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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: IDENTIFIED - Green River Killer’s Final Victim · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body bags with Joseph Scott Morgan years ago, when I
0:19
Speaker 1: was working as an investigator. Every death that occurred, you know,
0:25
Speaker 1: I'd like to say that each death is unique, and
0:28
Speaker 1: they are. But when you're in the middle of conducting
0:34
Speaker 1: an investigation into an obvious homicide and a pattern begins
0:42
Speaker 1: to appear in other cases, there's this little thing that
0:50
Speaker 1: occurs in your brain. And I used to think that
0:54
Speaker 1: I would get distracted from other cases that did not
0:59
Speaker 1: have the same patterns because you get I don't know,
1:02
Speaker 1: it's it's almost like a in a hyper state of awareness,
1:06
Speaker 1: I think, because you know, you see, you know, investigators
1:10
Speaker 1: are no different than anybody else. You know, you begin
1:13
Speaker 1: to see the Boogeyman everywhere you go. But the hardcore
1:19
Speaker 1: reality is is that the boogeyman does exist. And today
1:29
Speaker 1: I want to speak to a particular case of a teenager,
1:37
Speaker 1: a teen girl who died many, many years ago, but
1:44
Speaker 1: yet her death was shrouded in mystery for a long time,
1:51
Speaker 1: and I think that it's important that we discuss it
1:54
Speaker 1: because she fell victim to a boogeyman. She fell victim
2:04
Speaker 1: to Gary Ridgeway, otherwise known as a Green River killer.
2:12
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags. I think
2:21
Speaker 1: that Dave, you and I kind of came to maturity
2:26
Speaker 1: as young adults.
2:28
Speaker 2: Okay, Joe, stop before you guys get worried that this
2:31
Speaker 2: is going to be some kind of summer of forty
2:32
Speaker 2: two boys becoming men show.
2:34
Speaker 3: It's not.
2:36
Speaker 2: This show today is about Tammy Lyles directly and indirectly.
2:41
Speaker 2: Tammy Lyles was only sixteen years old when she was
2:44
Speaker 2: murdered by Gary Ridgway, known to many as the Green
2:47
Speaker 2: River serial killer. Gary Ridgway killed forty nine women and girls.
2:51
Speaker 2: Tammy Lyles was just sixteen when she met Gary Ridgeway
2:54
Speaker 2: and he killed her. It took years for her for
2:57
Speaker 2: her to be identified, for her family to know for
3:00
Speaker 2: sure this was our Tammy. As a matter of fact,
3:02
Speaker 2: for a year she was called bones twenty. But it
3:05
Speaker 2: took the people at Authorm Labs and the work they
3:08
Speaker 2: do that goes beyond the pail.
3:11
Speaker 3: It's just as.
3:12
Speaker 2: Fascinating, incredible work. And I think about every time they
3:16
Speaker 2: solve a case genetically using genetic genealogy, it's another family
3:21
Speaker 2: that now has peace and comfort. Joe and I both
3:25
Speaker 2: don't like to say closure, but peace and comfort. Knowing
3:29
Speaker 2: knowing that's the key. So I wanted to make sure
3:33
Speaker 2: y'all know that's what we're talking about today. Green River,
3:35
Speaker 2: Sarah Killer Authoram Labs, and sixteen year old Tammy Lyles. Now, Joe,
3:40
Speaker 2: let's go back to the summer of forty two.
3:42
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to myself. I can't speak to you.
3:48
Speaker 2: We're the same, We heard the same agent of parallel
3:50
Speaker 2: existences in our private lives before we ever met one another.
3:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, it's weird how people get connected that way.
3:57
Speaker 1: But we came of age. I think at at an
4:01
Speaker 1: interesting time, particularly from a crime history perspective, because it
4:07
Speaker 1: seems as though that the world that we that we
4:11
Speaker 1: inhabited back then, serial killers were talked about. They seemed
4:15
Speaker 1: to be. I know that they talk about him now
4:17
Speaker 1: in true crime world, but back then, you know, I
4:21
Speaker 1: can reflect back and think about all these serial perpetrators
4:24
Speaker 1: that were out there when I was a young guy,
4:26
Speaker 1: and they were it seems like that they were everywhere.
4:31
Speaker 2: Because of Ted Bundy more than anything else. Ted Bundy
4:34
Speaker 2: because he was that, he was attractive, he had been big,
4:37
Speaker 2: and you know, they they talked about him being very
4:39
Speaker 2: big in Washington State politics. He really wasn't, but because
4:43
Speaker 2: his story was so remarkable and and rule writing the
4:49
Speaker 2: book The Stranger Beside Me actually illuminated this whole world
4:53
Speaker 2: of the good looking guy that you would be happy
4:57
Speaker 2: for your daughter to date is actually killing women who
5:00
Speaker 2: looked like his first real love. But then we had
5:04
Speaker 2: in the seventies, we had his escape from jail twice
5:08
Speaker 2: if you remember, oh yeah, that was the two you know,
5:11
Speaker 2: run Ted run kind of stuff, a run Bundy run,
5:14
Speaker 2: whatever it was. We had that all over the press.
5:16
Speaker 2: And then in the eighties we had all of the
5:19
Speaker 2: other things. We had the Green River killer in the
5:22
Speaker 2: news because they labeled.
5:24
Speaker 3: It that way.
5:24
Speaker 2: But in the meantime, we had Ted Bundy reaching out
5:27
Speaker 2: to the press because he was on death row and
5:30
Speaker 2: they kept trying to kill him and he kept trying
5:32
Speaker 2: to fight it off. And so every time a serial
5:34
Speaker 2: killer started being covered in the press, Ted Bundy got
5:37
Speaker 2: his wheels in motion to get the press back on him.
5:40
Speaker 3: It was amazing. Yeah, it really was in a bad way.
5:43
Speaker 1: Amazing Yeah yeah, no, no, really in a reality in
5:47
Speaker 1: a realistic way, because I think that you know, it
5:51
Speaker 1: goes to people throw around the term of narcissism all
5:54
Speaker 1: the time nowadays, and it's certainly I think that it
6:00
Speaker 1: is very uh it's it is symptomatic of narcissism relative
6:08
Speaker 1: to him and he you know, he uh he he
6:12
Speaker 1: would draw the spotlight back to him. And I think
6:15
Speaker 1: back we had Richard Maris. Wow, we had the hillside
6:19
Speaker 1: strang GluRs. It's not stranged GluR.
6:22
Speaker 3: Uh.
6:23
Speaker 1: For a while it was singular, but then you've got
6:25
Speaker 1: this team of guys. And then going back even further
6:28
Speaker 1: than that, you know, you you had uh yeah, Tate
6:34
Speaker 1: lot Bianca. But I was thinking about uh uh he
6:38
Speaker 1: refused to be called Otis but ottis Tool and uh
6:43
Speaker 1: that Wascas and they worked in tandem. And actually I
6:48
Speaker 1: had I didn't have direct contact with with Ottis O
6:53
Speaker 1: t I s. He preferred to be called by that,
6:55
Speaker 1: but Otis uh otis tool. They worked in hand them.
7:00
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen Henry Portrait of serial Killer, very
7:05
Speaker 1: disturbing film, but that you know, those two worked in
7:10
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, when I was with a corner in New Orleans,
7:15
Speaker 1: they brought Oddis Tool to my jurisdiction. And one of
7:20
Speaker 1: the little traps that a lot of investigators would fall
7:22
Speaker 1: into back then was the fact that these guys would
7:25
Speaker 1: be cool on their heels in jail. I think Ottis
7:27
Speaker 1: was in Florida Penitentiary at that point in time, and
7:31
Speaker 1: they brought him to New Orleans because he claimed that
7:34
Speaker 1: he could tell tell authorities where bodies were, and you know,
7:38
Speaker 1: he kind of made the rounds relative to that. And
7:43
Speaker 1: with Ridgeway, there's an element of that with Ridgeway, Gary
7:47
Speaker 1: Ridgeway the Green River Killer, because he took he took
7:52
Speaker 1: the authorities out to a variety of sites and he
7:55
Speaker 1: had a huge body count. I think that some people,
8:00
Speaker 1: you know, believe that that he was really responsible for
8:06
Speaker 1: far more than he had claimed. And I don't know
8:09
Speaker 1: if that if that goes to his he's trying to,
8:15
Speaker 1: you know, bait the authorities with with that or if
8:20
Speaker 1: it's if it's reality. You never can tell because it's
8:23
Speaker 1: such a deceptive game that they play, you know. But
8:27
Speaker 1: for me, what's really cool, Dave, is that I had
8:32
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say it was life changing, but I
8:33
Speaker 1: had a real peak behind the curtain a couple of
8:36
Speaker 1: weeks ago, and I got to go to Authorm Labs
8:40
Speaker 1: down in the woodlands outside of Houston, Houston, Texas, and
8:44
Speaker 1: they have a direct bearing on the case we're going
8:46
Speaker 1: to talk talk about today and the work that they're
8:49
Speaker 1: doing in forensic genetic genealogy, and so I think that
8:53
Speaker 1: it's important that we try to understand our victim today
8:58
Speaker 1: that we're gonna talk about, Sami Lawles, and she's what
9:03
Speaker 1: they believe is the youngest victim of the Green rip
9:06
Speaker 1: killer and AUTHORN played a big role in this day.
9:09
Speaker 2: You know, it's amazing that for those of us who
9:12
Speaker 2: watched the trial of the century, maybe one of the
9:15
Speaker 2: last trials of the century for the nineteen hundreds was
9:18
Speaker 2: the O. J. Simpson trial, where we heard a lot
9:20
Speaker 2: about DNA for the first time for many of us
9:23
Speaker 2: as observers of crime related stuff, that story was all
9:27
Speaker 2: about DNA, it seemed at the end. And I think
9:30
Speaker 2: there's a whole lot more that could be told. But
9:32
Speaker 2: the bottom line here is that because of so many
9:37
Speaker 2: of us knowing about DNA because of the oj trial
9:40
Speaker 2: and what has happened since then, I think it's important
9:43
Speaker 2: for people to understand to know that AUTHORM they're not
9:48
Speaker 2: some heavily funded government entity that's got a staff of
9:53
Speaker 2: you know, with billions of dollars pouring in. They it's
9:56
Speaker 2: amazing to me, and we'll cover this more to what
9:58
Speaker 2: they but they actually have to crowd fund to do
10:01
Speaker 2: stories like if you have a loved one that was
10:04
Speaker 2: murdered and you're trying to solve it has been years
10:07
Speaker 2: and years and years, and you know, there's no statute
10:10
Speaker 2: of limitations on murder and the only evidence you have
10:12
Speaker 2: is this sample of DNA and you've they've been able
10:15
Speaker 2: to do nothing with it, and it's twenty years later.
10:19
Speaker 2: Authorn can do something with it.
10:20
Speaker 1: They can try, Yeah, they can, and it kind of
10:23
Speaker 1: bifurcates in the sense of how it's utilized. I got
10:26
Speaker 1: to meet and spend time with David Mettleman, who is
10:31
Speaker 1: the director and CEO, and his brilliant wife, Kristin Mittleman,
10:37
Speaker 1: and they've run this thing and created something essentially from
10:41
Speaker 1: the ground up.
10:42
Speaker 3: And wow, I didn't know that.
10:44
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, there's going to have to be a movie
10:47
Speaker 2: on this, you know, Yeah.
10:49
Speaker 1: I think that it would be perfect and they're fantastic.
10:52
Speaker 1: And David, if you ever enter, and I know that
10:56
Speaker 1: a lot of people may be in can state this,
10:58
Speaker 1: if you've never been a around a true savant somebody
11:03
Speaker 1: that if you're around them, their intellect seems to be
11:07
Speaker 1: off the scale. I'd say that David fits within that category.
11:12
Speaker 1: He is brilliant. But you know, the thing about it
11:14
Speaker 1: is is that his brilliance doesn't stifle his compassion. And
11:22
Speaker 1: it's one thing, you know, it's one thing to say
11:25
Speaker 1: we can sit around all day long and say how
11:28
Speaker 1: compassionate we are, but you know you and I believe
11:31
Speaker 1: that you're You know that your abilities are proven through
11:36
Speaker 1: your actions, and you know, put the words into motion,
11:40
Speaker 1: put those you know what, otherwise would just be worthless platitudes.
11:46
Speaker 1: His goal, which is fascinating to me, is not only
11:52
Speaker 1: to help solve crimes, which is part of it. That's
11:56
Speaker 1: why this is a bifurcated discussion. Is to solve help
12:00
Speaker 1: solve crimes, to bring people, to hold people responsible for
12:05
Speaker 1: these horrible things that they've done. But also the other
12:08
Speaker 1: part that he's engaged in is trying to get the
12:13
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands and thousands of bodies that are out
12:19
Speaker 1: there identified and to help families know that have been
12:24
Speaker 1: missing loved ones, that there is always an empty chair
12:29
Speaker 1: at Christmas time or Thanksgiving or whatever holiday they celebrate,
12:33
Speaker 1: and you never know what had happened to those individuals.
12:37
Speaker 1: And you know, Dave, I got to tell you. I
12:40
Speaker 1: was having a conversation with David Meddleman and we were
12:46
Speaker 1: standing out on this sun drenched porch in the Texas heat,
12:54
Speaker 1: and he looked at me and he said, you know,
12:56
Speaker 1: my goal is to get the database for name US,
13:03
Speaker 1: which is the database for all of the unidentified bodies
13:06
Speaker 1: that we have that are out there. My goal and
13:10
Speaker 1: should be the goal of everyone, to clear that database
13:13
Speaker 1: out and get everybody known to the world once again,
13:34
Speaker 1: sixteen years old. No, you're not an adult in it,
13:38
Speaker 1: but you know, sometimes dependent upon the circumstances that a
13:42
Speaker 1: sixteen year old is in, they have to face horrors
13:46
Speaker 1: that you would think would otherwise only be reserved for adults.
13:51
Speaker 1: And of course, in the case that we're speaking of
13:54
Speaker 1: today with Tammy Lyles, she faced that horror. She faced
13:59
Speaker 1: this devil, this book man and Gary Ridgeway, and it's
14:03
Speaker 1: still amazing that first off, that they were ever even
14:07
Speaker 1: able to get her identified.
14:08
Speaker 2: David, the entire spectrum of the Green River Killer covers
14:16
Speaker 2: so many years, so much investigation, so much press. This
14:20
Speaker 2: was not something that was just discovered one day and
14:25
Speaker 2: they researched it back as a history lesson. This was
14:28
Speaker 2: ongoing in the moment coverage of what was happening with
14:33
Speaker 2: these women who were being killed. And Gary Ridgeway, he
14:38
Speaker 2: was actually on the police radar early on, but just
14:43
Speaker 2: kept on truck and they never had enough to really
14:45
Speaker 2: do anything with him, but he was somebody they considered
14:49
Speaker 2: up there as we look at Tammy Lyles when her
14:54
Speaker 2: bones were I apologize if you're if you are one
14:59
Speaker 2: of tam these relatives or somebody that knew her as
15:03
Speaker 2: a living individual. This is no disrespect, it's but to
15:08
Speaker 2: be truthful, we have to describe what was found, when
15:10
Speaker 2: it was found, where it was found, how it was
15:12
Speaker 2: And I'm so sorry. If this was my love, no,
15:14
Speaker 2: I don't know how I would feel about this. But
15:17
Speaker 2: in this case, she was finally identified. She was not
15:21
Speaker 2: identified for a long time. And that's why I have
15:24
Speaker 2: a question for you about that, Joe, because they had
15:28
Speaker 2: labeled her as the Green River serial killer's final victim
15:33
Speaker 2: identified sixteen year old Tammy Lyles at the age of sixteen.
15:38
Speaker 3: She was murdered.
15:39
Speaker 2: Her remains were known as bones twenty. Didn't they have
15:46
Speaker 2: an identity. Didn't they know who she was before they
15:49
Speaker 2: used DNA to confirm what they thought?
15:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had gotten an ID on her years after
15:57
Speaker 1: she had gone missing, and her remains had been recovered. Okay,
16:01
Speaker 1: there was kind of a partial skeletal remain that was
16:04
Speaker 1: found of her, which is not uncommon. You know, when,
16:09
Speaker 1: particularly when you have what referred to as surface remains,
16:14
Speaker 1: those remains that are not buried, you're very fortunate, You're
16:19
Speaker 1: very fortunate to find anything at all. In her case,
16:21
Speaker 1: they did, and I think that that task was achieved
16:24
Speaker 1: through dental examination.
16:26
Speaker 2: Okay, because Tammy Lyles's body was found bones called Bones twenty.
16:31
Speaker 2: She had been last seen in downtown Seattle, Washington, June
16:36
Speaker 2: of eighty three, at the age of sixteen. She was
16:41
Speaker 2: one of two unidentified women whose remains were found near Tiggard, Oregon,
16:46
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five, two years after she went After she
16:51
Speaker 2: vanished from downtown Seattle, her remains found near Tiggered, Oregon.
16:56
Speaker 2: She had been considered one of Bridgeway's potential victims since
17:01
Speaker 2: way back, I like ninety eight or eighty eight. Rather, so,
17:05
Speaker 2: she goes missing in eighty three, her bones are recovered
17:08
Speaker 2: in eighty five, and by eighty eight they did consider
17:12
Speaker 2: her part of the Green River killer victims. And that's
17:16
Speaker 2: why I was curious about the identification. It was an
17:20
Speaker 2: incomplete set of bones and teeth that were just and
17:26
Speaker 2: if I get some of these confused too, and I
17:28
Speaker 2: am so sorry, but you know, there was one of
17:31
Speaker 2: the stories that I remember Joe where they were at
17:34
Speaker 2: a ball field and a dog came running up to
17:39
Speaker 2: the coach who was working on the field and had
17:41
Speaker 2: a leg bone in his mouth.
17:44
Speaker 3: And can you imagine what that would be like?
17:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, and for our listeners.
17:50
Speaker 3: Oh, that's not Tammy by the way.
17:53
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, that's not that's not Tammy. But
17:57
Speaker 1: when you have when you have canones that are running, uh,
18:04
Speaker 1: running a field if you will. Uh, there are a
18:06
Speaker 1: number of cases. Uh. And for some reason, dogs are
18:11
Speaker 1: attracted to skulls as well. It's almost like they're you know,
18:16
Speaker 1: commonly you think about dogs having long bones. They're laying
18:20
Speaker 1: in shade, maybe they're chewing on a long bone of
18:23
Speaker 1: some kind. Generally you don't expect that to be a
18:26
Speaker 1: human bone. But uh, I can think of two cases
18:30
Speaker 1: right off the top of my head where I had
18:35
Speaker 1: dogs that walked up in the yard of some unsuspecting
18:39
Speaker 1: person's home with a skull uh, And they treat them
18:44
Speaker 1: almost like balls many times, and they'll have them poised
18:47
Speaker 1: between their paws like this, and they'll you know, they'll
18:50
Speaker 1: they'll be chewing uh and working on those bones the
18:54
Speaker 1: entire time. And they, you know, canines seem to find
18:58
Speaker 1: find this, find great joy in doing this, and so
19:02
Speaker 1: it's not unusual for an animal to come walking up
19:05
Speaker 1: with a bone.
19:06
Speaker 2: If I could have answered a question for a million dollars,
19:08
Speaker 2: I never would have guessed that a dog would be
19:10
Speaker 2: fascinated with the head.
19:12
Speaker 3: I never would all about that.
19:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's like that. I think that it's if
19:17
Speaker 1: anyone has ever seen a dog with a ball between
19:19
Speaker 1: their paws kind of playing in the backyard with it,
19:23
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's kind of like that, only they
19:25
Speaker 1: see it as a source of protein. That's, you know,
19:28
Speaker 1: just like we're no different, you know, our bodies are
19:31
Speaker 1: no different after death like that. That. Wow, that's one
19:35
Speaker 1: of the things that attracts and so you never know.
19:37
Speaker 1: And here's the other thing is that if you if
19:40
Speaker 1: you have a skeletal remain and the dog grabs a
19:45
Speaker 1: skelter remain brings in one element of it, you don't
19:48
Speaker 1: know where that originated from. And so with Ridgeway, Gary
19:53
Speaker 1: Ridgeway and all of these victims, including Tammy Lyles, he
19:57
Speaker 1: perpetrated these crimes so that he had the he remained
20:00
Speaker 1: spread out in let's see how the distribution of the
20:05
Speaker 1: remains was all over King County, and so you didn't
20:09
Speaker 1: always know. He didn't have like a specific location he
20:14
Speaker 1: would go to, but he would do particular things with
20:16
Speaker 1: the bodies, some of them that they could still appreciate.
20:19
Speaker 1: Sometimes he'd lined bodies up, he'd go to these particular
20:22
Speaker 1: areas where he was just kind of keeping them. And
20:25
Speaker 1: so they've got these almost like commingaled remains. They even
20:29
Speaker 1: put forth the idea that he's posing some of these
20:31
Speaker 1: bodies after death and the fact that he would do this.
20:36
Speaker 1: And the other thing about Ridgeway is that he's not
20:41
Speaker 1: one of these brilliant guys. He doesn't have like an
20:43
Speaker 1: IQ that's off the chart. He was just singularly focused
20:47
Speaker 1: on what he was doing and he you know, he
20:52
Speaker 1: worked for years and years and this plays into the
20:56
Speaker 1: story as well. He worked for years and years as
20:59
Speaker 1: a not just a car painter or an automotive painter,
21:02
Speaker 1: but a painter of trucks specifically, like you know, big
21:06
Speaker 1: Peter Bilts and Mac trucks. That's what he did, and
21:10
Speaker 1: he maintained that job all of these years while still
21:13
Speaker 1: going out and perpetrating these crops, which is fascinating as
21:18
Speaker 1: far as I'm concerned, he was just singularly focused on
21:21
Speaker 1: this obsession that he had with killing prostitutes and then
21:26
Speaker 1: disregarding their remains.
21:28
Speaker 2: It's still amazing to me that he was. Gary Ridgeway
21:32
Speaker 2: was a suspect early on, from at least eighty seven,
21:36
Speaker 2: and that's when we publicly knew about him in terms
21:40
Speaker 2: of the investigation. But they suspected him. As you mentioned,
21:43
Speaker 2: he was not as clever or as intelligent as some
21:46
Speaker 2: others that we have dealt with, but still he got
21:48
Speaker 2: away with it for a whole lot longer than many
21:51
Speaker 2: of them ever did. And the damage he did to families.
21:55
Speaker 2: I think of the how one person can effect. One
21:59
Speaker 2: person's death affects so many people. Now you're talking fifty
22:04
Speaker 2: you know, you're talking a lot of extended people directly
22:07
Speaker 2: and indirectly affected by what this one person did. And
22:14
Speaker 2: that's what I think is the most shocking to talk
22:17
Speaker 2: about people in bones and things like that. When you
22:19
Speaker 2: had a girl at sixteen years old, his youngest victim
22:22
Speaker 2: was fourteen, or the youngest one we know about was fourteen,
22:26
Speaker 2: but you know still Tammy Lyles was sixteen years old.
22:29
Speaker 2: Her bones helped identify who she was with the as
22:33
Speaker 2: you mentioned the teeth, using those as identity, but they
22:37
Speaker 2: weren't actually able to get the whole picture pulled together
22:41
Speaker 2: on on Tammy Lyles until they were able to get
22:46
Speaker 2: the DNA tested. And when you start with so little evidence, Joe,
22:50
Speaker 2: and you don't have soft tissue, you don't have anything
22:54
Speaker 2: except the bones, what do you do as an investigator
22:59
Speaker 2: to try to find out who this person is and
23:02
Speaker 2: how they ended up where they are when they are discovered.
23:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's a lot of that is going to
23:09
Speaker 1: rest heavily upon. First off, your first stop along the
23:14
Speaker 1: continuum here is anthropology. I would imagine that many of
23:18
Speaker 1: our friends have all heard of the body Farm. That's
23:21
Speaker 1: one of the reasons the Body Farm does the research
23:23
Speaker 1: that they do, because you're dealing with decomposing skeletal remains,
23:29
Speaker 1: and you have to be able to these people that
23:32
Speaker 1: go out and practice as anthropologists. They can't put most
23:36
Speaker 1: of the time a real fine point on identification, so
23:39
Speaker 1: they're looking in very broad ways at the bones that
23:43
Speaker 1: they have. You know, they'll try to categorize the bones
23:48
Speaker 1: by virtue of race and that you really need a
23:51
Speaker 1: skull for that, and of course in many of these
23:53
Speaker 1: cases you're not going to have skull. And then you
23:54
Speaker 1: try to do stature, and there's a metric that you
23:57
Speaker 1: can apply relative to like bone link, Like if you're
24:00
Speaker 1: going to measure, say the length of the thigh bone,
24:05
Speaker 1: it's going to fit into a particular category as to
24:10
Speaker 1: what the height, the approximating height of this individual will be.
24:13
Speaker 1: But then you have to determine if the thigh bone
24:18
Speaker 1: that you're looking at is either male or female or
24:22
Speaker 1: is it from a racial grouping that would have more
24:25
Speaker 1: what to refer to. And this is a weird word
24:28
Speaker 1: grassile bones, which grass ale means fine kind of fine
24:32
Speaker 1: featured where if you had, say an Asian person that
24:40
Speaker 1: you found and it could be an adult male, their
24:43
Speaker 1: bones might not be as big and robust as some
24:48
Speaker 1: big European origin guy like me, and so you can't
24:53
Speaker 1: Sometimes you'll get the sexing of the bones. As I say,
24:56
Speaker 1: you'll get those confused. You'll get racial characteristics confused with
25:02
Speaker 1: skulls because the facial characteristics. You know, sometimes we're commingled,
25:07
Speaker 1: our genetics are commingled. Now it's not. You don't have
25:10
Speaker 1: these clear lines of delineation. So what are you left
25:14
Speaker 1: with at that point?
25:15
Speaker 3: Toime?
25:15
Speaker 1: Well, fortunately the world that we live in today has
25:21
Speaker 1: brought about the idea of who are we? Who are
25:26
Speaker 1: we at our molecular core? And to our benefit, you
25:33
Speaker 1: have groups of people like authorm that are answering some
25:38
Speaker 1: of these long, long unanswered questions. The big question is
25:59
Speaker 1: what are you left with? You know, you start off,
26:02
Speaker 1: I think, with an incomplete skeleton, and as horrible as
26:06
Speaker 1: it is, the only name that you have is bones
26:12
Speaker 1: twenty and you suspect that it could be one individual
26:18
Speaker 1: in particular based upon dental id but you need to
26:24
Speaker 1: confirm that. You need to confirm that for the sake
26:27
Speaker 1: of the family. And you, like you said, Dave, you
26:30
Speaker 1: don't have soft tissue. So where are you going to go? Well,
26:35
Speaker 1: you're going to take bone sample. And in Tammy Lyles case,
26:39
Speaker 1: that bone sample actually made it to Texas. But the
26:43
Speaker 1: first stop in Texas was not Authorm Labs. It's another
26:47
Speaker 1: great lab that's housed at the University of North Texas.
26:52
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, I've got a real
26:54
Speaker 1: good buddy of mine that just retired from there, and
26:58
Speaker 1: they do some of the most marvelous work in DNA identification.
27:04
Speaker 1: But when they played that out to the end, they
27:07
Speaker 1: were left scratching their head thinking, we can't take this
27:09
Speaker 1: any further. We need to see who else we can
27:11
Speaker 1: source this to. And of course that's when Authorm appears,
27:14
Speaker 1: appears on the radar and they come in to kind
27:18
Speaker 1: of complete this job.
27:19
Speaker 2: Now when we're talking about Authorm and beyond, because there
27:25
Speaker 2: is breaking down the DNA and having that map, but
27:32
Speaker 2: to find out who this person is and who they
27:36
Speaker 2: are tied to is a totally different It's an extension
27:40
Speaker 2: of the DNA exercise because now you've got to do
27:44
Speaker 2: the genetic genealogy. You have to build a family tree.
27:48
Speaker 2: So here is our victim, and we've got that victim. Boy,
27:51
Speaker 2: we got everything right here, but we have to find
27:55
Speaker 2: out other things. Who's related to this victim? There's other
27:58
Speaker 2: people at least too.
28:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a fascinating thing. In my recent visit
28:03
Speaker 1: to Athram that I was shocked by. You go into
28:06
Speaker 1: one one section of this of their facility, which is amazing,
28:12
Speaker 1: and you've got this very clinical environment where everything is
28:17
Speaker 1: sealed off. People are on the literally on the other
28:20
Speaker 1: side of the glass and wearing protective clothing, right, and
28:24
Speaker 1: they can only work for about forty five minutes at
28:26
Speaker 1: a time when they have to step out because it's
28:28
Speaker 1: such labor intensive work and you don't want your people
28:34
Speaker 1: to be distracted because of fatigue, so they have to
28:37
Speaker 1: take a break like every forty five minutes.
28:40
Speaker 2: So there's such a powerful thing on the brain. It
28:43
Speaker 2: is taxing your brain so much that they know after
28:47
Speaker 2: forty five minutes you're no longer at the top of
28:50
Speaker 2: your game.
28:50
Speaker 3: It has eaten that much. Take a break.
28:53
Speaker 1: That's remarkable, Yeah, it is, and it's the facility itself
28:57
Speaker 1: is really something to see from that perspect but also
29:01
Speaker 1: that awareness. So if you have a case like Tammy's
29:04
Speaker 1: case that comes in and you're trying to adjust yourself
29:08
Speaker 1: to be so laser focused in your assessments of what
29:13
Speaker 1: you have before you. Here's the really sad thing is
29:16
Speaker 1: that if this is a criminal case, defense attorneys will
29:20
Speaker 1: pick at that pick at, well, how many other cases
29:23
Speaker 1: if they're talking to the technician, how many other cases
29:25
Speaker 1: have you been working? How much time? Where do you
29:27
Speaker 1: think you were too tired to be doing this? And
29:29
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. They understand that concept. But here's
29:33
Speaker 1: the other part. They don't just have a scientific section,
29:39
Speaker 1: the genetics section. They've also got a genealogical section, which
29:44
Speaker 1: is when you begin to think about this in the
29:47
Speaker 1: world that I come from, which is, you know, morgues
29:50
Speaker 1: and crime labs and all that stuff you don't think about. Well,
29:54
Speaker 1: we've got a whole staff a genealogist here that they
29:58
Speaker 1: can confer with begin to kind of work out this
30:02
Speaker 1: big puzzle about who is this individual? And right you were,
30:07
Speaker 1: you know, when you were discussing how do you tie
30:11
Speaker 1: this back to a particular particular familial group, if you will,
30:17
Speaker 1: and that is you look for these peripheral individuals that
30:22
Speaker 1: are out there within the family tree. So you're talking
30:25
Speaker 1: about cousins most of the time and several times removed.
30:30
Speaker 1: And then they begin to kind of bring that in
30:33
Speaker 1: and tighten the focus on all of these cases. And Tammy,
30:36
Speaker 1: of course, is representative of that, and you want to
30:41
Speaker 1: be sure you want to be sure about these cases.
30:44
Speaker 1: And so for Tammy Lyles, which please keep in mind,
30:50
Speaker 1: if people are thinking, well, how did she die, there's
30:55
Speaker 1: no way to determine how many of these people die
31:00
Speaker 1: because when you get to the state where you're in
31:03
Speaker 1: a skelton On state, any of the soft tissue that
31:07
Speaker 1: you would be looking for for focal areas of hemorrhage
31:10
Speaker 1: in the neck, or you're looking for, you know, the
31:12
Speaker 1: fractured hyoid as they always talk about, or you're looking
31:17
Speaker 1: for trauma to the skull. Meantime, you're not going to
31:20
Speaker 1: have that. And so it's it's an idea of of
31:26
Speaker 1: essentially a presumptive event where you're you're presuming that this
31:31
Speaker 1: individual died at the hands of someone like Gary Ridgeway
31:36
Speaker 1: because it fit the mo of what he had done
31:40
Speaker 1: in the past and she fits into a particular grouping.
31:44
Speaker 1: But Authorm's role in this is I think that it's
31:49
Speaker 1: it is first off, it's the ultimate and compassion, but
31:52
Speaker 1: also it's it is from this particular case in the
31:55
Speaker 1: series of homicides that Gary Ridgeway was involved. Then it
32:02
Speaker 1: is the ultimate act of compassion as well, because finally
32:08
Speaker 1: the family can move on from that point, I never
32:11
Speaker 1: use the word closure because I think that that's it's
32:14
Speaker 1: a horrible term to use because families. You're diminishing the
32:19
Speaker 1: grief of families by saying that families never get closure
32:22
Speaker 1: from homicides. You can forget that. Please don't say that
32:25
Speaker 1: to people. I guess you have closure, now, No, they don't.
32:28
Speaker 1: People don't get closure. It's such a weird term. And
32:32
Speaker 1: for those of us that work as death investigators, families
32:36
Speaker 1: don't get closure, they might achieve certain levels of peace.
32:40
Speaker 1: I don't know. I can't speak to anybody's individual experiences,
32:45
Speaker 1: but the one piece to this is that from a
32:49
Speaker 1: confirmatory stint, Authorm offers that and it's a little slice
32:54
Speaker 1: of peace perhaps for them. And that's what they've done
32:57
Speaker 1: in tammy Law's case.
32:58
Speaker 3: Dave, Well, you.
32:59
Speaker 2: Know with Authorm and you have like math on one
33:03
Speaker 2: side and the theater arts to people on the other.
33:05
Speaker 2: Because to pull all this together to actually get answers
33:09
Speaker 2: to questions and solving crimes, this is really an amazing
33:13
Speaker 2: world of technology because it does require some out of
33:17
Speaker 2: the box thinking. Besides the math. We have the math,
33:20
Speaker 2: but we've got to find the rest. And that's why
33:23
Speaker 2: authoram is so important to what's being done. And I
33:26
Speaker 2: want to go back to this idea that they are
33:28
Speaker 2: crowd funded when police send. You know, oftentimes our law
33:33
Speaker 2: enforcement agencies are underfunded, especially when it comes to investigations
33:37
Speaker 2: in what are considered cold cases. Now, because of the
33:40
Speaker 2: strides that have been made, many departments have a cold
33:44
Speaker 2: case unit and they're breaking crimes. They're actually solving crimes
33:48
Speaker 2: that have been dormant for many, many years, but now
33:53
Speaker 2: have the ability to take the technology and the skills
33:57
Speaker 2: and just the experience of investment ditigators and actually solve
34:01
Speaker 2: these crimes. But to get to that next level, you
34:05
Speaker 2: need an author them, you need a law. Yeah, they
34:09
Speaker 2: don't have funding like well I would think, you know,
34:11
Speaker 2: I I just assumed until you told me. I really
34:15
Speaker 2: did assume that there was federal funding, that it came
34:18
Speaker 2: in from many different sources and they just had because
34:21
Speaker 2: of the work they are doing that I really did
34:23
Speaker 2: think that it was super funded. Not a problem. Send it,
34:26
Speaker 2: We got you. You know, we're lined up from here
34:28
Speaker 2: to the moon.
34:29
Speaker 3: But it's not like that at all.
34:30
Speaker 1: That's not the way it works, you know. Uh. And
34:34
Speaker 1: it's curious to me where certain government agencies push moneies
34:39
Speaker 1: towards UH, and I think that you know, for me,
34:42
Speaker 1: of course, i'm partial in this area because of the
34:44
Speaker 1: death investigation. I think that one of the most noble
34:47
Speaker 1: things that you can do is provide a service like
34:49
Speaker 1: this to families. Authorm fills that gap, uh, you know
34:54
Speaker 1: regarding this, regarding that that big unknown, because there's an
34:57
Speaker 1: ultimate key it's uh, you know, at a molecular level
35:01
Speaker 1: that they're offering. Look, there's been cold case squads for
35:05
Speaker 1: years and years, and it's frustrating being on a cold case.
35:08
Speaker 1: There's a reason they're cold cases, and you can in
35:12
Speaker 1: cold case cases that are part of a cold case packet.
35:18
Speaker 1: See if I can explain this correctly. They are generational,
35:23
Speaker 1: So you can have an old group of investigators that
35:25
Speaker 1: will be on a cold case, one of many that
35:28
Speaker 1: might exist in a certain jurisdiction, and from a generational standpoint,
35:33
Speaker 1: and I'm talking generational in a very narrow spectrum here,
35:37
Speaker 1: it's passed on to the next generation of investigators that
35:41
Speaker 1: have achieved the level of skill. Because the skills that
35:44
Speaker 1: a cold case investigator has are a bit different than
35:48
Speaker 1: your regular investigator that's out on the street. They're dealing
35:52
Speaker 1: with things that are a bit finer in detail, and
35:54
Speaker 1: so you have to raise up another generation of police
35:57
Speaker 1: officers to be at that level or investigators to be
35:59
Speaker 1: at that level, and sometimes these cases just get handed off.
36:03
Speaker 1: That's what that and I really want people to grab
36:05
Speaker 1: hold of this. That's why this is such a fantastic
36:09
Speaker 1: time to be alive and forensics to witness this because
36:14
Speaker 1: all of these cases dave that for years and years
36:17
Speaker 1: and years that have gone gone unanswered. You know, the
36:23
Speaker 1: big questions that arise from these cases that have gone
36:26
Speaker 1: unanswered for years and years and years. We're finally getting
36:30
Speaker 1: to see a few beams of sunlight that are exposed
36:35
Speaker 1: in this darkness, and there will finally be answers. And
36:38
Speaker 1: sometimes those answers will come about as an unidentified DNA
36:43
Speaker 1: sample that could be blood or semen or any number
36:48
Speaker 1: of body fluids that are found has seen that can
36:50
Speaker 1: tie back to a perpetrator, or it can be one
36:54
Speaker 1: of the best gifts that anybody could give to one
36:57
Speaker 1: of these families that have wanted to know for so
36:59
Speaker 1: long what happened to those that I love and striking
37:04
Speaker 1: them off of that master list that they have at names.
37:08
Speaker 1: I urge you to check out dnasolves dot com and
37:13
Speaker 1: just visit the website. I don't get a nickel off
37:17
Speaker 1: of this. I don't you know. I'm not here to
37:20
Speaker 1: necessarily sell what authorm is doing. However, I've spent more
37:26
Speaker 1: time than I can possibly express to any of you
37:29
Speaker 1: guys standing over unidentified human remains for years and years
37:35
Speaker 1: and years with no answers. Again, this might be one
37:41
Speaker 1: of the most noble things that's being done in the
37:44
Speaker 1: area of forensic sciences right now, and I urge each
37:47
Speaker 1: and every one of you to go and visit the
37:50
Speaker 1: website and see what these people are doing, because it
37:53
Speaker 1: will it will knock your socks off. I'm just Scott
38:01
Speaker 1: Morgan and this is body bags. H