DNA and 🧪 Genetic Genealogy in Crime Investigations

Tom (00:03.51)
All right, cool. Now, this will be chat number two with Chris Lyons of the Florida Investigators Network. F-I-N-I-N-C.org for the uninitiated. And last time we were chatting, we just briefly talked about.

something that's, you might, I consider exciting. Not sure if I consider it exciting in a positive way yet, but genetic genealogy and how it applies to investigations, how it applies to cold cases, how it applies to crime in general, we only touched on a little bit, but I'd like to give you the floor and really dig into that a little bit. Where would you start? So traditionally, I think genetic genealogy is,

thought of as being only a cold case investigative tool. And then when they had the murders in Idaho with the professor that had killed a few students, they used genetic genealogy in a new case, which I thought was really interesting. Because, I mean, there's no reason it couldn't be done. But.

most of the time when I think of it being used, it's used in cold, you know, unresolved cases, not fresh cases, but there's no reason that it couldn't be. But that was the, I'm sure it's been done, but that was, I think, the first time on a large scale on a large case nationally in the U.S. that it had been utilized, at least highly publicized.

Tom (01:49.482)
Why wouldn't it be used on every single new case? And why would your experience be mostly that it's used with cold cases? Because it is expensive and time consuming. And a lot of people don't really know how to properly do it. And everything else in that cold case, whatever the case is, has already been utilized. And there's no more options. So they say, well, there's this new option. Let's try.

this and see if we get some resolution to it. We spoke about it a little bit last time. The mainstream media, when they write about cold cases, it absolutely drives me bonkers because of the, they're trying to cover the story and give the public an insight into about the case and explain how it was resolved.

but they just use terms incorrectly and interchangeably. And it just, you know, as someone who uses it to read it, it just drives me insane, you know. They're just trying to tell the story, but there's certain terms that aren't interchangeable and they use them interchangeably.

Interesting. So you can elaborate if you would. So are you familiar with the term CODIS? Yeah, it's a database, right? It is. It's CODIS. It's the Database for Convicted Offenders. Each state has one. They maintain it at the state level, and then they upload that data to the national level.

and it has to be a certain quality sample to have enough genetic information to be eligible to be entered into that database. But you can do a thing in COTA called a familial search. So say I had committed some awful crime and I was not a convicted offender. So my DNA is at a scene, but my brother had served time in prison in...

Florida where I live and say the case occurred in Florida. So Florida is one of I think 13 states that allows familial searching in CODIS. So you have to get special permission from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and your prosecutor's office and you say we've exhausted all our leads. We don't have any anywhere else to go. We have this good sample but

we've uploaded it into CODIS and there have been no hits. We would like to do familial searching in CODIS to see if the offender has a relative that matches to give us, or not matches, but a relative that is somehow genetically related to the offender that could give us a lead about where to go. That is a true familial search.

by the statutory definition and the technological definition of what the technology can do. And I see in genetic genealogy news stories, they use the term familial search referring to IgG cases, which is incorrect. And it's just because they don't...

They're not trying to mislead people. They just don't know any better. It's just new technology. But as someone who's a, an end user who there's distinct difference when I read it, it just drives me crazy. Oh, I know where you're coming from. I've watched the news before. So, um, that's, that's a good example. Um, I also see a lot where they refer to, um, a case that was solved by say

one of the really large DNA companies like Ancestry or 23andMe, they'll say because the offender's cousin took a 23andMe test, the police were able to close an unsolved violent crime and that is absolutely incorrect. So the police...

do not have any special access to any of those companies. Those are private companies. They maintain those databases. They are very, very protective of that information and their consumers information and rights and privacy. We cannot, as law enforcement, we cannot search nor do we have any access to any of that data. And the way the newspaper

you know, or the media makes it look as that if you've taken a 23 and me test or something that means, you know, you're in the matrix. And we can, you know, see every cousin that you have in your family tree, which would be incredible, but it's just not so it's not it does not work that way. We are not allowed to do that. Okay, so

State and local law enforcement definitely doesn't have unfettered access to those databases.

I'll go as far as understanding that. If you tell me federal doesn't have unfettered access to those databases, I'll eat my shoe. I mean, illegal access. Yeah. No, they, they do not have access to any of that information. It's, it's held in a... You're telling me the NSA doesn't have a chart on the wall of me and my cousins? I would, I would be sure. I'm always talking shit on Rumsfeld just, just for fun in my emails. Yeah. I...

If they did, those companies would, I think, lose a lot of their customers because there's very... When you go through... Like, I have my DNA in Ancestry. I have my whole family tree built out. When I did that, you have to sign pages and pages of permissions that...

you know, that you're knowingly becoming involved in this program and that you're uploading this data. But most of it is them explaining to you what they will not do with your data, which is like sell it to Pfizer or sell your genetic information to, you know, a company, any other company or a doctor, anything like that for purposes of research.

that law enforcement does not have access to it. If we did, that would make life a lot easier because they estimate, I think, there's upwards of 30 million profiles in ancestry. So if they want to push the magic go button and make that happen, that would be great. But I don't think that's going to happen. How do those databases compare to the databases in the 13 states you mentioned?

in terms of proportion. That's a huge number you just mentioned in Ancestry. So do these private companies completely dwarf the system that's in place in terms of CODIS across the states that use it? I don't have exact numbers. Oh, fair. Yeah, they probably don't publish that kind of stuff either. No, they don't. But it's been estimated, one article that I read that Ancestry had upwards

DNA profiles nationally. But those are people who are paying for that service. They are voluntarily submitting their DNA to a private company for their own, for lack of a better word, entertainment purposes to build out their family tree and look for their long lost brother or whatever. Some people do like a family project. They'll buy DNA kits for everybody for Christmas and mail them.

to their family members and stuff and do that. I've seen that before. That's pretty fun. I'm not gonna lie. And it's a little warmer and fuzzier sounding to have you go into the fact that, and it makes sense. I mean, these organizations aren't trying to get sued and they're certainly working in a potentially delicate area in terms of PIP information or...

Yeah, just sensitive stuff, you know, it's so that's encouraging. And clearly I'm coming at it from the side of all I've ever been exposed to other than our brief exchanges is the cuckoo stuff from the news. So I'm a perfect I'm a perfect sounding board for you to expose the gibberish, because I'm sure I'm pretty much only I've only been exposed to gibberish. And I'm more than happy to.

reflect that back to you so you can see how bad it is. But yeah, that is different than I thought. And my understanding was that was the Matrix understanding. Oh my gosh, my cousins are in these or I've got an aunt who did it or whatever. That exposes me. Like, you know, I'm thinking now.

watch too many movies. But if you're the subject of a nefarious investigator, you were the subject of a bad intentioned actor who's within this system, then I got concerned because I was like, well they already have the evidence now. All they'd have to do is, I mean, and it's not like I've been running around picking up every hair I've shed in the, you know, heck the Airbnb I'm in.

You know, you could run a business as an Airbnb person just collecting DNA from everybody who stayed in your place for the next 20 years. And you'll run a freaking blackmail scam. So when we have done, I did one case where we collected what's called discarded DNA from an offender. And we, you have to be very careful that you are in fact collecting a DNA sample from that person.

If you have a guy who's standing out in front of a business and he's having a cigarette and then he goes inside and tosses his cigarette in the bin and there's 50 cigarettes in there, you know, do you want to bet that person's freedom on a one out of 50 that you're grabbing the right one? Is it the one that, you know, you know, you'd think there's a few ways to look at it. It's probably still hot.

it might still be burning, but what if a guy had just walked in there 60 seconds before him and did the same thing? So you might, I wouldn't say that you would be more likely to include and accidentally convict an innocent person as you would actually be more likely to exonerate a guilty person that you would, if you grab the wrong cigarette and you say that's not.

you test it and you say, oh, he's not the guy, but he's not the guy because you don't have the right cigarette. You grabbed the guy that was in there for a few minutes before. So on the case that we had, the guy was in a parking lot alone. We had, you know, checked the area and he had one cigarette in his hand, in his mouth. And we had a undercover detective who observed him flick that cigarette.

he drove away and then we sat there and watched it and immediately collected it. So we that you know it went from his hand and mouth to the ground and we saw it happen and maintain custody of it and took it as evidence. That's the only responsible way to do it because you have to testify that piece of evidence was directly in your suspect's possession. That's right out of a TV show.

Mm-hmm, man Kind of a cool job some days. I'm gonna I gotta tell you I want to do a ride along But um You know that when it got to that point we had other factors that Indicated that was the person but you know that is gonna be your final confirmation and then

Or I should say you're second to final because for the, our DNA lab won't do, that's called like a secondary standard. So we have to do a one-to-one standard, which is somebody, a detective taking a DNA buckle swab directly from their mouth and then entering it into evidence. And then that is what is used as the comparison.

in the DNA side, in the DNA lab, to make sure 100% that you have the correct person, that the samples weren't mixed up, that they weren't contaminated, that the cigarette wasn't the right cigarette, that, you know, and that I think is the only responsible way to do it, to 100% make sure that you have the correct person. And that won't then bring in

the incorrect parties. So in the example used a moment ago...

It the wrong cigarette isn't going to convict the wrong guy because you don't have him in the mix to compare to begin with. So the process will be a process of eliminating by comparison, not including by comparison. If I'm understanding. Okay. Right. Because say if you have like a sexual battery, a rape case and the detective accidentally retrieves the wrong cigarette, that cigarette, because it's just some random.

person is not going to match the DNA from the scene of the offender. So that now is not going to make the innocent person the suspect. Gotcha. Which is a very obvious component as long as you take a moment to stop and think about it, which is

probably what doesn't happen on this subject like many others, which is why there's so much confusion. But some of this is pretty elementary when you lay it out. It's like, well, 1 plus 1 equals 2, but in that particular scenario, it's a 0 plus 1.

equation like you don't have the other element in terms of a of matching up or comparison. So that makes sense. It's not like you can net somebody into this into the matrix and all of a sudden they're guilty because you guys grabbed the wrong cigarette which is a good checkbox. Okay. I'm becoming more and more comfortable with this as we go. Okay. What follows what follows next and

Because this so far is pretty good, I got to say. I'm not horrified by any of this, and you told me I wouldn't be. So when you take that direct swab directly from the suspect, that is then entered directly into evidence and then taken to the DNA lab. We're lucky where I live and work, we have our own lab. There's also a state lab that's nearby, but not every agency is that fortunate.

but we're very lucky where I am. That's Pinellas County? Pinellas, yes. Shout out Pinellas County DNA posse. And we have that ability where they do that comparison directly for us. So when you hear in terms of genetic genealogy, it's a different file type. So genetic genealogy uses a profile called a SNP.

which is a SNP, which is more of a built out by human genome thousands and thousands of characteristics. For criminal cases, we use a system that's called STR standard tandem repeats, which is certain genetic markers that are used in the CODIS system that

they can compare and then determine if the contributor of that sample is in fact the person from that crime scene. And after that's done, they can give you a statistical analysis of, and they break it down. They don't come out and just say yes or no, they give you like a mathematical formula of unlike,

It's very confusing to read. Let's say something like the chances of selecting an unrelated individual that would be this person is I had one that was 16 quadrillion.

So, you know, I don't know how many a quadrillion is. I know it's more than the number of people on Earth. Because there's about seven billion, billion would be people on Earth. And this was quadrillion.

Tom (20:12.982)
I'm not sure I'm even familiar with the terminology. That's how big it is. No, I'm not. Geez. When I, when I spoke with the analyst on that case, I said, what, I said, that sounds good. What, what does it actually mean? And she, she explained that it was X amount of number of people on earth, you know, that essentially that is the only person on earth who matches that profile.

the DNA information and the profile was at a very high rate. So they were able to mathematically chart it out very far, which is good in court. Um, cause if you had a weak sample and you said, um, you know, well, it's a one in a thousand, one in 10,000, one in a hundred thousand. Well, my County has about a million people in it. So one in a hundred thousand sounds good.

But then really what you're saying is in a population of a million people that there's 10 people that could possibly be a contributor to that profile. So when you lay it out that way, it's not as sure of a thing.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking when you said quadrillion or I was like, that's, that's just a silver platter for the courtroom is what that is. That's like, it doesn't get really get any better than that in terms of eliminating doubt. All right. But that's real math and, and 10, 10 people locally is something you need to take seriously. If you're sitting in your chair, you can't say, Oh, well, you know,

10 in a million, that's not bad. We probably have the right guy. So I can see where that doesn't really accomplish much. Like in that, you know, to a lot of people in their everyday math, that would sound like, ooh, oh, that's significant. But really, it's, well, that's very, very loose. Like that's not a stringent filter at that point, even with, you know, one in 100,000, like you say.

You know, and then, you know, you would build that say that, and sometimes that's as good as it gets. The sample is what the sample is. It's degraded. It rained that day. Um, it was outside in the heat and the weather and the sample was just degraded. The DNA lab has done their best and that is as good as it's going to get. So then, you know, you have to start to look at other corroborative evidence, you know, um,

maybe a cell phone triangulation. Where was that person that day? Did they have a job? Did they live locally? Did they know the victim? There's different things like that where if you can show that person was in Baltimore that day at a Ravens game, he's probably not your guy.

Tom (23:22.882)
So there's other things, it's just not, you know, while the DNA matches and says it's him, I think the public has a misconception that we just feed this information into a computer. And then, you know, the computer gives us a little green check mark and we go out and blindly arrest the person, because the computer says that it's him or it's her. And there's no...

other investigation and says, oh, well, it's the DNA and that's it. They're going to jail. You know, you have to look at the all the circumstances in the case to see, you know, is this your person? And if so, why? Other than just the DNA like more of a mosaic where everything has that like more of a mosaic where everything has a certain weight and you have to make sense of the whole picture. Yes.

DNA evidence is fantastic evidence, but it has to fit everything else and it has to fit the whole story. It's just not, well, the DNA matches. So that that's him. Case closed on TV. As soon as DNA comes up on TV, someone's either fully exonerated or fully guilty. It's, you know, I haven't seen them really struggle with this percentage conversation on, you know.

any of the legal TV shows and I like, well, let's really, let's really thoughtfully consider this. It's no, it's we got him or oh my gosh, he didn't do it. It's that cut and dry, which is, you know, yeah, which is why we need to have this conversation. You know, and also not that lack of evidence is evidence. But if you have, say, a murder inside a house where there are two

Tom (25:18.754)
does the murder and one is a lookout or is present, if the person who, say it's a shooting, say the person who's the second guy doesn't touch or manipulate anything, he may not have left fingerprints or DNA, but he could have information about that crime. So just because you say, oh, well, his DNA doesn't match anything, he wasn't there.

It's not always necessarily so either. Would it be fair to say that it's maybe the opposite of what the layman's first impression is? Like as you as you become qualified, as you become the person who's able to handle these things on the law enforcement side, it seems to me that a significant part of your training is to not be swayed by the DNA because.

It could be the thing that screws up your investigation if you don't put it in the framing that you're describing, if you've had any sort of pollution from the TV version of DNA investigation. To your point, the first thing it would make an investigator do is close off avenues that they should be thinking about. So I understand why you've got it framed totally different than I do in my head as a layman. Is that-

As this DNA hits you, you've got to be like, okay, well, what is this going to make me think that could be contrary to the most effective way to investigate the case? Per your point, if a person is in the conversation of the case and there's no DNA for them, it might be real easy to put them on a don't bother with list because you've got this exciting other stuff to chase. That's so to your, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And.

is slightly, just slightly counterintuitive in its sort of vibe to how you think you would receive it as a person who doesn't know anything about it. You think you'd see the DNA and that directs you, but that would be a negative thing. There's so much more in the universe of any given case.

It's funny. It's like how I thought it was like a way to include people into an investigation, but it's really a way to exclude people. You know, and eliminate them and then sort of from your side. I would have originally thought it's the thing that you immediately want to shine a light on if there's a DNA glimmer of DNA in the case. But the shiny thing in the room is

is always the thing that distracts you from what you might be looking for as well. And that is what it could become in a case to the uneducated, uninitiated kind of thing. Very interesting. Cause both of those facets are sort of the opposite of what I had at first blush in terms of an impression. In the case that we spoke about last time with Tom Sawyer and Janet Staszak, if you have a lady who is the victim of a homicide,

Say she's walking down the street, she is attacked, a guy robs her, steals her purse, and in the process of the robbery, she's killed. She's fully dressed. There's no indication that she was, you know...

any disrobed or any of her clothing was removed. Now because it's a homicide and because it's a female, you're probably part of it, you're probably going to do a sexual assault kit because you never get a chance to do it again. So you have to collect everything and have everything saved and preserved because you only get one chance to do it right. But if you have this lady who's only missing her purse, who's completely dressed.

who has no signs of sexual assault and then has male DNA in her vagina, that could be from a consensual encounter that occurred. I think now the science says that a DNA sample can survive up to 120 hours where we can get results from it inside.

of a female victim. So that's... It's almost a week. Yeah. So if she had consensual sex with somebody within that time and then was the unfortunate victim of a robbery where she was murdered, does that DNA inside her make that contributor automatically your murderer? No, of course not. You know, so...

You want to try to identify that person to see what his relationship was with her and things like that. I think like you had said earlier that DNA is the magic bullet and if there's DNA in a case, but in that case, in that example, there's no indication that she was the victim of a sexual assault during that robbery. So that DNA probably means nothing.

it from, you know, a sexual encounter that she had prior to her death that has is in no way related to that robbery. That makes and you probably I guess once you've worked a few cases, you probably learn this real quick. Like you probably don't get all excited over DNA once you've been down the path once or twice, because it's not it's very much not the magic.

qualifying or disqualifying bullet that it's portrayed as on TV. So you guys probably lose that type of unwarranted excitement level real quick, actually, because it doesn't serve you and you don't get rewarded for it. Where it is beneficial in an attack, like I described with the female getting robbed is most women usually leave their fingernails a little longer than most men do.

And if it was a particularly violent attack, what we call clippings and scrapings, they would do swabbing and then clip her fingernails and then scrape the contents beneath her fingernails for DNA processing. I would be much more interested to know a contributor of DNA under her fingernails in that type of attack than of a sexual assault kit.

because she fought with that guy, she didn't just stand there and let herself get murdered. She probably put up some kind of resistance, had some kind of physical contact with that person, maybe scratched him, maybe drew blood, maybe physically struggled with him. So those types of swabs in that type of case are really, really probative. Again, not the magic bullet. You have to weigh it because...

That DNA might not be from that offender at all, but you have to try to determine if there is Foreign DNA that's foreign to her who that person is and how I got there

Tom (32:59.114)
This is so much clearer to me now. And my only concern now is that I walked into this call so ignorant that I'm guessing none of my questions are all that poignant because now I already understand it in 20 minutes very differently than I did when we got on the call, which shows you how little time and effort I put into trying to understand it to begin with.

Tom (33:22.414)
You know, so it should give you pause considering I'm the guy sitting in front of a mic with a legal podcast wanting to talk about it. But I like asking questions from a place of complete ignorance because I do think, and that's why as a non-lawyer I'm even involved in this project because we know some of our audiences doesn't have a JD while a bunch of our audience does have a JD. That's a Juris Doctorate for the people who don't have one by the way. That's a law degree. Fascinating. So

How much, it seems actually less complicated now. How much, now I feel like there's less sort of secrets and layers to the onion than there were when we got on the call, because this seems relatively cut and dry in terms of how you use the tool. Are there any instances that can really throw you? Is there anything you have to be on the lookout for that can really get you? Because to me, this seems, again, it seems actually

Safer is the word I should be using, but safer is the word I'm going to use. I feel safer about this whole conversation and the genetic genealogy process. And certainly the fact that if the consumer side is totally unrelated, which is that sort of urban legend that really got me jazzed up for this call is the whole ancestry thing or the 23 and me. And to be clear...

That's not a tool for law enforcement. No, we have no access to any of that information lawfully. And it explicitly violates those companies' terms of use. Even if, say, law enforcement utilized one of those databases and got information.

in violation of those terms of use in a way that you were not supposed to. You just planted a poison tree, right? That's exactly correct. So then later when you have to explain to a judge why you want a search warrant for Mr. Smith's DNA or you want to issue an arrest warrant for Mr. Smith, well, how did you get to that point? Because a search warrant, you're, you know, you give

information about yourself on detective Smith. I this is who I am. This is where I work. This is what I want and this is why and then you have to write out a detail what's called an affidavit which is that you're swearing to the facts of that investigation. So step one is I created a fake account and uploaded DNA to a public or a private company and uploaded genetic information.

directly in violation of their terms of use. And then I found out XYZ, none of that information can be used in court. And if you can't use that information in court, it doesn't matter. If you have a confession from a suspect and you tie them to a tree and beat them with a rod, and he says, yeah, I killed the person, that confession, you violated his rights.

that confession is not admissible in court. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't matter what he tells you and anything, any information that you gained from that confession, anything that you gained from that improper upload of that genetic information, you wouldn't be able to use it in any court. It would be worthless. It's like a pee in the mattress when you do that. You can't, you can't, there's no, the judge is gonna...

or even a prosecutor for a warrant or something like that down the road. They're going to make you step back through that process you just described. And you have to go. Yeah, it's going to be uncovered. Like you have to go through every step of that investigation of what the crime was, what information you had, what you started with and then what you did to discover, to get to that next level.

Tom (37:46.428)
It's not going to be of any benefit to you because you can't use it. It wasn't obtained illegally in the sense of that you broke a...

a law or violated somebody's rights, but those databases are private and they explicitly have terms of use that you will not do that. That's their information and they're allowed to say who has access to it. So if you access it under false pretenses, you know, just saying that you're doing your family DNA project.

and you're actually the police and then you use that information in a criminal investigation, none of it is going to be admissible and you're going to greatly damage the that case is destroyed and then any other cases you know you're going to damage the procedure and the and the use and the technology for

every other detective out there because that story is going to be portrayed in the media and you're going to damage this very valuable technique for any other investigator out there. Now you might argue, now trying to think, does it become a civil rights violation if an investigator is doing something that they're not supposed to or does it not become a civil rights violation until a judge says, yeah, I'll accept that?

Um

Tom (39:29.11)
Is it not? It would. Yeah, I don't know. I almost think it would, it would, isn't it close? If you knowingly step out, I feel like this is so knowingly, because you guys, like nobody would do this without realizing it was egregious is what I'm saying. Like, I'm not sure you could do what you just described and not have that be considered a civil rights violation only because it's so far, now that you've walked me through the basics.

anyone in your position is going to know that that's so far out of bounds. Would that, just curious because for me as a layman, the one thing I do have to stay sharp on is definitions to have an accurate conversation with somebody like you or somebody like a lawyer. So could that potentially be considered a civil rights violation in the same way that a warrantless

search of a vehicle might be or a unwarranted slash no PC or any of that. Would that be sort of in the same category? Could we call this potentially a civil rights violation if somebody went rogue and started doing some 23andMe? I can't say it would be a civil rights violation, but I could definitely tell you would be heavily internally sanctioned by your agency.

Um, and you know, probably up to including termination because if you are, you know, clicking, you know, the 15 pages of permissions saying, um, this is for my, my own information. I am this person I am, you know, cause there's a lot of disclaimers in those, those documents when you're clicking those things that I have a right to this information. I have.

the I am this person or I'm doing this on this person's behalf with their knowledge and permission. Like if you were doing a DNA test for your grandmother who's 95, you know, something like that, that she provides the DNA, you're building out your own family tree and you're taking care of the computer side of it because she doesn't know how to do it. You're allowed to do that as a private person. As a police detective, absolutely not. So

I hopefully no one does that because it will damage the science and it will shake the public's faith in this technology. Where you have to think, you know, even if you did solve that case and even if it did somehow get by, at some point that would come out in an appellate level.

and that conviction potentially could be overturned or reversed. And then you are doing damage to anyone else who would use that technology to solve a violent unsolved murder or sex crime. So you're doing a catastrophic amount of damage to...

um the confidence in the process. The confidence in this process that um no singular case it wouldn't be uh worth it um it's not ethically the right thing to do and you wouldn't ultimately at some point you wouldn't be able to utilize it in court anyway so you would have done it for nothing. Yeah it wouldn't be worth it and you're right it is a number of pillars that make it not worth it

your personal, your ass getting on the line in your job is law enforcement. The public perception of it, if and when it does come out, is going to shake the confidence in this entire system. And then you'll have, you know, the conspiracies about

creeping up again like the, you know, the matrix that I jumped on this call thinking, wait, cops can jump on 23 and me. So, yeah, it does seem that would be so egregious. There's not, there's no reward for somebody to do that. Certainly not anyone who's thinking, yeah, that doesn't seem like the kind of thing that's going to be a rampant abuse. There's just no reward to do it at any level. Like there's not even a sneaky reward in the short term.

Because there's an appeals process on anything that would carry the magnitude of DNA testing, there's an appeal process if there was a conviction. So yeah, you're really exposing yourself as law enforcement, really exposing yourself to issues as law enforcement. So that's worth taking note. That doesn't seem like the kind of thing that will be abused under those circumstances. No, no. Like I said, it would be one, you'd be

personally responsible, you know, ethically, personally, you're gonna be heavily sanctioned by your agency, if not terminated, and then all, any information that you did learn that was beneficial wouldn't be admissible in any court anyway, so you wouldn't achieve anything, even if you were able to somehow push it through and...

arrest the person or obtain a warrant for their arrest. Eventually that is going to be uncovered and it's all going to be for nothing. I mean, at that rate, you're talking about a civil suit to ice the cake down the road too. I'm sure that would happen. Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's a shit pie, you're right. There's no reason for a law enforcement person to wanna take that path unless they're trying to burn themself at that point. Okay, well, I'm comfortable with that. I think abuses should burn you. So you've relaxed me somewhat on this conversation. What have we left off the table? Because this does seem, you've created a much more simpler view of this process and...

I was totally polluted with the consumer products being mixed in and these databases all being available and that's a horrible, that's a terrifying proposition to me still because I don't know if I trust the mix of public and private as much as I trust, you know, public servants.

I trust a business to do their thing. It's when they're mixing together doing weird shit that I get concerned. So I like that law enforcement has their databases and I like that there's all sorts of disclaiming and so forth. So, and I can see, you know, some sort of marriage in the future. Obviously that seems like.

a possibility unless that's the type of possibility that's going to put 23andMe or Ancestry out of business when people hear that. So maybe that's the protection. Ancestry, for me as a consumer, they have no interest in opening that door because that'll be very dissuasive to people who might be future Ancestry customers and that the other databases will grow. So the patch for that is a...

product that was developed by a guy actually who lived in Florida of a company called Jedmatch. And what he designed was if say you and I were related, but we didn't know it. So I'm looking for my brother, you're looking for your brother, maybe we're stepchildren, maybe we are half brothers, I mean, maybe we were adopted a million different scenarios. So

I test in 23andMe, I send my thing up and I get no matches, no relatives, I can't find anybody in my family. You do yours in Ancestry, you complete the kit and send it up, and you can't find anything. There is a private program called GEDmatch, which is G-E-D-match, that allows...

you to download as a private citizen to download your own genetic information and then upload it into a searchable database that allows you to compare your information to other people who have used private different private companies than you have. So it allows the 23andme users to compare genetic information against

the Ancestry users. However, it is entirely on that. It's a detailed process. You have to create an account. You have to obtain the information when I've done it with 23andMe. I did it with my own information. You have to, there's a few safeguards to make sure that they tell you that you're downloading your genetic information, you know, that it's private, that it's sensitive.

And then when you create the GEDmatch account, it's the same process where it's saying, you know, if you do this, it's going to be in this database, it's going to be viewable by other people. Are you sure that you want to do this? And then on top of that, since genetic genealogy has become so prevalent, there is a separate explicit disclaimer, which means you can opt out for law enforcement sharing.

So I can still search for my brother if I want to, but that information is not accessible or searchable by law enforcement. So those specific permissions are built in there so the private consumer can still try to do their family research, but that doesn't instantly mean you're handing over your profile to the police. Gotcha.

But so anybody who does that process and there's a, when you click on it, it's like a little blue policeman's hat and it is a check mark and it says opt in for law enforcement sharing. And then there's a little, you know, two or three sentences beneath that explain exactly what that means. And then, you know, it's a yes or a no. So it's very, very explicitly stated.

if people want to participate in that. Now if they opt in for that sharing, we can see that information through GEDmatch, but that is only because they have given their explicit permission that law enforcement can use that information.

Tom (50:42.914)
That's a cool product actually. That's an interesting application. And I'm not surprised somebody, somebody probably thought of it right away too. They were like, well, here's the problem. And cool solution. So it was designed by a guy who lived in somewhere on the East coast of Florida down like South East Florida. And, um, he was just kind of a hobbyist.

and but very, very bright. And he was able to design this program that did that. When genetic genealogy started to kind of blow up, there was some controversies around it. And he's an older guy. And he just said, I'm done with this. He was tired of, I think he was on 60 minutes, he was on a few different programs. And he sold

the program to a company in California named Verigen, which is a private company that they make forensic supplies and they make machinery instruments for law enforcement and private labs and stuff all over the world. I think they're based out of Germany. They make scientific instruments. But he sold the...

the information to that company. Yeah, interesting. He wasn't looking for a hassle. I could see that. He was like, I was, you know, if he was just sort of casually dabbling in the next thing, you know, he's got to defend his software solutions on 16 minutes. I'd be like, who wants to buy this? I want to I'm not looking for this crap. Now he's probably like 75 years old. And, you know, what he did.

which was a brilliant idea how he did it, but I'm sure that it did not, he did not intend on it for being used the way that it ultimately was used, so it was like an unforeseen consequence, and then when it started becoming a really hot-button issue in the public's eye, I think he just really wanted nothing to do with it. I think he was just a man who found

genealogy and That type of research interesting and was trying to help people You know discover their background and their family and he had no intention of this happening And then when it did he just said i'm too old for this and um You know was done with it cool I mean, I don't blame him. I mean, it sounds like a fun ride while it lasted But why stick around if you're not having fun anymore get out and you know

He exited with a sail. Good for him. Yeah, I can root for people from the wrong side of Florida. It's all right. It's okay, I won't hold to the East Coast against him. Seems like a bright guy.

This was enlightening to me. Anybody who sat through the last hour, I think, and who started as clueless as I did, has gained something. Anybody who jumped on the call and knew the soup to nuts, probably, is probably a detective. So I think this is good info to share. I know.

Megan some of the other lawyers I'm working with will probably enjoy this. I don't know how much exposure they've gotten to it personally Although I'm sure some of them have their you know former prosecutors slash criminal defense now but Yeah, kind of neat nuance, but also It's a more clear

less nebulous matrix like proposition than I thought it was going to be. It's not it's not nearly as scary when you get a little bit of a an elevator pitch on how it works and what the intended safeguards are. How do you feel about that? Do we cover most of this? I feel good about it. And I mentioned at one point to we're trying to establish like best practices.

kind of a guidebook for law enforcement and prosecutors so that the technology is used properly and responsibly. And then that process can also be replicated where I would be able to show somebody the steps that we took and say, we started with this sample, then we went to third cousin Ed, then we went here, then we went there.

and then ultimately to be able to replicate the process and show the steps that we took to ultimately arrive at that suspect and then doing the standard police lab STR DNA confirmation. I think that if...

It's explained that way and the more that it's utilized and just the clearer that we are about it, you know, from some of the TV shows I watched, you know, there's always these high level government conspiracies and, you know, technology and shadow this. I wish we were even a tenth as sophisticated on those shows. Most of the time, if you put four detectives in a room, they wouldn't be able to read where to go to lunch.

forget about some high level conspiracy about anything. So I think the longer that it's in the public eye that we're transparent about the way that it's done, the way that the process is and that it's transparent and easily explainable to somebody who isn't familiar with it, that the public will have

a strong confidence in it and that'll be a good investigative tool to solve violent crime. So that'd be a good little media project for the Florida investigators network to have sort of a comprehensive breakdown or is that the venue you would explain this to people in? That could be one of them. The

For every one step forward, there's always two steps back. So there was, with the Idaho murders, there was, I watched a story about some young lady, I think she lives in Texas, and she just came out and was online with these crazy conspiracy theories about

other people that were involved in the crime. It had nothing to do with genetic genealogy, but she was just absolutely insistent that this different faculty member was involved in the murder. I heard about this woman like she was just basically a fly in the ointment, throwing shit against the wall with much less basis than anybody else. But getting all sorts of like a tick tock or whatever it was, but just sort of basically throwing.

whackadoo conspiracies at this thing in getting millions of TikTok views, just polluting the understanding of any of the people who were able to pay attention for longer than four seconds. So, yeah, I'm familiar with that. That's I can't remember her name. I watched some of the videos. And then when people would challenge her on certain points that she made, she had like counterpoints and was.

you know, arguing against the evidence. She was saying that the true suspect that it was, I believe, I believe she identified a female. I can't remember her relationship to the students, but it just, it was really, it was completely baseless, but she had a very, very large social media following.

and it just caught fire. I mean, I was seeing it on mainstream media, you know, corporate media where they were talking about this lady and her, um, her theories about the crime. And I think at that point they had already made an arrest or were very close. So then the police agency out there is

defending themselves against this lady who just has a YouTube channel or a TikTok or whatever, trying to debunk her statements online. That's why I'm very careful whenever I speak about any case. I don't just make wild accusations about what I think happened or who I would think is responsible because I'm not...

fully versed in that case. And if you say, you know, I think it was Mr. X, and you have no basis for that, you could destroy Mr. X's life based on that you have a lot of followers on your social media account, and that person might not have anything to do with it. So I felt that was very irresponsible of her to do. And then when she was confronted about it, she just doubled down. And she just, just

absolutely insistent that, you know, she was correct and then changed her argument to fit the facts that she was being confronted with but luckily it seems that most of that was beaten back and that she's primarily off the scene now. Last I believe I saw a lawsuit creep into her world a month or two ago and I want to say that a lot of that activity took place after the arrest. I want to say a lot of that activity took place post

arrest of Brian whatever his name is Cole. Is it Cole Berger? Yeah. And so, yeah, she, I believe she was doing that. Um, or, and maybe even hit her big stride post arrest and.

I would have to look back, but it would probably be interesting to follow up on. I, I heard tell of lawsuits because my understanding was that she was casting aspersions on private citizens outside of the suspect in question on a huge public platform and these are not celebrities. So you don't get to take somebody whose name isn't in the open, put it in the open and then pile shit all over it. That's what you're not allowed to do. Unless they're a celebrity.

basically people are going to be able to just dump on you because your name's already out there. But I think what was, I think she was looking at libel or slander or a combination of libel and slander.

Tom (01:02:02.794)
which it seems to your point, that's how irresponsible her behavior was. It seems like she didn't care to protect herself in any way, shape or form. And yeah, that's really reckless. And I hope there was a case, to be honest. I mean, somebody should put people down who are spouting harmful nonsense about other private citizens. But yeah, that's just gross. That whole case was wild.

That'll probably be something to talk about in a year if either one of us has really gotten all the details and you may very well have all along the way. Yeah, that seems like one of those really, he seems like one of those really disturbing individuals that's going to be.

can be talked about for a while. So I'm curious about what the interest, the intricacies of that case will have shaken out to abandon. And we can go back through some of that because it'll probably be super creepy. But when you have cases like that, any case, but I mean, especially a case of public large public interest, that offense occurred in the state of Idaho. And they did.

Their government did a very good job in the Lori Valo case and Chad Daybell That was the doomsday mom where they had as things were becoming public in court They were releasing documents that were available then for public consumption Because once it gets past that discovery process, I went to

one of their websites for I can't remember the name of the county that it occurred, but they had, you know, like the regular banner and the regular things for people that lived there to do. And then they had like a cases of interest section and it had documents that were publicly available and case statuses and stuff. And they did a really good job because I'm sure they were inundated with media requests. But they did that with

that Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell case. I imagine that Kohlberger case is gonna draw the same level of public interest. Yeah, I bet you're right. I bet you're right. We'll circle back. Creepy guy, he gives me the creeps. Not a lot of people give me the creeps through the TV. He's just kinda got that blank stare. I mean, otherwise, he looks like he's a very handsome man.

um that he is a young guy reasonably successful. I don't really know the full story why if he knew those kids if he did not if he had taught them if they were neighbors I don't really know any of the background um the stories that I've read about it in the national media it's just kind

Tom (01:05:16.65)
view fact pattern, but I don't really know any of the details. I like to on cases like that, you really, if you can watch the live stream in court and the jury isn't able to hear certain parts and now they have like a little white noise machine they put on and so the jury can't hear but those sidebar discussions where they're

Tom (01:05:46.474)
should be admissible or isn't admissible, unfairly prejudicial. Now with the live stream from the courtrooms, you really get to see some of the really most interesting things from these trials live. It's really pretty amazing. Yeah, I find that fascinating as well. And there's a great nitty gritty in those sidebars.

Tom (01:06:13.718)
That's what I was thinking. Yeah, I think there's so much more to be sort of learned about that case. And it's got the creepy vibe that kind of makes you morbidly curious. But, uh, yeah, I'm sure there'll be more about that. We might dig into it. Um, in the meantime, I'm going to wrap this up. I think you've given me enough to think about, and let's leave some on the table for, for next time. Oh, and I'm going to have to circle back. We're doing some cool new stuff that I think might fit.

It's got a 501c3 vibe to it where I think some of the stuff you guys do might be potentially supplemented like the creation of media that's educational and informative on your topics. There's grants and things for stuff like that. And I'm bumping into that in other conversations. And I was like, I bet they could. Like a lot of what there's a lot of value in.

uh... your topics and there's uh... you know as you're already you guys are already a nonprofit correct yes sir i wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if you could get funding to put together

a sort of step-by-step like you were talking about before in terms of the, you know, explaining the genealogy related investigation and that type of thing. So just food for thought. We'll circle back on that, but that's something I've stepped into on topics of education or history or economic development or conservation, pretty much anything that's like good for society. And this is an educational topic for sure. And you've already got an audience.

So just planting seeds. But that would be interesting. Like I'd want to watch that. That's why I asked. I'm like is that going to be a Fin Inc. project or like where am I going to see that? Because that seems like you could package it and sell it, you know, make it a course or make it part of a course kind of thing. Like I don't know. Neat. And you're certainly the guy for that kind of conversation. But yeah, something to think about. I think people might fund you to explain some of these topics.

to appropriate audiences. Well, I can very clearly hear you over my phone, but my computer just did the fatal crash. Oh, you disappeared. Oh, that's hilarious. And I got it. I got it all on tape. Okay, well, now you're definitely getting kicked off. Yes. Well, that was fun, man. I appreciate the information and I'm going to sleep a little bit better at night.

Well, that's good. And I think like we talked about, I think as it, you know, people, you know, when, when we try to hoard the secrets and the shadows, that's when the people become concerned and conspiracies and stuff. But I mean, when you just lay it out and you say, this is what it is, this is what we do, this is how we use it. And this is how it works. I think, um, you know, 20 years from now, this won't even be

a discussion, it'll just be a standard investigative practice as standard as comparing fingerprints is now because people will, they'll have been exposed to it, they'll understand it, they won't be concerned about it, that it's being misused in a way against private citizens or innocent people.

And I think it'll just take time for them to digest it and understand it as is with anything new. But I think it will get there eventually. I agree. That seems to track, especially as people come online in terms of their understanding. Yeah. I'm a man. Anything coming up?

No, no, just work. No events, no speeches. All right, and people can find the Florida investigators network at fininc.org.

Tom (01:10:24.223)
It was great again. Thank you very much. Thanks, man. Talk to you soon. Okay. Bye. Bye