Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Woman Charged 25 Years After Baby Jacob Hope Found Dead in Dumpster Behind Grocery Store

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Woman Charged 25 Years After Baby Jacob Hope Found Dead in Dumpster Behind Grocery Store · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You know, usually when we talk about medical diagnosis, there
• 0:02
  is this expectation of clinical precision. Oh, absolutely, Like you
• 0:06
  break your arm, the X ray shows that jagged white line, right, yeah,
• 0:09
  and the doctor just points at the illuminated film and says, well,
• 0:12
  there it is.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: It's a comforting binary. Really, we inherently crave that visible,
• 0:17
  you know, categorizable proof. Definitely, it's either broken or not broken,
• 0:21
  case oven or case closed.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: But if you step into the world of forensic investigations,
• 0:26
  especially cold cases spanning multiple decades, well, yeah, that X
• 0:30
  ray machine is completely shattered.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Totally shattered. You're operating in the.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Dark, exactly, And today we are stepping into a diagnostic
• 0:38
  landscape that is the absolute definition of murky waters.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: You're unpacking a massive stack of sources for this deep dive.
• 0:47
  We've got a joint press release from July twenty twenty
• 0:50
  six from the Round Lake Beach Police Department and the
• 0:54
  Lake County State's Attorney's.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Office, right alongside some incredible on the ground reporting from
• 0:59
  ABCCI in Chicago, Fox thirty two, Chicago People Magazine, and
• 1:04
  the Lake McHenry Scanner.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the local coverage is fantastic. We are looking at
• 1:08
  a twenty five year old cold case out of a
• 1:10
  Chicago suburb that started with a discarded newborn and ended
• 1:14
  a quarter century later with a DNA test meant for
• 1:18
  finding distant ancestors.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: The scientific and legal ground covered in these sources is
• 1:22
  just it's staggering.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: You are looking at a masterclass and how time degrades
• 1:28
  physical evidence and human memory, but simultaneously it allows technology
• 1:33
  to evolve to a point where it can resurrect a
• 1:35
  completely dead trail.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Imagine you're reading a headline about a twenty five year
• 1:39
  old mystery finally being solved. I mean your instinct is
• 1:42
  to assume there was a dramatic deathbed confession, well sure, or.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: You know, a detective stumbled across a dusty box and
• 1:49
  a basement archives room.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Right like something straight out of a movie. But the
• 1:53
  reality presented in these documents is so much more intricate.
• 1:56
  Our mission today is to trace this thread from August
• 1:59
  twenty sixth, two thousand and one, when a newborn baby
• 2:02
  was found deceased in a dumpster in round Lake Beach,
• 2:04
  all the way to July twenty twenty six when genetic
• 2:07
  genealogy finally brought this case into the light.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: It's a long, heavy journey.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: It is. Okay, let's unpack this. I want to start
• 2:13
  by dropping you right into the reality of that late
• 2:17
  summer day in two thousand and one.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. To really grasp the gravity of this, you have
• 2:22
  to visualize Round Lake Beach.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Illinois gets that the zcene for us.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: It's a quiet, modest, suburban village. It's about forty five
• 2:30
  miles north of downtown Chicago, right. So this is absolutely
• 2:34
  not a jurisdiction accustomed to gruesome, high profile homicides. It
• 2:39
  is a community built around local businesses and neighborhood routines.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: It's everyday life exactly.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: It's late August, the intense Midwest summer heat is lingering.
• 2:49
  Families are out doing their back to school shopping. The
• 2:52
  rhythm of the town is entirely mundane, and.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: That routine completely shatters behind a local grocery store in
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  Rowlins Road. Yeah, police eve a call and the responding
• 3:02
  officers make a discovery that is going to fundamentally haunt
• 3:05
  their careers.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: It's a kind of call you never forget.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Right. Discarded in a bag inside a dumpster is the
• 3:10
  body of a newborn baby Boy. Just the sheer visual
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  contrast that a grocery stored dumpster, literally the most everyday
• 3:19
  location imaginable, Yeah, becoming the site of this profound tragedy.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: It's jarring. And the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force
• 3:26
  takes the lead almost instantly, which really signals how heavily
• 3:31
  this weighed on the regional authorities from our one.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: They didn't treat it like a minor incident, not at all.
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  Speaker 2: But the most critical piece of early intelligence doesn't actually
• 3:40
  come from the detectives canvassing the parking lot.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Where does it come from?
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: It comes from the medical examiner's office. They made a
• 3:47
  devastating determination very early in the autopsy process. The infant
• 3:51
  had not been still born. He was born alive.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, And the cause of death was officially determined to
• 3:57
  be suffocation.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I want to pause on that medical distinction for second,
• 4:00
  because it completely dictates the trajectory of the entire investigation, doesn't.
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  Speaker 2: It changes everything?
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, How does a forensic pathologist in two thousand and
• 4:08
  one look at a newborn and definitively prove it took
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  a breath? I mean, the line between a tragic still
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  birth and an active homicide seems incredibly thin. From a
• 4:19
  purely biological standpoint.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: It is thin, but it's a meticulous process. Pathologists often
• 4:25
  use something called a hydrostatic test or a lung float.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Test a lung flow test. Okay, how does that work?
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Well? During fetal development, a baby's lungs are very dense
• 4:34
  and collapse. They're filled with amniotic fluid. Right, So if
• 4:37
  a baby is stillborn and the lungs are placed in
• 4:40
  water during the autopsy, they will sink because there's no
• 4:42
  air in them exactly. But the moment a newborn takes
• 4:45
  its first breath, the lungs aerate, they expand, and the
• 4:49
  tissue actually becomes spongy.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
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  Speaker 2: Even if the child only takes a few breaths before suffocating,
• 4:54
  that residual air gets trapped in the alveola. So if
• 4:58
  those lungs float, it is a prime imary indicator of
• 5:01
  live birth.
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  Speaker 1: Wow, is that the only test they do? No?
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  Speaker 2: They combine that with histological exam so looking at the
• 5:07
  lung tissue under a microscope to see if the air
• 5:10
  sacks are actually expanded, and they also examine the stomach
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  for swallowed air.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: So the science firmly pivots the entire police force from investigating,
• 5:21
  you know, the illegal disposal of remains, to a full
• 5:24
  blown homicide investigation exactly. But looking at the sources, the
• 5:28
  detectives didn't believe they were looking for a calculated serial killer.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: No, the physical evidence at the scene pointed them toward
• 5:35
  a very specific theory. The circumstances really screamed of a panicked,
• 5:40
  desperate act rather than premeditated malice.
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  Speaker 1: You can almost see this psychological profile taking shape in
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  the detective's minds.
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  Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, they are looking for someone who was likely terrified,
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  possibly hiding a pregnancy from her family or her community.
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  Speaker 1: Hey, someone in crisis.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and in the immediate chaotic aftermath of the bird
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  sheer panic just took over. But having a working psychological
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  profile is very different from having an actual suspect, and
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  this is where the investigation hits a terrifying roadblock. The
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  fog of the investigation rolled in incredibly fast, and it
• 6:12
  led them down a disastrously wrong path.
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  Speaker 1: This is one of the most jarring details in the
• 6:17
  reporting because in September two thousand and one, just weeks
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  after the discovery, a woman was actually arrested and charged
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  with first degree murder in connection with the baby's death.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was huge news at the time.
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  Speaker 1: I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of the community.
• 6:31
  You see a first degree murder charge hit the evening news,
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  you think, Okay, the nightmare is over. The system worked.
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  Speaker 2: But the system had essentially hallucinated a solution.
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  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: Within a month of that highly publicized arrest, the entire
• 6:44
  narrative completely collapsed. Investigators were forced to admit that the
• 6:48
  woman they had sitting in a jail cell had never
• 6:50
  even been pregnant.
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  Speaker 1: Wait, really, she hadn't even been pregnant.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: No, she had absolutely zero involvement in the crime, and
• 6:56
  the state had to entirely dismiss the charges.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: I am j mnuinely struggling to understand how that happens.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: You have the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force, a
• 7:06
  specialized elite unit.
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  Speaker 2: Right right, very experienced officers.
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  Speaker 1: And they get derailed by a false lead of that magnitude.
• 7:14
  How do you charge someone with the murder of her
• 7:16
  newborn without verifying she recently gave birth.
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  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the stark contrast between the intense,
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  almost crushing pressure to solve a high profile case and
• 7:28
  the limitations of forensic realities.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: In two thousand and one, the pressure must have been immense.
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  Speaker 2: It was a baby in a dumpster triggers a visceral
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  public outcry. The media is relentless. The political pressure on
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  the police chief and the prosecutor is off the charts, right.
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  They need to win, exactly, and in that pressure cooker environment,
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  confirmation bias becomes a very real danger. Oh so well,
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  if they get a tip from an informant or a
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  witness says, oh, I saw this woman, she looked pregnant
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  a few months ago, and now she doesn't, I see,
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  the momentum can become a runaway train. Detectives might see
• 8:00
  cure confession under duress, or misinterpret circumstantial evidence, and suddenly
• 8:04
  they start molding the facts to fit their prime suspect,
• 8:07
  rather than letting the facts lead them.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: It's like driving on a road trip before GPS existed.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: You take one wrong turn because you misread a map,
• 8:15
  You drive one hundred miles in the wrong direction, convince
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  you're making good time, and by the time you finally
• 8:20
  realize your mistake, you're completely out of gas. It's pitch
• 8:23
  black and the trail is freezing cold.
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  Speaker 2: That analogy captures the investigative cost perfectly, because the tragedy
• 8:30
  of that false lead wasn't just the profound injustice experienced
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  by the innocent woman who was.
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  Speaker 1: Charged right, which is terrible on its own, of.
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  Speaker 2: Course, but the investigative cost was irreversible. Time. By the
• 8:41
  time they cleared her, a whole month had.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Evaporated, and time is everything in a homicide case.
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  Speaker 2: It's everything in homicide investigations. The first forty eight hours
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  are the golden window. Witnesses remember faces, security tapes haven't
• 8:55
  been overwritten, you know, physical evidence and the surrounding environment
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  is still intact. But after a month, after a month,
• 9:01
  the trail of whoever actually left the baby in that
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  dumpster had been completely washed away.
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  Speaker 1: So the task force has to shift resources. The hotline
• 9:09
  stopped ringing, and the initial shock in the community just
• 9:12
  kind of fades into this lingering, uneasy silence.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, the case file essentially goes dormant.
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  Speaker 1: But while the physical trail froze, the emotional trail never did.
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  The sources highlight a specific individual who really embodies the
• 9:26
  psychological weight of this unresolved trauma. A man named Ryan Rodriguez.
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  Speaker 2: Right back in August two thousand and one. Ryan Rodriguez
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  was just a young.
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  Speaker 1: Patrol officer, Wow, just starting out.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was one of the first people to
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  physically respond to that grocery store on Rollin's Road. You
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  have to consider the profound psychological toll that takes on
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  a person.
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  Speaker 1: I can't even imagine you enter.
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  Speaker 2: Law enforcement with a foundational desire to protect people, to
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  impose order on chaos. And there is nothing that represents
• 9:55
  chaos in total vulnerability more than a deceased, discarded newborn.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: It fundamentally challenges your belief in the safety of your
• 10:03
  own community, it really does. And he didn't just process
• 10:06
  the scene and transfer to a different precinct. He stayed.
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  Over the next two and a half decades, he rises
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  through the ranks, eventually becoming the police chief of Round
• 10:15
  Lake Beach.
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  Speaker 2: He carried the ghost of this case with him through
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  his entire career.
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  Speaker 1: And the community carried it right alongside him too. There
• 10:22
  was this localized refusal to let this child simply fade
• 10:26
  into the archives as a bureaucratic anomaly right for.
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  Speaker 2: Years, the infant was officially referred to in police and
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  coroner files as just baby Boy or simply by an
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  impersonal case number. But eventually an advocacy group called AMT
• 10:40
  Children of Hope, working in tandem with the Lake Tounty
• 10:43
  Public Guardian, stepped in to legally and officially give the
• 10:48
  baby a name.
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  Speaker 1: And they named him Jacob Hope.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, Jacob Hope.
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  Speaker 1: On a human level, it's a beautiful gesture. But playing
• 10:55
  Devil's advocate for a moment here. From a strictly procedural
• 10:58
  law enforcement perspective, why spend the bureaucratic energy and resources
• 11:03
  to legally name an unidentified victim. It's a fair question,
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  I mean, does changing a file from John Doe to
• 11:09
  Jacob Hope actually generate leads?
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Well, no, it doesn't yield a fingerprint, and it doesn't
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  suddenly make a witness remember or a license plate. But
• 11:16
  from an investigative psychology standpoint, it is an incredibly powerful maneuver.
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  Speaker 1: How does it help the psychology of the investigation.
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  Speaker 2: Justice isn't just the mechanical administrative act of catching a perpetrator.
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  It is fundamentally about restoring humanity to the victim. When
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  you transition from investigating the death of case number forty
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  four B to investigating the death of Jacob Hope. You
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  fundamentally alter how the detectives interact with the memory of
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  the crime.
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  Speaker 1: It prevents the investigators from emotionally.
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  Speaker 2: Detaching precisely, it makes it deeply personal every single time
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  a cold case detective pulls the file to review it.
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  As Chief Rodriguez stated in the twenty twenty six press release,
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  Jacob Hope deserved answers, dignity and justice. Cold cases involving
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  children carry a unique, suffocating weight because they don't just
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  represent a life lost, they represent a future entirely stolen
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  before it could even begin.
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  Speaker 1: Wow Well said.
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  Speaker 2: Naming him was a declaration by the community and the
• 12:14
  police force. They were saying, we recognize this child's humanity
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  and we are absolutely not giving up.
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  Speaker 1: I think about the timeline, and you really have to
• 12:21
  view this through the societal lens of two thousand and
• 12:24
  one to understand why it resonated. Is such a profound
• 12:27
  collective failure you really do. Today we see signs on
• 12:30
  fire stations about safe haven laws all the time, But
• 12:34
  in two thousand and one, a mother in crisis was
• 12:37
  essentially operating in an information vacuum.
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  Speaker 2: Wasn't she she was completely isolated. The concept of safe
• 12:43
  haven laws, which allow a parent to anonymously surrender an
• 12:47
  unharmed newborn at a designated location like a hospital or
• 12:50
  a firehouse, without facing criminal prosecution. That concept was in
• 12:55
  its infancy.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: It barely existed exactly.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Some states were just beginning to draft legislation, and public
• 13:00
  awareness campaigns were virtually non existent compared to the digital
• 13:03
  outreach of today.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: There were no social media campaigns or twenty four hour
• 13:07
  hotlines to.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Text, no, none of that. The infrastructure to support a
• 13:11
  mother in extreme distress, to give her a safe, legal
• 13:14
  and anonymous off ramp, was severely lacking. So the discovery
• 13:18
  of Jacob Hope wasn't just a crime. It was an
• 13:20
  indictment of the safety nets that failed to catch both
• 13:23
  the mother and the child.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: And it was exactly that refusal to forget, that ongoing
• 13:27
  emotional investment by Chief Rodriguez in his department that motivated
• 13:31
  them to meticulously preserve the physical evidence.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: That is a crucial point.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: They guarded those biological samples in a freezer for twenty
• 13:38
  three years, and that leads us to the monumental turning
• 13:41
  point of this story, because in early twenty twenty four,
• 13:45
  the Round Lake Beach Detectives decided to deploy a technology
• 13:48
  that would have sounded like pure science fiction to the
• 13:51
  officer standing in that parking lot in two thousand and one.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, totally unimaginable.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Back then, they submitted the infants DNA profile for genetic
• 13:59
  genealogy testing.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and to truly appreciate the twenty twenty four breakthrough,
• 14:03
  we really have to unpack the massive paradigm shift in
• 14:07
  forensic DNA technology.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's break that down.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: In two thousand and one, DNA was primarily a comparative tool.
• 14:13
  It relied on something called str profiling or short tandem.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Repeats str profiling, right, and.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: It was fantastic. If you had a suspect in custody,
• 14:22
  you take a swab from the crime scene, you take
• 14:23
  a swab from the suspect, and you ask the lab
• 14:25
  is this a one to one match?
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Right? And if you didn't have a suspect, you uploaded
• 14:29
  to codis, the FBI's database. But that database only contains
• 14:32
  the DNA of people who have already been arrested or
• 14:35
  convicted of specific crimes. So if your perpetrator has never
• 14:39
  been in the system, code just gives you a blank screen.
• 14:41
  It's a closed loop, right, a totally closed loop system.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: But genetic genealogy shatters that closed loop by utilizing a
• 14:48
  different type of DNA marker called SNP's single nucleotide polymorphisms.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, how are smps different.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Instead of just looking for a one to one direct match,
• 14:57
  SMP profiling maps out hundreds of thousands of genetic markers.
• 15:01
  Law enforcement takes this highly detailed profile and with the
• 15:05
  assistance of specialized labs, uploads it to consumer genetic databases.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, like the ones you see on TV commercials.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, the kinds of platforms where everyday people send
• 15:15
  in a tube of saliva to discover if they have
• 15:17
  Irish or Italian ancestry.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting, because I think the
• 15:22
  public perception of this, mostly fueled by crime shows, is
• 15:25
  that a detective types a DNA sequence into a laptop,
• 15:29
  a little progress bar flashes across the screen, and boom,
• 15:32
  the killer driver's license pops up.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Right the CSI effect.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: But that is completely divorce from reality. It's not a
• 15:38
  search engine. I like to think of it more like
• 15:41
  finding one single corner piece of a ten thousand piece
• 15:44
  jigsaw puzzle at a massive family reunion.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: That's a great analogy.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: And then having to individually interview every single distant cousin
• 15:52
  there just to figure out what the rest of the
• 15:53
  picture looks like.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: That is a phenomenal way to visualize it. Because the
• 15:57
  labor involved is staggering. It's detectives uploaded Jacob Hope's profile
• 16:02
  to law enforcement accessible databases. They did not get a
• 16:05
  hit for his mother.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: They didn't.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: No, they didn't even get a hit for his father.
• 16:09
  They got a hit on a distant relative.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Wow. So someone who likely took a twenty three mp
• 16:15
  or ancestry test just to build out a family tree,
• 16:18
  completely oblivious to the fact that their spit tube held
• 16:22
  the key to a twenty five year old cold case homicide.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The sources reveal that the genetic genealogists first found
• 16:29
  a match to a relative of the infant's biological father.
• 16:32
  Now we must state clearly, based on the official press release,
• 16:37
  the biological father was identified, thoroughly investigated, and entirely cleared
• 16:42
  of any criminal involvement or wrongdoing related to the infant's death.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: That is a crucial distinction. Yeah, he was a puzzle
• 16:49
  piece not a suspect, yes, exactly.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Scientifically, finding the father side of the family gave the
• 16:55
  genealogists half of the genetic map. From there, they measure
• 16:59
  the shared DNA in units called centi morgans. Centi morgans, Yeah,
• 17:02
  it's a unit of genetic measurement. By calculating how many
• 17:05
  centi moorgans the baby shared with this distant relative, the
• 17:09
  genealogists can estimate the exact generational distance between them.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Ah, so they can tell if it's a second cousin
• 17:15
  or a first cousin once removed precisely. And then they
• 17:18
  have to do the historical legwork because they are just
• 17:20
  looking at DNA anymore, are they.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. They are pulling census records, birth certificates,
• 17:25
  marriage licenses, and obituaries.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: They become historians.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: They do. They build massive family trees backward in time,
• 17:31
  sometimes going back to the eighteen hundreds, to find the
• 17:34
  common ancestor between the baby and the database match.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: That sounds incredibly tedious, it is.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Once they find that ancestral couple, they build the tree
• 17:43
  forward again, mapping out every single descendant to the present day.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: And what exactly are they looking for when they build
• 17:49
  it forward.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: They are looking for a convergence, a marriage or a
• 17:53
  relationship between a male from this identified father's tree and
• 17:57
  a female from a completely different family tree who could
• 18:00
  have plausibly been in the vicinity of Round Lake Beach, Illinois,
• 18:04
  in August two thousand and one.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: It is just mind boggling, and it proves that you
• 18:08
  can't just hand this off to a computer algorithm. It
• 18:11
  requires a delicate, intricate partnership between cutting edge consumer science
• 18:16
  and traditional old fashioned shoeletter detective work.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Science cannot make an arrest. The genetic genealogist might hand
• 18:23
  the detective a list of three sisters who fit the
• 18:25
  genetic and demographic profile, but a DNA match can't tell
• 18:29
  you which sister was pregnant in two thousand and one,
• 18:31
  or which sister was in Round Lake Beach. DNA gives
• 18:35
  you the neighborhood that the detective work finds the house.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: That's perfectly said.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: The Round Lake Beach detectives had to take that lead,
• 18:42
  go out into the field, conduct interviews, look for corroborating evidence,
• 18:46
  and manually narrow down the suspect.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: And through this relentless hybrid of lab work and field work,
• 18:53
  they finally arrived at a definitive name. They identified the
• 18:56
  biological mother as Jennifer Lebron. Yes, Sciens provided the key
• 19:01
  that twenty five years of traditional policing just couldn't find.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: But identifying the mother is only half the battle. Oh so,
• 19:07
  because the justice system does not operate purely on genetic probabilities.
• 19:10
  It operates on the rigid parameters of the law. Once
• 19:13
  they located Jennifer Lebron, state's attorney Eric Reinhardt had to
• 19:17
  answer a deeply complex legal question, which is what specific
• 19:21
  crime can you actually prove beyond a reasonable doubt in
• 19:24
  a court of law a quarter of a century after
• 19:26
  the event.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Which brings us directly into the legal reality of this
• 19:30
  case and the charges that were formally announced in July
• 19:33
  twenty twenty six. Because when you read the press release,
• 19:36
  the charge isn't murdered, No, it's not. Jennifer Lebron, who
• 19:40
  was forty eight years old at the time of her arrest,
• 19:43
  was charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: That's correct.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? The sources note this
• 19:50
  is a Class three felony in Illinois. Help us navigate
• 19:54
  the legal architecture here why involuntary manslaughter instead of the
• 19:58
  first degree murder charge they originally threw at that instant
• 20:02
  woman back in two thousand and one.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question about the legal definition of intent.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's hear it.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: In the state of Illinois, involuntary manslaughter generally applies when
• 20:11
  a person inadvertently causes the death of another individual through
• 20:15
  reckless conduct, reckless conduct, or if they commit an act
• 20:18
  that is likely to cause death or great bodily harm
• 20:21
  and death is the result. The crucial defining distinction here
• 20:24
  is that involuntary manslaughter does not require the prosecution to
• 20:28
  prove an intent.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: To kill ah I see, so if they charged her
• 20:32
  with first degree murder, the prosecutor would have to stand
• 20:35
  in front of a jury and prove that in two
• 20:37
  thousand and one, Jennifer Lebron actively maliciously intended to end
• 20:43
  the life.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Of that baby precisely, and if we look back at
• 20:46
  the physical evidence preserved from the initial crime scene, we
• 20:49
  have to remember the medical examiner's.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Conclusion right the suffocation.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: The baby suffocated, but the scene heavily indicated a panicked
• 20:56
  or desperate act. It lacked the hallmarks of calculating cold
• 21:00
  blooded premeditation. Charging her with involuntary manslaughter aligns the legal
• 21:05
  strategy with the forensic reality of a crisis event.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: But even with a lesser charge, how on earth does
• 21:10
  a prosecutor confidently prove reckless conduct for a few chaotic
• 21:14
  panic minutes that happened twenty five years ago. I mean,
• 21:17
  I'm thinking about the sheer logistics of a trial in
• 21:19
  twenty twenty six for a crime from two thousand and one.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly difficult. State's attorney Reinhardt is facing a monumental
• 21:26
  uphill battle. The passage of time is the greatest enemy
• 21:29
  of the prosecution. After twenty five years, human memory is
• 21:32
  virtually useless in a courtroom. Even if someone vividly remembers
• 21:37
  seeing a woman near that grocery store dumpster in two
• 21:39
  thousand and one, their testimony today would be incredibly easy
• 21:43
  for a skilled defense attorney to dismantle.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Because memory isn't perfect right.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Science has proven that memories degrade, shift, and rewrite themselves
• 21:52
  over time.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: So they can't rely on witnesses at all. They have
• 21:55
  to rely almost entirely on the preserved physical evidence from
• 21:59
  the initial crime scene. The genetic genealogy link and presumably
• 22:04
  whatever statements were made by Lebron during the new investigation
• 22:07
  in twenty twenty four and twenty twenty six.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. They have to take those tangible, immutable facts
• 22:12
  and weave them into a compelling narrative of reckless conduct.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: That sounds tough, and they.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: Have to do it while navigating the nightmare of chain
• 22:18
  of custody.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, right, chain of custody over twenty five years.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Think about an evidence locker over two and a half decades.
• 22:25
  How many times did that facility change hands? Did a
• 22:27
  freezer ever lease power during a storm?
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Wow? I didn't even think of that.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: A defense attorney will scrutinize every single logbook entry to
• 22:35
  cast doubt on the integrity of the DNA sample. And
• 22:38
  this highlights a critical point we must emphasize, as the
• 22:41
  sources clearly state Jennifer Lebron had no prior public criminal
• 22:45
  history highlighted in connection with this case. Right, she was
• 22:48
  arrested on a warrant, and she is entirely presumed innocent
• 22:51
  until proven guilty in a court of law.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, the presumption of innocence is the bedrock of the
• 22:56
  American judicial system. We are strictly examining the tr charges
• 23:00
  as filed by the state and the immense burden of
• 23:03
  proof that the prosecution currently carries.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Ensuring a fair trial after a quarter century gap is
• 23:09
  an incredible challenge for the judge and the legal teams
• 23:11
  on both sides.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: But you know, the legal mechanics we're discussing apply to
• 23:16
  this one specific woman and this one specific tragedy in
• 23:19
  Round Lake Beach. The resolution of this case forces us
• 23:22
  to zoom out.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, where are we zooming out to?
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: It demands that we look at how society handles mothers
• 23:28
  and crisis, and it forces us to confront the ethical
• 23:30
  boundaries of the very technology that was used to track
• 23:33
  her down.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I really want to dive into that broader landscape. The
• 23:37
  sources touch on the context of Neonata side and infant abandonment. Yes,
• 23:41
  this is a very specific tragic category of crime where
• 23:44
  a newborn dies or is harmed shortly after birth, and
• 23:48
  it typically involves a mother in a severe state of crisis.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Statistically, while these incidents are rare, the psychological literature surrounding
• 23:55
  neonata side points to an overwhelming convergence of factors. What
• 23:59
  kind of fact you are often looking at individuals experiencing
• 24:03
  profound denial of the pregnancy itself. Sometimes they are completely
• 24:07
  dissociating from the physical reality of their own bodies.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Oh wow.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Combine that with a total lack of social or familial support,
• 24:14
  severe untreated mental health struggles, and sheer paralyzing panic during
• 24:19
  the delivery process, it is a psychological perfect storm where
• 24:22
  rational decision making completely shuts down.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: And when you reflect on that, it's striking how aggressively
• 24:28
  society has attempted to shift its infrastructure since two thousand
• 24:31
  and one to intercept that perfect storm. We mentioned safe
• 24:35
  haven laws earlier. The evolution of that safety net over
• 24:37
  the last twenty five years has been massive.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: It has completely transformed. Today you can walk into virtually
• 24:43
  any hospital, fire station, or police station in the country,
• 24:47
  hand over an unharmed newborn and walk.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Away anonymously, no questions asked.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: No questions asked, no fear of criminal prosecution, and the
• 24:54
  infrastructure has expanded far beyond just legal protection. Crisis hotlines
• 24:59
  are accessible two hundred and four seven via text message,
• 25:03
  a technology that didn't even exist in a meaningful way
• 25:05
  in two thousand and one. Support services for pregnant individuals
• 25:09
  have been heavily funded and publicized. The entire societal goal
• 25:13
  is to ensure that no mother ever feels that abandoning
• 25:15
  a child in a dumpster is her only viable option.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: The social evolution is very clear, But the technological evolution
• 25:22
  brings us to the other massive debate embedded in the
• 25:25
  core of this story, which is genetic privacy. Yes, a
• 25:28
  massive debate because the tool that solved this case is
• 25:31
  currently sitting at the center of a raging bioethics debate.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: It is the absolute frontier of Fourth Amendment law right.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Now, and it raises a genuine philosophical tension. I mean,
• 25:40
  on one hand, you and I are sitting here marveling
• 25:42
  at this miracle of science. We are celebrating the fact
• 25:46
  that a discarded child, Jacob Hope, is finally getting.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Justice right, which is an incredible thing.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: But on the other hand, isn't there something fundamentally unnerving
• 25:54
  about the fact that sending your spit in a tube
• 25:56
  to find out if your ancestors are from Ireland or
• 25:59
  Italy inadvertently put your third cousin into police interrogation room.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, you are
• 26:06
  hitting them the exact nerve center of the controversy. Genetic
• 26:09
  genealogy essentially turns every single person who takes a consumer
• 26:13
  DNA test into an unwitting biological informant for their entire
• 26:18
  extended family tree.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: That is wild to think about. When I click except
• 26:23
  on the terms of service for a DNA testing site,
• 26:26
  I am consenting for myself, yes, But biologically I'm effectively
• 26:30
  consenting for relatives I've never even met, and relatives who
• 26:33
  haven't even been born yet.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: That is the core legal argument. The DNA that solved
• 26:37
  the Jacob Hope case came from distant relatives who almost
• 26:40
  certainly just wanted to map their heritage.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: They were just curious about their ancestors exactly.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: They had no idea they were providing the crucial puzzle
• 26:47
  piece for a two thousand and one homicide investigation. And
• 26:51
  people are deeply protective of their genetic data for very
• 26:54
  valid reasons.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Sure, it is the.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Most fundamental, immutable blueprint of who we are. It contains
• 27:00
  predispositions to diseases, familial secrets, our entire biological identity.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: It's not like changing a password if your email gets hacked.
• 27:08
  You can't change your DNA.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: No, you can't.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: If the state has access to map out your entire
• 27:13
  family network without a warrant, just by logging into a
• 27:16
  consumer database, where does the privacy line get drawn?
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: That is why this is an active, rapidly shifting legal battlefield.
• 27:24
  Legislators and judges are constantly trying to refine this balance.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: How are they trying to balance it?
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Well, how do we weigh the collective safety of society
• 27:32
  and the moral imperative to solve horrific crimes against the
• 27:35
  individual's constitutional right to genetic privacy. The policies of these
• 27:39
  database companies frequently change, opting users in or out of
• 27:43
  law enforcement.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Matching thoh, so the rules keep changing constantly.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Some states are passing laws requiring judicial sign off before
• 27:49
  police can even use genetic genealogy, but the tension remains
• 27:54
  entirely unresolved. It's a breathtakingly powerful tool, but it's a
• 27:58
  tool that requires found rigorous ethical oversight so it doesn't
• 28:03
  devolve into a surveillance state mechanism.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: It is a profound tight rope walk between justice and privacy.
• 28:09
  But bringing our focus back from those macro level societal
• 28:13
  debates to the micro level reality of Round Lake Beach
• 28:18
  what does this twenty five year journey truly signify for
• 28:21
  the people involved.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: I think it serves as a powerful testament to the
• 28:24
  fact that cold cases are never truly closed. They might
• 28:27
  gather dust in a physical filing cabinet, but they remain
• 28:30
  highly active in the minds of the investigators who work them,
• 28:33
  like Ghif Fredriguez, and the communities that mourn them. The
• 28:36
  relentless persistence of local law enforcement, combined with the quiet,
• 28:40
  invisible advancements in forensic science, eventually bridged a gap that
• 28:44
  time created.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: It's proof that the slow evolution of science and social
• 28:48
  safety nets doesn't just happen in laboratories or legislative chambers.
• 28:52
  It directly impacts the very streets we live on.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Jacob Hope's story was defined for twenty five years by
• 28:58
  the tragedy of his death and the anonymity of his existence.
• 29:02
  But today he has a name, and the circumstances of
• 29:05
  his short life are finally moving through the justice system.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: It is a profound reminder that every victim, especially the
• 29:12
  most vulnerable among us, deserves the full weight and resources
• 29:16
  of justice, Regardless of how many calendar pages have turned
• 29:19
  since the crime occurred.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: It really is. And as we wrap up this deep
• 29:23
  dive into the Round Lake beachcase, I want to leave
• 29:25
  you with a thought to mollover as you go about
• 29:27
  your week, A thought that builds on everything we've discussed
• 29:30
  today about technology, privacy, and time. Let's call it the
• 29:35
  Death of the clean Getaway. I like that title. For
• 29:37
  the vast majority of human history, time was the ultimate
• 29:40
  eraser of evidence. If you committed a crime, and you
• 29:43
  could just make it far enough away, either physically across
• 29:46
  state lines or chronologically by surviving past the fading memories
• 29:50
  of witnesses and the degradation of physical clues, well you
• 29:54
  could safely disappear into the past.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Time was an impenetrable shield exactly.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: But the advent of genetic genealogy suggests that time is
• 30:02
  no longer a shield. Our biology is a permanent, interconnected ledger.
• 30:07
  The DNA left in that dumpster in two thousand and
• 30:09
  one didn't change the world around it, just finally got
• 30:12
  smart enough to read it.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: That's incredibly well put.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: So as you think about this case, ask yourself in
• 30:18
  an era where our very DNA permanently tethers us to
• 30:21
  everyone we are related to past present and future. Is
• 30:25
  it even possible for the past to stay buried anymore?
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: It's definitely something to think about.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: We started this conversation talking about X rays and the murky,
• 30:32
  muddy waters of Cold case investigations, but maybe thanks to
• 30:36
  the intersection of human persistence and genetic science, those waters
• 30:39
  are finally starting to clear. Thank you for joining us
• 30:42
  on this deep dive.