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Cracking Cold Cases: Five Forensic DNA Breakthroughs · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: For Gary Ridgeway, the clock didn't actually start ticking when
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: the police finally put him in handcuffs. I mean it
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: started ticking the exact second he left a microscopic drop
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: of saliva behind in the early nineteen eighties.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he just didn't know yet, right.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: He spent decades living his life completely convinced he was
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: a phantom, you know, someone who had just slipped into
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the shadows.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: And well, for most of human history, that was the
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: grim reality of criminal justice. Like if a killer vanished
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: and the trail went cold, they were just gone.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: The shadow was always one step ahead, exactly.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: The techers were left just boxing up evidence, sliding it
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: onto a shelf in some dusty archive room, and living
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: with this terrible, suffocating feeling of powerlessness. But biology, Biology
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: doesn't forget.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: No, it doesn't. And welcome to the deep dive. You
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: our listener brought us an absolutely chilling dossier of true
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Cram case files today, and we are going to crack
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: open five notorious, completely baffling mysteries from this file.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: It's an incredible collection, honestly.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: It really is. Our mission today is to trace the
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: exact microscopic evolution like five revolutionary leaps in DNA testing
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: that finally drag these monsters into the light.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Because the criminals never changed their behavior, they just failed
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: to realize that science was quietly building a net around them.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: So we're going to explore the mechanics of the biology
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: that is fundamentally rewriting criminal history, turning these invisible traces
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: into undeniable confessions.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: And we have to start at the absolute bedrock of
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: forensic evidence. Let's go back to the Pacific Northwest.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, the Green River killer case exactly.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: It's the early nineteen eighties. Picture the mist, the relentless rain,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: the dense, suffocating forests, and a community living in absolute
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: terror of this killer. Dozens of women are just vanishing.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: The panic in that region was palpable. I mean, police
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: are desperate. They're working around the.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Clock, and in nineteen eighty three, a man named Gary
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Ridgway lands on their radar.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Right, he's interviewed, but he's lips away. They don't have
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: enough to hold.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Them, but they keep digging, right.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah. By nineteen eighty seven, investigators finally have enough
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: circumstantial evidence to execute a search warrant on his home,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: and during that search they collect physical samples, specifically his
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: hair in his.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Saliva, which brings us to the most agonizing part of
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: this timeline. It is nineteen eighty seven. The detectives sitting
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: across from ridgeway, they feel it in their gut. They knew,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: they absolutely knew. But the technology to definitively link that
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: saliva to the horrors out in the forest simply does
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: not exist yet, not in a usable court ready way.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they have to put that saliva into tube,
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: put it in a box, and just wait, just sit
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: on it.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, what was it like for those detectives having
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: to just sit on that evidence for fourteen years, praying
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: the science would catch up.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: It had to be excruciating. They had the physical material, right,
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: the biological blueprint, but they lacked the key to actually
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: read the information locked inside it.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: They had to wait for the technology to mature into
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: what we now call stive analysis or short tandem repeat testing.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Right when people talk about the gold standard of DNA testing,
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: this is what they mean.
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  Speaker 1: So I've heard SDR called the gold standard in court
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  Speaker 1: countless times, but I always assumed it was just because
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  Speaker 1: it's the oldest or most established technology. Is there an
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: actual biological reason courts trust it so implicitly over newer methods.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: There is a very specific mechanical reason. So human DNA
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: is roughly ninety nine point nine percent identical from person
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: to person. Sure, that's what makes us human. But in
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: that remaining point one percent, there are regions of junk
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  Speaker 2: DNA where short sequences of genetic code repeat themselves over
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  Speaker 2: and over.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, I follow.
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  Speaker 2: For example, a sequence like gata might repeat five times
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  Speaker 2: in my DNA, but twelve times in yours.
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  Speaker 1: Oh interesting.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, So str analysis doesn't try to read your entire genome.
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  Speaker 2: It simply counts the number of repeats at very specific locations.
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  Speaker 2: And when you count the repeats across fifteen or twenty
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  Speaker 2: different locations, the statistical probability of two people having the
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  Speaker 2: exact same combination as well, well, it's one in several quincillian.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, So instead of trying to read the whole book,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: you are just looking for a very specific stutter in
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  Speaker 1: a specific sentence on a specific page, And every single
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: person has a totally unique stutter.
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  Speaker 2: That is a perfect way to visualize it. It provides
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  Speaker 2: investigators with a binary, definitive answer, yes or no, a
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  Speaker 2: direct mat a one to one match, which is why
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  Speaker 2: it's the only type of DNA analysis powerful enough to
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  Speaker 2: secure a conviction in court on its own.
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  Speaker 1: Merits, Which brings us back to those detectives in Washington.
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  Speaker 1: Fast forward to two thousand and one, fourteen years of waiting.
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  Speaker 2: The STR technology has finally matured exactly.
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  Speaker 1: Investigators walk into that archive room, blow the dust off
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  Speaker 1: that box from nineteen eighty seven, and pull out ridgeway
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  Speaker 1: saliva sample. They run the STR analysis to count his
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  Speaker 1: unique genetic stutters, and then.
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  Speaker 2: They compare that result to sperm found on three victims
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  Speaker 2: discovered wayback in nineteen eighty two and nineteen eighty three,
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  Speaker 2: Cynthia Cookie, Gene Hines, marshif A Chapman, and Caroline Christensen.
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  Speaker 2: In it, the sequences line up flawlessly. It's a direct,
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  Speaker 2: mathematically undeniable match.
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  Speaker 1: Man.
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  Speaker 2: After nearly two decades of unanswered questions and profound grief,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Gary Ridgeway is confronted with his own biology. He is
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
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  Speaker 1: That is incredible. So STR is perfect if you have
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: a pristine, isolated drop of saliva or a clean sample,
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  Speaker 1: but you know crime scenes are violent. Biology is messy.
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  Speaker 1: What happens when the killer's DNA is completely drowned out
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: by the victims.
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  Speaker 2: Ah, Now that introduces a massive forensic hurdle. Standard str
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  Speaker 2: analysis gets completely overwhelmed in that scenario.
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  Speaker 1: Really, how so?
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  Speaker 2: Well, if you have a massive amount of the victim's
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  Speaker 2: epithelial cells mixed with just a few rogue cells from
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  Speaker 2: the killer, the sequencing machine basically.
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  Speaker 1: Panics like it can't read it.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, the signals cross and the killer's profile is buried
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  Speaker 2: in the noise.
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  Speaker 1: Which takes us to the second case in your file,
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  Speaker 1: and a shift in the scene to Austin, Texas. The
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  Speaker 1: year is nineteen ninety one. The yogurt shop murders.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Such a tragic case.
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  Speaker 1: It is a chilling, horrific crime. Four teenage girls found
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  Speaker 1: dead inside a burned out yogurt shop. It's a case
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: that haunted the state of Texas and traumatized investigators for
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: over thirty years. They managed to pull evidence of a
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: sexual assault from the scene, but just like you said,
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  Speaker 1: the killer's genetic profile was buried.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the victim's DNA was just drowning it out.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: The standard test was useless. They needed a way to
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: isolate the phantom in the room. And this brings us
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: to the second evolutionary leap YSTR testing.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Why as in the male Y chromosome right, correct.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: The Y chromosome is unique first, obviously it only exists
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  Speaker 2: in males. Second, Unlike the rest of our DNA, which
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: constantly recombines and scrambles with every generation, the Y chromosome
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  Speaker 2: is passed down directly from father to son, virtually unchanged.
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  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, So when a forensic lab applies a YSTR test
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  Speaker 2: to a mixed biological sample, it acts as a selective filter.
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  Speaker 2: It ignores everything else and zero's in exclusively on the
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  Speaker 2: Y chromosome.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. So it's like trying to listen to a single
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  Speaker 1: specific instrument in a crowded, incredible loud orchestra recording. The
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: YSTR test essentially mutes all the other instruments, completely washing
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  Speaker 1: away all the female DNA from the victim, leaving behind
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  Speaker 1: only the faint, isolated melody of the male suspect.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, the district attorney in Austin actually authorized this specialized
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  Speaker 2: testing on the surviving evidence, and by applying that filter,
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  Speaker 2: the lab successfully pulled a partial male DNA profile out
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  Speaker 2: of the noise.
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  Speaker 1: The male instrument was finally isolated exactly, but the technology
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  Speaker 1: was still in its infancy in the nineties, right, I
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  Speaker 1: mean they ran this newly isolated phantom profile against the
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  Speaker 1: database and they got absolutely nothing, no matches.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, the trail went ice cold again for decades.
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  Speaker 1: Because databases only work if the person you are looking
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  Speaker 1: for is already in them.
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  Speaker 2: Right, But science is patient. The databases expanded exponentially over
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  Speaker 2: the next few decades, and finally, in twenty twenty five,
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  Speaker 2: a massive breakthrough occurred.
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  Speaker 1: Oh this part is wild.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, a state lab in South Carolina was running routine
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  Speaker 2: checks and link that isolated ystr profile from the nineteen
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  Speaker 2: ninety one Austin yogurt shop to a known profile from
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  Speaker 2: a nineteen ninety sexual assault and murder case out of Greenville,
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  Speaker 2: South Carolina.
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  Speaker 1: And that South Carolina profile belonged to a man named
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  Speaker 1: Robert Eugene Brescher's. He was a known serial rapist and killer.
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  Speaker 1: But here is the haunting twist. Brushiers had already taken
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  Speaker 1: his own life back in nineteen ninety nine.
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  Speaker 2: It's crazy think.
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  Speaker 1: About the sheer scale of what this test accomplished by
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  Speaker 1: isolating that single biological instrument investigators didn't just solve a
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  Speaker 1: local Austin case. They connected a phantom across state lines,
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  Speaker 1: closing a loop on a monster who had been dead
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  Speaker 1: and buried for over two decades.
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  Speaker 2: It proves that the biological record outlives the criminal, and
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  Speaker 2: ystr is incredible for tracking that paternal lineage. But both
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: of the methods we've discussed so far require nuclear DNA,
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  Speaker 2: the DNA found inside the nucleus of a cell.
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  Speaker 1: Which requires a relatively decent biological sample, right like fluid
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  Speaker 1: tissue or a hare with a thick, fleshy root attached
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  Speaker 1: to it.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, But what if the killer leaves almost nothing?
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  Speaker 2: What if the evidence has been battered by the elements
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  Speaker 2: for years?
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  Speaker 1: Oh Man, this takes us to one of the most
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  Speaker 1: atmospheric grim locations in the entire dossier you shared with us.
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  Speaker 2: You'll go Beach.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, picture the desolate, windswept shores of Gilgo Beach in
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  Speaker 1: New York, the freezing ocean breeze blowing off the Atlantic,
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  Speaker 1: the tall sharp grass hiding unspeakable secrets, and the grim
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  Speaker 1: discovery of victims wrapped in burlap sacks buried in the brush.
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  Speaker 2: A terrifying mystery, A serial killer using the isolation of
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  Speaker 2: the barrier island is a dumping ground for decades.
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  Speaker 1: And the only physical clues investigators could find after all
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  Speaker 1: that time in the harsh elements were tiny, highly degraded,
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  Speaker 1: rootless hairs left clinging to the burlap.
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  Speaker 2: Which is a forensic nightmare because without the root of
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  Speaker 2: the hair, you don't have a cellular nucleus, right and
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: without a nucleus, you have no nuclear DNA. So for
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: a long time, those broken, degraded hares were considered scientifically useless.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Saltwater UV radiation, bacterial degradation, all of that destroys linear
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: nuclear DNA very.
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  Speaker 1: Quickly, until science found a way to unlock the maternal thread.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, this is the third major breakthrough mitochondrial DNA or
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: mt DNA analysis.
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  Speaker 1: How does that work?
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  Speaker 2: So instead of looking inside the nucleus of the cell,
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: scientists look at the mitochondria, these microscopic power plants floating
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  Speaker 2: around outside the nucleus, and this DNA is passed down
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  Speaker 2: exclusively from mother to child.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, I understand that it traces the mother's line, making
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: it sort of the opposite of the ystr test. But
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  Speaker 1: why does mitochondrial DNA survive when the nuclear DNA is
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: completely obliterated by the salt and sun of Gilgo Beach.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: It basically comes down to structure and sheer volume. Okay,
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  Speaker 2: a standard human cell has only one fragile nucleus, it's
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: a single target. But that same cell has hundreds, sometimes
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: thousands of mitochondria. Oh wow, it is a sheer numbers game.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: If the elements destroy ninety nine percent of the cell,
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: there are still surviving mitochondria. Furthermore, nuclear DNA is shaped
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: like a long fragile string. It breaks easily, but mitochondrial
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  Speaker 2: DNA is c is a closed loop, making it significantly
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: harder for the elements to degrade.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: The resilience of a closed loop. That makes perfect sense.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: So let's look at how this played out on that
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: desolate beach. It's twenty twenty three. A specialized lab takes
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: these degraded rootless hairs from the burlap sacks and using
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: advanced whole genome sequencing, they break open those microscopic power
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  Speaker 1: plants and finally extract an mtDNA sequence. This maternal thread
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: immediately narrows the entire world of suspects down to a
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: small pool of possible families.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, and one of those families belongs to a Long
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Island resident named Rex Hoyerman.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: But there's a catch, right.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: There is, and it's a critical legal distinction. Because mtDNA
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: is shared by everyone in a maternal line, a mother,
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: her siblings, her children. It cannot identify a unique, single individual.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Oh so it can't give you that one to one
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: str match exactly.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Just points a giant, glaring spotlight directly at Rex Horman
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: to prove it was him and not his brother or
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: a cousin. They still needed his direct nuclear.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: DNA, so they stalk him. Detectives form a surveillance team
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: and watches every single move around New York City. They
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: wait for him to eat, They wait for him throwaway
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: his trash, and from a Manhattan sidewalk trash can they
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: pull a discarded pizza crust he had been chewing on.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: From the saliva on that crust, they get a pristine
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: direct str match. He is subsequently charged with the murders
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: of at least seven women spanning three decades. And what
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: does this all mean? You evade capture for thirty years,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: you outsmart local authorities, You bury your secrets on a
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: freezing beach, and your downfall is a discarded piece of
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: pizza crust.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: It really highlights the layered reality of modern investigations. The
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: mtDNA was the resilient bridge. It survived the elements and
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: pointed them to the suspect. But the abandoned saliva on
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: the pizza crust was the final definitive lock that secured
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: the warrant.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's flip the scenario entirely. What if investiators
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: walk into a crime scene and they don't have to
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: worry about degraded hair or mixed samples like.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: They extract absolutely perfect, pristine DNA.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they run it through COTIS, the National Law Enforcement Database,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: and the computer returns to zero.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Ah. That is the ultimate investigative wall. The DNA is perfect,
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: but the killer is a ghost in the machine. If
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: they have never been arrested for a felony that required
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: a DNA swab, they simply aren't in.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: The system, which means you have to stop looking for
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: the killer and you start looking for their family.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: This is case number four from the file. We are
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: in New York, The year is nineteen eighty four. The
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: heartbreaking murder of a young girl named Wendy Jerome. Investigators
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: find multiple pristine biological samples at the scene, but as
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: the years turn into decades, the original detectives age out, retire,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: and pass the samples down to the next generation.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: And they ran those samples through cotis relentlessly year after year,
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: hoping the killer would slip up and commit a new crime.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: But the computer always returned to zero.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: This is where we introduce familial searching. The strategy completely shifts.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: Right. Investigators manipulate the database algorithms. Instead of asking code
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: is does anyone have all fifteen of these genetic stutters
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: perfectly matched? They lower the threshold, they ask.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Does anyone in the system share half of these stutters?
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly? They are intentionally looking for partial matches that indicate
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: apparent a sibling or a child. They are essentially turning
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: a law enforcement database into a biological family tree. Wow,
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: and this introduces a massive layer of complexity regarding the law.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, I can totally see why this raises an important
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: ethical tension. Right, you are suddenly investigating people who are
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: entirely innocent of the crime you were looking at, simply
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: because they share biology with the suspect. To find this killer,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: law enforcement had to rely on a relative who was
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: already in the system, perhaps for a completely unrelated minor offense.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: The net is widening from the criminal to their entire
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: family network.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: That tension between privacy and justice is exactly why the
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: laws around familial searching are so strict. In many states,
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: it is outright banned due to privacy concerns. The argument
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: is that you are subjecting innocent relatives to police scrutiny. However,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: New York is one of the states that carefully regulates
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: and approves its use under very specific conditions for violent cold.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Cases and for the family of Wendy Jerome. It was
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: a miracle they did because in twenty twenty, after thirty
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: six years of waiting, a familial search of the CODIS
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: database finally triggered a hit.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the lord threshold flagged a partial match. It was
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: a relative of a man named Timothy Williams.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: That partial hit gave detectives the exact thread they needed
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: to pull. They built the family tree, investigated Williams, confirmed
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: his direct DNA match the nineteen eighty four crime scene,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: and finally closed the case. It was a historic moment,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the very first case in New York State solved using
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: familial DNA testing.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: It's an incredible victory, it really is.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: But it also leads us to the final and undoubtedly
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: the most intense hurdle in this dossia. Oh definitely, what
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: if you run that familial search in the police database,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: You lower the threshold to look for brothers, fathers, and sons,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: and you still get a zero. Neither the killer nor
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: any of their close relatives have ever committed a crime
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: that put them in the system.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: At that point, you have entirely exhausted the law enforcement ecosystem.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: The police databases are useless, so investigators have to step outside.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: The police station, cast the net wider.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Cast the widest net possible, and move directly into the
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: public square.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: This brings us to the pinnacle of modern cold case solving.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: It's Spring nineteen eighty eight. An eight year old girl
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: named April Marie Tinsley is kidnapped, assaulted, and murdered. It
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: is a case of sheer terror yea. The killer even
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: leaves taunting notes for the police on children's bicycles in
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: the area. Over the years, decades pass by the early
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: two thousands, police have managed to pull a pristine DNA
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: profile from the evidence and put it into CODIS. Zero matches.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: They try familial searching zero matches. The killer is a
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: total ghost.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Because he had never committed another crime and neither had
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: anyone in his immediate family. Right. This brings us to
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: our fifth and final breakthrough, Investigative genetic genealogy or IgG.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: This is the moment where cutting edge forensic science merges
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: with traditional, painstaking family tree mapping.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Wait, if they aren't using the police database, where exactly
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: are they putting this killer's DNA?
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: They take the killer's genetic profile and they upload it
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: to public opt in genetic databases. Public databases, Yeah, platforms
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: like ged match. These are the sites where everyday people
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: upload their own DNA results from commercial kits to find
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: out where their ancestors emigrated from or to find a
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: long lost third cousin.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Wait, really think about this. Everyday people, maybe even you
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: listening right now, uploading DNA to find out where your
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: ancestors are from, are inadvertently building the exact family trees
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: that trap these killers.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: That is precisely how it works. You aren't finding the
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: killer directly, You are finding a distant cousin who shares
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: a specific amount of DNA measured in units called sin
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: to Morgan's with the killer Wow. So by twenty eighteen,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: investigators in the April Tinsley case formatted the crime scene
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: DNA and uploaded it to ged match. A brilliant genetic
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: genealogist named C. C. Moore took the results.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: And the database didn't give her the killer.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: No, it gave her distant cousins.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: So she has to build a massive family tree backward
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: in time, using census records, birth certificates, and marriage licenses,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: finding common ancestors from maybe one hundred years ago, and
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: then meticulously building the branches forward again to the present
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: day exactly.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: She triangulates the branches until she finds the living descendants
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: who fit the geographical and age profile of the killer.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: That is insane, it is she mapped this specific tree
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: all the way down to two brothers, and only one
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: of them lived in the area at the time of
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: the murder in nineteen eighty eight. His name was John D. Miller.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Now, after thirty years of taunting, the police investigators know
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Miller isn't going to just voluntarily hand over a cheek
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: swab to confirm the match. No way, so they use
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: the exact same tactic we saw with the Gilgo Beach killer.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: They wait in the shadows, They watch his house, They
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: collect his abandoned trash. In this case, they recovered used
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: condoms from his garbage.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: They extracted DNA from that trash. Run the gold standard
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: str direct comparison against the profile from the nineteen eighty
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: eight crime scene.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: And the stutters line up perfectly. In twenty eighteen, John D.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Miller is arrested. Confronted with the absolute certainty of his
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: own biology, he pleads guilty. He gets eighty years.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: It's just brilliant And if we synthesize this entire journey,
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: looking at the incredible file you brought us today, we
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: can see how science has systematically stripped away the anonymity
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: of criminals. We started with the necessity of a clean
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: sample for a direct str match. When the biology was messy,
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: we learned how to isolate the phantom mail with y SDR.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: When the elements destroyed the nuclear evidence, we trace the
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: resilient circular maternal thread with mtDNA. And finally, when the
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: killer was a ghost in the system, we saw how
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: investigators cast matt familial nets through codis and public IgG databases.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Every discarded pizza crust, every dropped hair, every piece of
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: trash on the sidewalk is now a ticking clock for
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: anyone who thinks they got away with it. The shadow
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: simply cannot outrun the light forever. The biology left behind
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: is a permanent, unalterable record.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: It fundamentally changes the landscape of investigation. The microscopic world
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: is capturing everything.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Which leaves us with a final, highly provocative thought for
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: you to mull over. Building on this idea of investigative
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: genetic genealogy and familial searching, if public ancestry databases continue
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: to expand and these familial matches become even more precise,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: are we rapidly approaching a future where every single person
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: on Earth is effectively genetically mapped.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: It's a huge question.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Even if you personally have never taken a DNA test
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: in your life, your cousins have, your siblings, have, your
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: distant relatives have? Has the era of true biological anonymity
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: already ended without us even realizing it.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: It forces us to confront the undeniable power and the
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: profound reach of our shared biology.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: It really does. Next time you stand in a quiet
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: room or look into the shadows. Just remember, the microscopic
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: world is always watching. Thank you so much for bringing
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: these grouping case files to the Deep Dive. Until next time,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: keep your curiosity sharp.