Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / 5-year-old girl sex-assaulted, found dead in snow packed culvert

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5-year-old girl sex-assaulted, found dead in snow packed culvert · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:05
Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. How does a five year
0:15
Speaker 1: old little girl get raped and murdered and the case
0:21
Speaker 1: goes cold? Crime stories with me Grace happened to First
0:35
Speaker 1: of all, take a listen to our friends at k
0:38
Speaker 1: h Q six. We had more trust, especially with the
0:41
Speaker 1: children and her neighborhood in the north side. You know,
0:46
Speaker 1: family mostly. You know, I'm fairly safe. Everybody thought they
0:50
Speaker 1: were safe. February, Missoula, Montana. Steve's little girl, five year
0:55
Speaker 1: old Chavon McGinnis, was thriving. She's a very happy child,
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Speaker 1: very telligent, very outgoing. Just in a short period of
1:05
Speaker 1: time that she was here, I think she impacted a
1:08
Speaker 1: lot of people's lives. Stephen, Chavon's mother had split up
1:12
Speaker 1: and he moved across town. The nightmare began with a
1:16
Speaker 1: single knock from Missoula PD. Look on his guy's face
1:22
Speaker 1: was very chilling, and he asked me to sit down.
1:26
Speaker 1: He said, thing, your daughter's missing. Steve says. The officer
1:30
Speaker 1: told him they were doing everything they could, that crews
1:33
Speaker 1: were searching the entire city. That knock on the door
1:36
Speaker 1: no parent wants. Well, it came for this family. Let
1:41
Speaker 1: me introduce you our all star panel, Who's gonna break
1:44
Speaker 1: it down and put it back together for you? The
1:46
Speaker 1: search for Chavon James at shell Nutt twenty seven years
1:50
Speaker 1: metro major case now lawyer at shell Nutt Lawfirm dot com.
1:55
Speaker 1: Renowned psychologist joining us from New York. Karen Stark at
2:00
Speaker 1: Karen Stark dot com. Former police chief John's Creek now
2:05
Speaker 1: at Chris Buyer's Investigation and polygraph dot com. Doctor Tim Gallagher,
2:10
Speaker 1: the medical examiner for the entire state of Florida. You
2:14
Speaker 1: can find him at Pathcaremed dot com. Cheron La Pointe,
2:19
Speaker 1: genetic genealogist, the gene hunter at the Jane Hunter dot com.
2:23
Speaker 1: And David Mittelman, the CEO of Authoram Incorporated, expert in
2:29
Speaker 1: DNA identification at authoram dot com. But first to Ray Kaputo,
2:35
Speaker 1: lead news anchor for WDBO. Ray, let's start at the beginning.
2:41
Speaker 1: Where did the murder of this five year old little
2:44
Speaker 1: girl take place? Well, please call Missoula, Montana, Nancy. It's
2:48
Speaker 1: on the western edge of that state, not far from
2:51
Speaker 1: the Idaho border. Thought seventy five thousand people in town.
2:54
Speaker 1: It's not a huge town. And one unique thing about
2:57
Speaker 1: Missoula is that it has an interesting called ninety that
3:01
Speaker 1: runs through it, and that that road is familiar. It's
3:03
Speaker 1: a good chance of you run through your town too,
3:05
Speaker 1: because it's the longest highway in the US. It basically
3:08
Speaker 1: stretches from coast to coast, so very cold time a
3:12
Speaker 1: year or two. This was in February, where they're not
3:15
Speaker 1: getting a ton of light. And it was in the
3:17
Speaker 1: thirties or choose high twenties when all this happened. I'm
3:20
Speaker 1: processing what you're saying, Ray Kaputo. And when you sat
3:23
Speaker 1: a town of seventy thousand, that really reduces the suspect pool. Okay,
3:30
Speaker 1: But when you said nine runs beside it, well, that
3:35
Speaker 1: opens up the suspect pool. And it brings to mind
3:37
Speaker 1: the case of Dylan and Shasta Gronee up in Cordelaine, Idaho.
3:42
Speaker 1: They live if you look down on an aerial nothing
3:45
Speaker 1: but green forest. But there was an interstate, and as
3:49
Speaker 1: the kidnapper and killer spree killer drove by on the interstate,
3:55
Speaker 1: he saw Shasta playing in an above ground pool, pulled
4:01
Speaker 1: off the interstate kill. The whole family also ended up
4:04
Speaker 1: killing the little brother Dylan. Shasta lived. So when you
4:09
Speaker 1: have an interstate in the mix, no matter how small
4:11
Speaker 1: the town is. That changes things. Another factor, Ray Kaputo,
4:17
Speaker 1: you said Montana. Sure, there's I ninety, but Montana is
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Speaker 1: very mountainous. I mean, unless you're going for tourism and
4:28
Speaker 1: you are going out of your way to see its beauty.
4:32
Speaker 1: How many people are in that neck of the woods?
4:35
Speaker 1: Ray Nancy, You're completely right. It's a very rural part
4:40
Speaker 1: of the world. And if you don't go there for beauty,
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Speaker 1: you know it's probably a policeer just passing through. And
4:45
Speaker 1: get back to ninety, Just to tell you how immense
4:47
Speaker 1: this road is and how somebody could just be passing through.
4:50
Speaker 1: I grew up in the middle of New York State
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Speaker 1: in Syracuse, and I ninety literally runs past my hometown
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Speaker 1: to all the way out out there in New York.
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Speaker 1: So people can literally go from coast to coast a
5:00
Speaker 1: seemingly on this road. Now I'm thinking about what we
5:03
Speaker 1: know so far. Ray kid Puto, you're telling me that
5:06
Speaker 1: this five year little girl is raped and murder. Doctor
5:11
Speaker 1: Tim Gallagher, a medical examiner, State of Florida. How did
5:14
Speaker 1: they deduce that the child had been raped? Well, we
5:17
Speaker 1: can do sexual assault kit on the child, where we
5:20
Speaker 1: would take swabs of the vaginal area and of the
5:24
Speaker 1: anal area as well as in the mouth, and we
5:26
Speaker 1: could look under the microscope and see if there is
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Speaker 1: sperm or some sort of evidence of sexual contact pubic
5:34
Speaker 1: hair from an adult, and then we could deduce that
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Speaker 1: they've been raped. That way, we could also look for
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Speaker 1: injuries on the body, injuries in the crotch area, injuries
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Speaker 1: in the vaginal area, and indirect them. That will also
5:47
Speaker 1: give us clues as to whether this child was raped
5:49
Speaker 1: or not. Take us nor forensic kh Q six hope
5:53
Speaker 1: fell right along with the brutal cold temperatures. She's found
5:59
Speaker 1: outside of the Zoosa. It was in this area just
6:04
Speaker 1: off of Vine ninety called Tura. She was violated. No,
6:10
Speaker 1: it was really awful. Chavon's half sister, Una says. The
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Speaker 1: family believes whoever did this was watching Chavon as she walked,
6:18
Speaker 1: waiting for an opportunity for the little girl to be alone.
6:23
Speaker 1: Her house was within sight and the little friend she'd
6:26
Speaker 1: been visiting. Her mom walked her to the end of
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Speaker 1: that block, but she had dinner on the stove and
6:33
Speaker 1: had to get back to stir the dinner, and she said, oh,
6:35
Speaker 1: it's okay. Honey, you can see your house. You think
6:38
Speaker 1: you'll be all right. And she went back to the
6:41
Speaker 1: kids and dinner, and they believed her killer somehow got
6:44
Speaker 1: Chavon into his car. Oh my stars. To Raka Puto,
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Speaker 1: I was curious, as everyone has been, about why chavan
6:54
Speaker 1: was outside and these temperatures explain how she was kidnapped
7:00
Speaker 1: on Nancy. I mean, we really don't know because she's
7:02
Speaker 1: seemingly disappeared without a trace. But one thing, you know,
7:04
Speaker 1: you have a young girl. I do as well, and
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Speaker 1: kids at five years old their people pleasers that you know,
7:09
Speaker 1: they want to actively make friends, they want to get
7:12
Speaker 1: positive responses from adults. So it's not hard to imagine
7:15
Speaker 1: how easily it would have been for an adult to
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Speaker 1: get a five year old little girl and just that
7:21
Speaker 1: that moment where she's not being watched into his car.
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Speaker 1: But you know, right now, we don't know really, but
7:28
Speaker 1: we know that she got into that car when we
7:31
Speaker 1: were the other well we know this too, Chief Chris
7:33
Speaker 1: Buyers joining us now with Chris Buyer's investigations and polygrass
7:38
Speaker 1: dot Com. I was wondering what mom or dad would
7:44
Speaker 1: let the little girl go play outside in this weather
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Speaker 1: all by herself and it was getting dark, if not
7:50
Speaker 1: already dark. But that's not what happened. Chief. We know
7:53
Speaker 1: that she had a playdate with a little girl a
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Speaker 1: couple of blocks away, and the mom walked her all
8:00
Speaker 1: all the way home except for one block. But she
8:04
Speaker 1: had left something on the stove and turned around, Look
8:07
Speaker 1: there's your house, Just walk to your house. And she
8:10
Speaker 1: went back to the stove and let the little girl
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Speaker 1: walk one block and in that block, Chief Buyers, she
8:18
Speaker 1: gets kidnapped. Yeah, what a what a horrible situation. And
8:22
Speaker 1: you got to think too, probably in that type of
8:25
Speaker 1: town we're talking the early seventies, probably nothing like that
8:29
Speaker 1: had happened there before. And just mom, you know this,
8:34
Speaker 1: This little girl's mom, friend's mom let her guard down,
8:38
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that was something that probably happened quite
8:40
Speaker 1: regularly in that area. And what a just horrible set
8:44
Speaker 1: of circumstances to line up for this to happen. To
8:47
Speaker 1: Earth Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, we are talking about
9:03
Speaker 1: the disappearance, the brutal, rate kidnap and murder of a
9:09
Speaker 1: five year old little girl. To make matters worse, the
9:15
Speaker 1: case goes cold. Take a listen to our friends at
9:19
Speaker 1: k HQ six. Chavan was walking home from a neighborhood
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Speaker 1: friend's house, nearly visible from her own, but that short
9:27
Speaker 1: distance on the North Missoula sidewalks mere moments alone was
9:32
Speaker 1: all it took for a killer to get her. I
9:35
Speaker 1: think her body was found the next evening, two days.
9:39
Speaker 1: I think it was two days. Did you just did
9:44
Speaker 1: you just know before you knew? You know, like, yeah,
9:46
Speaker 1: I had a feeling that she was not going to
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Speaker 1: survive because she's so little, she was so young, and
9:52
Speaker 1: it was February, it was freezing at night, and always said,
9:55
Speaker 1: yeah it was you know, whether it was it was
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Speaker 1: not good, and whether things were not favorable for any
10:01
Speaker 1: kind of survival. Certainly her body was dumped east of town,
10:04
Speaker 1: in the area of Tura, just off of by ninety.
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Speaker 1: She was found in a culvert, snow piled up all around.
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Speaker 1: Everyone was a suspect, but Stephen says he never thought
10:15
Speaker 1: his daughter's killer was close to their family. Did you
10:18
Speaker 1: think it was someone you knew? Maybe? Oh? I did
10:21
Speaker 1: not think it was anyone I knew too. Karen start
10:24
Speaker 1: joining me in New York psychologists joining us karens dot
10:28
Speaker 1: Com Karen with a C. Karen when you hear that
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Speaker 1: her body was dumped, dumped down a culvert, was snow
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Speaker 1: piled up all around her. This five year old girl,
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Speaker 1: her body just dumped. What does that tell you about
10:47
Speaker 1: the killer girl, Nanthy. It tells me that this is
10:50
Speaker 1: somebody who has absolutely no regard for human life. We're
10:56
Speaker 1: talking about someone who could look at this little girl
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Speaker 1: as though she would or a toy. He could care
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Speaker 1: less about her. There's not even an attempt to make
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Speaker 1: it seem as though she's in a warm place or
11:10
Speaker 1: anything like that. She's actually just touched the side. Also
11:15
Speaker 1: to James Shelnuh twenty seven years mester, a major case
11:19
Speaker 1: at Shelnut Lawfirm dot com. James, you know that neighbor
11:23
Speaker 1: mom must have tortured herself the rest of her life
11:28
Speaker 1: as her own mom. And to make it more complex,
11:31
Speaker 1: another wrinkle is that mom and dad are separated and
11:34
Speaker 1: living two different parts of town. You've got the neighbor
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Speaker 1: mom who lives with the guilt of leaving the girl alone,
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Speaker 1: a five year old little girl alone to walk the
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Speaker 1: rest of the way home, and then turning around and leaving,
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Speaker 1: not looking back. Then you've got the mother who it's
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Speaker 1: on her watch, whether she intended it to happen or not.
11:55
Speaker 1: Then you got the dad who's living across town after
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Speaker 1: the split, without any control over what's happening with this
12:02
Speaker 1: five year old, and she ends up raped and dead. Yeah,
12:04
Speaker 1: you know you in cases like this, you know, there's
12:07
Speaker 1: always people who ask themselves, what if I would have
12:10
Speaker 1: done something differently? Could I have prevented this? You know?
12:13
Speaker 1: Did I play a role in this unintentionally? Can I
12:17
Speaker 1: stop this? You got a reality? The person who caused
12:21
Speaker 1: this is this maniac who murdered this child. That's who
12:25
Speaker 1: caused it. And I think those are normal films to have,
12:27
Speaker 1: you know what, You're right, that's hard to get your
12:29
Speaker 1: minder on that when you're so busy blaming yourself. But
12:33
Speaker 1: none of these people had anything to do with this
12:37
Speaker 1: little girl's death. Back to Ray Kaputo, lead news anchor
12:41
Speaker 1: w DBO joining us. Ray, So, it's a very small town,
12:46
Speaker 1: even though there is I ninety the interstate there in
12:49
Speaker 1: the beautiful Montana mountains. And the girl goes missing. When
12:54
Speaker 1: did they How much time passed before they find her body?
12:57
Speaker 1: Along Nancy? All about two days passes and they end
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Speaker 1: up finding her not far down the road from the
13:04
Speaker 1: town right off the highway in a culvert. It's a
13:07
Speaker 1: little tunnel that passes under the road with you know
13:10
Speaker 1: where water travels, and you know there's snow around, and
13:13
Speaker 1: she she was just discarded like a piece of trash. Well,
13:16
Speaker 1: it didn't take very long for them, but you know,
13:18
Speaker 1: it might have seemed like eternity for those who are
13:20
Speaker 1: looking for to share the point. Joining us genetic genealogisists,
13:24
Speaker 1: the so called gene hunter at the gene hunter dot
13:27
Speaker 1: com shared thanks for being with us. The child had
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Speaker 1: been out in the snow, literally piles of snow all
13:36
Speaker 1: around her. How does that affect or does it affect
13:41
Speaker 1: DNA nancy? It definitely affects DNA um. It affects it
13:46
Speaker 1: by it degrades the DNA it um. The DNA in
13:51
Speaker 1: the element get affected by cold weather, by rain, by water,
13:57
Speaker 1: um being mixed in the body and it makes it
14:01
Speaker 1: harder to be able to separate and work with. Luckily,
14:06
Speaker 1: at the time the investigators preserved DNA that proved to
14:12
Speaker 1: be key evidence in this case. And anytime you have
14:16
Speaker 1: DNA that's been around it was out in the elements
14:20
Speaker 1: and then sat basically on a shelf somewhere for about
14:23
Speaker 1: forty seven years, so the preservation of that DNA was amazing.
14:29
Speaker 1: This family suffering and as the days pass, no arrests
14:35
Speaker 1: are made. Take a listen to our friends at KHQ six.
14:38
Speaker 1: It's my understanding that the police at the time felt
14:42
Speaker 1: that whoever had murdered her was not experienced at that
14:48
Speaker 1: she was assaulted and then she sustained several stab wounds.
14:52
Speaker 1: There were many initial leads. Missoula police say each was
14:56
Speaker 1: aggressively pursued. They even publicly discussed real opening the case,
15:01
Speaker 1: as covered in this article by the Missoulean There is DNA.
15:05
Speaker 1: I know that it has been run against the criminal
15:09
Speaker 1: databases and nothing really came of that. Despite his rage,
15:14
Speaker 1: his extreme sorrow, life moved on. It had to. Steve
15:19
Speaker 1: did end up remarrying, having Una and another daughter, but
15:23
Speaker 1: knowing they will never meet his first as a wound
15:27
Speaker 1: that even time can't touch. So the world keeps spinning
15:31
Speaker 1: and time passes by, and her parents still devastated, even
15:37
Speaker 1: though seemingly on the outside they're moving forward with their lives.
15:40
Speaker 1: Inside their heart is broken over the death, the unsolved
15:46
Speaker 1: death of their five year old girl, Chavon McGinnis. You know,
15:51
Speaker 1: I want to go back to you, Rayka Puto. I
15:53
Speaker 1: didn't realize she had been stabbed so many times. What
15:57
Speaker 1: can you tell me about cod cause of death? She
16:00
Speaker 1: was raped, she was beaten, and she was stabbed. And
16:03
Speaker 1: you know, given this, this is a five year old girl.
16:05
Speaker 1: I mean, what kind of monster can look a little child,
16:09
Speaker 1: innocent child and the eyes to do that? Nancy? But
16:11
Speaker 1: but she was not in good ship. I mean she
16:13
Speaker 1: was hurt pretty badly and ultimately stabbed to death too.
16:17
Speaker 1: Chris Buyer's former police chief John's Creek. When you come
16:20
Speaker 1: upon a body like that, you've got a child, five
16:24
Speaker 1: year old little girl in a snow bank, you've been
16:27
Speaker 1: looking for her for days one, how do you separate
16:30
Speaker 1: your emotions from what you've got to do right then
16:33
Speaker 1: at the scene? And where do you start, you know,
16:39
Speaker 1: dealing with child chasing, child murders, child's rapes. There's nothing
16:44
Speaker 1: worse in my twenty five years than I ever dealt
16:46
Speaker 1: with was that. And you just learned to compartmentalize these
16:51
Speaker 1: things and just relying your training. Your training kicks in
16:54
Speaker 1: at that point. You've got a job to do, you know,
16:58
Speaker 1: you want to get answers to this. You know, you
17:00
Speaker 1: want to bring somebody to justice, so that's what motivates
17:02
Speaker 1: you at this point. You know, things in the seventies,
17:05
Speaker 1: I'm sure we're a lot different than they would be
17:07
Speaker 1: today coming up on this, because when we approach these
17:10
Speaker 1: typecases where there's a body, where there's a sexual assault,
17:13
Speaker 1: we're thinking DNA right off the bat. That responding officers
17:16
Speaker 1: that are getting there, we're setting up, you know, perimeters,
17:19
Speaker 1: we're knowing that we have to protect these miniscule cells
17:23
Speaker 1: that make up the DNA. In the seventies, you know,
17:27
Speaker 1: I'm not real sure. I know DNA became a criminal
17:30
Speaker 1: thing in the eighties, But when you come to a
17:32
Speaker 1: scene like this, I mean, the first thing you're doing,
17:34
Speaker 1: when it's a child, it's usually obvious that there's been
17:36
Speaker 1: sexual assault. You start looking at the sexual registries within
17:40
Speaker 1: the area, and you start sending units to those houses,
17:43
Speaker 1: and you start, you know, you go in. You're searching
17:46
Speaker 1: for the child or you're searching for any evidence at
17:48
Speaker 1: this point, but you're hitting that sexual predator or registry
17:53
Speaker 1: pretty quick to begin, You're because that's usually going to
17:56
Speaker 1: be it's not the first time that the person's done this,
17:59
Speaker 1: it's going to be they've done this repeatedly, and so
18:02
Speaker 1: that's how you started. But again, coming up on these
18:05
Speaker 1: things in twenty twenty, nineteen seventy four are a huge difference,
18:08
Speaker 1: I would imagine, and the family sits by twiddling their thumbs,
18:12
Speaker 1: doing what they can, but ultimately giving up any hope
18:16
Speaker 1: that the killer would ever be caught. Take a listen
18:20
Speaker 1: to Chavon's dad. Yes, they had a lot of of course,
18:25
Speaker 1: they will talk to many people about her, and they
18:27
Speaker 1: had a good, good sense of who she was. And
18:30
Speaker 1: even at that young age, I think she was quite
18:34
Speaker 1: a remarkable child and many many people will you know,
18:39
Speaker 1: will say that. Her teachers, you know, say that, and
18:45
Speaker 1: she was just a wonderful person. And and precocious crime stories.
19:05
Speaker 1: With Nancy Grace, we are talking about the kidnapped, rape
19:10
Speaker 1: and murder of a five year old little girl. How
19:15
Speaker 1: did it happen? Who took her? Decades pass and the
19:19
Speaker 1: case stays cold. Back to doctor Tim Gallagher joining me,
19:24
Speaker 1: the medical examiner for the State of Florida. Doctor Gallagher,
19:28
Speaker 1: when you are searching the body of a child like this,
19:34
Speaker 1: does it cross your mind that whatever you find on
19:38
Speaker 1: her body may just sit on a shelf for the
19:42
Speaker 1: next forty years, but ultimately may end up proving the case.
19:49
Speaker 1: I mean, what goes through your mind and how do
19:51
Speaker 1: you disassociate from the fact that you're working on the
19:55
Speaker 1: body of a dead child. Well, that's always a difficult part, Nancy.
19:58
Speaker 1: And you know, we at the Medical Examiner's offices are
20:03
Speaker 1: human beings with children of our own, and sometimes it
20:06
Speaker 1: is very difficult to do these things. But you know,
20:09
Speaker 1: in our minds we need to get closure for the family,
20:14
Speaker 1: We need to solve the case. We need to help
20:16
Speaker 1: solve the case. And it's that type of internal drive
20:21
Speaker 1: that enables us to do the work that we do,
20:24
Speaker 1: you know. And getting back to the other question, you know,
20:29
Speaker 1: collecting DNA, the technology that we use to collect DNA
20:33
Speaker 1: is vastly different from forty seven years ago when this
20:36
Speaker 1: case took place. Our methods of collecting it allow the
20:41
Speaker 1: DNA to become more stable over the longer periods of time.
20:45
Speaker 1: So yes, not only do we collect samples for the case,
20:49
Speaker 1: but we do it in duplicate because we know that
20:52
Speaker 1: there is a chance that that can sit on the
20:54
Speaker 1: shelf for fifty years, maybe even a hundred years, and
20:58
Speaker 1: we have to believe in the technology that we have
21:00
Speaker 1: now that DNA would be examinable and a good sample
21:04
Speaker 1: even one hundred years from now. And now joining us
21:08
Speaker 1: is the CEO of Authoram Incorporated, the company that did
21:14
Speaker 1: the i D work with DNA on this case at
21:17
Speaker 1: authoram dot com. David, thank you for being with us.
21:21
Speaker 1: How did you get involved in Chavon's case. So we
21:26
Speaker 1: have a laboratory. We're the only folks in the United
21:29
Speaker 1: States that do this kind of advanced testing Folia House,
21:33
Speaker 1: and we have a laboratory that can work from evidence
21:36
Speaker 1: that's been either deemed them suitable or insufficient by other
21:41
Speaker 1: test methods. And so we got involved because there was
21:44
Speaker 1: evidence remaining at this crime scene. Was it was very little.
21:48
Speaker 1: It was about fifty cells worth of DNA left. And
21:53
Speaker 1: hold on, hold on, You've got me drinking from the
21:55
Speaker 1: fire hygien. I've got a j D. That's true. But
22:00
Speaker 1: I'm not a chemist or a biologist or a scientist.
22:04
Speaker 1: So I'm trying to digest what you're saying. You said
22:06
Speaker 1: you had fifty cells. Now I do know this. I
22:12
Speaker 1: just help the twins get through their nuclear science Merit Badge.
22:16
Speaker 1: I learned a lot about atoms and protons and neutrons
22:19
Speaker 1: and particles. What do you mean by a cell? When
22:24
Speaker 1: you have fifty cells? How big is that? Do I
22:28
Speaker 1: need to look under a microscope to see it? Yeah,
22:30
Speaker 1: this is a super tiny quantity um to give you,
22:33
Speaker 1: to give you a perspective, you know, if you if
22:37
Speaker 1: you do like a medical test, a medical test or
22:41
Speaker 1: a maybe an ancestry test with a consumer company. Um.
22:45
Speaker 1: You know, in science quantities, you'll be collecting between seven
22:50
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty to like a thousand nanograms, that's what
22:53
Speaker 1: they call it. We're talking about quantities that are like,
22:56
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere between a half a nanogram to like
22:59
Speaker 1: a quarter of a nanagram. So these are these are
23:02
Speaker 1: minute quantity. I don't know what a nanagram is. Does
23:04
Speaker 1: it fit in a thimble? It's like a it's like
23:06
Speaker 1: a yeah, it's a super tiny amount of DNA And
23:09
Speaker 1: so okay, no offense, David Mettleman, because you're the scientist.
23:14
Speaker 1: I'm just a trial lawyer. But super tiny does not
23:18
Speaker 1: sound like a scientific amount to me. You got you
23:21
Speaker 1: got dummy down man? Uh fifty grams? What what is that?
23:26
Speaker 1: Does it fit in a teaspoon? Does sit on the
23:29
Speaker 1: top of a needle. What is that? I mean, like
23:32
Speaker 1: a single cell would be a so tiny you would
23:36
Speaker 1: need a high powered scope to be able to see it.
23:38
Speaker 1: And it's got now I'm getting it. We're getting down
23:42
Speaker 1: to on the top of a pen thing. Okay, so
23:45
Speaker 1: fifty cells. I can't even see that with a naked eye. Yeah.
23:49
Speaker 1: And in fact, not only can you not see it,
23:51
Speaker 1: the most forensic methods will not be able to access
23:54
Speaker 1: or see that that amount of DNA either. And then
23:57
Speaker 1: on top of it, on top of it being a
23:59
Speaker 1: small amount of DNA, it's also old. It's from nineteen
24:02
Speaker 1: seventy four, so it's degraded. When DNA gets old, it
24:05
Speaker 1: begins to break into little anybat pieces, and that makes
24:08
Speaker 1: it also hard to analyze. So you have DNA that
24:11
Speaker 1: is a small amount, but also in any baty pieces,
24:14
Speaker 1: and it has probably been you know, it has been
24:17
Speaker 1: stored in the best thing they could store if it's
24:19
Speaker 1: been sitting around since nineteen seventy four. James shell Nutt
24:22
Speaker 1: twenty seven years Metro major case. Now lawyer is actually
24:26
Speaker 1: starting to make my head hurt, physically hurt, because I
24:29
Speaker 1: feel like I'm back in the courtroom with a there's
24:33
Speaker 1: no such thing as bad DNA. We're lucky to have DNA.
24:37
Speaker 1: But when I hear him saying this, it just seems
24:40
Speaker 1: almost insurmountable. And that's all we have in this case. Yeah,
24:45
Speaker 1: there's not a lot to go on. And so so
24:48
Speaker 1: that's that's what we specialize in cases that are are intractable.
24:53
Speaker 1: They've they've you know, and there's a lot of other
24:55
Speaker 1: cases like this. There are cases where there's evidence there's DNA,
24:59
Speaker 1: and like said, no DNA is bad. It's great to
25:01
Speaker 1: have DNA, but sometimes there's not enough DNA or DNA
25:05
Speaker 1: is not suitable for one reason or another, and the
25:08
Speaker 1: case can't move forward. And just in the last couple
25:11
Speaker 1: of years, its narology to you had fifty five zero
25:16
Speaker 1: cells YEA naked to the invisible eye. When you look
25:20
Speaker 1: through a microscope, can you tell is it skin? Is
25:23
Speaker 1: it hair? Is it touch DNA? Is it sperm? Can
25:27
Speaker 1: you tell that by looking through the microscope? Sure? Sure
25:30
Speaker 1: you can. You can tell um sometimes what kind of
25:33
Speaker 1: cell type it is, and uh and so and not.
25:36
Speaker 1: In fact, how how they do some of these examinations
25:39
Speaker 1: to look if a sexual assault has occurred. They're looking
25:42
Speaker 1: for something that looks like sperm. What was this? Was it? Blood?
25:46
Speaker 1: Was it? What was it? This was? This was semen
25:49
Speaker 1: from a from a sexual assault kit. Okay, so this
25:51
Speaker 1: is semen taken from inside or the outside of this
25:55
Speaker 1: five year old girl's body. Okay? What kind of tests?
26:00
Speaker 1: David Middleman joining me, the CEO of Authoram, and praise
26:04
Speaker 1: God you exist. I mean, I don't know if you
26:07
Speaker 1: believe in God. Maybe you're strict chemist, and maybe it
26:09
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to you. But without Authoram and people
26:14
Speaker 1: like you, and people like cheryla point the genetic genealogist,
26:18
Speaker 1: these cases would never ever be solved. So when you
26:22
Speaker 1: look through the microscope you see this, you know it's sperm,
26:26
Speaker 1: you know it's degraded. You've only got fifty sales. What
26:29
Speaker 1: do you do then? What kind of test did you
26:31
Speaker 1: run on it? So we have a way of In
26:34
Speaker 1: a traditional forensic test, you're looking at you know, these
26:38
Speaker 1: markers they make up what people call the codas test,
26:41
Speaker 1: and it's twenty markers, twenty spots in your DNA. What
26:44
Speaker 1: we're doing is very different. We're looking at tens of thousands,
26:47
Speaker 1: two hundreds of thousands of markers in the DNA, and
26:50
Speaker 1: so we collected not only that we're working with these
26:52
Speaker 1: challenging kind of sources of the DNA, we're also collecting
26:56
Speaker 1: tremendous amounts of information. And that information that we collect
27:00
Speaker 1: is the information that Shara and other folks can use
27:03
Speaker 1: to then do relationship testing and comparisons that allow you
27:07
Speaker 1: to help kind of build out that genetic genealogy part.
27:10
Speaker 1: David Middleman, when I ask you what test you ran,
27:13
Speaker 1: I didn't really understand your answer. You said you were
27:16
Speaker 1: looking at thousands of data points? Is there a name
27:21
Speaker 1: to the test or? And also how accurate is that tests? Sure?
27:26
Speaker 1: Those are good questions. So the test that we run
27:28
Speaker 1: is called forensic grade genome sequencing. It's a forensic Oh
27:32
Speaker 1: well wait wait David, it's it's just like a game.
27:35
Speaker 1: Do you you know? I don't know what you just said? Now,
27:39
Speaker 1: slow down? Taught, regular people taught? What did you just say?
27:43
Speaker 1: It's a what test? It's a forensic grade genome sequencing.
27:47
Speaker 1: So all the DNA in yoursell is your genome. And
27:50
Speaker 1: we use a technique called sequencing to access information about
27:54
Speaker 1: lots of markers at once, tens of thousands to hundreds
27:57
Speaker 1: of thousands and it designs specifically for forensics. It's the
28:01
Speaker 1: first of this kind test that is only for forensic DNA,
28:04
Speaker 1: which allows us, like I said, to access DNA that
28:07
Speaker 1: otherwise would be not usable. And so the whole name
28:11
Speaker 1: is forensic grade genome sequencing. And we collect, as I said,
28:15
Speaker 1: tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of markers and
28:18
Speaker 1: so with that much information you can make very very
28:21
Speaker 1: very accurate and precise measurements of relationship. The other thing
28:25
Speaker 1: that I'll note is that the work that we do
28:27
Speaker 1: at OFFERM is uh it's investigational, and so you'll appreciate this, uh,
28:32
Speaker 1: you know, with the with the with the lawyer and
28:34
Speaker 1: trial background. We start with a CODAS test, right, that's
28:38
Speaker 1: you know, a profile has been uploaded the CODAS it
28:41
Speaker 1: doesn't match an own identity. Then we do our test
28:45
Speaker 1: which complements that and it generates the data unique to
28:47
Speaker 1: find somebody. And then at the end you do another
28:50
Speaker 1: CODAS style test to confirm that the work that we
28:53
Speaker 1: did was correct and we've we've produced the right identity.
28:57
Speaker 1: And so so it's nice about it is CODAS is
29:00
Speaker 1: exceptional at being an accredited involve vetted testing courts to
29:04
Speaker 1: confirm identity. It's just that COTUS isn't always good at
29:07
Speaker 1: finding people, and so what we do is we find
29:10
Speaker 1: people and then we work with folks to use the
29:12
Speaker 1: conventional forensic testing to confirm and so that makes it
29:16
Speaker 1: very accurate but also very powerful. This is neither here
29:19
Speaker 1: nor there, But I've just got to know this, David Middleman,
29:23
Speaker 1: how did you end up and this line of business?
29:26
Speaker 1: What led you there? Well, I've been doing DNA testing
29:30
Speaker 1: my whole working life. I'm a one trick pony, it's
29:33
Speaker 1: all I've ever done DNA testing. And I started in
29:36
Speaker 1: the Human Genome Project in the nineties. This was the
29:39
Speaker 1: original project to map out all the DNA all the
29:43
Speaker 1: DNA letters of a human being. And so this was
29:46
Speaker 1: in the nineties and then I fell in love with
29:49
Speaker 1: DNA and mostly biomedical research in medicine. But I've done
29:53
Speaker 1: that for a couple of decades and there's actually twenty
29:56
Speaker 1: of us. I have to mention it's not just me,
29:58
Speaker 1: it's a whole team of us that have worked in
30:00
Speaker 1: biomedicine and in medical testing, and we've helped bring a
30:03
Speaker 1: lot of this technology to that field, to medicine, and
30:07
Speaker 1: we came to this realization a few years ago that
30:11
Speaker 1: you can go to any street corner and get a
30:13
Speaker 1: medical test now for whatever you think might ail you.
30:16
Speaker 1: But what street corner can you go to to solve
30:18
Speaker 1: a cold case? And so we made a decision to
30:20
Speaker 1: drop what we were doing in the biomedical research in
30:23
Speaker 1: clinical space. There's lots of great people there and bring
30:27
Speaker 1: this very powerful being a testing technology to an area
30:31
Speaker 1: that's underserved but has lots of cold cases. There's there's
30:35
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of cases that would could possibly benefit
30:38
Speaker 1: from this approach, and so so we all jumped on
30:40
Speaker 1: and we started the company off firm. Okay, wait a minute, David,
30:45
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm trying to figure out when you were
30:47
Speaker 1: a little boy, did you think up in your treehouse, Wow,
30:51
Speaker 1: I'm going to become an expert and for is it great?
30:53
Speaker 1: Genome secrecy. I didn't anticipate that I would be talking
30:58
Speaker 1: to lawyers and working with it's a law enforcement But
31:01
Speaker 1: when I was a little boy, I was really curious
31:03
Speaker 1: what DNA was and what it means and how it
31:06
Speaker 1: makes us who we are. And so I've been lifelong
31:09
Speaker 1: fascinated with DNA and genetics. Um. But but I've just
31:12
Speaker 1: followed that, you know, wherever it goes. And I've always
31:16
Speaker 1: looked for a way to do good for the world,
31:17
Speaker 1: and it seemed like a good opportunity to. Like I said,
31:21
Speaker 1: I'm a one trick so I have to look for
31:23
Speaker 1: where to be applied. I don't think that I would
31:25
Speaker 1: refer to you as a one trick pony. David Mitteleman
31:29
Speaker 1: CEO of U thor M O T h R A
31:32
Speaker 1: M Inc. They did the DNA I d in this case,
31:36
Speaker 1: Um God bless you. Yeah, it's it's a huge team project.
31:40
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a it's a lot of folks
31:42
Speaker 1: that were involved. But we're very excited to be um
31:45
Speaker 1: one of those team players to help bring this case
31:48
Speaker 1: to a quivment. David, how long did it take for
31:50
Speaker 1: you to come up with the answers to who it is?
31:52
Speaker 1: Who the part was? So, so there's two parts. There's
31:56
Speaker 1: two parts to this project, right. There's you have to
31:58
Speaker 1: generate that set of information, the markers, and that was
32:02
Speaker 1: a twelve that's a twelve week process. But then there's
32:04
Speaker 1: the genealogy component. And in this case, we actually worked
32:08
Speaker 1: with the FBI. This is a Steve Kramer and Steve
32:11
Speaker 1: Bush at the FBI, they have a genealogy division and
32:14
Speaker 1: they did the research on this case. And so sometimes
32:18
Speaker 1: we get contracted to build a profile and do the
32:21
Speaker 1: identifying work. Sometimes we're just contracted to build the profile,
32:24
Speaker 1: and this time we did the profile. This was in
32:27
Speaker 1: a partnership with the with the Bureau Time Stories with
32:44
Speaker 1: Nancy Grace. We are talking to a brilliant scientists who,
32:49
Speaker 1: along with police, crime scene techs investigators, somehow managed to
32:55
Speaker 1: put this forty plus year old case back together again.
32:58
Speaker 1: David Middleman, but now I'm wanting to hear from Chief
33:03
Speaker 1: Jason White with a Missola p D. We are here
33:05
Speaker 1: today to discuss the closure of a forty six year
33:08
Speaker 1: old case. On February fifth, nineteen seventy four, five year
33:13
Speaker 1: old Chavan McGinnis was abducted within a few blocks of
33:16
Speaker 1: her Northside neighborhood home. Tragically, two days later, she was
33:20
Speaker 1: found deceased near the Tura exit off of Interstate ninety.
33:25
Speaker 1: Despite all of the exhaustive hours by detectives over the
33:28
Speaker 1: past four decades, the case has remained unsolved and open.
33:33
Speaker 1: In twenty and nineteen, the Missouri Police Department reached out
33:37
Speaker 1: to the newly formed of Missoula County Sheriff's Office Cold
33:40
Speaker 1: Case Squad for assistance. Through modern DNA technology and assistance
33:46
Speaker 1: from state and federal law enforcement partners, the Cold Case
33:50
Speaker 1: Squad was able to identify a suspect. The suspect has
33:56
Speaker 1: been identified as Richard William Davis. Suspect Davis was born
34:02
Speaker 1: on November seventh, nineteen forty one, and most recently resided
34:06
Speaker 1: in Cabot, Arkansas. What more do we know? Take a
34:09
Speaker 1: listen to Michael Aaron. The Missoula County Sheriff's Office says
34:12
Speaker 1: DNA evidence from the scene of the killing matches that
34:14
Speaker 1: of Richard William Davis. According to the FBI, Davis moved
34:18
Speaker 1: to North Little Rock in the late nineteen seventies, then
34:21
Speaker 1: lived in Cabot from the late nineteen eighties until his
34:23
Speaker 1: death in twenty twelve. It was through cooperation with the
34:27
Speaker 1: suspects family that we were able to get information that
34:30
Speaker 1: conclusively linked suspect Davis to Chavon's murder. That's because DNA
34:37
Speaker 1: evidence from the crime scene, reanalyzed in twenty nineteen, partially
34:41
Speaker 1: matched the DNA of a family member of Davis who
34:44
Speaker 1: had sent a DNA sample into a consumer database. Wow,
34:48
Speaker 1: and here from THHV eleven. Davis had no known ties
34:52
Speaker 1: to Missoula, and police say he was just passing through
34:55
Speaker 1: when McGuinness disappeared. And we are just completely overwhelmed by science,
35:00
Speaker 1: the dedication, the hard work that has gone into everything
35:03
Speaker 1: that you have done. Una McGinnis never met her half sister,
35:07
Speaker 1: but that doesn't change the pain. Certainly affected our family
35:11
Speaker 1: for many decades, and she and her family have felt
35:14
Speaker 1: fort or six years is a very long space of
35:16
Speaker 1: time to be in a state of unending grief and
35:21
Speaker 1: a mean sorrow. For why, it's beautiful and amazing, Sean.
35:32
Speaker 1: That pain now I met with a sense of peace
35:34
Speaker 1: and gratitude for those who brought them a long awaited answer.
35:37
Speaker 1: We are just completely overwhelmed by the science, the dedication,
35:42
Speaker 1: the hard work that has gone into everything that you
35:44
Speaker 1: have done. He described it as unending grief and sorrow.
35:49
Speaker 1: Out to Ray Kaputo, Lee News anchor WDBO, what do
35:53
Speaker 1: we know about this guy? It doesn't really paint the
35:56
Speaker 1: picture of a child rapist or a murderer. Says he
35:59
Speaker 1: was a loving has been dead and grandfather. He was married,
36:02
Speaker 1: he had four daughters of his own. He was a
36:04
Speaker 1: born again Christian, and also some of his jobs are
36:08
Speaker 1: kind of alarming given what he's accused to do. When
36:11
Speaker 1: he was a missionary in the sixties, he worked at
36:13
Speaker 1: an Arkansas school for the deaf in the blind, and
36:16
Speaker 1: he even drove a school bus in the seventies in Alaska.
36:19
Speaker 1: So Williams has been around kids many, many parts of
36:22
Speaker 1: his life. Yeah, almost everything you're saying, right, ka Uto,
36:26
Speaker 1: he's seeking out jobs with children, just like Chavonne. Listen
36:32
Speaker 1: to Una McGinnis. He left behind a widow, and the
36:37
Speaker 1: detective said that it's extremely rare for this type of
36:42
Speaker 1: criminal to have made because that's just not normally the
36:45
Speaker 1: case when they're looking at this type of criminal behavior.
36:50
Speaker 1: He moved around a lot. He would move suddenly. He
36:56
Speaker 1: would tell his wife, you know, I've got a job
36:58
Speaker 1: wind up in Florida. Where moving right now. We're leaving
37:01
Speaker 1: today and pack everything up, booth kids, And then they
37:05
Speaker 1: get to Florida and there would not, in fact be
37:08
Speaker 1: the job, and it would kind of have been a
37:10
Speaker 1: lie that he told the family to relocate quickly. So
37:15
Speaker 1: currently the Missoula Police Department and the FBI are reaching
37:22
Speaker 1: out to the many places where he lived and suddenly
37:24
Speaker 1: moved his family too, to let them know that if
37:28
Speaker 1: they have cold cases, that this DNA profile is now available.
37:33
Speaker 1: So now police are trying to compare his DNA profile
37:37
Speaker 1: to all the many places he lives. In my mind,
37:40
Speaker 1: he fits the profile perfectly. What about it, James Shelnutt, Yeah,
37:44
Speaker 1: I mean where you begin with this guy? I was
37:46
Speaker 1: thinking the exact same thing, and there's so many places
37:49
Speaker 1: to start, but I'll make it brief. You know, I'm
37:53
Speaker 1: gonna start on the opposite end. A born again Christian
37:55
Speaker 1: goes back and admits what he's done wrong, and I
37:58
Speaker 1: will tell you it doesn't sound like this guy admitted anything.
38:01
Speaker 1: He left these paris in at bar for forty six years.
38:03
Speaker 1: I also am under the belief and have experienced that
38:07
Speaker 1: people who commit these crimes against children, these predators, you
38:11
Speaker 1: don't just find one victim. And I would love to
38:14
Speaker 1: see the police agencies involved in this investigation go back
38:18
Speaker 1: and contact other police agencies where this guy has lived
38:22
Speaker 1: at and say, hey, if you've got anything unsolved or
38:25
Speaker 1: anything in DNA that you got laying around that you
38:28
Speaker 1: think matches this guy during this timeframe, he lived here.
38:31
Speaker 1: You need to run it on this database. I would
38:34
Speaker 1: not be surprised if more than one victim turned up.
38:38
Speaker 1: Is justice delayed? Justice denied? Many parties in this case
38:45
Speaker 1: have now passed on, passed on before the case was
38:49
Speaker 1: ever solved. I think no, there is still justice, justice
38:56
Speaker 1: for Chavon. Nancy Grace crime story is signing off, goodbye
39:01
Speaker 1: for it