Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Woman Found Stabbed to Death With Scissors at Local Bookstore

Transcript

Woman Found Stabbed to Death With Scissors at Local Bookstore · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Picture yourself walking into a quiet, dimly lit, rare bookstore
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: on a crisp November morning.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Okay, setting the scene.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. You have a meeting scheduled with the owner.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: You step through the front door expecting to be greeted,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: but the front room is just completely empty.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Right, just totally silent.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: It's silent. The shelves are perfectly organized. The air smells
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: like old paper and binding glue. So, you know, you
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: sit down, you check your watch, you read a bit.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Like you normally would. Right.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: You wait for 45 minutes. And then, annoyed that the
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: owner seemingly forgot your appointment, you get up, walk out
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the front door, and dry away.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Just a totally normal, if slightly annoying, morning.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Except you are completely unaware that just a few
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: feet away from where you were sitting, behind a wall
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: you didn't even realize was a door, the owner of
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: that bookstore is lying on the floor.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. She is the victim of a brutally violent
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: murder that happened just minutes before you arrived.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: It sounds like something straight out of a psychological thriller.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, really.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It really does.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: But that exact scenario is the entry point into one
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: of the most complex and baffling investigations in modern criminal history.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Which is exactly why we're digging into it today. Welcome
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: to the deep dive, by the way.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Glad to be here.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: So our mission today is to take a single, incredibly
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: dense source— this comprehensive Law and Crime Network transcript, and
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: extract the core of how this seemingly unsolvable case was
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: finally cracked.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Right, because when you look at the raw mechanics of
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: a crime scene like this, the presence of a witness
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: who is physically inches away, but, you know, perceptually miles away,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: it completely shatters the initial timeline.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: It really throws a wrench in everything.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: It forces law enforcement to question their fundamental assumptions about
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: reality and, well, The physical space itself.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We are looking at a decade-long quest that started
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: with a chaotic, senseless crime and ended up requiring a
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: literal revolution in genetic technology.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Not to mention a total masterclass in psychological interviewing.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Because in this case, the killer left behind the
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: absolute perfect scientific evidence. I mean, the literal smoking gun,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: pristine DNA.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: But the system had absolutely no idea who it belonged to. Right.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Which is so frustrating.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Imagine holding a single puzzle piece in your hand. It
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: is perfectly cut. The colors are vivid. The edges are sharp.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: You know it's the centerpiece.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You know for a fact that this piece fits
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: into the dead center of the puzzle. But when you
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: look down at the table, the rest of the board
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: is completely blank.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Just nothing there.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: No corners, no edges, no reference picture on the box.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: You have the ultimate answer, but it connects to absolutely
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: nothing in your known universe.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: How do you build the rest of the picture when
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: your perfect piece exists in a total vacuum?
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: That was the reality for the detectives in South Salt Lake, Utah,
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: for 10 grueling years.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: 10 years. I mean, before we get into the national
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: databases and the DNA phenotyping, which is wild, by the way,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: we have to ground this entire conversation in the life
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: of Sherry Black.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: We really do. We have to start with who she was.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Because the sheer brutality of what happened is magnified 100
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: times over when you contrast it with the incredibly peaceful,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: quiet nature of her daily life.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Right. Sherry Black was 64 years old. She was a
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: dedicated mother, a grandmother.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: And she had been married to her childhood sweetheart, Earl Black,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: for 46 years.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: To put 46 years of marriage into perspective, I mean,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: that is an entire lifetime of shared history.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: They grew up together, they navigated adulthood together, and they
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: built this deeply rooted life in South Salt Lake. They
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: were entrepreneurs, you know.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Right, they operated a highly successful billiards business.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Supplying and servicing pool tables across the region. They were
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: absolute fixtures in their community.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: And Sherry herself, she was a woman of intense intellect
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: and passion. Her ultimate passion was books.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Not just reading them, though.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: No, collecting them, understanding their history, their bindings, their rarity.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Her dream for years was to build a massive library
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: of her own.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Which she definitely did. She spent decades slowly expanding this collection.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: It grew so large that it eventually spilled completely out
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: of their family home.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: So they had to move the collection into the commercial
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: building where Earl ran his billiards shop. Right.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: And she turned this lifelong passion into a legitimate business
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: called B & W Billiards and Books, specializing in valuable,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: rare texts.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: She basically created a sanctuary. When you visualize a rare
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: bookstore run by a 64-year-old grandmother attached to her husband's
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: shop in a quiet commercial district, you are picturing a
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: place of profound peace.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: It is the absolute last environment on earth where anyone
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: would anticipate an explosion of chaotic random violence.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: But that peaceful image is precisely what makes the afternoon
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: of November 30, 2010 so incredibly jarring.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: We have to move from that sanctuary directly into the
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: absolute chaos of the crime scene.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Because what we see in the immediate aftermath of this
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: event is a stark lesson in how the sheer trauma,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: the raw human grief of a scene, can actually obscure
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: the forensic truth right from the starting line.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the primary source material details the initial 911 call,
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: and it is a really harrowing piece of audio.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I can only imagine.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: The call comes into Salt Lake County Dispatch, and it
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: is Earl Black on the line. He and his employee,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: a man named Michael Vasquez, had just returned to the
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: shop after a morning of working off-site.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: You can hear the complete system shock in his voice.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: The dispatcher is doing what dispatchers are trained to do, right?
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Following protocol, trying to establish the address, asking if it's
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: a house or an apartment to guide the paramedics.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: And Earl, completely bypassing the procedural questions, just blurts out,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: I come home and my wife's been murdered, pair of
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: scissors sticking in her.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: It's just chilling. The dispatcher attempts to initiate life-saving measures
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: over the phone. They instruct Earl to lay her flat,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: check her airway, begin chest compressions.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: But Earl is just completely overwhelmed by the undeniable physical
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: reality in front of him.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Right. He keeps repeating to the dispatcher, she's dead. She's cold.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to a detail that is incredibly difficult
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: to hear, but forensically crucial.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, this part is so tough.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Earl admits to the police that when he found Sherry,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: he pulled the scissors out of his wife's chest.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: And when the very first responding officer, Jerry Silva, arrives
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: on the scene, Earl explains that out of respect, he
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: took his own jacket and covered Sherry's body.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: From a psychological standpoint, I mean, this is a deeply ingrained,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: protective human instinct.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. A husband of 46 years is confronted with the
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: most traumatic sight imaginable, and his immediate response is to
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: try to preserve her dignity.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: To shield her from the exposure of the room.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: But from a strictly forensic standpoint, manipulating a murder weapon
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: and altering the covering of the victim's body introduces massive,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: immediate complexities to the prime scene.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: It demonstrates how quickly the theoretical, sterile environment of a
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: police investigation gets totally compromised by the messy, visceral reality
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: of human trauma.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the scene in that back room was undeniably grim.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: When the backup officers finally make their way into the
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: bookstore and look past Earl's jacket, they find Sherry.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: And Officer Silva's initial report notes the onset of rigor mortis.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Right, which is the stiffening of the body's muscles after
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: death due to chemical changes. The fact that Officer Silva
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: noted its onset provides a critical, immediate anchor for the timeline.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: It tells investigators unequivocally that this was not a crime
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: that had just occurred five minutes before Earl walked in.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Sherry had been deceased for a significant amount of time.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Alongside that timeline anchor, they find a massive amount of
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: blood pooling underneath her body. There is a very distinct
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: bloody handprint on the wall right next to a telephone.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: And when the crime scene technicians carefully remove Earl's jacket,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: they realize they are not just looking at a robbery
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: gone wrong or a sudden argument.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: No, they are looking at a sexually motivated attack.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: The source material is explicit that the perpetrator had manipulated
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Sherry's clothing in a manner that left her exposed, which
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: instantly shifts the psychological profile of the offender the police
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: are looking for.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: The entire room spoke to a chaotic, frenzied, incredibly violent struggle.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: There is a bloody wooden stepladder knocked over behind her
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: and blood spatter on rolled up maps leaning against the
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: wall in the entryway.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, I am looking at this chaotic scene and
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: I am thinking about standard police procedure.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Right. You have a horrific murder. You have a husband
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: who just found the body and you have an employee
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: who was with him.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Law enforcement always starts with the closest circle.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: How did they approach Earl and Michael?
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Well, standard protocol dictates that the people who discover the
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: body are inherently the first people of interest, if not
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: outright suspects.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: So Earl Black and Michael Vasquez give their initial statements
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: to the detectives.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Earl explains his routine. He left for work around 9 a.m.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: He and Michael spend the entire morning setting up a
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: pool table at a client's location in Riverton, Utah.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: They finished the job, returned to South Salt Lake, couldn't
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: find Sherry in their main house, walked next door to
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: the business... and discovered the unimaginable.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Now, modern investigations rely heavily on digital footprints to verify
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: these kinds of physical alibis.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: So the police immediately fan out into the neighborhood looking
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: for surveillance cameras.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: And they find a nearby residence with a security camera
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: pointing directly at the main road leading to the business.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: The footage shows Earl's vehicle leaving in the morning, and
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: it shows the vehicle returning in the afternoon. It perfectly
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: corroborates their story.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: But there is a massive catch in the source material.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: The timestamps on that surveillance footage were off by exactly
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: one hour.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: This is a perfect example of how the physical mechanics
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: of technology can derail a case if an investigator isn't meticulous. Oh, completely.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Many older or standalone DVR security systems, they do not
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: automatically connect to a network time protocol server to update
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: their internal clocks.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Right. So when daylight savings time occurs, the physical time changes,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: but the digital stamp on the recording remains in the
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: previous time zone.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: If the detectives had taken that timestamp at face value,
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Earl's alibi would have contained a massive one-hour unexplainable gap.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Instantly making him the prime suspect.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But an observant investigator recognized the discrepancy, mathematically adjusted
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: for the daylight savings shift, and the timeline locked in perfectly.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Earl and Michael were definitively cleared, which is a huge relief,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: but also means they have to look elsewhere.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: With the husband and the employee clear, the investigation immediately
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: pivots to whoever else was scheduled to be in that
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: building that day.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: And Earl tells investigators that Sherry had a meeting scheduled
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: with a book vendor around 10.30 a.m.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: The book vendor actually contacts Earl immediately. on his own
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: after hearing the news of the police presence.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Which, you know, makes sense if you're just there.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Right. He tells Earl, and subsequently tells the homicide detectives,
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: that he arrived at the bookstore around 10.30 a.m. for
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: his scheduled appointment.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: He says Sherry wasn't in the main front area, so
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: assuming she had stepped out for a moment, he just waited.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: He sat inside the bookstore for approximately 45 minutes. When
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: she didn't appear, he assumed she had forgotten the meeting,
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: got up, and left.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, my brain absolutely rejects this scenario.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: It's so hard to grasp.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: A woman has been brutally murdered. There is a violent struggle,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: blood pooling, step ladders knocked over in the back of
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: the store, and a vendor just sits in the front
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: room for 45 minutes, reading a book, checking his watch,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: and then strolls out.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: It defies logic.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: We're talking about a physical space here. How does a
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: person share a physical structure with a fresh murder scene
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: for almost an hour and completely miss it? It feels
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: like the ultimate blind spot.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: The detectives shared your complete disbelief. Based on the onset
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: of rigor mortis observed by the medical examiner, they knew
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Sherry was already deceased when this vendor claimed to be
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: sitting in the front room.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: So from their perspective, the vendor's story was not just improbable.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: It sounded like an incredibly poorly constructed lie from a
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: guilty man trying to explain away his presence at the scene.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: Naturally, they asked the vendor to come into the station
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: for a formal interview.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: And he immediately retains legal counsel, which is always the
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: smart constitutional move for any citizen. But in the heat
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: of a fresh homicide investigation, it often dramatically heightens police suspicion.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. Two days later, he comes into the
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: station with his lawyers. He repeats his story verbatim.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: And the detectives ask him what seems like the most
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: obvious question in the world. They say, did you look
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: in the back room? Was the door to the back
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: office open?
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: And the vendor's response completely shifts the trajectory of the investigation.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: He looks at the detectives and says, what back room?
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: He didn't even know a secondary space existed.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: And this is where the specific architecture, the physical carpentry
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: of the crime scene, becomes the most important piece of evidence.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: The investigators returned to the bookstore and scrutinized the layout.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: From the vantage point of the front room where the
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: vendor was waiting, the door to the back office wasn't
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: just closed. It was actively camouflaged.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Right. The source material details that the door was constructed
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: using the exact same wood paneling as the surrounding wall.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Furthermore, it was painted the exact same color, and the
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: hinges were likely concealed or flush. If that door was
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: pulled shut, it did not look like an egress point.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: It looked like a solid, continuous wall.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: It is the architectural equivalent of a speakeasy entrance. You
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: could stare directly at a bookcase for an hour and
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: never realize it pushes inward to reveal a hidden bar.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: So the vendor was staring at a solid wall. completely
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: unaware that a few feet behind that specific panel of wood,
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: the nightmare had already occurred.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Once the detectives verified the physical mechanics of that hidden door,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: the vendor's bizarre story transitioned into an entirely plausible reality.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: He cooperated fully with the investigation. He handed over the
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: exact clothes he was wearing that day, he provided a
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: voluntary DNA swab, and crucially, he provided his palm prints.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Remember the distinct, bloody handprint left by the phone next
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: to Sherry's body. Right.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: They ran the vendor's prints against it. It was a
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: definitive scientific exclusion. He was not a match. The vendor
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: was entirely eliminated as a suspect.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Clearing the vendor brings us to a terrifying precipice in
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: this investigation. The husband didn't do it. The employee didn't
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: do it. The client didn't do it.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: When you eliminate the entire known circle, you are left
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: staring into the void.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: It means a complete stranger walked into that quiet sanctuary
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: and committed an act of unspeakable violence for absolutely no
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: discernible reason.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: And that realization fundamentally changes the nature of the hunt.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: You move from investigating a crime rooted in interpersonal conflict, greed,
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: or domestic issues to investigating a random act of chaos.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Random crimes are exponentially harder to solve because there is
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: no logical vector pointing from the victim to the perpetrator.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: The traditional motive is completely absent.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Which pulls us into the next massive chapter of this story.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: We are looking at a 10-year timeline where the trail
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: goes cold.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: But usually when we talk about a cold case, we
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: mean a case where the evidence washed away in the
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: rain or the witnesses died or the crime scene was
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: too degraded.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: But here, the killer left an absolute forensic goldmine.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: The medical examiner's report confirmed the sheer, terrifying brutality of
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: the attack. Sherry suffered from both blunt and sharp force injuries.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: She had a distinct bite mark on her body.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: She had sustained a total of 15 separate stab wounds.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: But the byproduct of that intense close quarters physical struggle
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: was a wealth of biological material left behind by the attacker.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Let's break down the exact physical evidence they recovered. They
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: had the bloody fingerprints by the phone. They recovered three
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: entirely separate sources of DNA from the scene.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: And one of those specific DNA sources was pulled from
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: an Armani brand belt that was left near Sherry's body.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: The crime lab processes all of this and they make
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: a definitive scientific conclusion. The fingerprints in all three DNA
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: sources belong to a single, unknown male.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: In forensic science, blood, a bite mark, and an item
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: of clothing left at the scene are considered the holy
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: trinity of evidence.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: You have the killer's exact genetic blueprint.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: You have the unique friction ridges of his fingertips. You
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: know precisely what his biology looks like down to the
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: molecular level.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: You have the absolute answer key to the crime. You
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: just don't have a name to pair it with.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Armed with this perfect biological answer key, the police start
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: aggressively chasing leads.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Six weeks after the murder, a tip comes in from
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: a confidential informant. This informant claims that an acquaintance of
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: theirs has been bragging about killing Sherry Black.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: The story goes that it was supposed to be a
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: simple robbery, but things went sideways.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: The detectives locate this individual. He refuses to speak with
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: them about the tip, but he does consent to a
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: DNA swab.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: This is exactly how that pristine evidence is supposed to function.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: They take a swab, send it to the lab, and
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: run it directly against the unknown male profile generated from
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: the crime scene.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: And the result is a complete biological exclusion. It is
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: not a match.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Whether the individual is lying for street credibility or the
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: informant was fabricating the story, the science cuts through the
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: noise instantly. It is a false lead, definitively shut down
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: by the DNA.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: But while the science is working to exclude false suspects,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: the anxiety in South Salt Lake is reaching a boiling point.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Because just 18 days after Sherry's murder, a mere two
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: miles away from the bookstore, another woman is found brutally killed.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: 45-year-old Christine Gable is discovered dead inside a woman's public
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: restroom at Fairmont Park.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: The parallels between the two crime scenes were deeply, deeply
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: disturbing to the investigators.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: You have two brutally violent, sexually motivated murders of women
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: occurring in the exact same localized geographic area committed less
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: than three weeks apart.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: From a purely behavioral analysis standpoint, the natural logical conclusion
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: is that law enforcement is dealing with an escalating serial
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: offender operating in South Salt Lake.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: So the police pour incredible resources into the Fairmont Park murder,
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: and they actually catch the suspect. They arrest a man
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: named Paul David Vara for the murder of Christine Gable.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: The detectives bring him into the interrogation room, and they
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: are absolutely convinced that this man is the answer to
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: both nightmares. They believe they are about to close the
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Sherry Black case.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: They dive into his background, preparing to tie him to
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: the bookstore. But when they pull Paul David Vara's institutional record,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: they make a discovery that completely upends their theory.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: During the exact time frame on the morning of November 30th,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: when Sherry Black was being murdered in her bookstore, Paul
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: David Vara was sitting inside a locked jail cell on
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: completely unrelated charges.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: It was physically, geographically impossible for him to have killed Sherry.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Let that statistical improbability sink in.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: The community was not dealing with a single serial killer.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: They were dealing with two entirely separate, unrelated monsters operating
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: in the exact same two-mile radius, committing incredibly similar violent
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: crimes at the exact same time.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: It is an absolute nightmare scenario for a homicide division.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: It means their primary, most logical suspect for the Black
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: case is completely removed from the board, and the real
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: killer is still walking the streets.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: With local leads exhausted, they turned to the ultimate tool
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: in modern law enforcement CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: managed by the FBI.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: When I think of CODIS, I picture a massive, glowing
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: digital library. Millions of genetic profiles. If you have the
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: killer's DNA, you plug the sequence into the computer. The
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: servers work, and it spits out a match with a
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: name and an address.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Conceptually, CODIS is an incredibly powerful tool. It relies on
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: analyzing specific markers in the DNA called short tandem repeats,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: or STRs.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: But the critical limitation of CODIS is not the science.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: It is the legal parameters of the database itself. There
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: are strict statutory rules regarding whose DNA is allowed to
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: be entered into CODIS.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Generally speaking, in most jurisdictions, it requires an adult felony conviction,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: or sometimes a felony arrest, depending on the state.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: If the unknown suspect who left his blood in that
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: bookstore had never been caught and convicted for a qualifying felony,
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: his biological profile simply would not exist in the database.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: It is the ultimate library card analogy. CODIS is the largest,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: most comprehensive library in the criminal justice system. But if
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the killer hasn't committed a prior felony to register for
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: a library card, his book isn't on the shelves.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: You can wander up and down those aisles for decades
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: with your perfect DNA sample, and you will never, ever
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: find a match.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: That analogy perfectly captures the agony of this investigation. For
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: six grueling years, the detectives did exactly that.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Every single week, for over 300 consecutive weeks, they took
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: the unknown male profile from the bookstore and ran it
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: through CODIS, hoping that the killer had slipped up and
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: committed a felony somewhere else in the country that would
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: trigger a database entry.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: And every single week for six years, the computer returned
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: the exact same result, zero matches.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: Think about the psychological toll that takes. Have you ever
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: possessed the exact, irrefutable answer to a massive problem, but
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: lacked the specific tool required to translate it into a
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: language anyone could understand?
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Imagine holding the master key to a padlock, but you
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: are trapped in a city with no doors. That was
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: the crushing reality for these detectives, and more importantly, for
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Sherry's family.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: The sheer attrition of time degrades cases. The original lead
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: investigator working the Black murder eventually reached retirement age and
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: stepped down.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: The case went cold. Not because the police stopped caring.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: And not from a lack of physical evidence, but from
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: a complete lack of technological capability to translate the perfect
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: evidence they possessed into a human identity.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: But Sherry's family Earl, her daughter Heidi and her son-in-law Greg,
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: refused to let her memory fade into a filing cabinet.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: They consistently met with detectives. They kept the external pressure
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: on the department year after year.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: And that relentless pressure leads us to a massive turning
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: point in the timeline.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: The case is eventually handed over to the Unified Police
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Department's Major Investigations Unit, specifically landing on the desk of
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: a detective named Ben Pender.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: He takes over the investigation during the sixth year. And
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Pender looks at this file and realizes a fundamental truth
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: running the exact same DNA sequence through the exact same
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: database every Tuesday. isn't going to magically yield a different
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: result on Wednesday.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: He needs a paradigm shift. He needs a completely different
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: way to read the biology.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: So Detective Pender starts researching what other scientific applications exist
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: for a pristine DNA sample outside of traditional STR database matching.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: He reaches out to a pioneering company based in Virginia
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: called Parabon Mana Labs. They specialize in a deeply complex
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: field called DNA phenotyping.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, we have to stop and explain phenotyping, because to
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: a layperson, it sounds indistinguishable from science fiction. How does
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: a lab look at a drop of blood and draw
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: a picture of face?
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: It is a remarkable leap in genetic science. Traditional DNA
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: testing looks at the junk DNA, the non-coding regions used
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: just for identification, like a barcode. Right. Phenotyping, specifically Parabon's
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: snapshot technology, does something entirely different. It looks at the
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: It essentially reads the actual genetic instruction manual that dictates
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: how a human body is built.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: The algorithms analyze the DNA. to predict the physical appearance
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: of the unknown person. It reads the genetic markers to
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: forecast traits like the exact shade of skin color, eye
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: color based on melanin production, hair color, the likelihood of freckling,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: and even the fundamental morphology or shape of the skull
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: and face.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: It builds a digital, three-dimensional composite sketch of the suspect
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: based purely on their biological code.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: This is just mind-blowing.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: It really is. So on the seventh anniversary of Sherry's murder,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: the police hold a press conference and they release these
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: snapshot predictive sketches to the public.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: They show the media what the suspect's face likely looked
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: like at age 25 and age 30 based purely on
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: the blood left at the scene.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: And at the same press conference, Sherry's son-in-law, Greg Miller,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: who is the CEO of the Larry H. Miller Group,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: a massive corporate entity with car dealerships and professional sports teams,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: steps up to the microphone and announces a staggering $ 250, 000
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: cash reward for information leading to an arrest.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: You combine the cutting-edge predictive sketches with a quarter of
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: a million dollar incentive, and the tip lines absolutely explode.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: They generated hundreds of new, seemingly viable leads. Detective Pender
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: and his team chased down every single tip, running down names, alibis,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: and connections across the state.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: But, devastatingly, after all that effort... They were left exactly
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: where they started.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: The snapshot sketches were a brilliant starting point, but they
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: were ultimately just a picture. They weren't enough to isolate
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: a specific name in a sea of millions of faces.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: But while Pender is grinding through these tips, the entire
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: landscape of criminal investigations fundamentally shifts on a global scale.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: In early 2018, the news breaks that the Golden State Killer,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: one of the most prolific, elusive serial killers in American history,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: has finally been arrested.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: And the headline isn't that he was caught using a
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: CODIS match. He was caught using a completely new investigative
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: technique genetic genealogy.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: The Golden State Killer arrest was an absolute earthquake in
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: forensic science. Detective Pender immediately meets with the Utah Bureau
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: of Forensic Services to dissect exactly how that case was cracked.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: They learn about a database called GEDmatch. To understand why
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: this is different, you have to understand the architecture of
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: the databases.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: CODIS is closed. strictly regulated by the government and populated
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: by convicted offenders.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: Commercial sites like 23andMe or AncestryDNA are closed. Proprietary servers
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: protected by massive corporate terms of service that require legal
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: subpoenas to even attempt to access, which companies fight vigorously
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: to protect user privacy.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: GEDmatch is different. It is an open source database. It
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: is a platform where regular people who have already taken
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: commercial testing kits to learn about their heritage can voluntarily
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: take their raw DNA data file and upload it to
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: a public forum to find distant relatives.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: So the fundamental shift is this. Instead of hoping the
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: killer gets arrested for a felony and ends up in
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: a closed government database of criminals, you take the killer's
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: crime scene DNA and you upload it to an open
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: source database filled with people who are just curious about
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: their family tree.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: You aren't looking for the killer directly. You are looking
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: for the killer's cousins.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Precisely. Pender immediately re-engages with Parabon Nanolabs, who had rapidly
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: pivoted to include a dedicated team of genetic genealogists, led
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: by the renowned CeCe Moore.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: A year later, a representative from Family Tree DNA, another
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: genetic testing company, also reaches out to offer their specific
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: database and expertise.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: So now, Detective Pender has two separate databases and teams
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: of brilliant scientists working on the suspect's profile.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: But I want to make sure we understand the mechanics
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: of this, because it isn't just a computer program doing
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: the work. You don't just upload the blood, click a mouse,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: and a printer spits out a piece of paper that says,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: the killer is John Smith.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Not at all. The process is incredibly labor intensive. When
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: the killer's profile is uploaded to GEDmatch, the system looks
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: for shared centimorgans, a unit of genetic measurement that indicates
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: how much DNA two people share.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: The genealogists find distant relatives in these databases. They might
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: find someone who shares enough centimorgans to be a third
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: or fourth cousin of the suspect.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: They give those distant names to Detective Pender. To build
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: the family tree backward, to figure out who the common
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: great-great-grandparents are, and then build the branches forward to narrow
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: down which specific branch the killer is on, they need
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: DNA from people closer in the family line who aren't
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: in any database.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: This means Detective Pender literally has to get on airplanes
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: and fly coast to coast.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: He is engaging in the most grueling old school shoe
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: leather police work imaginable.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: He is knocking on the front doors of random citizens,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: distant relatives of an unknown killer, explaining this incredibly complex
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: situation and asking if they will voluntarily swab their cheeks
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: to help solve a decade old murder of a woman
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: they have never met.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: And remarkably, consistently, people consented. Pender would collect a swab
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: in another state, overnight it to the lab, and they
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: would test it.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: They would determine, OK, this new person shares more centimorgans.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: They are a second cousin. Now we need to go
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: find this specific person's aunt or uncle.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: It is a painfully slow, a meticulous process of elimination,
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: triangulating down a massive, sprawling familial web using census records,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: birth certificates, and marriage licenses, cross-referencing every single male born
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: in the right time frame.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: As this exhaustive process is happening, Another absolute legend in
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: the field joins the hunt. Dr. Barbara Raventer, the specific
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: genetic genealogist who actually cracked the Golden State Killer case,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: contacts Pender in June 2020.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: She brings her own expertise and starts providing additional names
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: for targeted DNA collection, working entirely independently from the Parabon team.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: All of this intense multi-agency cross-country effort culminates on one
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: single incredible day, September 24th, 2020.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Detective Pender is at his desk when he receives a
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: call from Carol Rolnick, the genealogist at Parabon. She tells
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: him that after years of building these trees backward and forward,
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: she has finally narrowed the primary branch down.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: She has located the suspect's father and grandmother, currently living
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: in Sacramento, California.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: But wait. The timeline of this day gets even better.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Less than two hours after Pender hangs up with Parabon,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: his phone rings again.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: It is Dr. Barbara Raventer. Working completely independently, using her
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: own methodologies and building her own trees, she calls Pender
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: to give him the exact same information.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Two separate groups of brilliant scientists using different databases and
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: different triangulation methods arrive at the exact same doorstep. in Sacramento, California,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: on the exact same afternoon.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: I just have to pause and marvel at the profound
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: implications of this.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: It really is staggering.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: In the scientific community, independent verification is the ultimate gold standard.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: When two independent methodologies yield the identical, highly specific result,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: it mathematically eliminates any doubt of a computational anomaly or
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: a false positive.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: When Pinder received that second phone call, he knew with absolute,
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: irrefutable scientific certainty that that the man who murdered Sherry
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: Black was biologically tethered to that specific family line in Sacramento.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Our actions, our most deeply hidden secrets, are tethered not
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: just to our own biology, but to our second, third,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: and fourth cousins.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: If your third cousin in another state decides to take
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: a DNA test just to find out what region of
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Europe their ancestors are from, they might accidentally hand law
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: enforcement the mathematical key to a murder you committed 10
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: years ago.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: It completely redefines the concept of a secret. But this
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: brings us to the micro level of the investigation. We
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: are moving from the macro world of national databases and
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: sprawling family trees down into one specific family's hidden history.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Detective Pender boards a flight to Sacramento. He finds the
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: address provided by the genealogist and knocks on the door.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: He sits down in the living room with his elderly
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: grandmother and her adult son, the man the science has
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: definitively identified as the suspect's father.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Pender doesn't pull any punches. He opens his file. He
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: shows them crime scene photos. He shows them pictures of
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Sherry smiling, pictures of Earl, pictures of the blood in
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: the bookstore.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: He lays the absolute gravity of a savage homicide out
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: on their coffee table.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Pender looks at the grandmother and asks a straightforward question.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Do you have any other children besides the son sitting
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: next to you? She answers no.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Pender then turns his attention to the son. He asks
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: the man for the names of all his biological children.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: The father complies, listing off his kids.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: But there is a massive problem. Every single child the
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: father lists is female.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: Which presents a seemingly impossible biological paradox. The DNA profile
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: meticulously extracted from the blood and the Armani belt to
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: the crime scene is definitively, undeniably male.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: If this man only has daughters, the genealogical tree has
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: hit a brick wall.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: So Pender, relying on his instincts as an interrogator, asks
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: the pivotal question. The specific question that breaks a 10-year
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: cold case wide open. He looks at the father and asks,
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: are you aware of any biological children whom you had
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: not raised?
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: The room goes quiet. The father pauses. He has to
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: mentally travel back decades, back to his time in high school.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: He tells Pender that he'd been intimate with a young
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: woman back then. Sometime later, she informed him that she
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: had given birth to a child and that he was
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: the biological father.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: But he admits he never pursued it. He never requested
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: a paternity test. He never verified her claim. And he
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: was completely absent from the child's life.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: He didn't even know the boy's last name. The only
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: piece of information he retained was that the boy's first
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: name was Antonio.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: And then the father does something incredible. He goes into
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: his belongings and pulls out a physical photograph. It's a
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: picture of this unknown boy, Antonio, attending a childhood birthday party.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: And crucially, on the back of this physical photograph, someone,
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: perhaps the mother, perhaps a relative, had written the exact
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: date the picture was taken.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: By looking at the boy's age in the photo and
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: the date scribbled on the back, Pender is able to
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: mathematically determine the boy was born in the year 1991.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Think about the terrifying fragility of this entire 10-year pursuit.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: If that father had thrown that single photograph away during
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: a move.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: If he had been too embarrassed in front of his
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: mother to admit to a high school fling resulting in
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: an unacknowledged child.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: If whoever developed that film had forgotten to scribble the
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: date on the back of the print. The multi-million dollar databases,
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: the phenotyping, the brilliant genealogists, all of it would have
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: slammed into a brick wall.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: The trail could have gone completely cold right there in
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: that Sacramento living room. It demonstrates how the highest levels
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: of scientific achievement often completely rely on the absolute chance
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: of human memory and physical artifacts.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: But chance was on their side. Pender has a first name, Antonio,
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: a birth year of 1991, and the biological mother's name.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: He immediately calls the genealogists Cece Moore and Carol Rolnick.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: He says... Filter your data. Look for an Antonio born
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: in 1991, biologically associated with this specific mother.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: And within hours, they find him. They give Pender the
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: full name, Adam Antonio Spencer Durbro.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: It is a name that had never once appeared in
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: the thousands of pages of the case file. Not as
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: a suspect, not as a witness, not as a tip.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: In 10 years, the name Adam Durbro was a complete
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: ghost to the South Salt Lake Police Department.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: And the immediate question is, why wasn't he in CODIS?
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: If he is capable of this level of violence, how
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: is he not in the system?
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: Pender pulls Durbarow's criminal history and finds the answer. Adams'
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: adult criminal record only consisted of three very minor theft charges,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: shoplifting offenses.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Nothing that reaches the felony threshold required to trigger a
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: mandatory DNA swab for the national database.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: However, when Pender digs deeper, he discovers Adams' juvenile record
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: was extensive and deeply troubling. It included sex-related crimes and
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: violent assault charges.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: But because the justice system heavily protects minors, juvenile records
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: are sealed and juvenile DNA profiles are not typically cross-referenced
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: or retained in the adult CODIS database the way adult
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: felonies are.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: So Pender tracks Durbarow's current whereabouts. And the geographic reality
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: is staggering. Guess where Adam Durbarow is currently living?
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Orem, Utah, a city just 35 miles straight down the
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: highway from Sherry's bookstore.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: He hasn't fled the country. He hasn't gone off the grid.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: He's been living in the exact same general geographic footprint
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: for a decade.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: The police mobilize immediately. They set up a covert stakeout
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: on Adam's apartment complex. On October 3rd, 2020, they watch
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Adam leave his apartment and get into a white Ford Focus.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: Plainclothes officers tail him through traffic. And where does this decade-long,
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: multi-million dollar, scientifically unprecedented manhunt culminate? A random fast food drive-thru.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: The juxtaposition of this moment is incredible to think about.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: This man is doing the most mundane, everyday American activity imaginable,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: eating a burger in his car.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: He orders his fast food at the speaker box. He
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: pulls his Ford Focus into a parking space in the lot,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: eats his meal alone in his car, and then completely casually,
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: he opens his door and tosses his discarded drink cup
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: and food container into the public trash can.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: He drives away completely oblivious. He is entirely unaware that
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: the simple, thoughtless act of tossing a piece of garbage
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: with his saliva on the straw is about to end
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: 10 years of freedom.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: The moment his taillights leave the lot, the undercover officers
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: swoop in. They dig into the trash can, carefully collect
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: the discarded drink cup wearing gloves, bag it as evidence,
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: and rush it directly to the crime lab.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: The science of touch DNA and saliva extraction from plastics
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: is highly refined. The lab swabs the rim of the
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: cup and the straw, extracting the epithelial cells Adam left behind.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: Five days later, the conclusive results come back. The DNA
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: extracted from the saliva on that fast food cup is
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: a microscopic, identical, astronomical match to the DNA found on
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: the scissors, the Armani belt, and the blood pools at
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: the crime scene 10 years earlier.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Armed with an ironclad warrant, they arrest Adam Durborough the
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: very next day in a Walmart parking lot.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: So the science answered the who. The genetic genealogy and
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: the discarded cup unquivocally proved that Adam Durborough was the
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: man who committed the violence in the bookstore.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: But biological evidence is fundamentally limited. It can put a
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: man in a room, but it cannot explain human behavior.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: It cannot explain the why.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: And for Earl Black and the rest of the family,
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: the why is the agonizing question that has haunted them
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: for a decade. Why did a stranger walk into a
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: rare bookstore and butcher a 64-year-old grandmother?
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: To get that answer, Detective Pender couldn't rely on a laboratory.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: He had to rely on psychology. And this transition into
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: the interrogation room is absolutely fascinating.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Pender brings Adam into the interview room, reads him his
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: Miranda rights, and Adam, surprisingly, waives his rights and agrees
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: to speak without an attorney present.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: You watch movies, and you expect these interrogations to be
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: immediately aggressive, table-pounding, screaming bright lights.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: But this starts with a deeply jarring, almost friendly conversation.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: Pender and Adam are just chatting about his daily life.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Adam is sitting across from Homicide Detective, and he's talking
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: about how much he enjoys reading fantasy novels. He talks
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: about how he plays Dungeons and Dragons with his friends.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: He talks about listening to Critical Role, which is a
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: massive live-action D & D podcast. He is describing an
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: entirely normal, slightly nerdy, completely benign lifestyle.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: But Pender isn't just making idle conversation. He is establishing
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: a psychological baseline. He is making Adam comfortable in the room,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: lowering his defensive posture, and building rapport.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Once that baseline is established, Pender executes a highly specific
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: calculated interrogation strategy. He leans forward, looks Adam directly in
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: the eye, and says, We don't have you here because
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: we're wondering if you did it or not. I know
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: you did it. It's about the why.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: It is a brilliant psychological maneuver. By stating the guilt
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: as an absolute undeniable fact, Pender completely removes the cognitive
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: load of denial from Adam's shoulders.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: He isn't asking Adam to confess to committing a crime.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: He is telling Adam the crime is already a solved equation.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: He is merely inviting Adam to explain his side of
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: the equation.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Modern interrogation relies heavily on this technique. Instead of the confrontational,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: accusatory style of the older Reed technique, Pender uses a
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: combination of minimization and radical empathy.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: He doesn't call Adam a monster. He doesn't express disgust
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: or moral outrage. Instead, Pender begins to paint a narrative
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: that frames Adam as a victim of a cruel world
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: and a system that failed him.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: I want to read some of Pender's exact phrasing from
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: the transcript because it is a master class in manipulation
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: through empathy.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Go for it.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: He tells Adam, I know you had a very difficult upbringing.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: You were exposed to different things that pushed you that
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: way with your mother. You get adopted and this situation
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: with your adopted father happens. Does this guy ever get
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: a break?
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Pender even brings up a tragic accident involving Adam's little
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: sister passing away.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: If you analyze the psychology of what Pender is doing,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: he is offering Adam an emotional way out.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: He is essentially saying to the suspect, I don't think
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: you were fundamentally evil. I think you were a broken,
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: deeply traumatized teenager who made a terrible, tragic mistake because
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: the adults in your life failed to protect you.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: But providing this narrative, it allows Adam to confess to
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: a horrific act without having to look in the mirror
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: and see himself as a villain.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: It preserves a tiny shred of his ego, which is
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: often the only way to coax a confession out of
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: a cornered suspect.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: And the strategy absolutely works. The facade crumbles. Adam starts
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: to break down in the room. He tells Pender that
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: he actually feels relief being caught, acknowledging that it sounds
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: incredibly selfish to say out loud.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: And then he finally tells the story of November 30th, 2010,
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: as he was 19 years old at the time. His
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: Proctor family, essentially a specialized foster family, had gone on
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: a family vacation and they had chosen not to take
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: him with them.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: It triggered a massive core wound of abandonment. He felt rejected,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: cast aside by the very people supposed to be caring
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: for him.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: Adam says he was furious. He left his home in Magna,
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: got on a public bus with no real destination, got
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: off at a random stop in South Salt Lake, and
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: just started walking the streets.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: He was silently fuming, angry at his biological mother. angry
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: at the foster system feeling like a complete failure, and
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: as he is walking, he happens to pass by B
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: & W billiards and books.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: He decides to walk in to ask if they carry
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: a specific fantasy series he wanted to read. He walks
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: into the back room. Sherry tells him she doesn't carry
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: that specific series.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: But Sherry Black, being the incredibly observant and kind woman
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: she was, noticed Adam's demeanor. She noticed the physical tension,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: the visible upset in this 19-year-old stranger.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: And she did what a kind grandmother does. She walked
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: over to him, made eye contact, smiled, and gently asked
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: him if everything was fine.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: And that simple human act of kindness was the fatal trigger.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Adam tells Pender, I was so angry and I just,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I just lashed out.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: He saw a heavy pair of shearing scissors lying on
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: a nearby table. He picked them up and struck Sherry
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: in the back of the head. When she staggered and
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: tried to defend herself, His rage completely took over.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: He hit her again and again. He grabbed a glass
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: bottle and broke it over her head. The violence was absolute.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: The randomness of the trigger is deeply chilling. Adam wasn't
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: physically attracted to her. He didn't know her name. He
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: didn't enter the store with a premeditated plan to commit murder.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: He didn't even attempt to steal the cash register or
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: rare books after the fact. It was an explosion of pure,
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: displaced rage poured out entirely onto an innocent woman whose
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: only mistake was offering him a kind word when his
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: internal levy broke.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: But inside this harrowing confession, there's a bizarre psychological contradiction
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: that we have to talk about.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: As Adam is confessing to the murder, the detectives press
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: him on the physical evidence. They specifically ask him about
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: the Armani brand belt that was found lying on the
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: floor next to Sherry's body, the belt that had his
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: DNA all over it.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: And Adam, who is just freely admitted to beating a
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: woman to death with scissors, aggressively pushes back on this
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: specific fashion choice.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Yes, the transcript notes his exact response. He gets defensive
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: and says, I don't remember taking off any belt. I
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: wore studded belts. It was a phase.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: He is adamant that he would never wear an Armani belt,
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: insisting it couldn't possibly belong to him.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: What does it say about the mechanics of human memory?
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: That a killer can sit in a room, weep, and
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: admit to a brutal homicide, but will firmly and adamantly
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: debate homicide detectives over the branding of a leather accessory.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: It speaks volumes about trauma and how the brain encodes
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: memory during moments of extreme violence. When a human being
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: engages in a hyper-violent act, their sympathetic nervous system goes
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: into massive overdrive.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: The brain is amygdala. The fear and threat center is
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: essentially on fire.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: It hyper-focuses all cognitive resources on the central action, the
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: physical struggle, the weapon, the immediate threat. Peripheral details, like
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: what brand of belt fell off during the struggle or
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: what song was playing on the radio, often aren't encoded
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: into long-term memory at all.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: Alternatively, it is entirely possible that his brain deliberately compartmentalized
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: certain aspects of the assault to protect his own psyche
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: from the full reality of what he did.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: The fact that he admits he might have touched the
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: belt during the struggle, but forcefully denies owning or wearing it,
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: demonstrates just how fragmented and unreliable memory can be, even
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: for the perpetrator of the crime.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: It is a fascinating glimpse into a broken mind. Adam
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: finishes the confession by explaining his escape. He runs out
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: of the bookstore, leaving the belt and the scissors behind.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: He flees on foot, running for 15 minutes straight until
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: he reaches his therapist's office, of all places.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: He tells Pender that the reality of what he had
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: actually done didn't fully hit him until he was standing
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: in the therapist's bathroom, staring in the mirror, scrubbing the
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: blood off his face.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: He walked out of that bathroom and carried that horrific
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: secret every single day for 10 years.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: At the conclusion of the interrogation, Detective Pender asks Adam
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: if he would be willing to sign a letter of
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: apology to the Black family. Adam agrees, signing his name
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: to the confession.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: Which brings a very strange, quiet end to a decade
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: of violence, evasion, and scientific pursuit. He doesn't fight the detectives.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: He doesn't demand a lawyer at the end. He accepts
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: that the run is over.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: This brings us to the final reality of this deep dive.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: The science worked. The interrogation worked. The killer is in custody.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: We move from the sterile confines of the interrogation room
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: into the very real lifelong fallout for the family left behind.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: Adam Durbarow is formally booked on charges of aggravated homicide.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: And this phase of the justice process highlights a profound
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: and empowering decision made by the victim's family.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: Detective Pender allows Earl Black, Heidi Miller, and Greg Miller
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: to watch the confession tape. They sit and listen to
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: Adam describe exactly what he did to Sherry.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: After processing this horror... The family makes a collective, unified decision.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: They formally request that the state prosecutors do not pursue
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: or charge Adam with the sexual assault aspect of the crime.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: To someone on the outside, that might sound counterintuitive. Why
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: wouldn't you want the maximum possible charges levied against the
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: man who killed your wife?
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: But their reasoning was entirely about protecting Sherry. If the
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: state charged him with sexual assault, those highly specific, deeply intimate,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: gruesome details would become a matter of public record.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: They would be debated in open court, discussed in front
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: of a jury of strangers, entered into permanent legal transcripts,
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: and endlessly reported on by the local news media.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: By strategically choosing to drop those specific charges and focus
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: solely on the aggravated homicide, the family chose to protect
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Sherry's dignity.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: The criminal justice system is a massive machinery that often
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: treats victims and their families as mere spectators or evidence
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: delivery systems. They are frequently sidelined in the pursuit of
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: a conviction.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: But in this instance, the Black and Miller family seized
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: control of the narrative. They ensured that when the public
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: remembers Sherry Black, they remember her for her vibrant life,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: her 46-year marriage, her intellect, and her passion for books,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: rather than having her legacy defined by the degrading, violent
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: actions of her killer in her final moments.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: It is a remarkable reclamation of power. Facing the overwhelming
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: evidence against him and seeking to avoid a potential death
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: penalty trial, Adam Durbrough ultimately pleads guilty to the murder.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: On February 23, 2022, he stands before a judge and
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: receives a sentence of life in prison without the possibility
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: of parole.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: During the sentencing hearing, Sherry's daughter, Heidi, delivered a powerful statement.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: She acknowledged the deep tragedy of Adam's life, stating that
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: anyone who could commit such an act is clearly beyond troubled.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: But she firmly affirmed that because of his actions, he
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: needed to remain behind bars for the rest of his
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: natural life.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: The family also channeled their immense grief into systemic action.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: They established the Sherry Black Foundation.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: This organization provides crucial financial resources, training, and specialized assistance
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: to law enforcement agencies and cold case teams nationwide, specifically
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: funding the kind of advanced genetic genealogy that solved Sherry's case,
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: ensuring that other families don't have to wait decades for answers.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: But as we close this deep dive, I want to
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: reflect on Earl Black's final sentiment in the source material.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: It's a powerful one.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: After all the millions of data points analyzed, the cross-country flights,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: the genetic genealogy, the confession, and the final sentencing, Earl
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: simply said that Adam took away a massive piece of
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: his life and that he will never, ever be over it.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: It forces us to ask, what does solving a case
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: actually mean? It means that a conviction doesn't erase the tragedy.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: A life sentence doesn't bring Sherry back to the rare bookstore.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: But it does stop the bleeding. It provides a definitive
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: answer to the why that haunts the empty spaces of
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: a family's life.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: We have charted an unbelievable investigative arc today. We started
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: with a perfectly camouflaged physical door that nearly destroyed the
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: initial timeline.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: We explored the crippling limitations of closed, traditional DNA databases.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: We watched the rise of open-source genetic genealogy that required
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: detectives to meticulously map out entire family trees across the country.
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: And finally, we witnessed an interrogation built on radical empathy
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: that successfully coaxed out a secret held tightly for 10 years.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: It is an absolute testament to scientific perseverance and the
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: refusal to let a case truly go cold. But I
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: want to leave you with a provocative thought to mull
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: over long after this finishes.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: I'm ready.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: Think about your own family tree right now. Every single
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: time someone in your extended family, a cousin you haven't
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: spoken to in years, spits into a tube and takes
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: a commercial DNA test just to find out where their
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: great grandparents came from, they are effectively turning your entire
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: bloodline into a permanent biological neighborhood watch.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: That is wild to think about.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: In the modern age, your genetic ghosts are speaking loudly
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: to anyone who knows how to listen. The question is,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: as this technology grows exponentially and these open source databases
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: expand to include millions more profiles, what other secrets, good
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: or bad, ancient or fresh, are just waiting to be
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: uncovered in our DNA?
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: It completely redefines what it means to leave a trace
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: in this world. You can meticulously wipe down a crime scene.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: You can hide in a different city. You can live
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: a quiet, unassuming life for decades.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: But your biology is inextricably tied to thousands of other
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: people who might just hand the key over to the
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: authorities without ever knowing it.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: Because as we saw today, sometimes you can have the
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: perfect puzzle piece sitting right in the palm of your
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: hand for years. But it takes the rest of the
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: world slowly building the edges of the board to finally
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: show you the picture.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us on this deep dive. Stay insanely
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: curious and we will catch you next time.