Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / The Murder of 15-Year-Old Melissa Lee

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The Murder of 15-Year-Old Melissa Lee · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: I want you to, like really try to picture this
0:02
scenario for a second. It's two o'clock in the morning, Okay,
0:06
you have just gotten home from you know, a really
0:09
long evening out, and you're walking up to your front door.
0:12
It is totally quiet, just a typical sleepy suburban night, right,
0:17
But as you reach for the handle, your hand just
0:20
stops because the lock has been violently forced. Oh man, yeah,
0:24
I mean the doorjam is completely splintered, like the wood
0:26
is just shattered inward. So you push the door open,
0:29
and your living room is in just total inexplicable.
0:33
Speaker 2: Chaos, which is terrifying.
0:35
Speaker 1: Exactly. The heavy coffee table is completely overturned. There's this
0:39
spilled drink just soaking deep into the carpet fibers, and
0:43
sitting right there, like right in the middle of all
0:45
this mess is an unfamiliar pack of cigarettes and a
0:48
lighter things that absolutely do not belong.
0:51
Speaker 2: In your home, So immediately you know someone has been.
0:53
Speaker 1: In there, right, and then the smell hits you. It
0:56
hits you like a physical wall. It's this overpowering, really sharp,
1:00
almost intoxicating chemical odor. It's so intense, so thick in
1:05
the air that your lungs literally involuntarily sees up. You
1:08
immediately have to like run around, throwing open every door
1:12
and window in the house just to be able to
1:14
take a breath.
1:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's wild.
1:15
Speaker 1: So ask yourself, what would you do if you walked
1:18
into that horrifying scene and your fifteen year old daughter,
1:21
who was supposed to be asleep in her bed, was
1:24
just simply gone.
1:26
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the ultimate psychological abyss, right, Yeah, you
1:28
were describing the exact fraction of a second where the
1:31
human brain just completely short circuits because what you were
1:34
looking at simply does not compute with the reality you inhabited,
1:38
you know, five minutes prior.
1:40
Speaker 1: It's totally shattered.
1:41
Speaker 2: Exactly, and the mind just frantically scrambles to find any
1:46
rational explanation for what is essentially an inherently irrational, violent event.
1:51
Speaker 1: And we are exploring that specific nightmare today, So welcome
1:54
in everyone. We are doing a deep dive today into
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the nineteen ninety three murder of fifteen year old Melissa Lee.
2:00
Speaker 2: It's a heavy one, it really is.
2:02
Speaker 1: We are going to trace the anatomy of a cold
2:04
case that sat completely dormant for three decades. We'll be
2:08
looking at how it was ultimately dismantled by well, a
2:11
combination of just relentless investigative pressure, extreme patients, and honestly
2:16
a level of cutting edge forensic science that would have
2:19
sounded like pure science fiction to the detectives who first
2:22
walked into that splintered house.
2:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, and grounding ourselves in the specific temporal reality of
2:27
nineteen ninety three is so vital here, Oh absolutely, because
2:32
the early nineties in the Pacific Northwest it represented this
2:35
massive cultural and demographic boom, largely driven by the tech
2:39
and aerospace.
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Speaker 1: Industry, right, Microsoft, Boeing, all of that exactly, but.
2:43
Speaker 2: It was concurrently a peak era for violent crime in
2:45
the region. And furthermore, from an investigative standpoint, nineteen ninety
2:49
three was basically the dark ages of forensic science.
2:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, DNA was barely.
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Speaker 2: A thing, right, DNA profiling was in its absolute infancy.
2:57
It was restricted to these highly specialized labs and really
3:00
rudimentary applications. So that technological deficit really sets up the massive,
3:05
like seemingly insurmountable hurdles the detectives assigned to this case
3:08
we're about to face.
3:10
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this and establish the geography and the players.
3:13
The date is April thirteenth, nineteen ninety three. The location
3:16
is Boffel, Washington.
3:18
Speaker 2: Right.
3:18
Speaker 1: This is a city in the Seattle metropolitan area, positioned
3:21
right near the northeast end of Lake Washington. And interestingly,
3:25
Boffel actually straddles two different counties, King and Snowhomish.
3:29
Speaker 2: And that jurisdictional quirk is going to become a major,
3:31
major logistical friction point later on.
3:34
Speaker 1: Oh, big time. But in nineteen ninety three, Bothel is
3:37
largely seen as this quiet, insulated community. Right, It's the
3:40
kind of suburban enclave where violent home invasions and abductions
3:45
are just complete statistical anomalies.
3:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it functioned as a bedroom community. People
3:50
move there specifically to escape the rising metropolitan crime rates
3:53
of Seattle.
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Speaker 1: Proper, Right, So living in this community is our victim,
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fifteen year old Melissa Lee. She shares a home with
4:01
her mother Sharon, her eleven year old sister Kelly, and
4:04
Sharon's boyfriend Gary Okay. And Melissa's described super vividly by
4:08
those who knew her. She was tall, thin, striking. She
4:12
actually had genuine aspirations of becoming a model one day.
4:15
Speaker 2: Oh, Wow.
4:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, But the most prominent trait everyone mentions is her
4:19
nurturing disposition. She frequently went out of her way to
4:22
help the local unhoused population, and she was fiercely, just
4:26
uncompromisingly protective of her younger sister Kelly.
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Speaker 2: And see that protective instinct is a really crucial behavioral
4:33
marker for us. How so well, it tells us we're
4:35
dealing with a teenager who possessed a very strong sense
4:38
of agency and familial responsibility. You know, she was not passive.
4:42
Right if confronted in her own territory, especially with her
4:45
younger sister's safety potentially on her mind, her baseline instinct
4:49
would likely be defensive. She'd fight back.
4:51
Speaker 1: That makes total sense. So the timeline of April thirteen,
4:55
it begins with just mundane normalcy. Melissa's mother, Sharon, were
5:00
a shift at the pine Cone Cafe in the neighboring
5:02
city of Lynnwood, Okay. She finishes her shift around four
5:05
thirty in the afternoon, and Sharon and her boyfriend Gary,
5:09
they decide to linger at the cafe for a while
5:11
to just socialize, have some drinks, and later in the
5:14
evening they head over to a local Eagles club. So
5:17
Melissa's left.
5:18
Speaker 2: Home alone, right, but at approximately nine to thirty PM,
5:21
Sharon checks in.
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Speaker 1: She calls the house phone, just a normal mom thing exactly.
5:26
Speaker 2: Melissa had recently gone through this really difficult breakup with
5:29
a boyfriend, and Sharon is executing standard parental duty, you know,
5:32
just monitoring her daughter's emotional state.
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Speaker 1: And that phone call is entirely innocuous, like Melissa sounds
5:38
totally relaxed. Nothing in her tone indicates any distress, anxiety,
5:42
or you know, the presence of a threat in the house.
5:44
Speaker 2: And that is the very last time Sharon ever hears
5:46
her daughter's voice.
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Speaker 1: It's just chilling. So fast forward four and a half
5:51
hours to two point early m Sharon and Gary arrived
5:54
back at the house in Bofel and walked directly into
5:57
that nightmare we mapped out at the beginning of this
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deep dive or the table, all of it exactly, the
6:03
forced lock, the shattered jam, the overturned table, those unfamiliar cigarettes,
6:07
and that chemical wall. Gary actually identifies the odor immediately.
6:11
He recognizes it as ether, which is such a specific detail.
6:16
Speaker 2: Ether is a highly volatile, highly flammable liquid. It's got
6:20
a really rich complex.
6:22
Speaker 1: History medically speaking, right, yeah, Metically.
6:24
Speaker 2: Bithyl ether was one of the absolute earliest general anesthetics.
6:28
It has this very distinct, sweet, deeply penetrating odor and
6:32
make it smell it everywhere. Right. The fact that the
6:34
ambient air in the living room was so heavily saturated
6:37
that Gary and Sharon had to physically ventilate the property,
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that indicates a massive deployment of the chemical.
6:42
Speaker 1: Like they didn't just use a rag.
6:43
Speaker 2: No, it suggests someone brought a significant quantity into the
6:46
home with the express purpose of rapidly subduing a target.
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Speaker 1: So you would assume, right that the immediate reflexive action
6:55
upon smelling industrial anesthetic and finding a broken door is
6:58
to call nine one one.
7:00
Speaker 2: You would think so.
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Speaker 1: But Sharon does not make that call. Because Melissa had
7:04
a documented history of running away from home during previous conflicts.
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Sharon's mind grasps onto that precedent.
7:11
Speaker 2: It's a coping mechanism exactly.
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Speaker 1: She convinces herself that Melissa simply ran away again, So
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she delays contacting law enforcement for nearly twelve agonized hours,
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finally dialing the police at one, four or five pm
7:24
the following afternoon, which is April fourteen. But during that
7:27
twelve hour window of waiting, Sharon engages in an action
7:31
that fundamentally alters the trajectory of the entire investigation.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, this part is just heartbreak. He cleans the living room,
7:37
She methodically dismantles the primary crime scene.
7:40
Speaker 1: I mean, I really struggle to reconcile that action with
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the reality of the room. It's like accidentally hitting reset
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on a video game right before the final boss battle.
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She was trying to restore order, but she effectively wiped
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the crime scene clean.
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Speaker 2: She erased him.
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Speaker 1: Yes, every latent print on that overturned table, the exact
7:57
positioning of those unfamiliar cigarettes, the traject of the spilled drink.
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She wiped it all away before a single crime scene
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technician could even cross the threshold. How do investigators even
8:08
recover from leasing that initial physical evidence.
8:12
Speaker 2: Well, it's incredibly difficult if we examine this purely through
8:15
a forensic lens. Yeah, it is just a catastrophic loss
8:19
of data, right obviously. But you know what's fascinating here
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is if we analyze it through the lens of human
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psychology and traumatic shock, it makes complete sense. Really, Yeah,
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when a human being is confronted with an environment that
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suggests an unspeakable horror, like the violent deduction of their child,
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the prefrontal cortex becomes completely overwhelmed.
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Speaker 1: It just shuts down.
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Speaker 2: The brain desperately seeks homeostasis. It desperately looks for a
8:43
way to exert control over to completely uncontrollable environment, and
8:47
cleaning is a methodical, repetitive, controllable physical action.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow, so she's just trying to control something, anything exactly.
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Speaker 2: It is the physical manifestation of psychological denial. The subconscious
9:01
thought is, if she can fix the room, perhaps she
9:04
can fix the.
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Speaker 1: Reality that is just so incredibly sad. But the result
9:08
is that psychological defense mechanism obliterated the physical evidence completely.
9:13
By the time the Bothel Police and Snahomish County deputies arrive,
9:17
they are staring at a sterile environment. They have almost
9:20
zero physical evidence of the struggle to collect, so they
9:23
are instantly forced onto their back foot, just desperate for
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any external clues.
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Speaker 2: And tragically those clues materialize just a few hours later.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, we moved to the evening of April fourteenth, roughly
9:35
seven thirty pm. Two women are taking a walk near
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the Everett Macultel border. They are crossing the Edgewater Creek Bridge,
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which is a structure that spans this very deep, heavily
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wooded ravine. They happen to look down over the edge
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and they spot what appears to be a human body
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resting in the brush below. So they run to a
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nearby convenience store, the Soundview Deli, and contact emergency services.
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Speaker 2: And this specific geographical location instantly complicates the investigation.
10:00
Speaker 1: Because of the borders right exactly.
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Speaker 2: The bridge is located within the city limits of Effet,
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but Melissa was abducted from Bothel, which falls under the
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jurisdiction of the Snahomish County Sheriff's Office, but her body
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is discovered in the police department's territory.
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Speaker 1: A total logistical night.
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Speaker 2: It really is that this immediately necessitates a multi agency response,
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which you know, in nineteen ninety three often meant fragmented
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communication and really siloed information.
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Speaker 1: Right. So Sergeant Wayne Meyer of the Everett Police along
10:32
with patrol officers arrive at the bridge. They navigate down
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this really steep embankment into the ravine to confirm the
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visual and the scene they document is chilling. Yeah, they
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find a young strawberry blonde female. Based on the topography,
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it is evident she was dropped or thrown from the
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bridge above, and the state of her clothing instantly broadcasts
10:50
the motive to the responding officers as the story a
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horrible one. She has partially clothed, her sweatshirt and her
10:56
bra have been violently push up above her chest. She
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is wearing a pair of sin im in colored shorts
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and black socks, but there are no shoes anywhere in
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the vicinity, no purse, no identification.
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Speaker 2: And because Sharon had finally filed that missing person's report
11:09
earlier that afternoon, the description of the missing Boffel teenager
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was active across local dispatch.
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Speaker 1: Channels, so they put it together pretty fast.
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Speaker 2: They did the responding effort. Detectives recognize the physical match.
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They coordinate with Snowholmish County a range of meeting with
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Sharon and Gary back at the Pine Cone Cafe and
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use a photograph to confirm the devastating reality the victim
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in the ravine is Melissa Lee.
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Speaker 1: God I can't imagine that moment for the mother. The
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autopsy is conducted the very next day, April fifteenth. The
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Medical Examiner's findings map out a brutal final sequence of events. Fine,
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the official cause of death is strangulation, the manner is homicide.
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They document a distinct ligature mark on her neck, suggesting
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the use of a cord or rope rather than manual
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strangulation with hands. They also catalog extensive brute us across
12:00
her arms and legs, alongside deep abrasions on her back,
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which indicates she was dragged across a hard, rough surface,
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likely asphalt or concrete. Well incapacitated.
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Speaker 2: And during that physical examination, when the medical team undresses
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the body to document the trauma, they uncover a highly specific,
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really vital forensic anomaly.
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Speaker 1: Yes, this part is bizarre.
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Speaker 2: When they remove the salmon colored shorts, they discover that
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Melissa's underwear had been put back onto her body backwards.
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Speaker 1: Okay, walk me through the psychological and forensic implications of
12:35
that specific detail. Because it feels so deliberate but also so.
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Speaker 2: Chaotic, it provides a massive window into the perpetrators state
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of mind post assault. I mean, think about it, when
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a person dresses themselves. It is an automated function driven
12:49
by muscle memory.
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Speaker 1: Right, You don't even think about it exactly.
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Speaker 2: It requires zero conscious cognitive load. However, when a perpetrator
12:57
has committed a violent sexual assault and is attempting to
13:00
redress a lifeless, deadweight body, they are fighting massive cognitive overloads.
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Speaker 1: Oh, because they're panicking.
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Speaker 2: Yes, their sympathetic nervous system is flooded with adrenaline in
13:09
a severe fight or flight response. They're fine, motor skills degrade.
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They are likely operating in the dark, maybe in the
13:16
back of a vehicle, in just an absolute panic to
13:19
conceal the nature of the crime before transporting.
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Speaker 1: The body, so they just mess it up.
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Speaker 2: In that frantic state, they make a fundamental spatial error
13:27
and pull the garment on backwards for the detectives. This
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definitively cemented the sexual motivation of the crime, even prior
13:35
to microscopic analysis, and.
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Speaker 1: The autopsy yields one more critical piece of data, the
13:40
toxicology report. Right, the medical examiner draws Melissa's blood, They
13:44
screen it for common narcotics and alcohol, finding nothing, But
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they do detect traces of two highly specific volatile organic compounds,
13:53
ethyl ether and.
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Speaker 2: Heptane, which seamlessly bridges the gap back to the pristine
13:57
living room. Right.
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Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interest. The chemistry perfectly aligns
14:02
with the narrative. The toxicology report scientifically validates the overwhelming
14:06
odor Gary encountered at two point zero am.
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Speaker 2: It proves he wasn't crazy. He did smell ether exactly.
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Speaker 1: It confirms the exact mechanism of the abduction. The killer
14:16
did not use persuasion or a weapon or brute physical
14:20
force to remove her from the home. He utilized a
14:23
massive dose of industrial ether to induce rapid chemical incapacitation.
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Speaker 2: And it gives law enforcement a very distinct modus operandi.
14:33
I mean, ether is not a standard street drug.
14:36
Speaker 1: You can't just buy it on a corner.
14:37
Speaker 2: No, accessing it in quantities large enough to saturate an
14:41
entire home, and knowing how to deploy it effectively without
14:44
intoxicating oneself in the process. That suggests a perpetrator with
14:48
specific occupational access or deep chemical knowledge.
14:51
Speaker 1: And what about the heptane.
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Speaker 2: Eptane is frequently used as an industrial solvent or in
14:55
automotive fluids, so that narrows a profile even further.
14:58
Speaker 1: So the Baffel community is just plunged into absolute terror
15:01
at this point. Naturally, the reality of a teenager being
15:04
chemically subdued and kidnapped from her own living room. I
15:06
mean that shatters any illusion of suburban safety. Four hundred
15:10
people attend Melissa's funeral.
15:12
Speaker 2: That's a huge turnout.
15:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, and law enforcement is heavily embedded in that crowd,
15:16
covertly monitoring the attendees. They are operating on standard statistical
15:21
probability stranger on stranger Abductions of this nature are incredibly rare.
15:26
Speaker 2: Right, the perpetrator is almost always nested somewhere in the
15:29
victim's social periphery exactly.
15:31
Speaker 1: But with the physical crime scene at the house basically erased,
15:35
detectives are forced to pivot, so they tear into Melissa's bedroom.
15:39
Speaker 2: They are hunting for the pave trail, because in nineteen
15:43
ninety three, before the ubiquity of cellular data and digital footprints,
15:48
a teenager's life was documented in ink.
15:50
Speaker 1: They uncover this whole cache of personal artifacts, a calendar,
15:54
a day planner, a traditional address book, various loose notes,
15:57
and Melissa was utilizing her day planner as a makeshift diary.
16:01
And as the tectives comb through these entries, they uncover
16:04
a recurring reference to a deeply fascinating, distinctly nineteen nineties
16:08
cultural phenomenon known as the nightline.
16:11
Speaker 2: Ah. Yes, the nightline is a critical piece of technological
16:14
context for this era.
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Speaker 1: Can you explain what that actually was?
16:17
Speaker 2: Sure? Before internet chat rooms became mainstream, local telephone companies
16:22
and private services hosted these analog multi user chat lines.
16:27
You dialed local number and the telecommunications switchboard would drop
16:31
you into an open audio channel with dozens of random
16:34
people in your area.
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Speaker 1: It was basically an audio only, completely anonymous, digital free
16:39
for all. It's like a blindfolded audio version of Tinder.
16:43
People would adopt pseudonyms, talk over each other, flirt, occasionally
16:47
arrange physical meetups. It was chaotic, truly, and through our
16:52
modern lens, you know, hyper aware of digital predation and tracking,
16:55
the idea of a fifteen year old girl engaging with
16:58
anonymous adult men over a local phone network is terrifying.
17:02
Speaker 2: It's a nightmare for parents.
17:03
Speaker 1: But in the early nineties, Melissa and her best friend
17:06
Christa viewed it purely as entertainment. They used it during sleepovers.
17:09
It was just a novelty, But that.
17:11
Speaker 2: Novelty essentially installed an unmonitored door directly from the outside
17:15
world into her bedroom. I mean, her mother Sharon actually
17:19
used to physically confiscate the telephone from Melissa's room at
17:21
night because she was spending excessive hours on it. But
17:24
Sharon was completely oblivious to the fact that her daughter
17:28
was interfacing with a network of anonymous adults.
17:31
Speaker 1: So mining this physical diary and interviewing her peers leaves
17:35
detectives to two primary suspects. Suspect number one is the
17:39
ex boyfriend.
17:40
Speaker 2: Okay, tell me about him.
17:41
Speaker 1: He is roughly her age, perhaps slightly older, but he
17:44
carries a dark, really volatile reputation in the community. There
17:48
are persistent rumors of gang affiliation. Furthermore, family members describe
17:53
him as highly toxic. They asserted he was emotionally and
17:56
physically abusive toward Melissa, sometimes leaving visible Bruce.
18:00
Speaker 2: That's a huge red flag, huge.
18:02
Speaker 1: And the timeline regarding this individual is incredibly alarming. On
18:05
the very night she vanished, Melissa engaged in a heated,
18:09
highly emotional phone call with this ex boyfriend on the
18:12
night of the abduction, Yes, and during the argument, he
18:14
allegedly told her she was marked marked. Yeah. In the
18:18
vernacular of their social circle, that translated to a threat
18:21
like a hit being placed on her.
18:23
Speaker 2: Wow. That provides a clear, documented motive, delivered just hours before.
18:28
Speaker 1: She is kidnapped exactly, and Sharon is absolutely convinced he
18:32
is the architect of the murder. Law enforcement pressures this
18:35
lead relentlessly. They interrogate him repeatedly, pull in his known associates,
18:40
and attempt to map his every movement on April thirteenth.
18:43
Speaker 2: Did they find anything?
18:44
Speaker 1: Nothing? Yet, despite his history of violence and the documented threat,
18:48
they cannot place him at the house or the bridge.
18:51
He simply does not fit the microscopic physical evidence they
18:54
are slowly beginning to process, So the investigation must expand
18:58
They pivot to Suspect none number two, and.
19:00
Speaker 2: This individual emerges directly from the handwritten address book found
19:04
in the bedroom. Detective Greg Renta locates a specific entry,
19:09
the name Michael, written next to a standard local phone number, and.
19:12
Speaker 1: The police trace that number and the facade crumbles instantly.
19:15
Michael is a pseudonym used on the nightline. The number
19:18
actually belongs to an adult man named Alan Dean. Detective
19:22
Renta drives to Dean's residence to initiate a face to
19:25
face interview. Renta produces a photograph of Melissa, and Dean
19:29
doesn't feign total ignorance. He admits to utilizing the nightline,
19:34
admits to interacting with Melissa, and acknowledges they had met
19:37
in person for a couple of dates, but he denies
19:40
the murder right. He adamantly denies any sexual relationship. He
19:44
also feigns shock, claiming he had zero knowledge of her
19:48
death until Renta arrived on his doorstep.
19:50
Speaker 2: But the critical moment in that interrogation comes when Rented
19:53
demands an alibi for the overnight hours of April thirteen
19:57
into the fourteenth.
19:58
Speaker 1: What did he say?
19:59
Speaker 2: Dean's response is a void. He claims a complete memory lapse.
20:02
He states he simply cannot recall his whereabouts during that
20:05
specific twenty four hour window.
20:07
Speaker 1: I mean, as an investigator, that respons us to trigger
20:09
every instinct you possess. You have an adult male utilizing
20:13
a fake identity to court a high school sophomore on
20:15
an anonymous party line, and he suffers a highly convenient
20:18
bout of amnesia regarding the exact night she is brutally murdered.
20:21
Speaker 2: It's incredibly suspicious, and the uneas surrounding Dean wasn't limited
20:26
to just the detective bureau. There is a deeply unsettling
20:29
psychological footnote to this interaction involving Melissa's younger sister, Kelly,
20:35
who remember was only eleven at the time.
20:37
Speaker 1: This detail is haunting.
20:38
Speaker 2: It really is.
20:39
Speaker 1: Kelly actually had a visceral memory of the man she
20:42
knew as Michael. Sometime prior to the murder, Alan Dean
20:46
drove to the Boffel house to pick up Melissa, and
20:49
he ended up taking both Melissa and eleven year old
20:52
Kelly to a local movie theater to see Fantasia Right.
20:55
Kelly recalls sitting in the dark theater absolutely consumed by
20:59
a sense of dress. She couldn't articulate it as a child,
21:02
but her primal instincts were screaming that this man was dangerous.
21:05
Speaker 2: She'd pick up on that stuff.
21:07
Speaker 1: They really do. She was so unnerved she actively pleaded
21:10
with Melissa to leave the theater early. Melissa refused the
21:13
request initially, but eventually Melissa forced Dean to drive them
21:16
both back to the safety of the house, and for
21:18
the next thirty one years, Kelly lived with immense survivor's guilt.
21:23
She was at her grandparents' house the week of the murder.
21:26
She spent decades torturing herself with the unknown. You know,
21:29
if she had been in her bed that night, could
21:31
she have intervened, would she have recognized his voice in
21:35
the dark, or would there simply be two bodies at
21:37
the bottom of the ravine.
21:39
Speaker 2: The psychological weight placed on that child is just incalculable.
21:42
But you know, in nineteen ninety three, a child's bad feeling,
21:46
a fake name, and a missing alibi do not equate
21:48
to probable cause for arrest. No, the legal standard demands
21:52
physical evidence linking the suspect to the crime scene or
21:55
the body, and.
21:56
Speaker 1: Thanks to the trauma induced cleaning of the living room,
21:58
the house offered nothing. The bridge exposed to the elements,
22:03
offered very little trace evidence tying back to Dean. As
22:06
the months bleed into nineteen ninety four, the momentum just evaporates.
22:11
The friction between the Evert Police Department and the Snohomish
22:14
County Sheriff's Office exacerbates the stall. Vital data points are siloed,
22:19
the case plunges into the dark.
22:21
Speaker 2: We enter the long cold sleep of the investigation. From
22:24
nineteen ninety four until the early two thousands. The physical
22:27
evidence sits in temperature controlled storage and the case file
22:31
gathers dust.
22:31
Speaker 1: It's so frustrating to think about it is.
22:35
Speaker 2: But while the investigation laid dormant, the underlying architecture of
22:39
forensic biology was undergoing a radical exponential evolution.
22:44
Speaker 1: This technological leap is the fulcrum of the entire case.
22:47
I mean, imagine being Sharon living year after year with
22:50
the silence, but in laboratories across the world, scientists are
22:54
building the exact tools required to catch her daughter's killer.
22:57
Speaker 2: Let us examine the specific mechanics of that. Because in
23:01
nineteen ninety three, the absolute sealing of forensic fluid analysis
23:04
for local departments was just ABO blood typing. If they
23:07
found blood, they could determine if it was type A,
23:10
type BAB or O. They could test for a glutination
23:13
and tell you what percentage of the population shared that trait.
23:16
Speaker 1: So it's basically an exclusionary tool. You can definitively say
23:20
someone didn't leave the blood, but you cannot secure a
23:22
homicide conviction by telling a jury the suspect shares a
23:25
blood type with four million other people.
23:28
Speaker 2: In the state, exactly. But by two thousand and one, however,
23:31
the paradigm had shifted entirely. The Washington State crime lab
23:35
had fully integrated STR DNA.
23:37
Speaker 1: Profiling SDR being short tandem.
23:40
Speaker 2: Repeats Precisely, instead of looking at broad blood proteins, STR
23:44
technology analyzes a highly specific targeted lo si or locations
23:49
within a person's junk DNA Okay. These losi contain repeating
23:53
sequences of genetic code that vary wildly from person to person.
23:57
By counting the repeats at thirteen or twenty different losi,
24:00
scientists generate a statistical barcode unique to that specific individual.
24:04
The odds of two random people sharing the same STR
24:07
profile are often one in several quintillion.
24:10
Speaker 1: That is just mind blowing precision. It is so armed
24:13
with this new capability. In two thousand and one, detectives
24:15
request the crime lab to re examine the physical evidence
24:18
retrieved from the autopsy. They focus on the salmon colored
24:20
shorts Melissa is wearing. The lab targets a specific microscopic
24:24
bloodstain on the fabric. They extract the genetic material and
24:27
successfully generate a mixed STR profile.
24:29
Speaker 2: And the term mixed profile indicates the sample contains genetic
24:31
material for more than one individual who was in there
24:34
in this specific stain, the minor contributor meaning the genetic
24:38
material present in a smaller quantity is a definitive match
24:42
to Melissa Le. The major contributor, however, yields a complete
24:47
str profile of an unknown male. Wow, they have successfully
24:52
isolated the killer's genetic fingerprint.
24:54
Speaker 1: Right, So, if you are watching a television procedural, this
24:57
is the moment the music swells. They type the code
24:59
into a glo bowing computer screen, the database flashes mattch
25:03
and the swat team kicks down the door.
25:05
Speaker 2: Yeah. TV makes it look so easy.
25:07
Speaker 1: But the reality of two thousand and one is much
25:09
more frustrating. Isn't it Like? They have the DNA, they
25:11
plug it into the magical FBI database and they get
25:14
the killer.
25:14
Speaker 2: Right. No. Unfortunately, that television trope is based on CODIS,
25:18
the combined DNA index system maintained by the FBI. COTIS
25:23
is a brilliant piece of infrastructure, but it is fundamentally
25:25
limited by its input.
25:26
Speaker 1: Parameters, meaning what exactly.
25:28
Speaker 2: It operates in tiers local, state, and national. But the
25:32
most critical limitation is that COTIS is essentially a database
25:35
of convicted offenders and unsolved crime scene samples. It only
25:40
flags a match if the person who left the blood
25:42
on those shorts has subsequently been convicted of a qualifying
25:45
felony that legally mandated the state to forcibly take their
25:49
DNA and upload it.
25:50
Speaker 1: Oh I see, which brings the investigation right back to
25:52
the volatile ex boyfriend, the teenager with the gang rumors
25:56
who told Melissa she was.
25:57
Speaker 2: Marked exactly between nineteen ninety three and me two thousand
26:00
and one, that specific ex boyfriend had continued a trajectory
26:03
of criminal behavior. He was arrested, prosecuted, and convicted of
26:08
several unrelated felonies, so.
26:09
Speaker 1: He was in the database.
26:10
Speaker 2: Yes. Because of the nature of those convictions, the State
26:13
of Washington swabbed him and entered his str profile into
26:16
the coda's architecture. When the Snowhomish County detectives upload the
26:20
unknown male profile from Melissa Schwartz into the database, it
26:23
runs the algorithm against millions of offenders, including the ex boyfriend.
26:27
Speaker 1: And the result let me guess total exclusion.
26:31
Speaker 2: The unknown DNA does not match the ex boyfriend. It
26:34
definitively proves he did not bleed onto her clothing during
26:37
the commission of the murder. Wow. But the broader, more
26:41
devastating implication is that the actual killer has managed to
26:45
avoid a qualifying felony conviction for eight years. He is
26:49
not in the system. The str profile they spent years
26:53
waiting for is functionally useless without a name attached to it.
26:56
Speaker 1: It's like they possess the biological key to the cell door,
27:00
but they have no idea what building the door is in.
27:02
Speaker 2: That's a perfect way to put it.
27:04
Speaker 1: So another fifteen years pass. It is now twenty sixteen.
27:07
A new generation of cold case detectives decides to take
27:09
another run at the preserved evidence. They turn their attention
27:12
back to the backwards underwear. Right during the nineteen ninety
27:15
three autopsy, the medical examiner noted a suspicion of a
27:17
semen stain on the fabric, but the degradation and the
27:20
technology of the time prevented definitive analysis. In twenty sixteen,
27:24
utilizing advanced chemical regents, a presumptive test on the crotch
27:28
portion of the garment comes back undeniably positive, which is huge.
27:32
It locks in the forensic reality of the sexual assault,
27:35
but again it yields an str profile that codis cannot recognize.
27:40
Speaker 2: The investigation just hits a hard biological ceiling to break
27:44
through it law enforcement required a completely different approach to
27:47
genetic analysis. That brings us to late twenty eighteen and
27:51
the introduction of genetic genealogy.
27:53
Speaker 1: And this is where the landscape of criminal justice permanently alters.
27:57
Detective Jim Sharf of the Snowhomish County Shop Aerof's office,
28:01
refusing to let the case languish, packages the remaining biological
28:04
evidence and sends it to a private company called Pair
28:07
bond Manilabs.
28:08
Speaker 2: He specifically partners with a renowned genetic genealogist named CC Moore.
28:12
Speaker 1: And the science here is wild.
28:14
Speaker 2: The shift here is not just methodological, it is foundational
28:17
to the biology. For two decades, law enforcement relied on
28:20
those STR profiles. STRs are phenomenal for one to one matching.
28:24
Does the blood in the knife match the suspect in
28:26
the chair? Yes? Or no? Right? But STRs are completely
28:29
inadequate for identifying biological relatives. To build out a family tree,
28:33
you must transition to genotyping and SNP profiles.
28:36
Speaker 1: Wait SNP profile Yes.
28:39
Speaker 2: SNP stands for a single nucleotide polymorphism. Well str looks
28:44
at maybe twenty locations on the DNA strand SNP genotyping
28:48
maps hundreds of thousands of variable points across the entire
28:51
human genome.
28:51
Speaker 1: Ah, So it is the exact same underlying technology utilized
28:55
by direct to consumer DNA kits, the companies where millions
28:58
of people submit a saliva sample to learn about their
29:01
ancestral migration patterns or discover hidden relatives.
29:04
Speaker 2: P decisely pairabond successfully extracts a viable SNP profile from
29:08
the deeply degraded nineteen ninety three sample, But they do
29:11
not upload this massive data file to codis because Codis
29:13
isn't built to read it, so where does it go? Instead?
29:16
CC Moore uploads the killer's SNP profile to gd match.
29:20
Gd match is an open source, publicly accessible database where
29:23
individuals who have already taken commercial DNA tests voluntarily upload
29:27
their raw data files specifically defined genetic connections across different platforms.
29:31
Speaker 1: Let me make sure I understand the mechanics of this,
29:33
because it is staggering. So instead of just checking if
29:36
a criminal's fingerprint is in the local filing cabinet, you're
29:40
mapping their entire extended family tree across the globe to
29:44
narrow down exactly what branch they sit on.
29:47
Speaker 2: That is the exact mechanism. If a user on gd
29:50
match shares a certain threshold of sent of Morgans with
29:53
the crime scene sample, it indicates they share a common ancestor,
29:56
perhaps a great great grandparent from the eighteen hundred wow.
30:00
Ccmore utilizes that distant cousin is a starting block. She
30:04
then executes painstaking traditional genealogical research. She pulls census records,
30:09
mirror certificates, birth announcements, and obituaries.
30:12
Speaker 1: That sounds like so much work, it is.
30:14
Speaker 2: She builds massive, sprawling family trees downward from that nineteenth
30:17
century ancestor, mapping out hundreds of descendants, narrowing the branches
30:21
based on age, gender, and geographical proximity to Bofel Washington
30:25
in nineteen ninety three. It is a masterclass in data synthesis,
30:29
and it is crucial to highlight that ccmore took this
30:32
specific case pro bono. The emotional weight of Sharon's decades
30:37
long wait drove her to bypasser usual fees to secure.
30:40
Speaker 1: An answer that is incredible. She receives the genetic data
30:44
phile on January twenty three, twenty nineteen. By early twenty nineteen,
30:47
I mean a span of mirror weeks, she completely dismantles
30:51
a twenty six year old mystery. She hands detective Sharf
30:54
a single name. She tells him the killer sits on
30:57
a specific branch of the family tree, representing a man
30:59
who resided in Snowhomish County in nineteen ninety three, a
31:03
man whose documented address placed him exactly three point six
31:06
miles from the Edgewater Creek bridge where Melissa was discarded.
31:09
The name she hands over is Alan Edward.
31:11
Speaker 2: Dean, the phantom Michael from the Nightline. Yes, the man
31:14
Detective Renta interviewed in his living room in nineteen ninety three,
31:17
the man who could not produce an alibi for the
31:18
night of the abduction, The man alveyear old Kelly's perceived
31:22
as an acute threat in the movie theater.
31:24
Speaker 1: The circle closes, detectives immediately pull the original nineteen ninety
31:28
three murder book, the massive physical binders containing the foundational
31:32
case reports, and there he is. He was in their
31:34
crosshairs thirty years ago, insulated only by the technological limitations
31:39
of the era.
31:40
Speaker 2: However, a genetic genealogist pointing to a name on a
31:44
sprawling family tree does not constitute proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
31:48
In a court of law uned actual proof, it establishes
31:51
powerful probable cause for an investigation. But law enforcement now
31:55
requires a fresh, direct biological sample from Alan Dean today
32:00
to execute a direct str comparison against the nineteen ninety
32:04
three blood stain.
32:05
Speaker 1: And this introduces a massive tactical dilemma. They cannot simply
32:09
drive to his house, knock on the door, and present
32:11
a warrant for a boucle swab.
32:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely not.
32:13
Speaker 1: If Allan Dean is the man who kidnapped and strangled Melissaly,
32:16
he knows exactly what he did. If he senses that
32:18
law enforcement has suddenly recentered their focus on him thirty
32:21
years later, the flight risk is astronomical.
32:23
Speaker 2: He'd run immediately, he.
32:25
Speaker 1: Could destroy secondary evidence, he could flee the jurisdiction, or
32:28
cornered in desperate, he could become violent. They have to
32:32
acquire his DNA without him ever realizing they are hunting him,
32:35
so they initiate.
32:36
Speaker 2: A complex surveillance operation. They begin with a comprehensive background workup.
32:41
They discover that Dean, now advancing in age, leads a
32:45
life of extreme isolation. Okay, he has zero digital footprint,
32:50
no social media, no online presence, He's described by those
32:53
in his periphery as highly suspicious and deeply paranoid. He
32:57
rarely leaves his property to bypass paranoia.
33:01
Speaker 1: The detective's engineer an elaborate undercover sting operation designed to
33:05
harvest his saliva. They observe that he frequently smucks cigarettes
33:08
on his porch, but he is meticulously careful to never
33:11
discard the butts outside.
33:12
Speaker 2: He always carries them back into the house.
33:14
Speaker 1: Right, So three undercover detectives adopt the persona of market researchers.
33:18
They pose as employees of a fictional chewing gum company
33:21
conducting localized taste tests.
33:23
Speaker 2: This is wild, I know.
33:25
Speaker 1: They canvass his specific neighborhood, going door to door, establishing
33:29
a pattern before they finally knock on his door. Astonishingly,
33:33
despite his isolation, Dean opens the door and agrees to
33:37
participate in the survey, so.
33:38
Speaker 2: They give him the gum.
33:39
Speaker 1: They hand him a piece of gum, He places it
33:42
in his mouth and begins to chew. The trap is
33:44
perfectly sprung. The detectives offer him a small disposable cup
33:48
to spit the chewed gum into, intending to walk away
33:51
with a prime DNA sample, but his.
33:53
Speaker 2: Underlying paranoia violently overrides the social contract of the interaction.
33:57
Speaker 1: Yes, he stares at the undercut officers, completely rejects the
34:01
cup and asks them point blank, you're not here to
34:04
get my DNA, are you?
34:05
Speaker 2: Oh? My god.
34:06
Speaker 1: He then turns around, walks back into his house, and
34:09
spits the gum directly into his own private indoor trash receptacle.
34:13
And here is where the legal constraints of the Fourth
34:15
Amendment paralyze the operation.
34:17
Speaker 2: Right the legal boundaries exactly.
34:19
Speaker 1: The police cannot simply tackle him and take it. They
34:22
cannot legally enter his home or dig through a trash
34:25
can located within the curtilage of his property without a
34:28
signed search warrant, which they don't quite have the direct
34:31
evidence to secure. Yet.
34:32
Speaker 2: It is a remarkable moment of tension. I mean, his
34:35
acute suspicion was entirely accurate. He sniffed out a highly
34:39
sophisticated ruse.
34:40
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? The movie style sting
34:44
operation totally failed. They are back to zero, but the
34:47
dynamic has shifted dangerously. They now know for a fact
34:51
that he is actively guarding his biological material. He is
34:54
hyper aware of the concept of DNA collection.
34:57
Speaker 2: This failure forces the task force to pick from active
35:00
engagement to passive relentless endurance. They secure permission to install
35:04
a covert pole camera on the utility fixture directly across
35:08
him as culled to sac okay. This provides them with
35:10
an unblinking two hundred and four seven video feed of
35:13
his property line.
35:14
Speaker 1: And then they wait. They watch monitors for weeks, bleeding
35:18
into months. Finally, in April of twenty twenty, patience pays out.
35:22
The camera captures beans stepping off his private property to
35:24
check his mailbox. He's smoking a cigarette. As he turns
35:28
to retreat to the safety of his home, he casually
35:31
flicks the cigarette butt onto the asphalt of the public roadway.
35:35
He crosses back onto his property and shuts the door.
35:38
That tiny motion seals his.
35:40
Speaker 2: Fate because of where it landed.
35:42
Speaker 1: Yes, because he discarded the item onto a public street,
35:45
it legally transitions to abandoned property. He has forfeited his
35:49
expectation of privacy under the law. A surveillance detective immediately
35:53
swoops in, recovers the butt, and bags it. It is
35:56
rushed to the state crime lab. They extract the epithelial
35:58
cells from the saliva trap in the filter and run
36:01
the SDR profile.
36:02
Speaker 2: And the resulting data is compared against the unknown male
36:05
profile extracted from the bloodstain on Melissa Lee's shorts in
36:09
two thousand and one. It is a slawless, mathematically undeniable match,
36:13
just incredible.
36:15
Speaker 1: On July twenty eight, twenty twenty, detectives bradwall Vance and
36:19
Kendrack Conley finally close the loop. They arrest Alan Dean
36:22
and transport him to the Major Crimes Unit. They place
36:25
him in an interrogation room, and.
36:27
Speaker 2: The behavioral dynamics of this interrogation are deeply unsettling. Confronted
36:31
with the thirty year old murder, Dean does not react
36:34
with righteous indignation. He does not demand a lawyer to
36:37
fight the charges.
36:38
Speaker 1: What does she do?
36:39
Speaker 2: Instead, he engages in a clear strategy of malingering. He
36:42
begins providing utterly bizarre, logically fractured, nonsensical answers to straightforward questions.
36:49
He loops the same disjointed phrases repeatedly. Why it is
36:53
a calculated tactic to effectively invoke his right to silence
36:56
through deliberate non compliance while potentially laying the groundwork for
36:59
a psychiatric defense.
37:01
Speaker 1: Wow. The detectives quickly realize they are not going to
37:04
extract a confession through standard interrogation techniques. They formally inform
37:08
him that he is under arrest for the kidnapping and
37:10
first degree murder of Melissa Lee. Then they execute a
37:13
classic tactical maneuver. They leave the room.
37:16
Speaker 2: The camera is rolling always.
37:18
Speaker 1: They leave the audio and high definition video recording systems active,
37:21
Dina sitting there utterly isolated in the stark room. The
37:25
recording captures him looking up toward the ceiling, staring at nothing,
37:29
and softly saying I'm sorry.
37:31
Speaker 2: Detective Sarah Johnson, analyzing the footage, interpreted that singular moment
37:36
as Dean breaking the psychological partition he had built in
37:39
the absolute quiet, facing the inescapable reality of his capture,
37:44
he spoke directly to the ghost of the girl he killed.
37:47
It was the only crack in a facade that held
37:49
for three decades.
37:51
Speaker 1: And while Dina is in the interview room, a separate
37:52
team is executing a search warrant on his Baffel home.
37:55
They're looking for anything tying him to nineteen ninety three.
37:58
What they find in his garag provides the final devastating
38:02
piece of circumstantial evidence. They locate an old canister of
38:05
commercial carburetor cleaner. The chemical analysis of that specific solvent
38:08
reveals its primary active ingredients ether and heptane.
38:12
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, when we
38:14
examine Dean's occupational history, the entire methodology of the crime crystallizes.
38:20
In nineteen ninety three, Alan Dean was employed as a
38:22
mechanic for Boeing, the massive aerospace corporation anchoring the region's economy.
38:27
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
38:28
Speaker 2: In that role, he spent his days immersed in industrial solvents,
38:31
heavy degreasers, and mechanical chemicals. He possessed unmonitored access to
38:37
and an intimate working knowledge of the exact volatile compounds
38:41
found in Melissa's bloodstream. The overpowering sweet chemical odor that
38:45
drove Gary to open the windows at two a m.
38:48
Was simply a tool of Dean's daily trade, weaponized to
38:51
bypass the teenager's physical defenses.
38:54
Speaker 1: The fusion of the genealogical science, the str DNA match,
38:57
and the occupational chemistry builds an impenetrable wall around him.
39:01
But navigating the legal system is rarely a linear process.
39:04
Speaker 2: Is it?
39:04
Speaker 1: Securing the handcuffs did not immediately deliver justice for the
39:07
Lee family. Dean imported the exact same strategy he utilized
39:10
in the interrogation room into the courtroom. He continued to
39:13
project bizarre, nonsensical behavior during his initial hearings.
39:17
Speaker 2: He was actively attempting to subvert the legal process. The
39:21
court was forced to order a psychiatric evaluation to determine
39:24
his competency to stand trial. Competency is a specific legal standard.
39:30
It asks whether the defendant currently understands the nature of
39:34
the charges against them and presents the cognitive ability to
39:37
assist their attorneys in their own defense.
39:39
Speaker 1: Did he pass.
39:40
Speaker 2: The evaluators at Western State Hospital determined he was at
39:44
that moment gravely disabled. The criminal proceedings were halted and
39:48
he was civilly committed to the psychiatric facility for treatment.
39:51
Speaker 1: Oh Man that delay had to be psychological torture for
39:54
Sharon and Kelay. After waiting nearly thirty years, the system
39:58
hits the pause button. However, after approximately a year of
40:01
civil commitment, Dean's psychiatric state miraculously improves. The hospital clears
40:06
him for release back into the general community.
40:08
Speaker 2: But the prosecutors were ready.
40:10
Speaker 1: Yes, they were the exact moment that happens, the Snohomish
40:13
County Prosecutor's office violently yanks the chain. They immediately refile
40:17
the murder charges, intercept his release, and successfully argue that
40:21
he is now fully competent to stand trial.
40:24
Speaker 2: The trial finally commences in March of twenty twenty three,
40:27
arriving almost exactly on the thirtieth anniversary of Melissa's.
40:30
Speaker 1: Death, and the atmosphere inside that courtroom is described as
40:34
suffocatingly intense. You have Melissa's family, Sharon and Kelly, who
40:39
is now a grown woman, sitting near feet away from
40:41
the architect of their family's destruction. Kelly later expressed that
40:45
every fiber of her being wanted to vault over the
40:47
partition and physically attack him.
40:49
Speaker 2: I can't even imagine that feeling right.
40:52
Speaker 1: Dean, for his part, sat completely rigid, a stone faced void.
40:56
Yet he would occasionally manipulate his posture to look past
40:59
the line of correctional officers lockeyes with Sharon or Kelly
41:02
and offer a slow, deliberate grin.
41:05
Speaker 2: That specific behavioral choice is incredibly revealing. It is the
41:09
hallmark of a psychopathic need for dominance. Even while shackled,
41:13
even while facing the total loss of his freedom in
41:15
his life, he utilized the only tool he had left,
41:18
his facial expressions, to inflict secondary trauma. He was attempting
41:23
to exert psychological control over his victim's family from the
41:25
defense table.
41:26
Speaker 1: It's sickening, but the jury was entirely immune to his tactics.
41:31
The trial was a grueling two week marathon of highly dense,
41:35
heavily technical scientific testimony regarding degradation rates of thirty year
41:40
old DNA and the chemical properties of ether. When the
41:43
arguments concluded and the jury retired to deliberate, they returned
41:47
with a unanimous guilty verdict for first free murder in
41:50
under three hours.
41:51
Speaker 2: A three hour deliberation following a two week trial built
41:55
entirely on cold case forensics, is a stunning indictment of
41:58
his guilt. It underscores, or is, the absolute irrefutability of
42:01
the genetic genealogy and the crushing weight of the circumstantial chemistry.
42:05
Absolutely during the sentencing phase that judge was bound by
42:08
the state guidelines. Because Dean had managed to evade the
42:11
system entirely, his official offender score was zero. He had
42:14
no prior felony convictions. Consequently, the judge handed down the
42:18
absolute maximum sentence allowed within the standard range for that
42:21
specific charge, twenty six point five years.
42:24
Speaker 1: Given that Alan Dean was sixty six years old when
42:26
the sentence was handed down, it is a de facto
42:29
life sentence. He will take his final breath inside a
42:31
concrete cell.
42:32
Speaker 2: The legal machinery functioned flawlessly in the end, providing absolute
42:36
institutional closure. However, the emotional landscape for the surviving family
42:41
is infinitely more complicated and fractured.
42:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, we must center the reality of the co victims
42:47
as we close this narrative. When the verdict echoed through
42:50
the courtroom, Sharon stated she did not experience a profound
42:53
wave of closure or relief.
42:56
Speaker 2: It never really ends for them exactly.
42:59
Speaker 1: Watching him be led away way in chains offered a
43:01
stark finality, a sense that the active war was over,
43:04
but it did not fill the void in her living room.
43:06
She still spends her days trapped in the hypothetical. She
43:09
wonders what Melissa's adult life would have looked like. Would
43:12
she have pursued the modeling career, who would she have married?
43:15
How many grandchildren were a race from existence? On that bridge, and.
43:19
Speaker 2: Kelly's grief is even more tangled. As the younger sister
43:23
who sensed the danger but couldn't articulate it, she carries
43:26
a profound, complicated trauma. She articulated a sentiment common among
43:30
long term homicide survivors. She feels that her grief is
43:34
the only tangible connection she has left at her sister.
43:37
She fears that if she fully processes the pain and
43:39
lets it go, she is effectively letting Melissa go. The
43:43
trauma has become a sanctuary. For over three decades, she
43:46
hasn't been able to speak freely about her sister because
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the horror of the end completely eclipses the joy of
43:52
the memory. That reality underscores the massive intergenerational blast radius
43:57
of a single act of violence brings us directly to
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the implications of this deep dive. For you, the listener,
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this narrative is a stark, unavoidable testament to the reality
44:08
of the invisible trails we leave behind. It really is
44:11
a discarded cigarette butt on a rain slick suburban street,
44:15
a microscopic drop of blood trapped in the fibers of
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a piece of clothing, Even a distant cousin deciding to
44:20
spit into a plastic tube to discover their heritage. Those
44:23
data points never truly vanish. They wagh patiently in the dark,
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and inevitably the arc of scientific progress intersects with them.
44:30
Speaker 1: It forces us to confront a profound question regarding the
44:33
future of criminal justice. As these genetic databases expand exponentially
44:38
every single day, as millions of new profiles are uploaded,
44:41
we are rapidly mapping the entire human biological network, which
44:45
is wild to think about.
44:46
Speaker 2: We are fast approaching an inflection point. Are we entering
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an arrow where the very concept of a cold case
44:52
is technologically obsolete? Will it soon become literally impossible to
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commit an act of violence and fade into the background
44:59
simply because the unique code of your own biology will
45:03
inevitably betray you through the bloodline of a total stranger.
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Speaker 1: That is a staggering reality to process. You can violently
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break a door, you can flutter room with chemicals, and
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you can methodically scrub a living room clean, but you
45:15
cannot wipe your genetic code from the fabric of the universe.
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Thank you so much for joining us on this intense,
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complicated journey today, diving deep into the science the psychology
45:25
and the enduring memory of Melissa Lee. We will see
45:28
you on the next deep dive