Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / California teen girl found buried in vineyard identified after 48 years

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California teen girl found buried in vineyard identified after 48 years · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So welcome to the Deep Dive. I'm your host, and
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: today we are looking at something that, well, it really
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: proves that the idea of a perfectly hidden crime is
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: just I mean, it's basically becoming scientifically impossible.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, completely impossible. Now, I'm our resident forensics expert, and
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: I am so excited to unpack this one with you.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Awesome. So we're dissecting a recent true crime breakthrough that
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: was reported by People magazine, and it's about the identification
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: of a fifteen year old girl named Michelle Louise Collier.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: And this is a cold case from California that sat
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: unsolved for nearly fifty years.
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  Speaker 2: Fifty years. It's just it is a phenomenal intersection of
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: rapidly evolving biology and honestly, just the family's sheer endurance. Yeah,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: the story of Michelle really forces us to look at
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: how investigative timelines have fundamentally changed. You know, a case
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: that hits a permanent dead end in the late seventies
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: is now actively rewriting the history of a forgotten victim.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's unpack this from the very beginning, right,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: because we need to look at the physical reality of
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: the scene to understand why it took half a century to.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: All Right, the environment is key here exactly.
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  Speaker 1: So June nineteen seventy eight, and we're in Kern County, California.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: A tractor driver is just working in a vineyard. He
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: makes this horrifying discovery. Oh man, he finds skeletal remains
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: that are buried in this really shallow grave. Now, today,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: obviously we know this is Michelle, But in nineteen seventy eight,
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  Speaker 1: she was just a Jane Doe.
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  Speaker 2: Just a completely unidentified person.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the immediate wall that investigators hit back then,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: it's purely biological. Like in June nineteen seventy eight, the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: forensic toolkit for identifying an unknown body consisted of essentially
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: two things, fingerprints and teeth, exactly, fingerprints in peeth. And
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: if the remains were severely degraded and you didn't have
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: a specific missing person in mind, I mean you simply
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: didn't have a name.
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  Speaker 2: You just had a ghost, you really did, because well,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: when remains become skeletal, the soft tissue degrades very rapidly,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: especially in an environment like a shallow grave in a vineyard.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Think about it, You've got soilisted, you've got massive microbial
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: acts agriculture, Yeah, exactly, the fertilizers, the watering cycles, all
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: of that accelerates decompositions. So the dermal ridges that actually
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: make up a fingerprint, they are long gone by the
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: time those bones are found.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, so the investigators are essentially left holding a
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: biological puzzle, but like all the important pieces are.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Missing, Yeah, most of the pieces, and without fingerprints. The
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: default pivot for law enforcement in the seventies was always
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: forensic odontology, right, dental records, dental records. But there is
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: this massive inherent flaw in relying on dental records for
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: a John or Jane Doe, because well, you have to
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: already have a working theory of who the victim is.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see, because it's not like it's not like
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: they had a giant database of every tooth in America exactly.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Dental matching is a strictly one to one comparison.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Ok.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: If you don't suspect that the victim is Michelle from Fresno,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: you don't know to call her specific dentist in Fresno.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: You couldn't just you know, run a dental X ray
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  Speaker 2: through some national scanner. In nineteen seventy eight didn't exist.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: That is such an agonizing catch twenty two. It really is,
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  Speaker 1: you need the identity to go find the medical records,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: but you need the records to actually confirm the identity. Right.
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  Speaker 2: It paralyzes the investigation right at the starting line because
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: a homicide detective, as entire initial strategy, it relies on
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: victimology diychnology. Yeah, you have to look at their social circle,
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: their enemies, the last place they were seen. Right, So
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: if you don't have a name, you have no timeline,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: you have no motive.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: It's like, okay, let me try this. Analogy comparing nineteen
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: seventy eight forensics to what we have today is it's
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: like trying to read a book in a pitch black room.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a great way to put it.
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  Speaker 1: Right, because the information, like the actual story of what
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: happened to this young girl, it is physically written into
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  Speaker 1: the calcium of those bones.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: The data is there, the DNA is sitting right there exactly.
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  Speaker 1: But investigators in the seventies they didn't just lack a flashlight,
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  Speaker 1: they lack the ability to even comprehend the language the
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: book was written in. The concept of friends. DNA profiling
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  Speaker 1: was just absolute science fiction to a local sheriff.
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  Speaker 2: Total science fiction. I mean, the double helix structure of
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: DNA had only been discovered a couple of decades prior
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  Speaker 2: to this. The idea of, you know, extracting it from
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: a degraded bone matrix to track down a murderer completely unimaginable.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: So what do they do, Well, the current county detectives.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: They do all they can. They collect the remains, they
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: photograph and document the scene, and then we just wait.
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  Speaker 2: They just wait. They are effectively forced to wait for
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: the rest of the scientific world to literally invent the
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: tools they need to do their jobs.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Man, that is that's bleak. So the trail goes totally
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: permanently cold. The eighties pass, the nineties pass, and we
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: don't really see any movement on this case until two
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: thousand and seven.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Right two thousand and seven, that's when the.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Kurrent County Sheriff's office officially reopens the case and they
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: take what I think is a pretty drastic step. They
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: exhume their remains.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is a huge deal.
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  Speaker 1: Right, Like, they digger up specifically to obtain a DNA sample.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Can you talk about that? Because getting DNA from a
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: thirty year old bone sounds incredibly difficult.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, it's an incredibly hostile biochemical process, but the science
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  Speaker 2: of two thousand and seven had finally caught up just
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: enough to attempt it.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so how do they do it?
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  Speaker 2: Well, forensic anthropologists essentially have to take this bone and
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: pulverize it into dust.
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  Speaker 1: Literally grind it up.
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  Speaker 2: Literally, grind it into powder. Because what they are trying
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  Speaker 2: to do is access the osteocytes.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Osteocytes, Yeah, they're.
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  Speaker 2: The bone cells that are trapped deep, deep inside the
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: calcified matrix of the bone. Because the DNA that's inside
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: those really inner cells, it's somewhat protected from all the
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: environmental degradation we talked about earlier, Oh.
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  Speaker 1: Like the moisture and the soil bacteria.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly, the outside of the bone is compromised, but the
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: deep interior might still hold intact DNA strands.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so think about how agonizing that is for the detectives.
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  Speaker 1: They go through this massive legal and physical effort to
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  Speaker 1: exum a body. Right, they do this crazy complex bone
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  Speaker 1: grinding science. They successfully extract a DNA profile, which they did.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: They did, Yes, they got a profile.
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  Speaker 1: And they submitted to the California Department of Justice database.
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  Speaker 1: So if the local detectives, the state analysts, everyone is
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: just waiting for this.
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  Speaker 2: Hit, and they get absolutely nothing.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing, zero family references in the state database to make
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  Speaker 1: a match. It's like finally finding the key to a lock,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: only to realize the door itself is just missing. The
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: case goes cold all over again.
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  Speaker 2: It freezes over entirely. And to understand why that massive
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: effort failed in two thousand and seven, you really have
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: to look at the architecture of criminal databases from that era,
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  Speaker 2: like codis the National.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Database, right, because I think a lot of people assume
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  Speaker 1: if you have DNA, you just put it in a
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  Speaker 1: computer and it spits out a driver's.
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  Speaker 2: License, right, which is just TV magic. The databases in
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  Speaker 2: the early two thousands were built exclusively for direct law
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  Speaker 2: enforcement matches. They were analyzing a very small number of
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  Speaker 2: genetic markers, usually around twenty specific low side only twenty, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: just twenty. And they were basically looking for two things.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: Either repeat offenders whose DNA was already legally mandated to
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  Speaker 2: be in this system.
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  Speaker 1: Like convicted felons, right, or.
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  Speaker 2: They were looking for direct first degree relatives like a
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: parent or a full sibling who had intentionally gone to
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  Speaker 2: a police department and submitted a reference swab specifically to
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: look for their missing loved one.
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  Speaker 1: Oh wow. So it's like having a perfectly clear barcode,
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  Speaker 1: but you have no store inventory system to scan it against.
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  Speaker 2: That is exactly it.
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  Speaker 1: The DNA profile they pulled from Michelle's bone was scientifically flawless,
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  Speaker 1: but without a matching profile already saved in that specific
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  Speaker 1: closed criminal justice system, it's literally just a meaningless string
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  Speaker 1: of numbers.
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  Speaker 2: Having pristine DNA is completely useless if you are locked
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  Speaker 2: inside a closed loop of data.
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  Speaker 1: Man, the frustration for those detectives must have been suffocating.
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  Speaker 2: Oh beyond suffocating. You pull off this highly complex exhumation,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: you utilize cutting edge molecular biology, and you still end
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: up staring at a blank wall. And it really highlighted
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: a major structural limitation in forensic science at the time.
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  Speaker 2: As long as law enforcement was legally and technologically restricted
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  Speaker 2: to searching only among known criminals or active missing person submitters,
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  Speaker 2: countless victims were just going to remain nameless.
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  Speaker 1: Because the criminal database was basically an evolutionary dead end
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  Speaker 1: for this kind of cold case. Exactly, so investigators realized
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  Speaker 1: they had to look outside the justice system entirely, they
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: had to look at civilians. And that structural shift is
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  Speaker 1: what brings us to the actual breakthrough that was announced
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  Speaker 1: via a Kerr County sheriff Office Facebook post on July thirty,
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  Speaker 1: twenty twenty.
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  Speaker 2: Six, almost fifty years later.
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  Speaker 1: Fifty years later, they finally have our name, and the
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  Speaker 1: method that broke the case open is called forensic Investigative
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Genetic Genesilogy or FIGG.
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  Speaker 2: FIGG and FIGG is the exact mechanism that shattered that
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  Speaker 2: close loop we were just talking about.
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  Speaker 1: So how does the Kern County Sheriff's Office actually define it?
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  Speaker 2: Well, they define it as a powerful tool that combines
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: advanced DNA analysis with tradition old genealogical research. But honestly,
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: the sheer scale of the operation is what stands.
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  Speaker 1: Out to me because as eleven just one lab doing this.
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  Speaker 2: No, not at all, we are looking at a massive coalition.
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  Speaker 2: You've got the KCSO homicide detectives, You've got their Coroner's office,
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  Speaker 2: You've got the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
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  Speaker 2: mc NCMEC, plus the California DOJ and a private sector
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: company named.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: AUTHRM awthrom okay, And according to the release, AUTHORAM is
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  Speaker 1: the one that offered this FIGG technology, which prompted the
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Kerrent County Sheriffs to ask the California DOJ to physically
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: transfer the biological samples over to AUTHRM for this specialized testing. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: so we need to clarify how AUTHORAM I'm sequencing fundamentally
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  Speaker 1: differs from that database failure in two thousand and seven,
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  Speaker 1: because it's a totally different ballgamer.
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  Speaker 2: It is entirely doesn't. So remember how I said the
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: two thousand and seven says database looked at maybe twenty
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  Speaker 2: genetic markers. Well, FIGG looks at hundreds.
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  Speaker 1: Of thousands of hundreds of thousands.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, they are called single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs SNPs,
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: and those hundreds of thousands of markers allow scientists to
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: calculate something called genetic distance. This is crucial because they
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: don't need a parent or sibling in a police database anymore.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: They are looking into commercial and open source genealogical databases.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, like the platforms everyday people use to trace their
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: family trees.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly, And because of the SNPs, FIGG can identify a third, fourth,
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  Speaker 2: or even fifth cousin, people who might share only a tiny,
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: tiny fraction of a percentage of DNA with the victim.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Wow. And they use a specific measurement.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: For that, right, right, They use centi morgans.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: S gantam morgans, which is the unit of measurement for
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: genetic linkage.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can think of it like a genetic tape measure.
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  Speaker 2: If the algorithm shows that you share a very specific
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: number of centi morgans with this unidentified DNA, the genetic
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: genealogists know that you are exactly, say, a third cousin.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, So what do they do with that? Because a
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: third cousin doesn't give you a name.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: No, but it gives you a starting point. Then they
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: take two distinct third cousins from totally different parts of
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  Speaker 2: the country. They draw this massive genetic ven diagram essentially,
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: and they trace the family trees backward through public records.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Like census records and obituaries.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They trace it all the way back until they
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: find the overlapping great great grandparent. And once they find
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: that apex ancestor, they start building the tree forward branch
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: by branch, child by child, until they find a branch
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: that has a fifteen year old girl who vanished in
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: It is just staggering when you map it out like that,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: And it obviously requires a very specific division of labor.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Like a local sheriff's department simply doesn't have proprietary next
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: generation sequencing machines in their basement, right.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Nor do they have civilian genealogists on staff building family trees.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the California DOJ has the pristine chain of
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: custody evidence handling, but maybe they don't have this specific
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: algorithmic tools that are private lab like Uthrum does.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It's a puzzle where everyone holds a different piece.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for the future of
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: solving crimes? I mean we have local sheriffs initiating the legwork,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: state departments handling the biological transfers, national missing children's centers coordinating,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: and private tech companies running the actual code. Is this
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: massive collaborative web just a cool new option or is
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: this the new mandatory blueprint for solving cold cases?
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Oh, it absolutely has to be the mandatory blueprint. Yeah.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: The days of a loan detective staring at a corkboard
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: with red string to solve a fifty year old cold case.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Those days are over. The sheer complexity of the science
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: now demands this multi agency public private partnership.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: But you know, as powerful as authoram sequencing is and
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: as intricate as those genealogical trees get, they really only
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: build a theoretical framework. What do you mean, Well, science
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: provides the scaffolding, but humanity has to fill in the rest.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: To actually identify Michelle, they needed the living branches of
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: that tree to step forward.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Oh right, because data needs humans to become a reality.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: And that brings us to the press conference on July
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: twenty eight. This is when the victim was officially finally
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: identified as fifteen year old Michelle Louise Collier from Fresno, California.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: She disappeared forty eight years ago, forty eight years.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: And at that press conference, her older sister, Cynthia Dunbar,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: spoke and she laid out exactly how this genetic match
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: was finally completed.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: And the mechanism of that match is deeply, deeply moving,
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: because it wasn't just a single stroke of luck, you know,
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: it was a collective family effort.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Right, And here's where it gets really interesting. It wasn't
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: just one relative. Michelle's brother Kevin, his wife Nancy, and
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: their cousin Michael had all submitted their DNA to a
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: genealogy database.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't just a direct relative looking for her
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: at a police station. It was a network of family
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: members using commercial databases. It's like the crowdsourced of family
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: reunion to solve a decade's old mystery.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: That's a beautiful way to think about it. And when
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: you look at the psychology of a family enduring a
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: missing person case for forty eight years, you are looking
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: at the trauma of ambiguous loss.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Ambiguous loss, Can you explain that a bit more?
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: Sure? It is a very specific, agonizing type of grief
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: where there is no closure, there's no funeral, there's no
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: structural endpoint to the mourning.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Process because you just don't know.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: You just don't know. For nearly five decades, the call
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: of your family lived in this suspended state of uncertainty,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: like is she alive? Did she run away and start
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: a new life, or is she coming back.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: I can't even imagine the psychological toll that takes on
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: a family decades of just waiting for the phone to ring.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: It destroys families. But Cynthia Dunbar's reaction at the press
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: conference it was incredibly gracious.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: It was she expressed immense gratitude to the detectives for
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: their dedication and their attention to detail. I actually have
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: her quote here. She said, she disappeared forty eight years ago,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: and it was only recently that we knew where she was.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: At least with this information, my family has some closure.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Closure.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: The result for the family is that they finally know
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: where she is and they finally have the ability to
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: bring their sister home for a proper burial.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: And the current county Sheriff's office they added a sentiment
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: to their announcement that I think really reframes the entire
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: purpose of cold case forensics.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Oh what did they say?
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: They said, every person deserves their name. No case is
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: ever truly forgotten.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Wow, every person deserves their name. Yeah.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: It shifts the objective right because obviously solving the homicide
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: is the legal goal, but restoring human dignity to an
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: unidentified Jane do that is the moral goal. Giving her
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: back her name is just the ultimate act of respect.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: It really is. It is a profound victory for the
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: family and for all these forensic teams that collaborated. Absolutely,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: but you know, I have to push back just a
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: little on the natural sense of finality that kind of
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: washes over a press conference like this.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Okay, how so well we hear.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Jane do I identified, and the human brain immediately registers
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: that as case closed. We're celebrating this amazing identification. But wait,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: this is still a homicide. Fifty years later. The trail
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: of who actually did it is just as cold as
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Michelle's identity used to be. The circumstances surrounding Michelle's death
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: remain totally unknown. According to the current county chair of
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: his homicide detective Ashley Thompson, the homicide investigation is still
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: actively continuing.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: You're completely right. The identification is a monumental scientific achievement,
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: no doubt, But from a criminal justice perspective, finding her
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: name is really just the starting line of a brand new,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: exceptionally difficult investigation.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Exactly because they spent fifty years just trying to figure
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: out who the victim was.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: And the trail of who committed the crime has been
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: physically and memory wised, decaying that entire time.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Right, think about a fifty year old crime scene. That
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: shallow grave in the vineyard has been exposed to five
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: decades of weather, agricultural development, heavy mischie deanery, shifting soil.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, any physical evidence outside of the actual bone structure
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: is long gone. There's no weapon, no fibers, no footprints.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: And what about witnesses anyone who might have seen something
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: in Fresno in nineteen seventy eight or near the vineyard
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: in Kern County. They're likely suffering from really faded memories
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: or honestly, they might.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Have passed away, which makes traditional detective work incredibly tenuous.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, interviewing suspects, checking alibis from nineteen seventy eight,
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: finding a murder weapon. It's almost impossible.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: So how do they even proceed?
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Well, the key is that they aren't starting with nothing anymore.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: By getting her name, they finally have a geographical anchor.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, a geographical anchor. Yeah.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: They now know she was from Fresno and she somehow
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: ended up in Kern County, which gives them a route exactly.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: They can start cross referencing known violent offenders who are
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: operating along those specific highway transit routes. In the late seventies,
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: they can look at serial offenders from that era. Well,
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: that makes sense, and most importantly, they can find only
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: interview the surviving family to reconstruct the exact days before
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: she vanished. Who was she hanging out with? Did she
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: have a new boyfriend? Was she acting scared?
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Right? Because before this they couldn't ask any one of
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: those questions because they didn't know whose friends to talk to.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Precisely, it completely changes the scope of what is possible
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: in the investigation.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: So for anyone listening to this deep dive right now,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: who might be wondering, you know, why should I care
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: about this one specific nineteen seventy eight cold case from
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: a California vineyard, Like, why does this matter to me?
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: I think it comes down to what this represents on
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: a macro level. It is undeniable proof that the passage
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: of time no longer guarantees a killer's anonymity.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: That is so true.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Scientific advancement is actively reaching backward in time and just
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: ripping the cover off of secrets that were considered permanently buried.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: It fundamentally alters the risk calculus for any unsolved crime.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Think about it. A perpetrator who thought they got away
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: with murder in the seventies. Because they wore gloves and
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: didn't leave finger they are now totally vulnerable to a
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: technology that they couldn't have even conceived of at the
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: time they committed the crime. The anxiety for cold case
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: killers right now must be through the roof, which.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Actually leads me with a final kind of provocative thought
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: that I want everyone listening to just mull over.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's hear it.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: So we noted earlier that Michelle's brother Kevin, his wife Nancy,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: and her cousin Michael were the ones who submitted their
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: DNA to a genealogy database.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: Right right, which was the key to solving it.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Think about the broader implications of that. Anyone who has
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: ever mailed off one of those ancestry kits for a
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: holiday gift, or spit in a plastic tube just to
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: figure out what country their great grandparents came from, they
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: have actually contributed to the exact type of massive, interconnected
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: biological web that cracked this case.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Oh wow.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, When everyday people submit their DNA just to map
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: their own family history, they aren't just looking at their
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: own past. They might inadvertently provide the exact missing sequence
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: of Sene Morgan's needed to solve a fifty year old murder.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: That is wild to think about.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Right. It makes every single person who uses a commercial
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: DNA kit a potential, completely unknowing forensic investigator.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: You're basically crowdsourcing justice without even realizing.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: It exactly, and I think that is just an incredible
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: place to leave it for today. We will keep an
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: eye on the Kern County investigation to see if Michelle's
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: killer is finally brought to justice. Thanks for joining me
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: on this deep dive, and we'll catch you all next
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: time