather was the person that the paper records tell us it was.
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So I was following his surname, my surname, Moore, back generation, you know, generation, generation.
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So keep going back in that tree, confirming my grandfather is the correct person.
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They don't have Ed Kelly in the system, you know, that does this testing because he never did any DNA testing.
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So what would my thing come back saying, Ed Kelly was your father?
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I realize to figure out family tree, but like what how would they know who on earth I'm related to just based on my brother's DNA?
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How would they be able to link it to somebody who wasn't in their system?
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So you would get a list of people who, say, shared your brother's Y chromosome or it was very similar to his Y chromosome.
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And probably a lot of them would have the surname Kelly.
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Now, that is only if there was no break in your direct paternal line, meaning no adoption, misattributed paternity, that type of thing.
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But if there was an adoption or a break in that line, maybe you'd get a bunch of Smiths, right?
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Then you say, OK, why is my brother or father's Y chromosome connecting to Smiths instead of Kelly's?
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And so it's just a way of confirming or learning more about that direct paternal line.
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And like, for instance, in my family, there was this argument whether our Moors were from Germany or Ireland.
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So that was one of my interests, was trying to prove which it was.
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Is it an Irish origin Y chromosome or a German origin Y chromosome?
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And so when we were first using genetic genealogy, it was looking at this very deep ancestry.
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It wasn't looking at anywhere near present day.
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So did you get back something that said like more, more, more, more, more, more, more, you know, thousands of Moors?
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Like I would, Kelly, of course, is very common.
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And I can't imagine I'd get back hundreds of thousands.
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I mean, it would be so many that it would be it would feel useless.
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There are different origins for both of our surnames, Moore and Kelly, because they're so common.
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And so you would only match those Kellys or Moors, in my case, that have the same origin.
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You know, Moore is from all over the world, basically.
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Now, Kelly, you're probably looking at Ireland.
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And so you might get lots of Irish people, not necessarily with the last name Kelly, because the Y chromosome goes back so far.
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You might connect before they even adopted the surnames.
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But you're only going to match that group, not all the other Kellys in the world.
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And my dad's Moore line was actually really unique.
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When I first joined the Moore surname project, he didn't match any of the Moors.
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And there were already quite a few people in it, even in the early days.
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And so it will tell you which group of those Moors, which group of those Kellys your line fits into.
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And you wouldn't have thousands of matches, typically.
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I mean, when I started, you had almost no matches.
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And so that's based on so they would they're looking at Moors that are roaming the Earth right now who have submitted DNA to try to give you as much info as they can.
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And they can see that your dad, your dad Moore, has similar DNA to these other Moors who have also participated here and given a cheek swab.
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And we can glean something about their ancestors just to get you started.
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So much of it is building trees, building your own tree, building other people's tree, trying to find where they converge.
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How far back can you find that common ancestor in the tree?
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And so it's not one of these things where it's done for you.
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OK, there's a man in Michigan who shares my dad's Y chromosome.
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There's a man in Germany who shares my dad's Y chromosome.
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So these are modern day men who have also sent in their their DNA.
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Somehow there's a relation between this guy and my dad and maybe that this guy and me.
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And this is where your family tree building comes in.
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And so let's go to that because that's like an investigative piece.
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That is like, you know, newspaper articles, oh, bits.
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I remember we talked about this on NBC, but it's like anything you can get your hands on to tell you the story about that guy.
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And then you build it out around him like a tree, like just as far like an actual tree, like what branch goes here and what branch goes there.
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So when we were working with Y chromosome, we would only build the father's father's father's father's father's father's father.
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What you're talking about now is what we're doing today with a totally different type of DNA.
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Now, that's the autosomal DNA that you're you're trying to mention.
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OK, so you used to just do sort of this investigative work and trying to figure out the dad vertically, the mom.
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And now, OK, now take it to where you wanted to take it with what how it's changed.
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And we started thousands of surname projects doing that.
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But for those of us that were hungry for more, we really wanted to be able to explore those ancestors in the middle of our tree, not just those lines.
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And we started asking some of the scientists, could we use a type of DNA called autosomal DNA, which is auto like the car zomal.
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And that type of DNA, even women inherit that from their fathers.
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So we wouldn't have to test a brother or father or cousin.
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We could test our own DNA to learn about our father's side.
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You get on average 25 percent from each of your grandparents, about 12 and a half percent from each of your great grandparents.
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But scientists told us back before 2009 that it couldn't be done, that you could not use autosomal DNA for genealogy because it recombines so quickly.
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We were used to using very static type of DNA, type of DNA that mutated very slowly.
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But now asking about autosomal DNA, the traditional belief at that time was that it changes too quickly and therefore you wouldn't be able to use it in genealogy.
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So a very groundbreaking company called 23andMe introduced an autosomal based test for health purposes.
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I think most of us have heard of 23andMe now, but back then it was brand new.
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And just as an FYI, the woman who started that and runs it still, I think, is Anne Wojcicki, who's the sister of Susan Wojcicki.
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And the sister of Susan, who runs YouTube, and there's another gunner of a sister in that family, and the mother was a gunner.
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And Anne used to be married to one of the Google founders, Sergey Brin, I think.
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In any event, she, on her own, decided to start this company, very interesting, called 23andMe, which most people now have heard of.
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And correct me if I'm wrong, Cece, but I thought it started off as like a health website.
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People who wanted to know, am I going to get Alzheimer's or what am I prone to would use 23andMe to figure out, based on your genetics, what you're necessarily guaranteed to get, but what you're prone to get.
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And now it's just branched out well beyond that.
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So Anne wanted to democratize our access to our own genetic information, which her purpose was different.
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She had worked on Wall Street in that sector and was discouraged about profit-making on our health and wanted to give people the power to be able to work with their own genetic information and learn about their own health and take charge of that.
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And so her goal was very different than mine and my field, but we saw what she was doing and said, well, wait a minute, can we test our own autosomal DNA at her company and see if we can use it for genealogy?
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And so that was really early adopters, people that had been engaged in genetic genealogy with these other types of testing and wanted more.
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We just wanted to see if we could learn even more.
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So you were asking 23andMe if they would help you out in that goal?
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We just had to buy what was a very expensive test back then.
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This is saliva collection instead of a cheek swab and mail it in.
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You could share your information and you could check and see if you shared any DNA with someone.
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So we started looking for shared segments, so long identical segments of DNA, those ATCs and Gs lining up in a row, because if you had that, it meant you likely had a common ancestor somewhere in your family tree.
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And it opened up the inner branches for exploration.
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Now, we didn't know if it would work at first, but at the same time, they had a very forward-thinking scientist named Mike McPherson at 23andMe who created a beta test of a tool called Relative Finder.
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And there they compared everyone in their database against each other to see if they could find those long segments of identical DNA.
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So that's it's really interesting because, you know, some people find 23andMe and Session.com controversial.
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They're worried that the government's going to hold on to your DNA and all that stuff, whatever.
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But they don't get enough credit for being sort of seedlings for crime fighting in the way you're talking about now.
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It's just that their innovation should be credited for helping give birth to this new lane of DNA exploration, which is putting tons of criminals in jail.
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I don't think they want credit for it, but they certainly do deserve some credit for it.
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You know, I went to them very early on, just shortly after that time that I'm discussing now, and asked if they would be willing to accept crime scene DNA into their database.
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And they schooled me very quickly and sent me to her general counsel, Ashley Gold, at the time.
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And we had about a three hour long conversation about why that wasn't something that they wanted to do, why that wasn't part of their business plan.
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And so, you know, people are paranoid about this.
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People they know, like people it's for all sorts of reasons.
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It's not like everybody's a criminal or worried that their brother's a criminal, but there are some of those.
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But it's also just distrust of government and just they're not government 23, but it's just like distrust of having your information out there in the 21st century and where it could go.
00:21:21.980
So I can see why they don't really want to be the assistant on this.
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And we should just make clear now we'll get to it later.
00:21:28.120
But there it's a different database that you use for your analysis and your crime fighting.
00:21:36.840
Though I will say some of my favorite stories on NBC were the 23andMe stories or the Ancestry.com stories where people because it's well beyond looking into your health history.
00:21:45.960
Now, it is finding long lost relatives and like the identical twins, you know, that those are some of my favorite stories.
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You think of going to 23andMe, you get your results back and it says you have an identical twin.
00:22:00.460
And we did some reunion shows of some of these women.
00:22:08.080
Yeah, I mean, it's just an amazing tool for any type of family mystery, missing.
00:22:18.780
But at that beginning, it was very clear that we would never fulfill that potential unless we got lots of people to take the test, which is obviously one of the reasons they didn't want to involve law enforcement, especially at that early time.
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Now, coming from media and marketing, I knew that the only way that we were going to be able to build these databases to where we could actually solve mysteries was by sharing positive DNA testing stories.
00:22:48.200
And so I started working with 23andMe and on my own independently to promote positive DNA testing stories.
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So if someone made an amazing discovery or even an upsetting discovery that led to, you know, a more positive outcome, these were things that we were I was starting to pitch to the media on my own.
00:23:08.860
But 23andMe was also getting inquiries and they would send them my way.
00:23:13.320
A lot of times we would have meetings with, for instance, a very early meeting with the 2020 producer.
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She reached out to 23andMe and they said, hey, Cece, come on up so you can tell her some of the stories of the things you're finding in this database.
00:23:29.800
Like, sometimes it's like, why is there no link between me and my dad?
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Now, and that's happened to millions of people now.
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You know, there's over 40 million people that have taken these direct to consumer DNA tests.
00:23:44.840
And it's a pretty high percentage, surprisingly, that have found out that their father was not their biological father or their grandfather.
00:23:54.380
And so I don't know if people realize just how many people have made that shocking discovery from direct to consumer DNA testing.
00:24:05.680
Some of those secrets women in particular in these cases are keeping.
00:24:13.500
Maybe you can see the chance to connect with somebody whose genetic background or other background be really interesting and helpful to you.
00:24:21.360
So just to move it forward, you wind up you're using a website, not 23andMe, not Ancestry.com called GEDmatch.
00:24:30.640
And my understanding is the way you populated this GEDmatch, because you point out you need as many samples on there as possible, is by encouraging people who are into this, who would like to connect with other relatives,
00:24:45.160
to take their 23andMe, their Ancestry.com results and upload them to GEDmatch and to widen the chances that they'll connect with somebody?
00:24:55.980
So GEDmatch was started by two friends of mine, Curtis Rogers and John Olson, back in 2010-11.
00:25:02.440
And of course, when it started, there was no one in there.
00:25:05.320
So we had to convince people to download their raw data from one of the other sites, which at the time was just 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA, and upload to GEDmatch.
00:25:15.960
And so it was just a small site, kind of a playground for more advanced genetic genealogists.
00:25:27.000
So if you tested at 23andMe and I tested at FamilyTreeDNA or later Ancestry, we could both upload there for free and then compare our data, looking for those long, identical, shared segments.
00:25:41.120
Now, and by the way, the criminal database, you know, like if you get arrested for, I don't know how long it's been going on in America that they do a DNA test of you if you get arrested for a felony.
00:25:52.800
How long is, how long, do you know how long they've been doing that?
00:25:55.840
And are those results also uploaded to GEDmatch?
00:26:01.400
So law enforcement has their own database, which is based on a different type of DNA marker than what we use in genealogy.
00:26:11.100
They've been doing it for about, well, it depends what state and which jurisdiction.
00:26:19.660
I've helped identify two serial killers who were put to death in Texas in 1999, and neither of them were in the law enforcement database, which seems shocking to me.
00:26:29.840
But I've since learned that it was kind of hit and miss at first.
00:26:33.400
You know, it took some time to get it off the ground and get collect those samples from violent criminals.
00:26:43.700
The and we're going to get to some of the cases that you've solved, but some of them are using DNA from crimes in the 70s, you know, and that's semen or blood or what have you.
00:26:54.600
And it really was very forward thinking of law enforcement back then before they had any idea what we'd be able to do in 2023 to save all that stuff in not sadly in every case, but in a lot of the cases making crime solving 50 years later possible.
00:27:15.980
Yeah, we owe them a huge debt of gratitude because they couldn't have possibly understood just how valuable that physical evidence was going to be.
00:27:30.040
I mean, yeah, quite a bit before I was even born.
00:27:33.180
And so it's just amazing what can be done in those cases where the crime scene investigators were so forward thinking.
00:27:41.160
They collected things they couldn't have imagined how powerful they would be today.
00:27:50.100
I mean, I think there's probably a hierarchy on the samples, right?
00:27:53.600
Like you'd rather have semen in a rape case than, I don't know, touch DNA.
00:28:10.720
When they dig up some old royalty and things or accidentally run into the one end of the car park, there's still DNA there.
00:28:18.720
So it just depends on the environment, how something was stored or where somebody was buried as to how long that DNA will survive.
00:28:28.040
But it can survive for hundreds of years in some cases, even thousands.
00:28:32.800
I mean, look, they've been able to to analyze the genome from neanderthals.
00:28:45.100
And so back to the crime fighting element of this.
00:28:48.820
You've got the new the GEDmatch, which is getting bigger and more useful.
00:28:53.340
And now can you just briefly describe how you do start filling in the tree, how it's become this is the tool that now that you're using to fight crime?
00:29:03.520
Yeah, let me also mention we have one other database that we can use with law enforcement, and that's family tree DNA.
00:29:09.940
The original pioneers of genetic genealogy decided that they wanted to help law enforcement as well.
00:29:16.780
Now, it is the smallest database, unfortunately, even though it was the first one, it's the smallest one.
00:29:23.960
And so the databases we can use are the two smallest in the field.
00:29:27.580
That's GEDmatch, which has about 1.5 million people in it, and family tree DNA that has about 1.25 million people in their autosomal DNA database.
00:29:40.260
A GEDmatch has about 1.5 million, but only about a third of those are opted in to law enforcement matching.
00:29:48.540
So we can only use about 500,000 to identify violent criminals.
00:29:55.680
I mean, I'm even more impressed that you've solved all these crimes with such a small sample size.
00:30:01.340
So, yes, it's like stepping back into 2014 when I was first trying to solve family mysteries, adoptions, and things like that.
00:30:13.220
So give us an actual example that's easy to understand of how you've used this to solve a crime.
00:30:20.340
So we get the unknown individual's DNA from the crime scene.
00:30:24.900
It might be semen, blood, saliva, even touch DNA, and we have to send that to a private lab.
00:30:32.500
So none of the crime labs have the capability to create the type of DNA profile that we need.
00:30:38.080
The law enforcement databases, as I mentioned, are based on a type of genetic marker called an STR, single nucleotide.
00:30:49.260
And we use SNPs, which is a totally different type of genetic marker, a single nucleotide polymorphism.
00:30:59.760
And that means there has to be DNA left from that crime scene.
00:31:03.340
If they've used it all up, then we cannot do genetic genealogy.
00:31:07.780
So it goes to a private lab where it is analyzed.
00:31:11.200
And just like they would analyze it at, say, AncestryDNA or 23andMe, we need it to be compatible with those profiles because that's the type of profiles we're going to compare against.
00:31:22.080
So it's about 700,000 to 800,000 genetic markers across the genome.
00:31:26.840
And then it goes to our bioinformaticists, our scientists.
00:31:30.280
Now, because these are degraded, mixed, contaminated samples, these are not like if you spit in a tube and you have this perfect DNA sample.
00:31:41.600
And so we need something called bioinformatics, which we have an amazing scientist, Dr. Ellen Gray-Tack and Dr. Ellen Katie, sorry, Dr. Janet Katie, it's Paravon, that work with that degraded DNA to try to repair it and make it as similar to a file as if you and I were to spit in a tube and mail it in.
00:32:02.520
Once we have that, we upload it to GEDmatch and or Family Tree DNA.
00:32:06.680
It's compared against all the people there that are opted into law enforcement matching.
00:32:14.000
Now, those matches are typically going to be really distant relatives.
00:32:18.400
And that's because these are really small databases we're working with.
00:32:21.640
So the chance of a close relative of a suspect are very small.
00:32:25.880
So we're lucky if we get a second cousin or a few second cousins, sometimes closer, but mostly we're working with third, fourth, fifth, sixth cousins and beyond.
00:32:36.240
And we can predict what the likely relationships are based on how much DNA someone is sharing with that unknown person.
00:32:51.780
And this is actually funny for me because I know who my sixth cousin is, or at least one of them.
00:32:59.320
That's the reason I know, because somebody actually did the family tree.
00:33:08.820
You're around my age, so I know you know who that is, of MASH fame.
00:33:14.380
She did a Barnes and Noble book signing up on the Upper West Side when I lived there.
00:33:17.880
And I popped in and told her we were long lost cousins.
00:33:23.920
But anyway, so let's say I committed a crime, but you didn't know it was me.
00:33:27.680
And Loretta had updated or had uploaded her DNA to GEDmatch.
00:33:33.260
You don't know it's me, but you find Loretta Swit is the sixth cousin of this person.
00:33:37.720
And you start doing these concentric circles around her, right?
00:33:40.660
You just start to do like, who are all the people she's related to and her aunts and uncles are
00:33:45.700
related to and you got to that's so much work to finally get to the possibles.
00:33:51.240
So there's a little bit more efficient way to do it, which is I'll say, OK, who's not who's
00:33:55.800
I've got the list of who's sharing DNA with the suspect, but who on that list shares DNA
00:34:04.280
So it's not just who's sharing with the suspect, but who is sharing with other people on that
00:34:09.560
So say matches one, three and five share DNA with each other.
00:34:13.500
If I can build all their family trees, I should be able to identify their common ancestor.
00:34:19.500
The only reason two people would share these identical segments of DNA is if they inherited
00:34:24.640
them from somebody in the past, they have to have common ancestry.
00:34:29.520
And so if I can identify where that DNA comes from, who's which of the great, great grandparents
00:34:35.520
are further back, then that gives me one piece of my unknown person's tree.
00:34:41.780
And so there I create what's called genetic networks.
00:34:45.920
I'll group the matches into networks of people that are sharing DNA with each other or clusters.
00:34:52.600
And each of those clusters will represent one branch of the unknown person's family tree.
00:35:01.380
Maybe I'll have one set of great, great grandparents, one set of great, great, great grandparents.
00:35:06.580
Maybe if I'm lucky, I can identify great grandparents.
00:35:09.960
And then I have to find that one person or set of siblings that is related to all of those
00:35:15.260
matches and descended from those sets of ancestors.
00:35:18.960
So it's like reverse engineering someone's family tree and eventually their identity based
00:35:27.620
And then do you get to the step of let's take the Idaho murders where it's like, OK, I know
00:35:35.500
it it could be, you know, somebody in this cluster or this cluster or this cluster.
00:35:40.920
But, hey, there's a guy in this cluster who lives within 10 miles of the murder site.
00:35:44.460
Like, do you do you use evidence like that to help narrow it down or you're only in the,
00:35:54.800
If you have enough matches that you can connect to someone's mother's side and their father's
00:35:59.580
side, maybe three or even four of their grandparents lines, you can narrow it down to just one immediate
00:36:05.940
But because these databases are so small, we often don't have that.
00:36:10.100
So say we could only identify one set of his great grandparents or great, great grandparents.
00:36:16.100
In that case, we would have to then do what's called reverse genealogy, identify all of their
00:36:21.620
descendants and look for their descendants who are the right gender, age range, maybe live
00:36:34.400
And that's something I think a lot of people don't realize is that with investigative genetic
00:36:39.620
genealogy, the DNA just gets us started without someone's family tree.
00:36:45.300
It's meaningless without trying to being able to identify the descendants of the common ancestors
00:36:56.440
We look for the one branch of the tree that maybe moved closer to the crime scene.
00:36:59.940
And 99% of the time, we find someone who lived right there within 10, 20 miles, sometimes
00:37:11.360
And then we use phenotyping at Parabon where they can predict eye color, hair color, skin
00:37:18.860
And so we use a lot of different factors to narrow it down further when there isn't enough
00:37:24.800
in the database to point us at just one person or one family.
00:37:28.340
And that phenom time, that's very interesting because that's something you can do even if
00:37:36.140
Like if you get DNA and you run it through GEDmatch and there's just nothing, like nothing
00:37:44.660
So we don't have many families or individuals in GEDmatch or family tree DNA that are recent
00:37:52.080
And so it's really difficult to identify someone if they were born in another country or their
00:37:58.380
parents or even grandparents or great grandparents were.
00:38:02.360
And so there are some cases where it's not viable to perform genetic genealogy, but Parabon
00:38:08.580
can still perform the phenotyping and still create this image of what someone might look
00:38:15.040
Now, it's not meant to be photographic, but it's meant to give you their traits.
00:38:18.800
And so it is used in quite a few cases where there just aren't enough matches, aren't enough
00:38:28.400
But what I have found is where it's most powerful is in conjunction with each other.
00:38:33.460
So maybe I narrow it down to 10 males who all descend from these common ancestors.
00:38:38.640
And then I can look which ones have blue eyes, brown eyes, which ones have blonde hair, maybe
00:38:43.560
red hair, and that can really help to narrow it down because we want to give as few people
00:38:50.940
We want this to be efficient and we want to keep innocent people out of these investigations.
00:38:55.760
So I work very hard to try to narrow things down using all different types of information.
00:39:01.160
So I'm not sending law enforcement on a wild goose chase and sending them after innocent
00:39:07.040
The moral of the story is don't leave your DNA to crime scene.
00:39:10.160
Even if you're not in the system, even if nobody you know is in a system, CeCe Moore is
00:39:18.000
And I want to pick up the Idaho case because they're saying that this was used to catch Brian
00:39:29.780
And they have reported there have been reports that genetic genealogy was used in nabbing
00:39:36.960
Brian Kohlberger, 28 years old, 10 miles away from the murder site, pursuing his Ph.D.
00:39:42.420
in criminology at the University of Washington, the four victims from the University of Idaho.
00:39:46.400
They have only told us so far that DNA was detected on one button of the knife sheath that they
00:39:57.000
tell us in the supporting affidavit for the warrant for arrest was found next to one of
00:40:10.440
I would think that I would think there'd be more DNA at this site.
00:40:14.460
So what does it tell you that there's there's zeroing in, first of all, on just that one
00:40:18.780
little button, as opposed to on the body of the four victims, on the bedpost, on the door
00:40:26.820
Well, I think that he went to great lengths to not leave DNA.
00:40:36.000
You would think he certainly would have made sure he wasn't leaving DNA behind, but he
00:40:41.700
must have handled that knife sheath earlier when he didn't have gloves on.
00:40:47.940
But I also want to point out that they don't have to reveal everything they have in the
00:40:54.420
And so I think it's very possible they have additional DNA.
00:40:57.740
And even if they didn't, they might buy now because I'm sure they've been going through
00:41:01.800
all of that physical evidence batch by batch, sending that to the Idaho crime lab and trying
00:41:09.760
So I don't think we'll really know what they have until this case progresses.
00:41:14.540
And hopefully they will find more DNA or already have.
00:41:18.360
It might be more complex, meaning there might be mixtures of blood.
00:41:23.080
Cases I've worked where there was a frenzied stabbing, almost always the knife has slipped
00:41:30.600
But then you have a mixture and you might even have a mixture of three people in this
00:41:36.060
Maybe you have his blood plus two of the victim's blood, for instance, and they have to do what's
00:41:41.580
called deconvolution, where they extract out the victim's DNA and are left with just that
00:41:50.560
And so it's possible that that could have taken more time, which is possibly why they were
00:41:55.260
focusing on this knife sheath for the affidavit.
00:42:00.700
They say that what was found on that button was single source male DNA.
00:42:10.240
So that's a much more straightforward DNA sample than if they have a mixture otherwise,
00:42:16.240
which could be why they focused on that for the affidavit, because it's the most straightforward.
00:42:21.140
Now, that was likely touch DNA, unless he happened to leave a little bit of blood on that.
00:42:28.740
And that is just a few skin cells, most likely.
00:42:33.360
And that really illustrates how far technology has come.
00:42:40.020
You know, my my feeling as a lawyer in discussing this case is if I'm the defense and best case
00:42:46.560
scenario for Brian Kohlberger, that's all the DNA they have of his at the scene, I'm thinking
00:42:52.000
I'm good because maybe Brian Kohlberger went to the store wherever they sold that knife
00:42:58.240
in the sheath and he touched it, he picked it up and it was still left on there.
00:43:10.740
Touch DNA is not the optimal DNA sample that you would want to have in this case.
00:43:15.180
Let's hope maybe it was a drop of blood instead.
00:43:17.620
And I'm wrong about my supposition that it was touch DNA.
00:43:20.820
But I think that the prosecution can argue that if he had handled it, then somebody else
00:43:31.060
And you would see a mixture or you would see their their DNA as the primary DNA.
00:43:35.720
Now, they can certainly argue that maybe the next person to handle it wore gloves and they
00:43:41.580
So they transported it to the crime scene and left it there.
00:43:45.180
So I do think there is some room for argument there.
00:43:48.160
And it's very fortunate that they have other evidence.
00:43:51.140
And that's really important because DNA, as you well know, should not be the only evidence
00:43:57.320
You certainly hope they will be able to support it with other types of evidence.
00:44:02.380
This is I mean, we're going to get into this on our legal panel tomorrow, but this is why
00:44:07.760
all the surveillance tape of the car and so on is relevant.
00:44:16.340
There's all sorts of things around that crime scene.
00:44:27.320
His old neighbor testified to that testified, but said it to reporters.
00:44:34.040
But wouldn't there be if there was touch DNA on the button, Cece, wouldn't there be typically
00:44:41.860
Well, not if he wiped it down or I think the knife sheath was leather.
00:44:46.620
It's maybe less likely to retain that touch DNA than the button.
00:44:56.820
You can shake someone's hand and you get their touch DNA on your hand and you can then transfer
00:45:04.120
And so it is more, you know, transitory or transferable and it's harder to detect.
00:45:11.860
So I'm not sure they would find it on the the leather.
00:45:18.040
I mean, I'm surprised he didn't wipe the whole thing down.
00:45:20.280
Yeah, so I might have forgotten about the button.
00:45:22.320
So if they found and we don't know what the order of events was, we don't know if they
00:45:25.760
found the white Hyundai Elantra and linked it to Brian Kohlberger or if they got onto him
00:45:31.500
But if it was the latter, they have a couple of let's say it's touch DNA, a couple of skin
00:45:36.480
cells that the lab tech sees miraculously and good for him or her.
00:45:40.460
And they run them into their law enforcement database first, I would assume.
00:45:46.640
As far as we know, there was some sort of well, I don't know that like Brian Kohlberger
00:45:50.940
doesn't have a criminal record as far as we know.
00:45:52.700
I don't know that his father or anybody else does.
00:45:57.880
Well, there had to be enough DNA extracted by the Idaho Crime Lab that they were able to
00:46:03.040
split that and send some of it to the private lab that would have created the genetic genealogy
00:46:08.840
And so there must have been, you know, enough, but even that could be a tiny amount.
00:46:14.800
So they would have created their profile, their law enforcement court admissible profile at
00:46:19.840
the crime lab and then sent out what was remaining to a private lab.
00:46:24.680
They would reanalyze it from scratch and create that genetic genealogy profile, which I believe
00:46:30.520
was likely sent back to the FBI investigative genetic genealogy team.
00:46:35.060
So I think it's very likely they did the genetic genealogy in-house.
00:46:39.280
We saw how closely involved the FBI was in this case, and they've been training agents
00:46:44.080
all over the country since you and I met to do this work.
00:46:48.400
So for almost five years, the FBI has been training their agents to do it.
00:46:53.020
I suspect strongly they kept this in-house, but they would have had to use a private lab
00:46:59.860
So that's, and I want to ask you what you mean by create that profile.
00:47:02.760
If you mean, I'm going to take a break, but if you mean create the, this is what the
00:47:06.700
suspect looks like or create the, he's got relatives and here they are.
00:47:11.100
We're going to pick that question up right after this break.
00:47:13.420
Love going through it line by line, because it's really fascinating and it's absolutely
00:47:17.120
going to dominate the news cycle over the next year as we go to that preliminary hearing.
00:47:20.540
And then ultimately the trial CC Moore stays with us on this and other cases coming up.
00:47:25.000
And remember folks, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM triumph channel
00:47:28.940
one 11 every weekday at noon East full video show at youtube.com slash Megan Kelly, along
00:47:34.100
with clips, audio podcast, wherever you get your podcasts for free, go check it out at
00:47:40.840
And there, if you go, you will find our full archives with more than 465 shows in the feed.
00:47:48.880
So CC, the question we left lingering before we went to break was if they get, um, let's
00:47:57.440
say it's touch DNA, some skin cells from the button of that sheath, and they don't get a
00:48:02.620
hit in the criminal database, uh, then they send it most likely to a private lab and come
00:48:09.580
And my question to you was, do you, are you, do you mean the kind of profile that they say,
00:48:13.780
well, it looks like he has brown eyes and brown hair and is about, you know, this descent
00:48:17.780
or the kind of profile that says, here's his dad?
00:48:22.060
It is a profile of genetic markers somewhere between probably 500,000 and a million genetic
00:48:29.040
markers of those SNPs, those single nucleotide polymorphisms that I mentioned earlier.
00:48:34.820
And so it doesn't tell you anything on its own.
00:48:37.620
It's only going to give you important information if you either compare it against others, their
00:48:48.360
Now I have no information that they performed phenotyping in this case.
00:48:51.720
I don't think they did because they didn't work with Parabon and they're really the ones
00:48:56.360
So they would have created that SNP profile that looks just like if you spit in a tube
00:49:02.340
at Ancestry or 23andMe and mailed that in and got your own raw data file.
00:49:08.300
So that, but if they don't have a hit in the database, you know, in, in any database, private
00:49:13.480
or otherwise to connect the DNA to, then they're at a luck unless they can zero in on a particular
00:49:25.120
And so you're always going to get matches in the genetic genealogy database, but if they're
00:49:30.000
way too distant, if it's too small amount of shared DNA, then you're not going to be
00:49:37.600
So everyone has matches, but maybe not close enough matches.
00:49:42.780
If you could not use genetic genealogy to point toward that suspect, they would have to try
00:49:48.600
to find him in other ways and then collect his DNA or a close relative's DNA and compare
00:49:54.640
it against that original profile that was created by the crime lab.
00:49:59.040
We don't know what results they had if, and when they ran it through the private lab.
00:50:03.520
We don't know whether somebody in Kohlberger's family had given DNA, had uploaded DNA.
00:50:09.840
We are told that they collected a sample of garbage outside of Brian Kohlberger's father's
00:50:17.500
He went back and stayed with his mother and father from December 15th forward to the day
00:50:22.460
of his arrest, December 30th after his cross country tour with his dad.
00:50:28.520
By the way, latest reporting is that the FBI was tailing him as of that date, still denying
00:50:33.600
that they were behind those two traffic stops in Indiana.
00:50:35.960
But the FBI now CBS reporting was tailing him and was tailing him via, you know, the
00:50:45.520
So possible there was an aircraft following him fixed wing would mean not a helicopter
00:50:55.000
So they were on to him by December 15th, according to this report.
00:50:58.440
So they go to the dad's house and they're they say that they got the garbage outside of
00:51:03.480
the Kohlberger house and that there was a match to the dad.
00:51:10.160
They compared it with the DNA from the knife sheath button.
00:51:15.020
And what they were able to tell was with ninety nine point nine nine nine six accuracy.
00:51:21.400
This DNA on this knife knife sheath belongs to.
00:51:31.020
And so this is pretty common when investigative genetic genealogy has pointed law enforcement
00:51:36.680
toward a certain individual or family and they'll do what's called a trash pull.
00:51:41.560
If they can't just follow that person and pick something up that they dropped, then they'll
00:51:45.640
typically resort to waiting for that person to put their trash out on the curb.
00:51:53.600
And then they go through the trash and try to find an item that might have DNA on it.
00:51:58.400
But when it's a home like this, a household where there's multiple people, they don't
00:52:04.860
So in this case, they found a male sample of DNA and tested it.
00:52:10.700
However, they were able to perform what is basically a standard paternity test comparison
00:52:16.080
to the profile from the button on the sheath and determined that that individual's DNA from
00:52:23.280
the trash was the father of the individual who left his DNA behind at the crime scene.
00:52:35.620
Well, it's been accepted in courts for decades to establish paternity.
00:52:39.800
It is extremely confident, as we saw by the number 99.999, 8%.
00:52:46.160
So that means that there's basically no one else on Earth that could be the father of that
00:52:54.800
So the real challenge for the defense lawyers is to say, oh, not I mean, they will try to
00:53:06.040
But the best line of argument is probably we don't know how that got there.
00:53:11.600
Now, by this point, that would become irrelevant because they would have collected his DNA upon
00:53:16.220
arrest and done the direct comparison, the one to one against that court admissible genetic
00:53:22.720
profile that is the one they originally compared against the law enforcement databases.
00:53:27.500
Once they got the one to one match, the paternity match wouldn't matter anymore.
00:53:31.220
Or any genetic genealogy that was done previously would all become irrelevant because they'd have
00:53:38.320
And that's when we hear those numbers like one in 300 trillion chance that it's anyone
00:53:45.180
And then still, but my comment stands out because the defense lawyers would be faced
00:53:59.560
But then they'll also just say, even if it's if it's correct, we don't know how that got
00:54:03.320
Maybe maybe Brian Kohlberger touched that knife in a store that sheath in a store.
00:54:07.760
Then the killer bought it, used gloves, never touched it.
00:54:10.340
It is interesting, like this guy is a criminology student.
00:54:15.480
He may have been suspicious that somebody was telling him and be and watched what he
00:54:21.040
threw out in his because now that we know the FBI was on to him and following him, I
00:54:25.060
mean, they identified the car as of November 29th as his.
00:54:30.180
Maybe they were waiting for him to throw something away and he wasn't wasn't until he got back
00:54:33.460
And there's one report he moved the trash from his dad's house over to the neighbors.
00:54:39.680
And I want to circle back around to something when we talked about whether there was any
00:54:45.240
When I first learned he was a criminology student, I thought he would have suited up like Dexter,
00:54:49.900
you know, to make sure he didn't leave any DNA behind.
00:54:52.400
But we know from the eyewitness, the roommate DM statement that she was able to see at least
00:54:59.220
And she said he had bushy eyebrows, which means he didn't cover them.
00:55:02.500
And the mask that she has described is, like you said, just one we would wear for COVID.
00:55:07.280
It doesn't sound like he had his whole head covered.
00:55:10.560
Now, there's quotes going around that I said his head wasn't covered.
00:55:15.000
I just said if he didn't cover his eyebrows, maybe he didn't cover his hair.
00:55:19.660
And if he didn't, you know, there's it's very likely he left a hair behind.
00:55:24.360
Even an eyebrow hair could have been left behind.
00:55:32.540
I mean, we lose hair all the time, all the time.
00:55:35.180
And we've even seen one single hair from someone's leg be able to be traced back.
00:55:41.240
And that is really because of advanced technology.
00:55:43.920
It used to be that you couldn't use hair for this type of purpose.
00:55:47.240
But only in the last couple of years have we been able to do so.
00:55:53.360
You know, does it have to be like pulled out by the root?
00:55:55.260
So, no, thanks to the brilliant Dr. Ed Green from UC Santa Cruz, it doesn't have to have
00:56:03.420
And it's opened up a lot more cases for us to work.
00:56:06.660
I was able to help identify the killer of a kindergartner using rootless hair and also
00:56:16.200
And so I've been able to use just a single hair thanks to Dr. Ed Green's amazing technology.
00:56:22.140
He's, you know, their lab is the one that is processing that and creating that profile for
00:56:28.760
So without these brilliant scientists, we wouldn't be able to even do what I do.
00:56:33.700
Have you ever seen a murder, Cece, that's this up close and violent at which there was
00:56:43.360
I just couldn't imagine him not leaving DNA behind because it's such a violent crime scene.
00:56:48.020
He stabbed four people multiple times and the chances of either the knife not slipping
00:56:55.320
and cutting him or one of those victims fighting back and potentially getting his DNA under their
00:57:00.280
fingernails or just dropping a single hair seems highly unlikely to me.
00:57:05.980
So I guess, you know, time will tell, but I think it's something that people need to think
00:57:10.860
If you are, you know, considering perpetrating this type of intimate violent crime, you will
00:57:20.340
I mean, Brian was clearly educated about this, and yet he still left his DNA behind.
00:57:26.240
Now, I will say people are talking about how smart he was.
00:57:28.640
I don't think he was the sharpest tool in the shed.
00:57:30.540
It does not sound like he planned this out nearly as well as we would expect from a PhD
00:57:38.440
But, you know, it's just virtually impossible not to leave your DNA behind in this type of
00:57:48.140
You know, there's speculation online that he posted under different names commenting on
00:57:56.820
Uh, but there, there is one posting under this suspected name again, unconfirmed in which
00:58:03.420
he talks about the sheath of the knife, trying to find it here.
00:58:07.160
Uh, it's by somebody named inside looking and the post under that guy's name, it was all
00:58:13.700
about the Idaho murders, this Facebook, Facebook group where they were, they were discussing it.
00:58:17.880
And one of the many things he posted this inside looking was of the evidence released, the murder
00:58:24.600
weapon has been consistent as a large fixed blade knife.
00:58:28.840
This leads me to believe they found the sheath.
00:58:32.160
My God, that's just, I mean, my God, like who that doesn't lead anyone other than the killer
00:58:42.320
So I've been a member of that group from early days.
00:58:46.100
I've been following this case from, I think the very first day it happened or the day we
00:58:54.320
You know, I mean, there's a lot of speculation, but that was something that really does make
00:58:59.740
it seem like this person had some inside information, or it was just a really good guess.
00:59:08.400
You'd say they looked at the wounds and determined that, I mean, that's a, that's a, I I'm sort
00:59:15.640
of on the side that it very possibly was him, but you know, like I said, it's all speculation,
00:59:23.360
But the law enforcement knows they know by now whether that was him because now they've,
00:59:27.660
They have a search warrant for his home, uh, in Washington state where he was living and
00:59:34.440
They're not allowing us access to it for now, although they say in March, we may get it.
00:59:45.500
You mentioned, um, you know, the victims were likely to fight there.
00:59:48.780
They, they say there were defensive wounds on the victims.
00:59:51.840
So they did, they did fight, you know, that's, what's one of the things that's so crazy about
00:59:58.100
You know, why weren't they, you know, just the, they have the one roommate who lived,
01:00:03.280
who wasn't attacked saying, I heard what sounded like crying coming from one of the
01:00:07.300
rooms, but crying is not exactly consistent with being brutally stabbed to death next to
01:00:16.240
So many questions still to be answered, but those defensive wounds could prove very important
01:00:24.120
I think when you're fighting for your life, you're conserving your energy.
01:00:29.420
Possibly they didn't scream, you know, maybe they were just focused on trying to survive
01:00:34.080
and focused on trying to fight him off without yelling or something that would have been heard
01:00:55.500
Um, they were seen just this past Friday, the 6th, taking two bloody mattresses out of
01:01:03.200
the crime scene, along with a bed frame and a box, which is strange to me.
01:01:08.800
I don't know why the bloody mattresses were still there.
01:01:11.700
I'm sure they've done some analysis on them prior to now, but in your experience of DNA
01:01:19.160
Would they have done like a scraping of the mattress on, let's say day one, and then maybe
01:01:24.300
this is a more in-depth look or what do you make of that?
01:01:29.980
And particularly since the judge had, I thought, frozen the crime scene until February 1st,
01:01:35.840
So it must have been either the defense or the prosecution taking that away.
01:01:42.480
Some people were saying maybe it was the roommates, the surviving roommates' bed, but I think you
01:01:47.560
could clearly see that there was a blood stain on one of those mattresses.
01:01:55.240
They would have collected the sheets first and maybe a mattress pad.
01:02:01.640
I don't know if they would do that on a mattress or not, but they are probably putting that
01:02:06.560
mattress into storage and for future testing or maybe even to use in the courtroom.
01:02:12.280
So we've been very focused on finding his DNA at the crime scene.
01:02:16.200
But there's another lane here, which is finding the victim's DNA on anything related to him.
01:02:27.880
Understanding, OK, he covered up, but like, I'm sorry, he's not superhuman.
01:02:36.520
We know they're going to analyze the route he took home, which is reportedly a little odd.
01:02:40.840
It's not this straight, direct line back to his apartment.
01:02:43.080
I'm sure they've poured over every inch of it looking for anything that's been discarded,
01:02:51.620
Like, what are the odds, Cece, in your experience of finding the victim's DNA someplace around him
01:03:03.160
Like you've pointed out, he would have had to have been covered in their DNA.
01:03:07.360
And then he must have gotten in that car still in those clothes.
01:03:10.820
I don't think he's stripped down there on that street.
01:03:13.940
And so you cannot clean that completely out of a car, even though we know he took great
01:03:21.900
There still would be DNA left behind, very likely blood, maybe hair, and maybe even transferred
01:03:30.340
When he went into his home, he might have brought some of that with him as well.
01:03:34.400
So I think there's a good chance they'll be able to tie the victims, one or more of the
01:03:40.200
victim's DNA to his property, his car or his home.
01:03:45.900
Even if he was meticulous, other than leaving the knife sheath behind at the crime scene,
01:03:52.560
there's no, there's just four people were murdered up close by a knife.
01:03:57.660
There's no way he wouldn't have their DNA on him.
01:04:00.520
And now that we have our suspect, you know, most of that battle is just knowing who to
01:04:06.160
whose car to search, whose apartment to search, whose computer to search.
01:04:09.700
They figured that out thanks to the button and thanks to the surveillance of the white
01:04:17.620
I wanted to ask you, could this would they would this case have looked very different to
01:04:27.660
Yes, some of the detectives I've worked with have told me that they don't need me to perform
01:04:33.260
investigative genetic genealogy on many of their cases, their active cases, because they
01:04:45.800
And so that is going to be a huge part of this case.
01:04:49.720
And like, we don't know, of course, if the car was what first led them to identify him or
01:04:56.680
the genetic genealogy, but also just having computerized systems where you can search cars,
01:05:04.360
When we go back to the cold cases, we often are not able to find that information.
01:05:12.940
And so the whole method of crime solving of investigation has advanced to such a degree
01:05:20.100
that it's already extremely difficult to get away with a crime like this, even without
01:05:24.540
the addition of investigative genetic genealogy.
01:05:30.540
I remember being terrified of son of Sam who was in the news that that case terrified me
01:05:36.740
because my Nana lived in the New York City area.
01:05:40.240
Just you never know what's seeping into your child's head, you know, just based on the
01:05:55.640
And we haven't even covered the big ones like BTK and Zodiac.
01:06:01.440
I've heard you say you don't think we can have a serial killer anymore.
01:06:04.740
Like that's the odds of that happening now are next to nil.
01:06:10.900
Well, first of all, what we just talked about, the technological evidence.
01:06:14.440
But if even that fails, we always will have investigative genetic genealogy going forward
01:06:20.820
And so unless someone is killing people from a distance with a gun and even then we might
01:06:27.820
I've been thinking about them this whole conversation that you get nowhere.
01:06:30.460
I mean, I'm not recommending how people commit murder, but they got nowhere near their
01:06:34.440
It's one of the reasons why it was so hard to detect who it was.
01:06:37.600
Well, then they better wear gloves when they handle the bullets because you can pull DNA
01:06:44.700
And so it's just going to be virtually impossible to be the type of serial killer and certainly
01:06:51.340
a serial rapist that is perpetrating these very intimate, up close and personal crimes
01:06:59.420
And if you do, we will identify you, even if it takes months or years.
01:07:04.840
I recently worked the Faith Hedgepeth case out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
01:07:10.580
It took us three years to identify the DNA contributor, her killer, her alleged killer, because he was
01:07:25.980
And as the databases grow, it's going to get more efficient and quicker and quicker as
01:07:31.640
And we're getting better at what we're doing every day as well.
01:07:34.820
And so, you know, that's why I don't think that we will have serial killers.
01:07:39.280
There won't be Ted Bundy's or Golden State killers or Zodiac, who's still unidentified 50 years
01:07:45.580
later because of investigative genetic genealogy.
01:07:49.080
This is a good incentive for people to actually upload their DNA results if you are at all so inclined.
01:07:57.280
But if you are inclined, do it and do it at GEDmatch to take your results from these other private
01:08:03.920
Not saying you're a serial killer or you're your family member, but like there could be this
01:08:11.420
You could have the sixth cousin who you have no love for connection, real connection to who's
01:08:18.160
And wouldn't it be nice to have helped law enforcement nab that person?
01:08:23.020
It's it's one of the reasons why your name came up in discussing the JonBenet Ramsey case.
01:08:28.820
We had Jon Ramsey on the show not long ago and he's like, I'm 78 years old.
01:08:34.360
I you know, I don't have much time to see this case solved.
01:08:38.180
And he said, Cece, he wants someone like you to analyze what they say is a teeny tiny bit
01:08:51.820
And I don't know why there's not more, because apparently they have they have JonBenet's pajamas.
01:08:57.740
They have the the implement used to strangle or JonBenet and the instrument.
01:09:05.600
And it's been tested repeatedly and there's been no match.
01:09:13.000
Basically, there's only one more test in here, like if we do this again and we don't get the
01:09:20.220
So just to update our viewers, he wants the governor of Colorado to allow him as the child's
01:09:28.060
father who's been ruled out as a suspect by the prosecutor to take this DNA and give it to
01:09:33.460
somebody like you to take it to a private lab that is the best of the best.
01:09:37.580
And this seems to make so much sense to me, but he wasn't able to get the governor,
01:09:45.320
He told us this right before Christmas when he came on.
01:09:47.640
So during that interview, he told us this is an update for our viewers, he told us about
01:09:53.460
a letter that he wrote to the Colorado governor, Jared Polis, and he had written it like two
01:09:58.200
He asked him for a face to face meeting because so far he'd been getting the stiff arm from
01:10:04.160
They created this sort of, oh, we're going to refer to our cold case unit.
01:10:11.580
And he wanted to tell the governor personally the different steps he wants taken in the investigation,
01:10:15.840
including this new DNA testing with somebody like you.
01:10:21.160
He said he and his supporters would pay for it.
01:10:24.740
He told us the governor never even did him the courtesy of responding to him.
01:10:28.660
I mean, how do you not respond to this grieving dad?
01:10:31.800
After the interview, we promised John Ramsey that we and our and our viewers were going to
01:10:41.060
Why are you ignoring John Ramsey and his concerns?
01:10:45.940
We told our listeners and our viewers to do it.
01:10:48.900
Reached out to the governor's office directly, demanding action on behalf of John Ramsey.
01:10:54.680
Now, we don't know what exactly flipped that switch.
01:10:58.040
But John just told us he's heard back from the governor after two months of being ignored.
01:11:02.440
And now the governor has asked him, John Ramsey, to contact the Colorado director of public
01:11:07.180
safety, and he's done that no face to face meeting yet.
01:11:10.200
But John is telling us he now feels encouraged by the response.
01:11:15.200
Thank you to all of our viewers and our listeners for helping and amping up the pressure.
01:11:20.100
And now, Cece, what we need to happen is for someone like you, ideally you, to get this
01:11:27.840
So how high are the risks given how little DNA there is?
01:11:31.460
Just backtracking a little, I don't know if you remember, but you asked me almost five
01:11:40.980
And I have received emails or messages on social media every single day since that time
01:11:49.000
I certainly would love to have the opportunity to do so.
01:11:52.780
But I doubt very much that they would let me work it.
01:11:55.680
I would expect maybe the FBI will work it if anyone is allowed to do so.
01:12:00.720
So as far as the risks, yeah, once you use up that DNA, that's the end.
01:12:05.980
So you have to make sure that it's being sent to a well-tested team, a lab that has been
01:12:14.100
able to create profiles, genetic genealogy profiles from tiny amounts of degraded DNA,
01:12:20.680
and that has scientists that are really highly skilled at working with that degraded DNA.
01:12:26.980
We can assume it's degraded after all these years.
01:12:29.280
With touch DNA, which I think that's what this is in this case, my understanding, again,
01:12:35.320
you just have a tiny bit of skin cells, and it can be very quickly consumed.
01:12:41.780
So I understand Boulder Police's hesitation to use up that last little bit because you
01:12:50.540
Nobody predicted investigative genetic genealogy outside of our little community.
01:12:55.840
And so I always am hesitant to second-guess law enforcement.
01:13:02.600
I've been involved in some pretty high-profile cases where people were out there criticizing
01:13:07.780
law enforcement and had no idea what was going on behind the scenes.
01:13:16.540
Now, in that case, I didn't have inside information, but I strongly suspected they were trying investigative
01:13:21.740
genetic genealogy, but there's been other cases where they've never even released that they
01:13:28.400
And I've had to keep quiet and listen, watch all these people criticizing law enforcement
01:13:34.700
It happened in the Chapel Hill case and Faith Hedgepest case as well.
01:13:39.600
And so you just don't know what they are doing behind the scenes and what their reasoning
01:13:45.480
And so I really do hesitate to second-guess, like I said, but I think it is the time to
01:13:53.380
They can get a whole genome sequence done on that DNA if it's viable, meaning you could not
01:13:59.940
just look at the 700,000 markers that we use for genetic genealogy, but they could look
01:14:05.820
at the entire genome and then have all of that information for the future.
01:14:11.000
And I think that's probably the best bet in this case.
01:14:15.320
One is called microarray, where you just look at those 700,000, 800,000 genetic markers that
01:14:20.740
the direct-to-consumer DNA testing companies also use.
01:14:24.240
Or you can do this whole genome sequence where you get every bit of the genome information
01:14:34.900
You know, about 10% of the cases that we've helped solve or been able to create profiles
01:14:44.060
We published a paper in 2019 talking about that.
01:14:47.680
And so people in this case are saying, oh, it's so new if they use touch DNA for genetic
01:14:58.660
And I think, you know, John's getting older, as he keeps pointing out, and now is the time.
01:15:06.940
Could you get, when you say you can get the whole genome, would that allow you to do both
01:15:10.460
lanes of investigative work you were telling us about?
01:15:12.900
Like, figure out the family tree potentially, and at a minimum, get, this is what the person
01:15:21.900
You could do both of those off the same tiny cells.
01:15:25.160
And so that's one thing that's interesting about Parabon is they were doing this phenotyping
01:15:29.520
before genetic genealogy was a thing for law enforcement.
01:15:33.400
And the files that they created for that are exactly the files that we use for genetic genealogy,
01:15:39.180
which is why when I joined forces with them, I had about 100 cases right off the bat because
01:15:48.320
And all we had to do was get permission to upload those to GEDmatch.
01:15:52.260
And so, yes, it absolutely has the same information in there that you would need to predict eye
01:16:07.480
This may have been a different company, but I feel like when I was at NBC, Andrea Canning
01:16:11.000
had this done, like on herself, you know, like and and there was a like, do you guys
01:16:17.720
do a a sketch, you know, off of the the info you get back?
01:16:33.440
We could potentially get a picture of the JonBenet killer pretty quickly if there's enough
01:16:39.380
And that's how quickly things have advanced in the DNA line.
01:16:43.160
And there's I mean, that's that case captured the attention of the nation.
01:16:46.080
Everybody would like to see whoever did that brought to justice.
01:16:48.920
OK, there's more because we've got to talk about this case out of Pennsylvania.
01:16:59.160
And wait until you hear how CeCe Moore solved this case.
01:17:09.380
We've got to talk about this case in Pennsylvania.
01:17:15.040
You recently solved this case as of July of 2022.
01:17:18.820
Let's go back before that, though, to 1975, when the murder of then 19 year old Lindy Sue
01:17:27.000
She was stabbed to death 19 times in her apartment on December 5th, 1975.
01:17:34.440
She was found lying on her back with a knife sticking out of her neck.
01:17:38.840
Decades went by without an arrest in the gruesome crime.
01:17:46.280
As I understand it, it happened in Pennsylvania and it was just a cold case.
01:17:55.660
How did you get involved in this all these years later?
01:17:57.440
Well, Lancaster Police had worked with Parabon before I even joined forces with them to create
01:18:06.000
So they had an established relationship with them.
01:18:08.800
So when I came on board, they asked Lancaster Police if we could perform genetic genealogy first on the
01:18:16.780
Christy Murak case, which they had done a phenotype for.
01:18:23.160
And on that case right away, we had good matches for me to work with.
01:18:27.100
Now, when I became really familiar with that case, I learned that Christy's brother and Lindy
01:18:33.300
Sue's brother had taken out billboards together asking for tips on their sisters.
01:18:39.220
And so I was able to help law enforcement solve Christy Murak's case way back in 2018.
01:18:46.620
But I felt like Lindy Sue's case was hanging over my head for years because I really felt
01:18:56.400
They were sort of like sister cases to me, even though they were so many years apart.
01:19:00.780
And I wanted Lindy Sue's family and brother to have those answers as well, like Christy's
01:19:07.920
But when we performed the analysis on that crime scene DNA and uploaded it to GEDmatch,
01:19:18.880
So we recommended they upload to Family Tree DNA as well, the second database.
01:19:25.480
And I was just so disappointed because I so desperately wanted to help law enforcement
01:19:37.620
Well, because we didn't have any close matches.
01:19:41.780
So the closest match we had only shared 30 centimorgans.
01:19:51.060
It could be a 10th cousin, but I was determined to try to help on this case.
01:19:56.480
So just behind the scenes, without even telling the law enforcement agency I was doing it, I
01:20:02.800
started building trees of these really distant matches.
01:20:11.940
And I didn't expect I'd find common ancestors because of the distance.
01:20:16.940
But I did find that they were all converging on this small town in southern Italy.
01:20:24.120
And so that was really interesting to me because it was clear that the person who left their
01:20:30.340
DNA behind on Lindy Sue, so her killer, her alleged killer at this point, had all of his
01:20:38.700
ancestral roots go back to this one small area in South Italy.
01:20:45.580
So I started researching the migration history of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
01:20:58.660
And I started looking through their membership cards, which are digitized online, thankfully.
01:21:03.440
And I found that most of the people, most of the Italians who came to Lancaster came from
01:21:13.520
Well, Gasparina is the town in Italy that the trees were going back to.
01:21:19.180
So that meant that Lindy's killer likely had roots in Lancaster going back.
01:21:26.440
This wasn't someone who just was passing through.
01:21:28.500
This is somebody whose family had been in Lancaster for probably a couple generations and had come
01:21:37.000
And he was going to be fully Italian with full ancestry from there based on the family trees
01:21:43.100
as well as the ancestry predictions we were able to create.
01:21:47.700
And so I needed to find someone who had four grandparents from Gasparina, all eight great
01:21:54.460
grandparents from either there or close by in that region.
01:22:01.540
And so I went through all of those cards and then started building the family trees for
01:22:12.120
Each of those men who came to Lancaster, I built their trees forward to see who did they
01:22:18.960
And then I would build their trees backward to see if they also had ancestry exclusively from
01:22:26.000
And so I needed to find somebody whose ancestors intermarried with people from their hometown.
01:22:33.580
And we also had done a snapshot phenotype in that case.
01:22:41.780
But he had for Southern Italian, he had sort of unusual physical traits.
01:22:50.880
And it wasn't that many people who came to Lancaster from that town.
01:22:56.860
I mean, there was a fair amount, but it was a very defined migration route.
01:23:00.980
And it was a small percent of the overall population.
01:23:04.140
So I figured if there was only a few hundred who came over, then that was doable.
01:23:13.680
Anyone who intermarried with someone from a different population group, their descendants
01:23:19.340
So I just kept building these trees and seeing who would fit.
01:23:24.860
And then as I was doing that, each of those descendants who would be a candidate, I started
01:23:33.080
And one of them turned out had the same address as Lindy.
01:23:39.620
I found a, I think it was an engagement announcement in the newspaper.
01:23:46.380
What are the chances of doing this for months and months, years actually, of behind the scenes
01:23:53.640
building these trees and it leading right to the same apartment building that Lindy was
01:24:10.840
Now you have a name who you think could potentially be the guy.
01:24:17.100
There's a couple other things about him that were compelling, but because this is still an
01:24:22.940
But I felt pretty confident, but I didn't have any solid evidence like I normally have.
01:24:29.800
Normally I can connect my person of interest to multiple matches through common ancestors,
01:24:36.000
but I couldn't connect any of these people directly to his family tree, just to that hometown
01:24:42.800
So it was really nerve wracking, but I still felt like it was a good enough lead to pass
01:24:48.860
And so we reached out to Lancaster police and let them know that I'd been working on this,
01:24:53.420
which they weren't even aware of, and set up a meeting.
01:25:02.920
No one's going to get arrested based on what I say.
01:25:05.620
So they have to perform their full investigation on this individual, just like they would have
01:25:10.200
had to do on Brian Kohlberger if that's how he was identified.
01:25:13.860
This is not evidence that's going to be used against anyone in a court of law.
01:25:18.160
So they started looking into this individual, and they eventually collected surreptitious DNA,
01:25:26.300
And they tested that against their original court admissible genetic profile.
01:25:34.820
They can't arrest somebody until they've done that or gotten a close family member like they
01:25:41.820
In this case, they got DNA directly from the suspect or the person of interest, and he became
01:25:47.680
a suspect because they got that one-to-one exact match, which when they told me was huge,
01:25:55.320
because this was a novel technique that I had just created.
01:26:03.000
If I can't even connect one match to someone's family tree, I feel very hesitant to point them
01:26:10.140
Like I said earlier, I don't want to send them after innocent people.
01:26:13.140
But there was just certain things, circumstantial things about him and about his life that made
01:26:23.100
So when they told me it was a match, it was just tremendous.
01:26:26.900
So they, according to what I read, they found him in the airport, in the Philadelphia airport.
01:26:34.860
And I think that's where they got his, February 2022, they recovered a coffee cup he used and
01:26:40.840
threw away at the Philadelphia International Airport.
01:26:43.780
Labs later confirmed the DNA on his coffee cup matched the DNA from the semen on Lindy
01:26:50.440
All these years later, again, the crime happened in 1975.
01:26:55.060
They also found that DNA in blood left on her pantyhose was consistent with the semen and
01:27:04.620
Like they were matching it on a couple of fronts.
01:27:17.120
But this guy did apparently live in her apartment building at the time in 1975.
01:27:21.800
He would have been, I think, 18 by my calculation.
01:27:27.020
This guy went on, as far as we can tell, to lead a relatively normal life.
01:27:36.600
Cece, do you know anything about like what he did over those next 50 years?
01:27:39.980
I did a lot of research, as I always do, when I have identified a potential person of interest.
01:27:45.540
I dig through social media, through newspaper articles, through the traditional genealogical
01:27:53.880
I use all types of different resources to learn about someone before I turn their name over.
01:27:59.360
I write a really complete report with a lot of information for law enforcement in my cases.
01:28:06.900
Yeah, he was a newlywed at the same time that Lindy was a newlywed.
01:28:12.640
I mean, it's just so creepy to think that if this is true, this guy committed a heinous,
01:28:20.380
brutal murder and then went on to live with the secret for 50 years, probably always wondering,
01:28:28.380
especially as DNA techniques got more developed, right?
01:28:31.940
Yeah, it definitely seems like it seems like we're identifying a new type of criminal with
01:28:40.500
We see so many of these cases where this individual seems to have perpetrated one really
01:28:46.280
horrible, violent crime and then gone on with their lives.
01:28:55.960
These are people that were never on law enforcement's radar at all.
01:28:59.040
So, you know, who knows what else these individuals may have done?
01:29:03.020
But it certainly appears that we've identified many of these types of individuals that did
01:29:08.660
something like this once and then faded back into society and lived what appeared to be
01:29:19.960
I will say to the audience, two things firm on a, you know, rape homicide victim.
01:29:26.380
I do want to make one more point, which is that the D.A.
01:29:28.940
has actually allowed me to speak about this case.
01:29:31.860
Normally, I wouldn't be doing so when it's still working its way through the court system.
01:29:36.380
specifically asked me to speak at the press conference and explain my methods.
01:29:44.240
Um, this has been used by you, uh, to, as I mentioned in the intro, identify murder victims
01:29:51.240
who, you know, Jane Doe's, John Doe's giving closure to so many families who just had their
01:29:56.660
child disappear and never knew what happened to them and just assume the worst.
01:30:00.580
But there's some closure in knowing this is how they died.
01:30:05.060
They certain deaths tied to this killer or that killer.
01:30:07.400
I mean, it's upsetting, but it's I'm sure most most families are relieved to be able
01:30:16.640
And just for the record, we went back and checked all the cases that you'd been working
01:30:20.780
on when you came on and we interviewed you on NBC.
01:30:24.180
There was one case involving a little girl, April Tinsley, who'd been murdered in December
01:30:33.760
The man you helped identify sentenced to 80 years in prison.
01:30:38.360
By the way, that was the first conviction of somebody identified through investigative
01:30:48.940
This is in connection with a 20 year old Jay Cook and 18 year old Tanya Van Koehlenberg
01:30:53.980
Canadian high school sweethearts visited Seattle and were killed.
01:30:57.620
You helped identify the accused killer, William Talbot.
01:31:00.680
He had pleaded not guilty at the time we interviewed, found guilty in June of 2019.
01:31:05.940
And that was the first jury trial to find someone guilty who was identified through
01:31:17.100
I mean, we talked about seven, six or whatever cases, every single one, the person either
01:31:21.720
pleaded guilty or was found guilty in a court of law.
01:31:35.380
It took longer to get these and we still have lots in the pipeline.
01:31:38.920
But yeah, our track record and genetic genealogy's track record record.
01:31:48.680
Like 20 years ago, probably nobody could anticipate where we are today.
01:31:53.780
Like if you had to predict the future, where's this going?
01:31:56.280
Well, if you, I mean, if you had asked me a month or two ago, I would have said we will
01:32:01.900
It'll start stopping criminals in their tracks, keeping serial killers from ever developing.
01:32:06.580
And here we see with Idaho, exactly what I would have told you would happen is what
01:32:12.920
And I am one of the reasons I've been out there talking about this Idaho case, even though
01:32:17.020
I was not involved in it, is because it is a fantastic example of what I've been advocating
01:32:22.280
for, is using investigative genetic genealogy early in a crime, soon as they don't get that
01:32:27.680
hit in the law enforcement database, because it can save lives.
01:32:31.580
And this is where we can have the real impact on public safety.
01:32:35.360
We can keep people from losing their lives and being victimized.
01:32:38.960
And we can really help law enforcement be more efficient with their investigations.
01:32:43.880
Instead of investigating something for years or decades and spending public funds on this
01:32:50.220
and involving innocent people in these investigations, we can probably even help avoid wrongful convictions
01:32:57.880
by keeping the focus off the innocent from the beginning.
01:33:01.380
Because one of the real powers of investigative genetic genealogy is the ability to rule people
01:33:08.140
You know, for every one of these, we focus on the arrests.
01:33:10.420
But I have ruled out dozens or hundreds of persons of interest in all of these cases
01:33:17.880
Many of those have already been under suspicion for years or decades.
01:33:21.480
I've heard from lots of people thanking me for finally lifting that burden off of their
01:33:27.020
And so I think that's where we're going, is when they don't, you know, when they run out
01:33:30.860
of avenues, when they tried all the technological advances, and they still don't have this individual
01:33:35.960
in their sites, they will turn to investigative genetic genealogy now.
01:33:40.780
It's another reminder, by the way, that when the police process a crime scene, they ought
01:33:48.520
Given this touch DNA, they can't go anywhere near it without suiting up from head to toe
01:33:58.900
You're right, because we have had some cases that trace back to law enforcement officers
01:34:08.600
And I'm sure that they're paying attention to latest developments and realizing how critical
01:34:12.160
that is more than ever to make sure that they touch nothing with their bare hands or,
01:34:16.820
you know, their own DNA getting on a site, which, as you point out, is so easy for people
01:34:28.260
Thank you so much for all the great work you do.
01:34:31.860
You are so kind, and I'm so happy we got to speak again.
01:34:36.280
And saying a prayer that it works out between you and the JonBenet Ramsey investigation.