What do you think is happening behind the scenes with that process in particular?

You know, I think that makes sense that they have performed some genetic genealogy already, but it led to people who didn't turn out to be suspects.

When you are collecting DNA from a crime scene like that, that's very likely going to happen.

As far as the mixture, well, we knew it was a complex mixture.

We knew it was more than two people.

It is disappointing to hear that it's four or more people with the most latest information.

interviews that the sheriff has given, because that is going to make it extremely difficult.

CeCe, how quickly is the technology changing? And is there any new tech on the horizon that you know about that could come online that could really change everything with this case?

We were speaking about DNA and really trying to understand, okay, well, how does it work in, in policing terms? So I asked CeCe about this, how this same technology has become one of the most powerful tools in modern policing.

When we first started using genetic genealogy, the idea was to identify long-dead ancestors, like who is your great-great-grandfather that you can't identify through the paper trail.

And then a very small number of us turned our attention to trying to identify recently living or living ancestors, meaning people's birth parents.

So that i- really is where I Kind of broke away from the crowd and started working on a different goal, and developing techniques to identify, uh, biological parents, whether someone was adopted, donor conceived, or if someone took one of these direct consumer DNA tests and made the unexpected discovery that their father was not their biological father or their grandfather was not their biological grandfather, which has happened to millions of people.

And so those techniques that, uh, a very few of us started developing back in 2011 are the ones that now are used to identify violent criminals and Jane and John Does, unidentified human remains.

So it's the exact same process, but instead of trying to identify someone's birth parent or parents, we are going one step further down the tree and actually identifying them.

So it's like I've been talking about, we're reverse engineering someone's DNA.

And I wanted to know from CeCe where she believes the technology, along with AI input, can be in another 10 to 20 years.

CeCe Moore is one of the world's leading genetic genealogists, using DNA and family tree analysis to solve cases that once seemed impossible.

What we're doing is reverse engineering an unknown person from their DNA, so whether that DNA is left behind at a crime scene, a violent crime, we do, we work with homicides and rapes, um, or if it's a person who dies without their identification, a Jane or John Doe, or un- unidentified human remains is the more formal term.

And so it doesn't really matter, uh, which it is, because it's the exact same process.

It is taking that DNA, creating what we call the snip profile that has hundreds of thousands of genetic markers across the genome, and then that is uploaded to the genetic genealogy databases that we're allowed to use on these types of cases, and we get a list of people who share significant amounts of DNA with that unknown person.

So there are over 54 million people who have taken direct-to-consumer DNA tests now.

The biggest database is Ancestry DNA, and then 23andMe, and then MyHeritage is a very close third now.

Yeah.

Yes.

So I need you to explain how you do what you do.

Well, what we're doing is reverse engineering an unknown person from their DNA, so whether that DNA is left behind at a crime scene, a violent crime, we do, we work with homicides and rapes, um, or if it's a person who dies without their identification, a Jane or John Doe, or uno- unidentified human remains is the more formal term.

And so it doesn't really matter, uh, which it is because it's the exact same process.

It is taking that DNA, creating what we call a SNP profile that has hundreds of thousands of genetic markers across the genome, usually about 700,000, and then that is uploaded to the genetic genealogy databases that we're allowed to use on these types of cases, and we get a list of people who share significant amounts of DNA with that unknown person.

Now, typically, because we're limited to the smallest databases, we are getting very distant cousins, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth cousins and beyond.

We are not very often working with close relatives, so that means that each of those individuals who shares DNA with the unknown suspect might share only 1% of their DNA.

And from 1%, we can predict they likely share great-great-grandparents.

I mean, I don't want you to, I don't want you to sell us on not doing it, but yeah, I am fascinated.

I don't have a graphics department, so I need you to explain how you do what you do.

Well, what we're doing is reverse engineering an unknown person from their DNA, so whether that DNA is left behind at a crime scene, a violent crime, we do, we work with homicides and rapes, um, or if it's a person who dies without their identification, a Jane or John Doe, or uno- unidentified human remains is the more formal term.

And so it doesn't really matter, uh, which it is, because it's the exact same process.

It is taking that DNA, creating what we call the SNP profile that has hundreds of thousands of genetic markers across the genome, usually about 700,000, and then that is uploaded to the genetic genealogy databases that we're allowed to use on these types of cases, and we get a list of people who share significant amounts of DNA with that unknown person.

Now, typically, because we're limited to the smallest databases, we are getting very distant cousins, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth cousins and beyond.

We are not very often working with close relatives.

So that means that each of those individuals who shares DNA with the unknown suspect might share only 1% of their DNA, and from 1%, we can predict that they likely share great-great-grandparents.

Yeah.

Not the sort of thing you can get out of your mind.

I opened them out of respect for Carol, 'cause I thought if she had to look at what had been done to her daughter, I should be able to do that as well.

It just really had a deep impact on me, and made me even more determined to find a way to help Carol and help Idaho Falls Police Department.

Trick was to figure out who.

The idea is to build trees and find commonalities between the people who are sharing DNA with the unknown suspect.

You find common ancestors, and once I am able to do that, I know there's promise.

I know I'm going in the right direction.

And so I just started building trees.

And for those listening who may not be familiar with this case, because it did happen in 1991 in Austin, just lay the background out for our listeners about what happened to four young girls.

In December 1991 in Austin, Texas, four young girls were at a yogurt shop late at night.

I believe two of them worked there and they were closing.

And someone that was unknown for decades, who that person was, sexually assaulted them and murdered them and then set the place on fire and so when there was a fire reported initially no one knew that there were these young girls in there and so they flooded the crime scene with water to put out that fire which made it very difficult to collect forensic evidence and to solve the case in the long run and it's easy to understand right if you've got dna at a crime scene and then you flood it with water when you go to collect that dna or that physical evidence you're not going to have the same amount of forensic evidence that you would have had otherwise so that was one of the big challenges on this case and one of the reasons it took so long to solve so the sister-in-law of the youngest victim amy airs airs had reached out to me when she had seen a lot of the cases that I had to help solve.

From 2018 on, so she reached out and said, can I help on the case and around the same time, the assistant district attorney mindy Montfort also reached out to me.

to advise Austin PD on what they might be able to do in the genetic genealogy arena.

But unfortunately, they didn't have the DNA that we need.

I think this is the right direction.

Oh, my gosh

...

I didn't expect I'd find common ancestors because of the distance, but I did find that they were all converging on this small town in Southern Italy.

And so that was really interesting to me, because it was clear that the person who left their DNA behind on Lindy Sue, so her killer, or alleged killer at this point, um, had all of his ancestral roots go back to this one small area in South Italy.

So that's pretty specific.

So I started researching the migration history of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Where did the people come from? Okay, Italy.

What step, what's the next step?

CeCe, how hard is it to do? What, what do you physically have to do?

I know it is a very difficult process, which is why it was believed for so long to not even be possible.

I have waited months for that SNP profile to be created from rootless hair on some of my cases, and so I know they've had to try multiple times on some pieces of hair.

Some hair is more SNP rich, more DNA rich than others, and so, you know, you kind of have to get lucky as well that there is a lot of DNA to be extracted on any given hair.

Whether it's gone through a chemical process can affect it, whe-- you know, whether it's been dyed, that can have an effect, and so we're-- we've got to hope for a little bit of luck here.

If they're sending one single hair out to Astrea, you're right, it puts a huge burden on them.

Very stressful.

What kind of cases were they?

Listen.

I think that he went to great lengths to not leave DNA.

He likely had gloves on.

He was, you know, educated about this, you would think.

He certainly would've made sure he wasn't leaving DNA behind, but he must have handled that knife sheath earlier when he didn't have gloves on.

That, that's my guess.

But I also wanna point out that they don't have to reveal everything they have in the affidavit, and you know that, of course.

Mm-hmm.

CeCe Moore is a DNA expert and genetic genealogist whom we asked about the case and the role of Y-STR DNA in criminal cases.

It is a tool that can eliminate almost everyone.

It should eliminate everybody but the suspect.

It was just Y-STR, the male portion of DNA, and it was not a very detailed sample, having just 16 markers.

16 STRs is not a very powerful match.

There could be millions of people with that same profile.

So in genetic genealogy, we usually use 67 or 111 markers, or maybe even more.

Okay.

But it's not a law.

These are guidelines, they are suggestions, and so if a federal employee is the one doing the genetic genealogy or if an agency is getting federal funds, they are supposed to follow that.

But it's not a- a final...

So, in this investigation, the FBI skirted its own policy.

And so the FBI decided that this was a big enough threat to public safety and that there was an urgency, and so they got clearance to upload to the MyHeritage database surreptitiously.