Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Girl, 16, Was Found Dead 40 Years Ago. Now, DNA Identifies a Suspect

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Girl, 16, Was Found Dead 40 Years Ago. Now, DNA Identifies a Suspect · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: I want you to try and imagine a number, right now, Okay,
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a number like what kind of number are we talking about? Well,
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not just a normal big number, you know, not like
0:07
the national debt or the distance to the nearest galaxy.
0:12
I want you to imagine a number so incomprehensibly massive
0:16
that the human brain actually lacks the evolutionary hardware to
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even visualize it properly.
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Speaker 2: That sounds, I mean, that sounds basically impossible.
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Speaker 1: To picture exactly. But try this picture a one now,
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put twenty seven zeros right after it.
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Speaker 2: Twenty seven zeros.
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Speaker 1: Wow. To even begin to give that a physical form,
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you'd have to take the entire population of the known world, right,
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every single man, woman, and child alive today, okay, and
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then multiply that staggering crowd by three. That reality bending
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figure is called an octilian one in an octilian, which.
0:51
Speaker 2: Is I mean that sounds like something a theoretical physicist
0:54
would use, you know, like to describe the number of
0:56
atoms in a nebula.
0:57
Speaker 1: Or something, right, But we aren't talking out astronomy today.
1:01
That number represents the exact mathematical certainty that recently tore
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the lid off a terrifying forty year old murder mystery.
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Speaker 2: It's a figure that well, it doesn't just challenge our
1:12
concept of probability, it completely obliterates the legal threshold of
1:16
reasonable doubt.
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Speaker 1: It really does, because.
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Speaker 2: When you walk into a courtroom with odds of one
1:19
and an optilian, you've you have left the realm of
1:22
circumstantial theory far behind. You've crossed into absolute, undeniable scientific permanence.
1:28
It's biological fact cemented right into the record.
1:32
Speaker 1: And that biological fact is the anchor of our deep
1:34
dive today. We're looking through this towering stack of sources
1:38
like police reports, forensic timelines, court transcripts, all detailing the
1:43
nineteen eighty six murder of a sixteen year old girl
1:46
named Deanna Ogg in Texas.
1:47
Speaker 2: That's a really heavy case, it is, so.
1:50
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this, because I want to be clear
1:52
right up front of you listening, we aren't just doing
1:54
a simple walkthrough of a cold case today. That would
1:57
that just wouldn't do this.
1:58
Speaker 2: Justice, No, it really wouldn't. There's so much more to it.
2:00
Speaker 1: Right, We're going to trace the entire agonizingly slow evolution
2:05
of forensic science over the last four decades, we have
2:08
to examine a devastating, wrongful conviction that just swallowed an
2:14
innocent man whole cost him a decade of his life,
2:16
a full decade. Yeah, And anchoring all of this legal
2:20
and scientific maneuvering is the relentless, quiet persistence of a
2:24
mother who waited forty long years just to earn the
2:28
right to finally begin grieving. Yeah.
2:31
Speaker 2: It requires looking at the absolute best and the absolute
2:34
worst of our justice system, basically simultaneously. Exactly as we
2:37
dig into these sources, I want you to pay close
2:39
attention to the psychology of a frightened community. You're going
2:42
to see firsthand how investigative tunnel vision can entirely corrupt
2:46
the pursuit of truth, especially when people are just desperate
2:50
for a monster to put behind bars.
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Speaker 1: People want answers, they do.
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Speaker 2: But you'll also see the flip side of that equation.
2:55
You'll see how modern science, when it's applied with incredible
2:58
patience and funding and precision.
3:01
Speaker 1: Oh, the precision is wild.
3:02
Speaker 2: It is how it can painstakingly reach back in time
3:05
and correct those horrific errors of the past.
3:07
Speaker 1: So before we get into the DNA, right before we
3:09
get into the wrongful convictions and the manhunts. I think
3:12
we really need to ground ourselves in the reality of
3:15
who was actually lost here.
3:17
Speaker 2: Absolutely, that's crucial.
3:19
Speaker 1: The victim at the center of this massive web was
3:22
sixteen year old Deanna og and the setting is September
3:27
nineteen eighty six in Porter, Texas.
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Speaker 2: Quarter is for those unfamiliar, it's this tight knit rural
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community sitting just north of Houston.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and the sources we have, they paint such a vivid,
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heartbreakingly normal picture of this girl. She was a student
3:44
at Nukuny High School and people remembered her for this
3:47
incredibly bright, constant smile and a very deep, foundational face.
3:52
Speaker 2: He's very religious, right, Yeah.
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Speaker 1: She loved Jesus, she loved her sprawling family, and she
3:55
loved fashion, but not like high fashion, you know, teenage fashion. Right.
4:00
I found this one detail in the sources so incredibly poignant.
4:04
She was the kind of teenager who would routinely mix
4:06
and match her mother's nice dresses with her brother's beat
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up concert t shirts.
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Speaker 2: Oh wow. I love that. That specific clothing detail really
4:14
caught my eye too, because it so perfectly encapsulates that
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transitional age, you know, totally at sixteen. You're experimenting with
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who you're going to become. You are literally borrowing the
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clothes of the adults around you, trying them on for size.
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But you're still fiercely holding onto the casual, comfortable youth
4:31
of a teenager. She was right on the precipice of adulthood.
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Speaker 1: She really was. In the sources note she had entirely ordinary,
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beautiful dreams. She was looking forward to her high school graduation.
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She talked about maybe going to college, starting a career,
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having a wedding, Yeah, a wedding, eventually having children of
4:49
her own. And she was deeply embedded in this hard working,
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working class family structure. There were five kids living under
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one roof.
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Speaker 2: That's a busy house, a very busy house.
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Speaker 1: Her mother worked over at a local plumbing supply company,
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and her father made a living driving an eighteen wheeler.
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Speaker 2: It's the quintessential American small town life. A bustling house,
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parents working hard to keep the lights on, kids sharing clothes.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, And September twenty seventh, nineteen eighty six, starts out
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like any other lazy Saturday in that kind of household.
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The sources trace her final known movements very clearly, Deanna
5:24
leaves her family home on Porter Road on.
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Speaker 2: Foot, and her plan for the day was just so innocent,
5:29
so innocent.
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Speaker 1: She's just taken a walk to a local convenience store
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situated at the corner of FM thirteen fourteen and Sorders Road.
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The goal buy a pack of cigarettes, hang out for
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a minute, and then catch a ride to her grandmother's.
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Speaker 2: House, which was about thirty minutes away.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, thirty minutes away, And there was some sort of
5:46
family gathering happening there, maybe a dance with her uncle.
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Speaker 2: And the timeline here is rock solid up to a
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certain point, because we have sworn witness testimony establishing her presence.
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A store clerk named Virginia Mathis later testified on the
6:00
record that Diana did indeed come into that convenience store
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right She was with some friends at the time she
6:05
bought the cigarettes, and mathis recalled Deanna mentioning something about
6:09
heading to a party over in Conro. That interaction places
6:12
her inside the store, safe sound and in good spirits
6:16
in the late afternoon, But right.
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Speaker 1: After she walks out those doors, the critical horrifying window
6:22
of this case violently rips open. Sometime between five thirty
6:26
PM and seven pm, Deanna Ogg simply vanished.
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Speaker 2: Ah that is a tiny window ninety minutes.
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Speaker 1: Ninety minutes and in broad daylight, in a town where
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people know each other. Yet no one saw her get
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into a vehicle. No one called the police to report
6:41
a struggle or anything suspicious on the side of the road.
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It's as if she evaporated.
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Speaker 2: It's terrifying to think about, it really is.
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Speaker 1: But then the grim reality of what actually happened sits in.
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Almost immediately, just after seven pm, a group of local
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teenagers are out messing around and they stumble upon a
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scene that would forever scar the community. Yeah, they find
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Diana's body off Old Houston Road in nearby Conroe. Now wait,
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hold on, you look at the map of this area
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and the sources and the geography is immediately jarring.
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Speaker 2: Oh.
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Speaker 1: Absolutely, If she was last seen at that convenience store
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on Sorders Road, trying to get a ride to her
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grandmother's house, why is her body found seven to eight
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miles away in Conroe. It completely shatters the logic of
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a teenager just walking down the street.
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Speaker 2: It absolutely breaks the logic of her intended route, which
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is the first massive red flag for investigators. She didn't
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wander there. The location where those teenagers found her is
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incredibly specific and deeply unsettling. How so well, it was
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a heavily wooded area situated near an isolated old logging road.
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This is not a place with foot traffic, you know.
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It's not somewhere a sixteen year old girl decides to
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take a shortcut through.
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Speaker 1: Definitely not.
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Speaker 2: It's secluded, it's hidden from the main thoroughfares. And it
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really implies that whoever took her there did so with
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intentionality and a disturbing familiarity with the local hidden geography.
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Speaker 1: You read through the crime scene details in these reports,
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and the brutality of what happened in those woods is
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just staggering. It wasn't a quick or accidental event. She
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had been brutally beaten. The medical examiner noted severe blunt
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force trauma to her head. It is awful, it is,
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and beyond that, she had suffered multiple stab wounds to
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the neck, and the scene confirmed she had been sexually assaulted.
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But in the midst of all this horror, the killer
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made mistakes. They left physical fragments of themselves behind, crucial fragments. Yeah,
8:29
investigators coming the dirt and the leaves found a Marlborough
8:32
cigarette butt near the body. Even more significantly, Deanna was
8:37
found clutching a large, dense clump of blonde hair tightly
8:41
in her right hand.
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Speaker 2: That right there suggests an incredibly violent, desperate struggle.
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Speaker 1: She fought back, she thought hard. And there's one more
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piece of the forensic puzzle from that night that I
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want to highlight because the sources really emphasize it. Her
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toxicology report. It came back completely clean. She had absolutely
8:58
no alcohol or drugs in her system. She was entirely sober.
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Speaker 2: I'm really glad you brought up the toxicology because while
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it might seem like a standard procedural footnote, it is
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actually crucial to understanding the social dynamics of this case.
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Speaker 1: Well for sure.
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Speaker 2: First, from a purely investigative standpoint, it strips away any
9:14
of the victim blaming narratives that often sadly plagued cases
9:17
like this. There was no argument to be made that
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she was intoxicated or reckless, or wandering into danger in
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a compromised state.
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Speaker 1: Right she was completely sober. She was highly vulnerable, and
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she was alone.
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Speaker 2: Secondly, that specific medical fact her sobriety and her age
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becomes a massive glaring point of contention later on when
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the police start building their theory of the crime. But
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if we stay in nineteen eighty six for a moment,
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you have to look at the psychological impact of this discovery.
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Speaker 1: The impact on the town.
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Speaker 2: You mean, yeah, when word gets out about the logging road,
9:50
the blunt force trauma, the sexual assault, the discovery of
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her body sent absolute shock waves through Montgomery County.
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Speaker 1: I can't even imagine you have this tight knit community
10:00
where everyone knows everyone's kids. Suddenly a teenager is found
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desecrated in the woods exactly.
10:06
Speaker 2: You have to remember what Porter and Conro were like
10:08
in the mid nineteen eighties. These were rural, trusting communities.
10:12
People routinely didn't lock their front doors.
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Speaker 1: Kids walked everywhere to the store, to school, to their
10:17
friend's houses.
10:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, and hitchhiking, while maybe frowned upon by some parents,
10:21
wasn't viewed as a guaranteed death sentence. It was just
10:23
a way to get around if you didn't.
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Speaker 1: Have a car, A totally normal thing back then.
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Speaker 2: But the second a sixteen year old girl is murdered
10:30
with that level of savagery, that entire illusion of safety
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evaporates overnight. The atmospheric pressure in the town literally changes.
10:39
Speaker 1: Families suddenly start locking their dead bolts.
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Speaker 2: Yes, parents are terrified, sitting their teenagers down and warning
10:45
them that the world is a dark place, that walking
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alone to the store could cost them their lives.
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Speaker 1: And when a community is gripped by that kind of
10:52
visceral terror, the pressure doesn't just dissipate right It channels
10:56
directly onto the local police department. The community is looking
10:59
at lawn for horsement and screaming, fix this, find the
11:02
monster who did this so we can sleep in our
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own beds again.
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Speaker 2: It's an immense crushing weight on the investigators. They are
11:09
pouring massive manpower and resources into the case from day one.
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They're knocking on doors, pulling over suspicious vehicles, running down
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every rumor.
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Speaker 1: But the initial leads dry up agonizingly fast. Dude.
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Speaker 2: Now, they do have biological evidence, as you mentioned, They
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have the blonde hair and the cigarette butt. The medical
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examiner was also able to secure seamen from vaginal and
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rectal swabs taken from the victim.
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Speaker 1: But having biological evidence in nineteen eighty six is very
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different from having it today.
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Speaker 2: Oh, completely different. They are severely limited by the scientific
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capabilities of the era. So the days turn into weeks,
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the killer is still out there, the town is still terrified,
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and that intense community pressure perfectly sets the stage for
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one of the most tragic investigative missteps.
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Speaker 1: You can make final vision exactly.
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Speaker 2: The sheer desperation to solve an unimaginable crime quickly creates
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the ultimate breeding ground for tunnel vision.
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Speaker 1: Which brings us to a part of this deep dive
12:03
that is incredibly difficult to process but completely necessary, The
12:08
Nightmare of Roy Wayne Kreiner.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, this part is rough, it really is.
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Speaker 1: The investigation is stalling out, but then almost out of nowhere,
12:16
the police zeros in on this twenty one year old
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local guy. The sources provide a lot of context about
12:22
Krener's background. His own defense attorney later described him using
12:25
the terminology of the era as nearly retarded.
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Speaker 2: It's an uncomfortable phrase now, for sure.
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Speaker 1: Very uncomfortable, but it critically highlights that Kriner had severe,
12:35
documented intellectual vulnerabilities. He was not a sophisticated criminal mastermind.
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He was a deeply vulnerable young man.
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Speaker 2: Understanding his intellectual limitations is the absolute key to understanding
12:48
how he became ensnared in a capital murder investigation in
12:51
the first place.
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Speaker 1: How does that happen?
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Speaker 2: Well, people with his significant cognitive impairments are historically and
12:58
statistically highly susceptible to suggestion, and they often seek social
13:02
validation in very destructive ways.
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Speaker 1: Just wanting to fit in right.
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Speaker 2: In Kriner's case, he allegedly started bragging to three of
13:10
his acquaintances. These guys named Michael Ringo, Terry Dale Hooker.
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Speaker 1: And Jeffrey Pitts, bragging about what.
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Speaker 2: According to them, Kriner was boasting. He claimed he had
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been driving around, picked up a young woman who was hitchhiking,
13:21
had sex with her, and then, to use the phrase
13:24
quoted in the sources, he had to get rough with her.
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Speaker 1: Wow. So these three acquaintances hear this incredibly disturbing boast,
13:31
and they immediately go to the police. Suddenly, the authorities
13:35
have what looks like a narrative. They have a guy
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practically confessing to a violent sexual encounter around the exact
13:41
time of the.
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Speaker 2: Murder, and driven by that community pressure we talked about,
13:44
the police pounce.
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Speaker 1: They arrest Roy Wayne Krener on October twenty ninth, nineteen
13:49
eighty six, That is barely a month after Deanna was murdered.
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The town probably breathed a massive sigh of relief.
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Speaker 2: I'm sure they did.
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Speaker 1: But wait, if you actually look at the case file,
14:00
the physical evidence they gathered against Kriner is disastrously weak.
14:04
I mean it's almost non existent.
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Speaker 2: Non existent is the accurate term here. Let's look at
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the forensics the state compiled. They brought in a forensic
14:11
rologist named Marita Howorth to analyze the blood, the seamen
14:15
and the hair collected from the scene.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so remember that massive clump of blonde hair Diana
14:20
was clutching in her death grip.
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Speaker 2: Howarth analyzed it. None of those hairs matched Roy Kreiner,
14:25
not a single strand. The police then seized a brown
14:29
flatbed truck that belonged to Kreiner's boss, operating under the
14:32
theory that this was the vehicle he used to pick
14:34
her up. They scoured that truck for trace evidence. None
14:39
of the hares found in that truck matched.
14:41
Speaker 1: Deanna, So no biological tie to the victim and no
14:45
biological tie to the vehicle exactly, But the police still
14:48
pushed forward. I read that they found a small flathead
14:51
screwdriver in the air vent of that flatbed truck. The
14:55
investigator speculated, Aha, this must be the murder weapon used
14:59
to cause the staff.
15:00
Speaker 2: Wounds, which was a massive leap.
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Speaker 1: A huge leap because they never even properly analyzed it,
15:05
and it didn't even match the medical examiner's descriptions of
15:08
the type of heavy tool that would have been required
15:10
to inflict those specific injuries.
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Speaker 2: It was pure conjecture meant to prop up a failing theory.
15:16
But the most alarming part of the physical evidence, or
15:18
the lack thereof, was the rology testing. This is where
15:22
the limitations of nineteen eighty science really come into focus
15:25
and how they were basically repinnized to secure conviction.
15:28
Speaker 1: Right, because when I saw the term zerrology testing, I
15:32
realized we aren't talking about DNA here. They were using
15:36
basic abo blood typing extracted from the semen sample found
15:40
on the victim. And this completely blew my mind.
15:43
Speaker 2: It's shocking by today's standards.
15:44
Speaker 1: Help me understand the mechanics of this, because relying on
15:48
basic blood typing to place a specific man at a
15:51
murder scene feels utterly absurd. Yeah, to me, it feels
15:55
like trying to identify a specific suspect in a packed
16:00
eighty thousand seat football stadium, and your only clue is
16:03
knowing the suspect has a common blood type that is
16:06
shared by forty percent of the men in that stadium.
16:08
Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.
16:09
Speaker 1: It's essentially meaningless. Doesn't point to Roy Kriner, it points
16:11
to tens of thousands of guys who live in the
16:13
Greater Houston area.
16:14
Speaker 2: Your football stadium analogy captures the absurdity perfectly. But let's
16:18
actually take it a step further to understand why the
16:20
jury bought it anyway, because they did buy it. In
16:22
the nineteen eighties, forensic sorology relied heavily on something called
16:26
secret status. About eighty percent of the population are what
16:30
we call secrats, meaning their ABO blood type antigens are
16:34
secreted into their other bodily fluids like saliva, sweat, or
16:39
in this case.
16:39
Speaker 1: Semen okay I fall.
16:41
Speaker 2: So if a perpetrator is a Type A secretor and
16:44
leaves semen at a crime scene, a nineteen eighties forensic
16:47
sorologist could test that semen and say the killer has
16:50
Type A blood. Now, as you pointed out, millions of
16:53
people have Type A blood. So what happens when the
16:56
police test Roy Kraner's blood and find out he's also
16:59
Type A.
17:00
Speaker 1: Say, it's a match exactly, But it's.
17:02
Speaker 2: Not a match. It is what we call exclusionary science
17:05
rather than identifying science. Blood typing is fantastic at proving
17:08
who didn't commit a crime?
17:09
Speaker 1: Oh, Because if the semen is type and the suspect
17:12
is type OH, you can one hundred percent exclude them.
17:14
Speaker 2: They're innocent, right, But if the semen is type A
17:17
and the suspect is Type A, you haven't identified them
17:19
at all. You've just failed to exclude them. You've narrowed
17:22
the suspect pooled down from one hundred percent of the
17:25
male population to roughly forty percent of the male.
17:28
Speaker 1: Population, which is still a massive number of people.
17:31
Speaker 2: Huge, But prosecutors in the nineteen eighties were highly skilled
17:34
at presenting this failure to exclude to juries as if
17:38
it were a definitive scientific link. They would stand up
17:40
and say, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the killer's
17:43
blood type matches the defendant's blood type. To a lay person,
17:48
that sounds incredibly damning.
17:49
Speaker 1: That is deeply manipulative. They're taking the mathematical ambiguity of
17:53
the science and weaponizing it against a cognitively vulnerable defendant.
17:58
And because the science didn't strictly clear I hear him,
18:00
the prosecution just relentlessly pushed forward. They did. They dragged
18:04
this young man to trial in April nineteen ninety. They
18:07
actually had to move the venue to Harris County because
18:09
the pre trial publicity and the vitriola Montgomery County were
18:13
so intense that he couldn't get a fair jury pool.
18:16
Speaker 2: But even in Harris County, the trial he received was
18:18
deeply flawed. Without solid physical evidence, the prosecution's entire case
18:23
rested almost exclusively on the testimony of those three acquaintances
18:27
who claimed he bragged about the crime.
18:29
Speaker 1: I read the transcripts of what those witnesses said on
18:31
this stand, and the trial sounds like an absolute farce.
18:34
Their stories conflict wildly, not just with each other, but
18:37
with the established scientific facts of the case.
18:40
Speaker 2: The facts were completely ignored.
18:42
Speaker 1: Yes, these guys claimed that Kriner told them the hitchhiker
18:46
he picked up was twenty years old and incredibly drunk,
18:49
But we know from the medical examiner's very clear report
18:52
that Diana was sixteen and her toxicology was completely spotless.
18:57
She was sober right. And it gets worse. Two of
19:00
these key witnesses actually placed this supposed violent encounter on
19:05
the night before the murder actually happened. They had the
19:07
wrong day.
19:08
Speaker 2: The defense attorney fought tooth and nail against this narrative.
19:10
They stood up in front of the jury and meticulously
19:13
highlighted all of these glaring, irreconcilable inconsistencies.
19:17
Speaker 1: I mean they had to.
19:17
Speaker 2: They pointed out that a bragging, intellectual, disabled young man
19:21
spinning hall tales to impress his friends does not equate
19:23
to murder, especially when none of the details match the victim.
19:28
The defense even called a veteran Texas ranger to the
19:31
witness stand.
19:31
Speaker 1: A Texas ranger, Yes.
19:34
Speaker 2: This is a highly respected law enforcement officer who testified
19:38
under oath that the flathead screwdriver found in the truck
19:41
absolutely did not match the forensic descriptions of the murder weapon.
19:45
Speaker 1: You would think a Texas ranger telling the jury that
19:48
the state's weapon is bogus would be enough to inject
19:51
reasonable doubt into the room.
19:53
Speaker 2: You would think so, but you cannot underestimate the power
19:56
of investigative tunnel vision. Once it has infected a court room.
20:00
Eight had woven a narrative that preyed on the community's fear.
20:03
Despite the total lack of biological evidence, despite the conflicting
20:07
testimony that had the wrong day and the wrong victim profile,
20:11
despite the obvious vulnerability of the defendant, the jury bought
20:15
the state's story. On April twenty sixth, nineteen ninety the
20:18
jury convicted Roy Wayne Criner.
20:21
Speaker 1: It's important to note here that the murder charge had
20:22
actually been reduced earlier in the process. He was officially
20:25
convicted of aggravated sexual assault, but the judge handed down
20:29
a staggering sentence life in prison.
20:32
Speaker 2: A life sentence.
20:33
Speaker 1: Roy Wayne Criner was thrown into the Texas penal system
20:36
to serve a life sentence for a brutal crime he
20:38
had absolutely nothing to do with. He spent years fighting
20:41
in the appellate courts, but his appeals eventually ran out.
20:45
He was officially and permanently transferred to state prison in
20:48
nineteen ninety four.
20:50
Speaker 2: Imagine the despair he is sitting in an eight x
20:52
ten cell, labeled a violent sexual predator, basically abandoned by
20:56
the system. But while he was locked away in the dark,
20:59
the outside world, forensic science was quietly undergoing the most
21:02
massive seismic revolution in the history of criminal justice.
21:06
Speaker 1: The advent of forensic DNA testing the leap from that
21:10
flawed exclusionary blood typing to actual identifying genetic coding.
21:15
Speaker 2: Precisely, by nineteen ninety seven, DNA technology had advanced and
21:19
become accessible enough that the Montgomery County District Attorney's office
21:22
finally agreed to test the original physical evidence from Dianna's murder.
21:25
Speaker 1: Okay, so they finally tested.
21:27
Speaker 2: They took those vaginal and rectal swabs from nineteen eighty six,
21:30
extracted the genetic material, and ran a DNA profile. The
21:34
results came back definitive, crystal clear, and undeniable. The sperm
21:38
was not Roy Wyne Kreiner's, not his. To be absolutely certain,
21:42
independent testing was ordered. That testing confirmed it again, he
21:46
was genetically excluded from the crime scene.
21:48
Speaker 1: Now any rational person listening to this would think, Okay,
21:51
that's the end of the nightmare. The state realizes they
21:54
made a horrific mistake. The DA holds a press conference
21:57
apologizing to Kriner and the open in the prison doors
22:00
and let him walk out. But that is not what happened. No,
22:03
the cognitive dissonance displayed by the prosecution at this juncture
22:07
is just staggering. Instead of admitting they convicted an innocent,
22:11
intellectually disabled man, they dig their heels in. They start
22:15
floating these utterly absurd, desperate new theories to keep him
22:18
locked up.
22:19
Speaker 2: It is a terrifying display of institutional ego. The state's
22:23
prosecutor suddenly suggested that, well, maybe Roy Kriner wore a
22:26
condom during the assault and the semen they found belonged
22:29
to someone else.
22:30
Speaker 1: That's insane.
22:31
Speaker 2: Or they theorized maybe the semen was from a prior,
22:35
completely consensual sexual encounter Deanna had earlier in the day
22:39
before Kriner allegedly attacked.
22:40
Speaker 1: Her, theories that were never not once ever raised during
22:44
the actual nineteen ninety trial. During the trial, that semen
22:47
was supposedly absolute proof of his guilt. Now that it
22:51
doesn't match him, they claim the semen is irrelevant.
22:54
Speaker 2: It's a textbook example of an institution prioritizing the protection
22:58
of its conviction rate and its public image over the
23:00
actual pursuit of the truth. They were willing to rewrite
23:04
the entire history of the crime to avoid admitting a
23:06
catastrophic error.
23:07
Speaker 1: How far did they take it?
23:08
Speaker 2: The resistance was so fierce that even when a lower
23:12
court judge reviewed the DNA evidence and recommended Krener's immediate
23:16
release in nineteen ninety eight, the Texas Court of Criminal
23:19
Appeals initially denied the request. They left him in prison.
23:23
Speaker 1: So what finally broke the band? How did he get out?
23:25
Speaker 2: It required even more science. The Innocence Project and Krener's
23:29
defense team demanded further testing on other pieces of evidence.
23:32
They went back to that Marlborough cigarette but found lying
23:35
in the dirt near Dianna's.
23:37
Speaker 1: Body a cigarette.
23:38
Speaker 2: But the lab extracted DNA from the saliva on the
23:40
cigarette filter. The DNA on the cigarette revealed a male profile.
23:45
That profile was compared to the DNA from the rectal swab.
23:48
It was a perfect match. The same unknown man who
23:51
smoked that cigarette had assaulted Deanna, and once again, that
23:55
genetic profile completely and entirely excluded Roy Wayne Krener.
24:00
Speaker 1: The mountain of scientific evidence was insurmountable. The prosecution couldn't
24:04
invent another phantom condom theory to explain away the cigarette.
24:07
The truth was undeniable.
24:09
Speaker 2: It was over.
24:10
Speaker 1: On August fourteenth, two thousand. After receiving a unanimous recommendation
24:14
from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Governor George W.
24:17
Bush granted Roy Wayne Krener a full absolute pardon he
24:21
was a free man. To compensate him for his stolen decade,
24:24
the state gave him one hundred and thirty thousand dollars
24:26
lump sum and a monthly annuity.
24:29
Speaker 2: Kriner walked out of prison and became one of Texas's earliest,
24:32
most high profile DNA exonerations. His case was a watershed moment,
24:36
achieved through the tireless, relentless work of his attorneys and
24:39
advocacy groups who just refused to let the state bury
24:42
its mistakes.
24:43
Speaker 1: But as I read through the end of Kriner's legal
24:45
saga in these sources, the bitter irony of the situation
24:48
is so heavy. Forensic DNA was powerful enough to reach
24:52
into a prison cell and pull an innocent man out.
24:55
It totally exposed the fragility of eyewitness testimony, the danger
24:58
of jailhouse snitches, and the devastating impact of police tunnel vision,
25:03
But it still couldn't put a name to the actual killer.
25:06
The science had right or wrong, but it hadn't solved
25:09
the case.
25:09
Speaker 2: That's the crux of early forensic DNA, because DNA technology
25:13
in the late nineties and early two thousands relied entirely
25:16
on direct one to one comparisons. You extracted a genetic
25:20
profile from a crime scene, and you basically had two options.
25:24
Speaker 1: What were they?
25:25
Speaker 2: You either had to have a physical suspect sitting in
25:27
an interrogation room whose cheek you could swab to compare
25:30
it to, or the suspects DNA had to already be
25:33
logged into a state or federal criminal database from a
25:36
previous felony conviction. Right if the killer was a ghost,
25:39
if he'd never been swabbed for a database and wasn't
25:42
on the police's radar, that incredibly precise DNA profile was
25:45
nothing more than a meaningless string of biological code. It
25:48
couldn't generate a name on its own.
25:50
Speaker 1: And that limitation ushers in the longest, darkest chapter of
25:54
this story, the cold years. For twenty four agonizing years,
26:00
Sianna Ogg's case sat dormant in the Montgomery County Sheriff's
26:03
Office cold files. I can't imagine what that does to
26:06
the detectives. It haunts them periodically investigators would pull the
26:10
dusty boxes down, review the evidence, look at the unknown
26:13
DNA profile, and hope something had changed. But without new
26:17
leads or database hit, progress was completely utterly stalled.
26:22
Speaker 2: And while the community outwardly moved on, buildings were torn
26:24
down new ones built. The teenagers who found her grew
26:27
up and had kids of their own, the Ogg family
26:30
was trapped in amber, just stuck. The sources offer glimpses
26:34
into the quiet, enduring, suffocating grief of Diana's mother, Patricia Ogg.
26:39
Think about what a twenty four year holding pattern does
26:41
to a parent's unbearable every passing holiday where there's an
26:44
empty chair at the table, every birthday that she never
26:46
got to celebrate, every spring when the local high school
26:48
holds graduation and Patricia has to watch other teenagers walk
26:52
across a stage in a cap and gown. Each one
26:54
of those normal life events is a painful, glaring reminder
26:57
of her daughter's stolen potential and a reminder that the
27:01
man who stole it is still breathing free air.
27:04
Speaker 1: But then we hit a massive turning point. We moved
27:06
from the nineteen eighties and nineties all the way to
27:09
the window between twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. And
27:12
what's fascinating here is that the breakthrough didn't just start
27:15
with a guy in a lab coat making a discovery.
27:17
It started with a bureaucratic shift. Yes, in March twenty twenty,
27:21
the Texas Rangers stepped in and officially added Deanna's cold
27:24
case to something called the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative or SAKI.
27:28
Speaker 2: SAKI is arguably one of the most profoundly important nationwide
27:32
programs operating in criminal justice today. It's funded by the
27:35
Department of Justices Bureau of Justice Assistance.
27:38
Speaker 1: Why is it so necessary.
27:39
Speaker 2: To understand why SAKI is necessary, you have to understand
27:42
the sheer volume of the problem across the United States.
27:45
Sitting in police evidence lockers and forgotten warehouse shelves, there
27:49
is a massive, daunting backlog of untested sexual assault evidence
27:53
kits and related homicide evidence just sitting there, just sitting there.
27:56
Local jurisdictions often simply do not have the hundreds of
28:00
thousands of dollars required to subject highly degraded, decades old
28:03
evidence to the newest, most cutting edge private lab extraction techniques.
28:08
SAKI exists to fix that.
28:10
Speaker 1: Wow.
28:10
Speaker 2: Its entire purpose is to provide the critical funding, the
28:13
structural guidance, and the resources to tackle that backlog. Through Sakai,
28:18
the financial barriers were finally removed, giving Diana's case the
28:21
high tech's second look it desperately needed, and.
28:24
Speaker 1: That funding was put to immediate use. In twenty twenty one,
28:27
the exhausted, thirty five year old physical evidence was carefully
28:31
packaged and sent off to a private laboratory called Bode Technology.
28:35
They specialize in advanced DNA testing and genetic genealogy research.
28:38
Speaker 2: They're incredible and they do now.
28:40
Speaker 1: Before Bode took over, the authorities had routinely run this
28:43
unknown killer's DNA profile through CODIS, the Combined DNA Index
28:48
System for listeners who don't know, CODIS is the standard
28:51
massive FBI database of known criminal offenders. But every time
28:55
they ran Dianna's killer through CODIS, the computer kickback absolutely nothing. Zero.
29:00
The killer was not in the system.
29:02
Speaker 2: Which is incredibly frustrating but not uncommon.
29:04
Speaker 1: So COTIS is a dead end. And here's where it
29:06
gets really interesting. Yes it does, because if traditional databases fail,
29:12
how do you find someone? How exactly does a private
29:15
lab take a crime scene DNA profile upload it to
29:20
public consumer genealogy websites like gemach or family Tree DNA
29:24
and use that to hunt down a suspect who has
29:27
never ever voluntarily given their DNA to law enforcement. What
29:32
is the actual biological mechanism making this possible.
29:35
Speaker 2: It is a brilliant, entirely lateral approach to forensic science.
29:39
It's called investigative genetic genealogy or IgG. Let's break down
29:43
the mechanics of how this actually functions, because it's.
29:45
Speaker 1: Vital to understand. Please do.
29:46
Speaker 2: When you use a traditional law enforcement database like COTIS,
29:49
you're looking for a direct, one hundred percent match. It's
29:52
like walking into a massive library and looking for one
29:55
specific book by its exact barcode. If the librarian never
29:58
scan that book into the system, you will never ever
30:01
find it, no matter how many times you search.
30:03
Speaker 1: Makes sense.
30:03
Speaker 2: Investigative genetic genealogy completely flips the script. Instead of looking
30:07
for the suspect directly, you look for their family. Labs
30:11
like Bode Technology take the crime scene DNA and use
30:14
advanced extraction methods to build a high resolution, incredibly dense
30:19
genetic profile. How dense we are talking about mapping hundreds
30:23
of thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs. They then
30:28
take this massive data file and upload it to consumer
30:31
genealogy databases. These are the websites where everyday citizens have
30:35
voluntarily spit into a tube and uploaded their own DNA
30:38
because they want to build a family tree or figure
30:41
out where their great grandparents emigrated from.
30:43
Speaker 1: Wait, so let me get this straight. You're telling me
30:44
that someone's random third cousin who lives three states away
30:47
decides they want to know if they have Irish or
30:49
Scottish heritage. They swab their cheek mail it off to
30:52
a website, and by doing so, they inadvertently become the
30:56
biological key to solving a forty year old capital murder case.
31:00
Speaker 2: That is exactly how it works. When Bode uploads the
31:03
killer's DNA, the system scans the entire database looking for
31:07
shared segments of DNA. These shared segments are measured in
31:11
units called centi morgans centi morgans. The higher the number
31:15
of shared cent to morgans, the closer the biological relationship.
31:18
Let's walk through a hypothetical scenario of how they process this.
31:22
The computer system spits out a notification we have found
31:25
a third cousin and a fourth cousin of your unknown suspect.
31:29
Then what now? The science takes a back seat and
31:32
the genealogists step in to do a massive, grueling amount
31:35
of traditional archival research. They look at the names of
31:38
those distant cousins and they start building massive family trees
31:42
backward in.
31:43
Speaker 1: Time, like looking up old records exactly.
31:45
Speaker 2: They pull census records from the nineteen twenties, birth certificates,
31:48
marriage licenses from county courthouses, military draft cards, and smalltown
31:53
newspaper obituaries. They trace the bloodlines of those cousins back
31:57
back back until they find the nexus a common ancestor.
32:00
Maybe it's a great great grandparent who lived in the
32:02
late eighteen hundreds.
32:03
Speaker 1: Wow, that is so much digging it is.
32:06
Speaker 2: Once they find that common ancestor, the genealogists reverse direction.
32:10
They start building the family tree forward. They trace every
32:13
single branch, every single descendant resulting from that nineteenth century marriage,
32:18
bringing the sprawling tree all the way down to the
32:20
present day.
32:21
Speaker 1: That's got to be a huge tree.
32:22
Speaker 2: We are talking about mapping out hundreds, sometimes thousands of
32:26
living relatives. Then they begin the process of triangulation and elimination.
32:31
They look at all the living male descendants in that
32:33
massive tree and start crossing names off the list based
32:36
on the known.
32:37
Speaker 1: Facts of the crime process of elimination.
32:39
Speaker 2: Exactly who is the wrong age? Cross them off? Who
32:42
was living in New York in nineteen eighty six? Cross
32:44
them off? Who fits the exact age profile the gender
32:47
and was physically located in Montgomery County, Texas in September
32:51
nineteen eighty six.
32:52
Speaker 1: Listening to you explain that the sheer volume of labor
32:55
required is astounding. It's not a computer pressing a button,
32:59
it's months of heare human researchers digging through archives. It's
33:02
the exact same pioneering technique that famously unmasked the Golden
33:06
State Killer back in twenty eighteen.
33:08
Speaker 2: Yes, it is the exact same methodology. It is painstaking,
33:12
deeply analytical, and often highly frustrating work, but the payoff
33:17
is unparalleled. And by twenty twenty four, after years of
33:20
building these sprawling family trees and crossing off names, this
33:24
triangulation process led the investigators in Texas directly to one single,
33:29
inescapable name. Bobby Charles Taylor, Senior.
33:33
Speaker 1: Science and Patients finally provided the map, and the map
33:36
led to a name. The DNA profile from the physical
33:39
evidence was a pristine match to a close relative of
33:42
Tailor's in the consumer genealogy database.
33:45
Speaker 2: Pristine match, and.
33:46
Speaker 1: When investigators started digging into Taylor's personal history, the circumstantial
33:50
evidence lined up so perfectly it must have sent chills
33:52
down their spines. In nineteen eighty six, Bobby Charles Taylor
33:55
Senior lived just two miles away from.
33:57
Speaker 2: The crime scene, just two miles.
33:59
Speaker 1: He was around twenty years old at the time of
34:00
Deanna's murder, placing him squarely in the physical prime required
34:03
to commit the violence described by the medical examiner, and
34:06
unlike Roy Kriner, Taylor had a documented, escalating criminal history.
34:10
The sources indicate he had prior convictions for burglary, assault,
34:14
and driving while intoxicated.
34:15
Speaker 2: The profile fits seamlessly. He wasn't some phantom drifter passing
34:19
through town on the interstate. He was a local. He
34:22
knew the roads, he knew the geography. He was right
34:24
there the whole time he was. But as any investigator
34:27
will tell you, having a name on a piece of
34:29
paper and actually making a physical arrest are two very different,
34:33
highly complicated things. Law enforcement now had the monumental task
34:38
of physically tracking down a ghost from nineteen eighty six
34:42
who had long since vanished from the Texas radar.
34:44
Speaker 1: When authority started running his current information to go put
34:47
handcuffs on him, they hit a massive roadblock. They realized
34:51
they had an international man hunt on their hands. Bobby
34:55
Charles Taylor Senior wasn't in Texas anymore. He was already
34:58
a fugitive from justice, actively hiding out deep in Mexico
35:02
to avoid prosecution on an entirely unrelated felony.
35:05
Speaker 2: Charge, which exponentially complicates the arrest. You can't just send
35:09
a Montgomery County Sheriff's deputy across the southern border to
35:12
kick down a door.
35:13
Speaker 1: No, you definitely can't.
35:14
Speaker 2: Apprehending a fugitive in a foreign nation requires a massive,
35:17
delicate level of cross border coordination. You have the Texas
35:21
Rangers compiling the case, the Montgomery County Sheriff's office managing
35:25
the local warrants, the FBI's international attaches liaising with foreign authorities,
35:30
and the US State Department managing the diplomatic hurdles of
35:33
extradition treaties, The logistical.
35:35
Speaker 1: Pressure and the anxiety of knowing you have the killer
35:37
but he's out of your jurisdiction must have been immense
35:40
for these detectives, but the pressure campaign finally broke him.
35:44
On April twenty fourth, twenty twenty six, realizing the walls
35:47
that completely closed in, Bobby Charles Taylor, Senior walked into
35:50
the US Embassy in Mexico City and formally surrendered himself
35:54
to the FBI.
35:54
Speaker 2: He just gave up.
35:55
Speaker 1: He did. The bureaucratic wheels spun incredibly fast. After that,
35:59
he was extrad eyed back to Texas the very next day,
36:02
and on May four, twenty twenty six, he stood before
36:04
a judge and was formally charged with the capital murder
36:07
of Deanna Ogg. And because of the aggravating factors of
36:10
the crime, the kidnapping and the sexual assault, that charge
36:13
carries the ultimate punishment, the death.
36:15
Speaker 2: Penalty, which brings us to the culmination of this entire
36:19
four decade journey. A few days after his arraignment, on
36:23
May six or seven, Montgomery County Sheriff Wesley Doolittle held
36:26
a press conference. And this is the moment we returned
36:30
to that staggering, brain breaking mathematical concept you introduced at
36:33
the very beginning of the steep dive.
36:35
Speaker 1: One in antillion yes. Sheriff Doolittle stood at the podium,
36:38
surrounded by the rangers and the prosecutors, and addressed the microphones.
36:43
He announced that the level of scientific confidence in the
36:45
DNA match linking tailor to the biological evidence left at
36:48
the crime scene was won in an octilian. He looked
36:52
right at the reporters and noted, that's an insane number,
36:56
three times as many people as there are in this world,
36:58
So it would be unreasonable to think that it's not him.
37:01
We truly believe it.
37:02
Speaker 2: Is just an astronomical figure.
37:03
Speaker 1: Think about what that means for a trial. When you
37:06
weigh a number with twenty seven zeros against the legal
37:08
standard of reasonable doubt, it completely annihilates any defense strategy
37:12
regarding physical presence.
37:13
Speaker 2: It obliterates it.
37:15
Speaker 1: In the nineteen ninety trial of Roy Kreiner, the defense
37:18
could argue mistaken identity, they could argue flawed zerology, they
37:22
could argue conflicting witnesses. But when the math is one
37:25
in an octilian, it effectively ends the debate over whether
37:29
Bobby Taylor's biological material was on that logging road. It
37:33
is an immovable mountain of fact.
37:35
Speaker 2: It entirely shifts the landscape of the upcoming legal battle.
37:39
The defense attorney representing Taylor can no longer rely on
37:42
the ambiguity of nineteen eighty science. The math is absolute.
37:46
They are now backed into a corner where they have
37:48
to explain how his DNA got there, rather than if
37:50
it is his DNA, which is a near impossible hurdle
37:53
in a case with these specific facts.
37:55
Speaker 1: The arrest of Bobby Charles Taylor, Senior brings the investigative
37:58
timeline of this deep dive square into the present day.
38:01
The mystery is solved, but as we look at the
38:03
fallout in these sources, we have to acknowledge a painful truth.
38:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
38:07
Speaker 1: While this arrest provides legal closure and answers a forty
38:10
year old question, it rips open incredibly complex, raw emotional
38:14
wounds for two very different families.
38:16
Speaker 2: The emotional weight detailed in the transcripts of that press
38:20
conference is profound. Montgomery County First Assistant District Attorney Michael
38:25
Hawley took the podium and his words really cut to
38:28
the core of what a murder actually steals from the universe.
38:31
Speaker 1: He gave a very powerful speech.
38:33
Speaker 2: He articulated it beautifully. He said that when Taylor allegedly
38:37
killed Gianna in those woods. He didn't just take her
38:40
life in that singular violent moment, he committed an ongoing theft.
38:45
He took away the experiences that her family would have
38:47
had with her over the next forty years.
38:49
Speaker 1: He stole the high school graduation. He stole the wedding day.
38:52
He stole the hypothetical grandchildren. He stole the joy of
38:55
every Christmas morning and every Birthday dinner. He erased an
38:58
entire future timeline exactly. Holly made it a point to
39:02
fiercely remind the public and a suspect that under Texas law,
39:06
there is absolutely no statute of limitations on murder. Time
39:10
does not erode the state's right to seek justice, and
39:13
time does not forgive this kind of crime.
39:15
Speaker 2: But amid all that heavy, righteous legal rhetoric from the
39:18
prosecutors and the sheriffs, the most striking and humbling moment
39:22
of the entire press conference came from Deanna's mother, Patricia
39:26
ogg Is, now eighty two years old, after carrying this
39:30
unimaginable heavy burden of grief and uncertainty for four decades,
39:34
her statement to the media was filled with an astonishing,
39:37
almost incomprehensible level of grace.
39:40
Speaker 1: She remembered her teenage daughter with this beautiful, simple, enduring phrase.
39:45
She said, she wasn't on this earth for a long time.
39:47
She was here for a good time.
39:49
Speaker 2: It's beautiful, such a.
39:50
Speaker 1: Pure distillation of a mother's love, focusing on the joy
39:53
Deana brot rather than the horror of her end. But
39:56
then Patricia did something remarkable, something I don't know if
39:59
many people would have strength to do.
40:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, this part really got me.
40:02
Speaker 1: She extended profound, genuine empathy and compassion directly to the
40:05
suspect's family. She publicly acknowledged that her family has had
40:09
forty long years to process their grief, to learn how
40:12
to live with a whole in their lives, but she
40:15
noted the Tailor family's painful journey has just begun.
40:18
Speaker 2: That level of empathy is staggering. To stand there, finally
40:23
facing the reality of the man who destroyed your family,
40:26
and to still have the capacity to acknowledge the collateral
40:29
damage that this arrest inflicts on the perpetrator's family. It
40:33
requires a tremendous amount of emotional fortitude. It shows a
40:37
deep understanding of the cascading tragedy.
40:40
Speaker 1: Of violence and the sources we reviewed ensure that we
40:43
do see that other side of the impact fulfilling our
40:45
mission to look at the whole picture. Bobby Taylor's daughters
40:48
spoke to reporters after his arrest, and they maintained their
40:51
father's innocence.
40:52
Speaker 2: Of course they do.
40:54
Speaker 1: They describe him to the press as a devoted parent,
40:56
a family man, someone who raised them with love. To
41:00
put yourself in their shoes for a moment. They are
41:02
suddenly thrust into this blinding media spotlight, experiencing immediate, terrifying heartbreak.
41:08
Their father, the man who raised them, is suddenly facing
41:10
execution for the crime of a monster, a crime committed
41:12
in nineteen eighty six, before they may have even been born.
41:15
Speaker 2: It's horrible for them.
41:17
Speaker 1: Their reality has been shattered, just as completely as the
41:19
illusion of safety was shattered in Porter forty years ago.
41:22
Speaker 2: It's a devastating ripple effect. And if we connect this
41:24
to the bigger picture of the American justice system, this
41:28
narrative forces a profound reckoning with the systemic failures of
41:32
the nineteen eighties and how the echoes of those failures
41:35
still shape our laws today.
41:37
Speaker 1: Think about Roy Wayne Krener.
41:39
Speaker 2: Exactly, his decade of stolen life wasn't just a tragedy,
41:42
it was a catalyst. His wrongful conviction, driven by the
41:46
vulnerabilities of his intellect and the flaws of exclusionary science,
41:49
became a massive, undeniable embarrassment for the state of Texas.
41:54
Speaker 1: Right Kreiner's exoneration wasn't just a news story. It forced
41:58
tangible legislative change because of what happened to him. The
42:02
state was forced to radically improve their protocols regarding eyewitness
42:05
testimony and jail house informants. It mandated post conviction DNA
42:09
testing in certain felony cases to prevent innocent people from
42:13
being executed.
42:13
Speaker 2: That's a huge step forward.
42:15
Speaker 1: And it established robust systems to financially compensate the wrongly convicted,
42:20
setting a precedent that the state must pay for its errors.
42:23
In a very tragic indirect way, the horror of what
42:27
happened to Deana aug inadvertently forced the Texas justice system
42:31
to become slightly more just for everyone else.
42:34
Speaker 2: And it is crucial to note that while this specific
42:37
murder may be solved, the broader investigation into Bobby Charles
42:40
Taylor Senior is far from over. During that press conference,
42:43
Sheriff Doolittle made a very pointed public appeal.
42:46
Speaker 1: What are you saying?
42:47
Speaker 2: He urged anyone who knew Taylor in the nineteen eighties,
42:50
former coworkers, drinking buddies, casual acquaintances, to come forward and
42:54
speak to investigators. Authorities strongly logically suspect that there may
42:58
be more victims out there.
43:00
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes sense when you look.
43:01
Speaker 2: At behavioral science. An individual who is capable of this
43:03
extreme level of predatory violence, who then manages to remain
43:07
free and evade capture for forty years. It is highly
43:11
statistically unlikely that Deanna Ogg was an isolated incident. There
43:14
may be other cold cases buried in the archives waiting
43:17
for a name.
43:18
Speaker 1: So as we reach the end of this journey, we
43:20
have to ask, why does all of this matter to you,
43:23
the person listening to this right now. Why do we
43:26
spend an hour digging into these decades old, dusty case files.
43:31
Because Deanna Ogg's story is a stark, unforgettable lesson in
43:35
human nature and scientific progress.
43:37
Speaker 2: It really is.
43:38
Speaker 1: It serves as a terrifying cautionary tale about the immense
43:41
dangers of investigative tunnel vision, a reminder that when the
43:45
community's desperation for an answer overrides the objective facts. The
43:49
truth is almost permanently buried, and innocent people are destroyed.
43:52
Well said, but equally, it is a testament to the patient, undeniable,
43:57
absolute power of preserved evidence and scientific innovation. And most importantly,
44:02
this deep dive is a tribute to the quiet resilience
44:05
of a family that absolutely refuse to let their daughter's
44:07
memory fade into just another file number in a cardboard box.
44:11
Speaker 2: The alignment of scientific evolution and human determination finally brought
44:14
the truth into the light. But before we wrap up
44:17
this deep dive, the mechanics of this case raise a
44:19
profoundly important question. It's a question that explores a very tricky,
44:23
uncomfortable ethical frontier.
44:25
Speaker 1: Who okay, what is it?
44:27
Speaker 2: As a society, we universally celebrate when investigative genetic genealogy
44:32
reaches back four decades and catches a killer. We cheer
44:35
for the lab technicians and the genealogists. But I want
44:38
you to think about the mechanism that makes it possible.
44:41
What does it actually mean for our collective future? When
44:44
the DNA you spit into a tube and submit online
44:47
out of completely innocent personal curiosity about your ancestry or
44:51
your health risks effectively makes you an unknowing biological informant
44:55
against your own extended family.
44:57
Speaker 1: Wow. It is the ultimate modern collision. It's the relentless
45:00
pursuit of public justice crashing head on into the absolute,
45:04
uncharted boundaries of biological privacy. It is a profound ethical
45:08
dilemma that we are all going to have to grapple
45:10
with as this technology becomes even more ubiquitous and powerful.
45:13
Speaker 2: Indeed, it is a question without an easy or comfortable answer,
45:16
but it is one absolutely worth considering the next time
45:18
you read a headline about a miraculous cold case breakthrough.
45:21
The answers we seek always come with a cost.
45:24
Speaker 1: We want to thank you for joining us today as
45:26
we unpack this monumental case. Keep questioning the world around you,
45:30
keep looking closely at the systems and the science we trust,
45:33
and always remember the staggering, undeniable power of one in
45:37
an octilion.