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Beyond the Thin Walls: The Carmen Van Huss Case · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So picture this. The date is March twenty three, nineteen
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: ninety three. It's right around one point zero zero am
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: in Indianapolis, Indiana, and I want you to just imagine
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the Turtle Creek Apartments. It's this massive, sprawling, gated community,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: like two hundred and sixty two units, and it's one
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: of those complexes where the walls are just practically paper thin,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: you know, the type.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, where you can hear your neighbor's TV through
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: the drywall exactly.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: You hear their heavy footsteps on the ceiling, or even
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: like their quiet conversations if they're close to the events. Well,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: in this particular night, cutting right through that quiet darkness,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: these horrific screams just erupt from apartment three zero two.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: A god.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a nineteen year old girl named Carmen van
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Huss and she's screaming, get off me, she's crying, she
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: is frantically banging against the wall, just physically fighting for
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: her life.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: And I mean it's a terrifying scene to just drop
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: you into. But what makes it truly chilling is the duration.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Because this isn't a brief you know, ten seconds struggle. Yeah,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: this absolute agony, These unmistakeable cries of terror. They go
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: on for thirty grueling minutes. Thirty minutes, yeah, and then
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: the silence returns, and the only sound left is the
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: rhythm of hurried footsteps echoing down the hall, just disappearing
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: into the cold night.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: And the neighbors, I mean, the people sleeping literally inches
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: away on the other side of that drywall. Not a
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: single person gets out of bed to knock on her door. Wow.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Not one person picks up a phone to call nine
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: one one. The only action taken by anyone in that
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: entire building is a single phone call made to apartment management,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: you know, just to file a noise complaint.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Which really forces us to confront the psychology of a
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: crowded space like It's a textbook example of the bystander effect,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: so specifically the diffusion of responsibility, because when you are
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: one of two hundred and sixty two units, your brain
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: rationalizes the inaction. You tell yourself you know someone else
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: will surely call the police. I don't need to get involved, right.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: But when everyone assumes someone else.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Is handling it, nobody handles it exactly, And that's silence
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: from the community. Didn't just allow a killer to escape.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: It meant the gruesome reality of what actually happened wouldn't
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: be discovered until the very next day.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Well, welcome to this deep dive using the massive stack
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: of case files you've shared with us. I mean the
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: police reports, the crime scene photos, the court transcripts. Our
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: mission today is to solve a thirty one year cold case,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: right alongside the investigators.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: It's quite a journey, it really is.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: We are tracing a saga marked by a completely botched
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: initial investigation, some mind numbing bureaucratic ego and unlikely hero cop,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: and a scientific breakthrough that literally changed how we look
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: at DNA.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: And it's a timeline that demands we question the assumptions
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: we make every single day about the people we live
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: next to, about the justice system, and how easily human
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: bias can just derail the search for the truth.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's silence from the neighbors. It led directly
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: to the grim morning of March twenty fourth. Carmen's friend
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Missy realizes Carmen hasn't shown up for her shift at Pizza.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Hut right, which is unusual for her, very.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: So Missy calls Carmen's father, James, and he immediately heads
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: over to the Turtle Creek apartments to check on her.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: But when James arrives at Apartment three zero two A,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: the first thing greeting him is a handwritten note tacked
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: to the door from apartment management.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: And it's a scolding note.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you can believe it, Management.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Is officially reprimanding his daughter for being too loud the
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: night before, literally demanding she'd be more considerate of her neighbors.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Just sickening to think about. So James opens the door,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: which is completely unlocked by the way, and he steps
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: into a totally ransacked studio. Apartment tables are knocked over
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: close or thrown everywhere, and Carmen is lying dead on
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: the floor. God, the level of brutality here is it's
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: difficult to even process. She suffered sixty stab wounds head face,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: body genitalia. The violence was so extreme that the wounds
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: to her head had actually penetrated her skull, which is well.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: When criminal profilers look at sixty stab worns, they see overkill, right,
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: that kind of physical desertion, it requires immense sustained rage. Now,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: the detectives processing the scene, they noted the wounds were
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: consistent with something small and pointed like maybe a pocket
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: knife or a.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Screwdriver, but they never found it.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: No, the weapon was entirely gone. Blood was smeared in
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: the kitchen, splattered on the walls, yet crucially, there was
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: absolutely no sign of forced entry.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. To understand why the police investigation
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: when to the direction it did, we really have to
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: look closely at who Carmen was. She was nineteen, and
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: she was basically living in two completely different worlds. Yeah,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: it's a complex dynamic, right, like an actor trying on
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: different masks. Because when she was three, her biological parents
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: sent her to live with her aunt and uncle, the Shots,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: because they were really struggling financially, and.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: The Shots were a large, strict, very loving Catholic family.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: They lived a very by the book lifestyle, but they
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: eventually moved to Indiana so Carmen could maintain a relationship
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: with her biological dad, James.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Right and Jane's lived on the exact opposite end of
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: the spectrum. He had substance use issues and lived a
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: much more transient edgy lifestyle.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: The Carmon just idolized him.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: She did. She wanted his approval just as much as
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: she wanted her strict adoptive family's approval, so she straddled
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: these two contrasting environments. Round her dad, she'd you know, smoke, drink,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: hang out with the punk, rock and skater crowds. But
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: around the shots she really tried to fit the mold
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: of the dutiful.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Catholic daughter and the sad part is. At the time
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: of her death, she was actually managing to pull all
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: these chaotic threads together.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she really was getting her life together.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: She was holding down her job at Pizza Hut, maintaining
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: her first apartment. She was in a steady relationship, and
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: she was taking classes at the Hairn School of Art
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: and Design.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: But of course, when the police walked into that apartment,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: they didn't see the aspiring.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Art student, did they No, they did not. They saw
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: the edgy friends, the skaters, the recreational drug use. They
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: just saw the lifestyle. Yeah, it's a cognitive bias we
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: see all too often in early forensics. Investigators looked at
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: her fragmented lifestyle and instantly cast judgment. They categorized her
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: whole social circle as high risk. Right, And because there
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: was no forced entry, and because of the sheer rage
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: of the overkill. They formed this rigid theory. They decided
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Carmen was killed by an intimate partner from her edgy
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: social circle, and.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: They tried to fit the evidence to their theory rather
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: than letting the evidence build the theory, which is I mean,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: think about how often we all do that in our
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: daily lives. We see who someone hangs out with or
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: how they dress, and we just make a snap judgment
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: about their entire character.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: You all do it.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: But the difference is when homicide detectives do it. A
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: killer walks free because the police were so laser focused
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: on her lifestyle. They had to rebuild her final evening
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: March twenty second, literally minute by minute, to find this
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: hypothetical intimate killer.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: So they track her movements. She spent that evening visiting
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: her grandmother in the hospital with her dad. She drops
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: her dad off around nine thirty pm. He actually asks
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: her to stay the night, but she tells him she
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: has to go home to wash her pizza hut uniform
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: for work the next day, and.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: The drive takes about thirty minutes. We know she makes
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: it home because at nine four nine pm, she has
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: a phone call with her boyfriend Rob, who is actually
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: living out of state in Arizona at the time. During
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: that call, she casually mentions to Rob that she ran
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: into an old friend that night, but she couldn't remember
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: his name. Now, a massive gap in the timeline emerges
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: right here. She told her dad she needed to wash
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: her uniform, but her studio apartment didn't have a washer
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: and dryer.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: She had to use the communal laundry room down the hall.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: And if we look at the timeline, her call with
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Rob lasted thirty two minutes, ending around ten point two pm,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: it is highly probable she headed down to that laundry
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: room right after hanging up. And yet there is no
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: record in the files of police ever thoroughly checking that
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: laundry room or even verifying if her uniform was actually
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: in the wash.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Which is wild. How does the detective just ignore the
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: laundry room when it's the stated reason she went home?
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Institutional tunnel vision, I mean they were already looking for
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: a punk rock boyfriend or a drug associate. They weren't
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: looking for a crime of opportunity in a communal space.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: And that blind spot meant they completely ignored what happened next.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: By eleven point zero pm, Several neighbors report hearing Carmen
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: walking up the stairs laughing and talking casually with.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Man, and they go inside her apartment. Detectors later find
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: fast food cups maybe from Subway, and beer bottles on
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: her table. This means the man she was laughing with
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: at eleven PM was almost certainly the same man who
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: brutally attacked her two hours later at one am.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: But the shared meal just reinforced the police's theory of
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: an intimate partner. So they launched this massive, wild goose chase,
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: pulling in literally everyone she knew.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they start with the boyfriend Rob, but call logs
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: and witnesses prove his rock solid alibi. He was definitely
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: in Arizona, yep.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: So then they pivot to an ex boyfriend, Peter, and
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: this part it reads like a bizarre movie plot. Peter
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: had pre stolen Carmen's car. When she finally got it back,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: she found a gift bag inside with Beastie Boys concert
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: tickets that Peter had bought for another girl. So as revenge,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Carmen took the tickets and went to the concert herself.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: It sounds incredibly petty, but Peter was furious. He had
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: actually been going around town openly threatening to get revenge
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: on Carmen. So the police hear this and think we
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: got him a brutal sixty stab worn murder over Beastie
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Boys tickets.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: But they verify his whereabouts and Peter has a flawless
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: alibi proving he was in San Francisco at the time
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: of the murder.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I just can't believe. They cast the nets so wide
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: that they even brought in her female friend, Missy. And
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: the only reason they interrogated Missy was because she accidentally
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: left a pack of cigarettes in Carmen's car with the
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: word death scrawled on it.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: I know Missy had to sit in an interrogation room
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: and explain that she wrote death on the pack as
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: a self reminder to quit smoking because her boyfriend hated
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: the habit.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Right, what's fascinating here is how investigators got tunnel vision.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: It's a dark coincidence, but it perfectly illustrates how unfocused
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: the police were. By assuming the killer must be a
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: close intimate partner, they completely ignored the physical clues proximity.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Right, and with all her known associates officially clear that
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: the leads just evaporate, the case goes completely cold for
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: twenty years, two decades, two decades of Carmen's family calling
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: the police precinct every single year, only to be given
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: the run around. You know, the file is on my desk,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: but we have nothing new. It really took a total
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: outsider stepping in to finally shake up the system. Enter
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Sergeant Bill Carter in twenty thirteen.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: And Bill Carter is a crucial piece of this puzzle.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: He was working in nuisance abatement for the Indianapolis Metropolitan
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: Police Department. His daily job was investigating community.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Disturbances like noise complaints.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly, things like underage drinking parties or animal cruelty complaints.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: He had absolutely zero homicide training, no cold case experience whatsoever.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: So how does a guy writing tickets for loud parties
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: end up with the twenty year old murder file.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Well, another officer who actually went to high school with
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Carmen practically begged Carter to look into the case. Carter
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: had built a reputation in the department as a guy
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: with a brilliant analytical mind who was willing to help
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: out behind the scenes. He had a deep sense of empathy,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: so on his own time. Carter dives in. He digitizes
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: this massive, chaotic paper file, and he realizes that, despite
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: it being twenty thirteen, the physical DNA evidence from the
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: crime scene had never been fully utilized.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: So Carter pushes the department for testing on a bloody
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: white paper bag found in Carmen's kitchen trash can and
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: on seaman swabs collected during the autopsy.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: And it works.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: It does. The lab is actually able to develop a
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: partial mail profile and a full profile from the blood,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: and over the next year, Carter uses this profile to
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: systematically eliminate over forty men, including all those former suspects.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: Which is a massive step forward. But then in twenty
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: fifteen they hit a wall. The city pays sixteen hundred
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: dollars for further more advance DNA testing. The results come
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: back and the lab tells Carter, we have a problem.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: The killer is a European female.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: A European female. I mean, how does a lab make
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: a mistake that massive?
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: It comes down to how mixed DNA samples were handled
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: at the time. The sample contained both the killers DNA
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: and Carmen's DNA. It's a lot like trying to clean
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: up a messy audio recording where two people are talking
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: at once. You want the software to isolate the background whisper,
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: but instead it accidentally enhances the main speaker. The lab's
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: extraction process accidentally isolated Carmen's own DNA instead of the killers.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: A human error, but an incredibly costly.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: One, right, And when Carter asks the department to pay
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: for a new test to fix the error, the city
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: flat out refuses. They tell him they will not authorize
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the funds. End of story, unbelievable. But Carter doesn't accept that.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: He decides to crowdfund the test himself. He sets up
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: a GoFundMe page, explains the situation to the public, and
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: in just seven hours, the community ravens and raises over
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: twelve hundred dollars about a thousand bucks for the test.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: And logically, you would think the police department would be thrilled.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: You'd think you have.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: An officer showing incredible initiative, finding private funding without using
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: a dime of taxpair dollars, all to catch a brutal murderer.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting, because I still get
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: genuinely angry reading what happened next, IMPD forces Carter to
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: return every single dime of the GoFundMe money to the donors.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Then they slap them with a ten day suspension without pay. Wow.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: They remove him from the case entirely and explicitly tell
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: him to stay in his lane and let the cold
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: case squad do their job. I mean, it's like punishing
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: a volunteer firefighter for bringing his own water to a
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: burning house just because he wasn't wearing the right uniform.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Why prioritize fragile egos over catching a murderer?
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: It exposes the dark underbelly of institutional bureaucracy in large organizations,
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Protecting turf and hierarchy often becomes more important than actually
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: achieving the mission. The department's leadership felt publicly embarrassed that
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: a nuisance abatement officer had to beg for money online
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: to do their job. To them, Carter broke the chain
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: of command. They claimed it was about standard operating procedures,
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: but it was really about bruised egos. Yeah, Carter, a
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: man who had only taken four hours of sick leave
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: in his entire career, was punished for caring too much.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: It's just infuriating, thankfully, though, Carmen's family refuses to take
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: this lying down. They launch a public petition, gathering over
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: five hundred signatures demanding Carter b reinstated on the case.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Good for them, yeah, and the public pressure actually forces
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: the department to quietly walk back the removal. They keep
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Carter in the game, but sort of from the sidelines.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: His hands are tied financially until the technology finally catches
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: up to his dedication.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: And that technological leap finally arrives. In twenty eighteen, a
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: company called Parabond Nanolabs performs a genetic snapshot on the
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: killer's DNA. This is a process that predicts physical traits
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: from genetic material, and it reveals that the suspect is
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: a black.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Mail, which immediately narrows the massive suspect pool exactly.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: Then in twenty twenty, a nonprofit organization calls Season of
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Justice steps in and provides a grant.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: They fund fifteen hours of intense genetic genealogy research, and
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: by June of twenty twenty three, Carter, who has now
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: actually been promoted to captain, and an IMPD analyst named
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Mira Patel get a hit, a huge hit. A great
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: niece once removed had uploaded her DNA to twenty three
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: and me. Now I understand the basic concept, but how
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: exactly this a great niece is spit in a plastic
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: tube led police to a killer from thirty years ago.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: It's essentially a massive game of biological connect the dots.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: When you submit your DNA to a site like twenty
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: three NA, the system measures shared segments of DNA called
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: centi morgans. Okay, the more centi morgans you share with
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: someone that closer the relative. Investigators take the killer's DNA
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: from the crime scene and upload it to a public database.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: They get a distant match. In this case that great
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: niece once removed, so.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: They have a distant relative, but they don't know who
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: the killer is.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: From there, genealogists build the family tree backward. They use
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: public records, census data, obituaries to trace that great niece's
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: family line all the way back to her great grandparents.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Once they find those common ancestors, they reverse direction. They
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: build the tree forward, mapping out every single male descendant
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: of those great grandparents. They cross reference the list of
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: men against the parabond snapshot, looking for black males, and
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: then look for anyone who is living in Indianapolis in
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: It just strips away all the human bias, all the
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: assumptions about Carmen's edgy lifestyle or her complex family dynamics.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: It just looks at the math.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, this shows
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: the sheer power of genetic genealogy to strip away human
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: bias and assumptions, leading straight to the stark, irrefutable truth
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: of physical proximity.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Because that mathematical truth points directly to a man named
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Danas Shepherd. And the jaw dropping twist here is that
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety three, Danas Shepherd was a twenty year
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: old kid who lived in the exact same apartment complex
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: as Carmen. In fact, his unit was a mere thirty
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: second walk from hers.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: They're connected by that very same communal laundry room. Suddenly,
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: the missing pieces of that two hour window snack into place.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: The physical proximity is undeniable. It is highly probable they
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: bumped into each other in that laundry room around ten
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: twenty pm. He was young, he lived in her building.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: She likely felt he was safe. She invites him up,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: They have a beer, and then the unthinkable happens.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Fast forward to February fifteenth, twenty twenty four. Police track
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Dani Shepherd down. He's no longer a twenty year old kid.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: He's working as a university custodian in Missouri. He has
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: a mostly nonviolent record, save for a nineteen ninety six
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: battery charge. Police serve him a warrant to swab as DNA.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: The official records actually note that as he reads the warrant,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: he is visibly shaking.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Because he knew instantly why they were there. I mean,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: for thirty one years, he had lived a completely normal life.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: He got married, had kids, became a grandfather, all while
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: Carmen's family suffered in agonizing limbo. Six months after they
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: take that swab, the lab confirms the match the DNA
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: is undeniably his. He is arrested, in charge with murder
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: and rape.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: It brings us to the present day, twenty twenty six,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: after a thirty one year nightmare. You expect this grand
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: climax in a courtroom, right, a dramatic trial where the
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: truth is finally laid bare for the family. But on
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: January twenty three, twenty twenty six, just days before the
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: jury selection is set to begin, Dana Shepherd takes a
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: plea deal.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: He pleads guilty to one count of murder and receives
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: a forty five year sentence, but as part of the deal,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: the rape and second murder charges are dropped. It is
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: an incredibly canticlimactic end to a three decade fight for justice.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for Carmen's family. It's
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: an agonizing reality. Because Dana took a plea, he never
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: has to take the stand, he never has to look
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: the family in the eye, and he never has to
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: explain his actions. They will never truly know what happened
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: during those final two hours between the laughter and the
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: hallway and the screams in the dark.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: Justice is served in the eyes of the law, but
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: the closure is terribly incomplete. Out of this immense pain,
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: there is a triumphant silver lining that has actually changed
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: a landscape of justice in Indiana forever.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Yet. In March twenty twenty six, the Governor signed Carmen's Law,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: which was championed relentlessly by her sister, Pam. This law
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: creates a formal legal process for families to privately fund
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: advanced DNA testing for cold cases that are older than
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: five years.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: It ensures that no other family and no other dedicated
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: officer like Bill Carter, will ever have to fight the
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: system just to pay for a DNA test. It removes
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: the very bureaucratic roadblocks that held Carmon's case hostage for years.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: We started this deep dive in a dark, thin wall
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: department in nineteen ninety three, listening to a young woman
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: cry for help while the world ignored her. We waded
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: through decades of police tunnel vision and bureaucratic absurdity, all
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: the way to a historic forensic victory in twenty twenty
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: six that actually changed state law.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: It really proves that while technology and genetic genealogy are
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: incredible tools, it is human perseverance, the love of a sister,
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: the stubbornness of a nuisance abatement officer that actually drives
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: justice forward.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: I want to leave you with a final thought to
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: mull over today. Think back to those thirty minutes of
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: terrifying screams in nineteen ninety three. The neighbors just rolled
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: over in their beds, annoyed by the noise, assuming it
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: was someone else's problem. Today, we live in a world
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: where we are more digitally connected than ever before. We
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: see everything happening globally on our screens, but are we
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: actually more isolated from the people right on the other
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: side of our physical walls. How many calls for help
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: in our own communities are we tuning out as mere noise.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Take a moment to day to reflect on your own
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: surroundings on the walls you share with the world, and
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: ask yourself, if the call came tonight, would you be
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: the one to listen.