Speaker 1: I was worring, Eugene. I don't remember the time. I
Speaker 1: think it was morning, but I don't remember June twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: And do you wonder about what the day was like
Speaker 2: that you came into this world?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder I've heard she was induced, but
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure. So I wonder what it was like.
Speaker 1: Was she in her jail cell and her water broke
Speaker 1: and she was rushed to the hospital, or you know,
Speaker 1: was it planned for that day?
Speaker 3: And then, you know, I wonder what.
Speaker 1: It was like after I was born, as she was
Speaker 1: showing me off and you know that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: It's a little strange to me. But I'm wondering being
Speaker 1: taken away from her, how did that go? Because I
Speaker 1: remember when when I gave my son to the nurse,
Speaker 1: it broke me. You know that that was that was
Speaker 1: a moment of just pain, sheer pain. But I knew
Speaker 1: he was going somewhere where he would be, you know, well,
Speaker 1: taken care of and loved. And I chose that family.
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit different than Diane, where she
Speaker 1: didn't get to choose the family, and you know, she
Speaker 1: didn't have a say in any of it. In no
Speaker 1: way am I saying she's a victim. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that it might have been hard on her, but with
Speaker 1: her mental state, it may not have been anything to her.
Speaker 1: I guess that's kind of what I'm curious is how
Speaker 1: did she handle it but she just like, okay, take
Speaker 1: my kid, or was it hard for her?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: I just have one more question, is that Okay, when
Speaker 2: you reached out to Diane and asked her about what
Speaker 2: was that like bringing me into the world, what was
Speaker 2: her answer?
Speaker 1: She was acting like it was the best thing in
Speaker 1: the world, you know, and how she was so happy
Speaker 1: and she got to hold me and how much she
Speaker 1: loved me. And she didn't say anything about having to
Speaker 1: hand me over or me being taken away or anything
Speaker 1: like that. It was just that she got to hold
Speaker 1: me for a very long time. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: it still kind of red creeps me out a little bit.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's just really strange to be born from a person
Speaker 1: that you cannot relate to. You know, that's my biological mother,
Speaker 1: But I don't understand her at all.
Speaker 3: I don't ever want to be here.
Speaker 1: I was about eight years old when my adoptive mom
Speaker 1: started telling me about my biological mom, about how she
Speaker 1: had done bad things. And I continued to ask and
Speaker 1: pester her throughout the next three years, and she finally
Speaker 1: got to the point where she just decided, you know,
Speaker 1: you're not old enough to know this is something that's awful.
Speaker 1: I don't ever want to tell you. In a sense
Speaker 1: as a little kid, it was more curiosity than anything.
Speaker 1: I was frustrated with her, and I was a little
Speaker 1: angry that she wouldn't tell me, and so I really
Speaker 1: just wanted to know. And then once I got that
Speaker 1: in my head that I wanted to know that they were,
Speaker 1: you know who she was because my mom had given
Speaker 1: me little tidbits, you know that she was bad, that
Speaker 1: she was in jail, that all this stuff, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to know why. So it was more frustrating, and
Speaker 1: I was a little bit angry when she wouldn't tell me,
Speaker 1: And then my brain went to work of how can
Speaker 1: I find out on my own.
Speaker 4: And of course by tricking her babysitter, Becky did finally
Speaker 4: find out who her mother was. Later, after watching Small Sacrifices.
Speaker 4: Eric Mason was one of the first people to help
Speaker 4: Becky bring her story to the press, and has a
Speaker 4: unique insight into Becky's reasons for wanting her story out
Speaker 4: into the world.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I think all of us have family secrets.
Speaker 5: We all have that crazy uncle, we all have something
Speaker 5: that we don't want to share with the rest of
Speaker 5: the world. And so as a story that one day
Speaker 5: Becky living in Bend is watching Farah Fawcet in the
Speaker 5: movie Small Sacrifices on television and thinking to herself, oh,
Speaker 5: my god, that is my mother. That in that sense,
Speaker 5: we all have to come to terms with what came
Speaker 5: before us and who came before us, and their crimes
Speaker 5: or their contributions, and to make peace with all of
Speaker 5: it is to understand ourselves a whole lot more. And
Speaker 5: so you know, the journey that we are all on
Speaker 5: is to understand why. And with Rebecca Wow, she has
Speaker 5: a lot of it that she can read about watch
Speaker 5: and that she has kind of a front row seat
Speaker 5: to this very infamous person and in so doing being
Speaker 5: able to talk about it in the magazine and on
Speaker 5: twenty twenty and on Oprah being able to talk about it,
Speaker 5: and everyone think to themselves, you know what, I think
Speaker 5: I can deal with my past a little bit better too.
Speaker 6: You know, it's been surprising to me, Eric, is that
Speaker 6: when I've been working on this case, I've had people
Speaker 6: attached to the case that worked with the children, anybody
Speaker 6: who's worked with Christy or Danny or came in contact
Speaker 6: with the deceased. Cheryl told me, why why does anybody
Speaker 6: care about Becky's story? She didn't get shocked, like that's
Speaker 6: kind of surprising to me, Like, what is she really
Speaker 6: suffering from? She was raised by a fabulous family. Why
Speaker 6: do this big quest? Is she just seeking fame?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a good point. I mean when the woman
Speaker 5: came to me who was in the film festival from
Speaker 5: Ben and said, do you want to meet Dianoun's daughter,
Speaker 5: I was like, Oh my god, could this even be true?
Speaker 5: And I don't think she really was per se looking
Speaker 5: for that. I think she was searching for the understanding
Speaker 5: of her own life. And I think she saw journalism
Speaker 5: and getting the story out there as a way to
Speaker 5: maybe find the other missing pieces of the puzzle. And
Speaker 5: so sort of crying out to the universe is not
Speaker 5: such a bad thing. I mean, I think in some
Speaker 5: ways it's therapeutic, and for her, I think The point
Speaker 5: of the story is this is the amazing control part
Speaker 5: of the experiment is she was raised in the absolute
Speaker 5: best surroundings environment, place to live, resources from parents, and
Speaker 5: yet she felt this toe from the water of that genetics,
Speaker 5: and it still was pulling on her and still in
Speaker 5: controlling her, even from in some ways from a prison
Speaker 5: in California. There was this element there that was just
Speaker 5: really strong, this current. And to be able to fight
Speaker 5: that current, you really have to understand and do your
Speaker 5: work to figure out how to overcome it.
Speaker 4: When we contacted Diane Downs about this podcast, she responded
Speaker 4: with a short and somewhat strange letter claiming that Becky
Speaker 4: was not her biological daughter. And even more odd was
Speaker 4: the fact that she included several Q tips enclosed in
Speaker 4: a small plastic bag inside an envelope with the words
Speaker 4: try it glued to the front, presumably saturated with her saliva,
Speaker 4: so that we could have her DNA. In Becky's quest
Speaker 4: to find out more about her family lineage, DNA is
Speaker 4: all she really has to start with. We enlisted the
Speaker 4: help of a DNA detective to help with the process,
Speaker 4: but first we spoke to doctor Greg hammikin a DNA
Speaker 4: expert to learn a bit about the process and what
Speaker 4: to expect.
Speaker 7: You know, my mother told me not to talk about myself.
Speaker 7: I violate that constantly, So tell.
Speaker 8: Your mom you have permission to brag.
Speaker 7: I started about twenty something years ago doing forensic work.
Speaker 7: Got into forensics really through teaching. I started using a
Speaker 7: murder scenario with the DNA. But then I met Calvin Johnson,
Speaker 7: who was a guy who got out through DNA through
Speaker 7: the Innocence Project in New York. He was released near
Speaker 7: where I was teaching in Georgia. He'd done seventeen years
Speaker 7: in prison, and he's on the radio talking and they
Speaker 7: asked him, how do you feel about the criminal justice
Speaker 7: system now? And he said, you got to have laws.
Speaker 7: He's not better. He's just a really great guy and
Speaker 7: believes in the system still after what he's been through.
Speaker 7: So we invited him too school, and as he was
Speaker 7: speaking to my students, I wrote chapter one of Exits
Speaker 7: to Freedom, which became his autobiography. After that book, in
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety nine, I started getting casework because people thought, well,
Speaker 7: if I can write about it, maybe I could help
Speaker 7: out with some cases. So I started doing case for free,
Speaker 7: helping out and then I testified, came back to Georgia,
Speaker 7: tried to start a Georgia Innocence Project, and there were
Speaker 7: already some students doing at the law school. So I
Speaker 7: got on their board as the DNA expert and we
Speaker 7: started working down there, and I think they worked on
Speaker 7: six cases with people goingxonerate with them. When I was
Speaker 7: in London working on a private case, I was doing
Speaker 7: research on how they do things in Europe, and so
Speaker 7: I got in touch with Amanda Knox's being she was
Speaker 7: a trial at that point. I joined the team, got
Speaker 7: a bunch of American experts to look at the case
Speaker 7: along with with Johnson. She was doing the same thing.
Speaker 7: We wrote a report to the court, the court couldn't
Speaker 7: accept it. She's convicted, and then I just kept working
Speaker 7: on a case of the family for about four years.
Speaker 7: That case really got so much press attention and so
Speaker 7: many fans and people who hated her. It was kind
Speaker 7: of like you know, O Jay's case. It was such
Speaker 7: a controversial case. So that really kind of thrusts our
Speaker 7: little project with much more in the limelight for a while,
Speaker 7: both in positive and negative ways.
Speaker 8: I called you a couple of weeks ago because I
Speaker 8: wanted to ask you where to start with DNA because
Speaker 8: Becky and I are on an interesting journey together and
Speaker 8: I have no knowledge of DNA, and it's critical to
Speaker 8: the journey that Becky and I are going on.
Speaker 1: I am the biological daughter of Diane Downes, and I
Speaker 1: am just curious about everything with DNA. So Diane actually
Speaker 1: denies that I'm her biological daughter. My original birth certificate
Speaker 1: actually says that she is my birth mother. Diane has
Speaker 1: sent her DNA to the studio so that we can,
Speaker 1: you know, try and match that. But I'm actually really
Speaker 1: interested to going to search for my biological father. Would
Speaker 1: that be something that we could do with running my
Speaker 1: DNA through some system.
Speaker 4: We found out that, due to Becky's ethnic background, is
Speaker 4: actually highly likely that she'll be able to find a
Speaker 4: lot of information through commercial DNA service.
Speaker 7: There's good news in that because the American genealogical databases
Speaker 7: are populated disproportionately with Caucasians, whereas the criminal databases are not.
Speaker 7: It's just just the opposite and the criminal databases, you know,
Speaker 7: the good news for Caucasians who are looking for their
Speaker 7: families is you're likely to get a lot of information
Speaker 7: from any of the commercial genealogy companies.
Speaker 4: According to doctor Greg interestingly enough, men often have a
Speaker 4: much easier time tracing the lineage.
Speaker 7: Because that men definitely you know, usually gives their last name.
Speaker 7: But no, you should be able to find out pretty
Speaker 7: easily with the genetic test that you can send off
Speaker 7: to any of the commercial shops and they link to
Speaker 7: all these great pay pertrayals. There are lots of things
Speaker 7: people are doing that with the through these ancestry records.
Speaker 7: I don't think you're going to have a terrible problem
Speaker 7: finding at least the lineage of both your parents.
Speaker 4: Doctor Gray continued to explain some of the technical aspects
Speaker 4: of examining DNA, as well as the process itself and
Speaker 4: some of the science behind it, but ultimately his suggestion
Speaker 4: was that we contact a genealogist, someone whose job it
Speaker 4: is to do a deep dive into the results provided
Speaker 4: by commercial DNA service and really trace the backgrounds and
Speaker 4: family lines by using the results as a foundation and
Speaker 4: researching beyond them. So we reached out to Michelle Leonard,
Speaker 4: a self proclaimed DNA detective.
Speaker 9: I'm Michelle, and I am a professional genealogist, a DNA detective,
Speaker 9: an author, a historian, and my main specialism is working
Speaker 9: with DNA testing in order to identify unknown ancestors, so
Speaker 9: all sorts of unknown ancestor misters mainly unknown parentage so
Speaker 9: unknown parents, unknown grandparents. But people will come to me
Speaker 9: with more distant unknown ancestor mysteries as well, like ann
Speaker 9: great and second great grandparents. What I do is I
Speaker 9: marry up all my years of genealogical expertise in creating
Speaker 9: and building family trees and in living person tracing, and
Speaker 9: with my DNA know how to try and identify these
Speaker 9: mystery ancestors. In general, people will come to me because
Speaker 9: they've heard or maybe they've seen something on TV, or
Speaker 9: they've read an article, or they've just found out that
Speaker 9: DNA testing can help with their mystery. Some people come
Speaker 9: to me right at the beginning, like I think Becky is,
Speaker 9: where they've not yet done any testing. They don't know
Speaker 9: where they should test, they don't know how to go
Speaker 9: about it. They've just found out. They've got this idea
Speaker 9: that doing DNA testing might solve their mystery, might help
Speaker 9: them find out who their father was or who their
Speaker 9: grandfather was, that kind of thing. Others will come to
Speaker 9: me after they've tested, and they don't know what to
Speaker 9: do with it, and so they maybe google for a
Speaker 9: DNA expert, a DNA detective, or a genetic genealogist, and
Speaker 9: they might hit upon me and contact me. At that point,
Speaker 9: they might already have been building perhaps a maternal tree
Speaker 9: or trees for the lines that they know of, and
Speaker 9: they want to do it themselves, but then they just
Speaker 9: hit a roadblock and they can't get any further, and
Speaker 9: they're frustrated with it, and they think, I need somebody
Speaker 9: with a bit more expertise on this than I have,
Speaker 9: and then they'll come to me at that point.
Speaker 4: One of the advantages of knowing your family line is
Speaker 4: having an understanding of their medical history. Becky has experienced
Speaker 4: some health problems in recent years, and she believes that
Speaker 4: knowing who her father is will help provide some insight
Speaker 4: to not only where she comes from, but also help
Speaker 4: establish a background on some of the medical problems she
Speaker 4: may be genetically predisposed to.
Speaker 1: I just would like to find out who my biological
Speaker 1: father is, not because my family life is disrupted or unhealthy.
Speaker 1: Because my parents are amazing. I love them dearly, but
Speaker 1: I'm just getting older. I have quite a bit of
Speaker 1: health problems that are going on as I'm aging, and
Speaker 1: I'm realizing that I never met my biological father, and
Speaker 1: it is something that I kind of wanted to do.
Speaker 9: Oh, medical history is something important, then.
Speaker 3: Yes, definitely.
Speaker 1: It's it's like when you go to the doctor and
Speaker 1: they say, you know, do you have family history of xyz?
Speaker 3: I always have to put adopted. I don't know.
Speaker 4: And you can see there's a big part of Becky
Speaker 4: that needs to know that some part of her comes
Speaker 4: from something decent.
Speaker 9: Many many people have said that to me, and they
Speaker 9: want to know what their medical history is, and you know,
Speaker 9: I think everyone has a right to know that as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean I really just want to know
Speaker 1: where I come from. I want to know just my background.
Speaker 1: I know my life now and I know my family parents,
Speaker 1: and this is all just beautiful and amazing, but I'd
Speaker 1: like to know the other half of me.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: I know Diane Downs is my biological mother, and that
Speaker 1: is the half of me that I am not proud of,
Speaker 1: and I would love to find the other half. So
Speaker 1: when I was eighteen, I was able to order my
Speaker 1: original birth certificate and that was the real answer that
Speaker 1: was Oh, my gosh, it's actually true. There's no denying
Speaker 1: it at that point because Diane Down's, well, Elizabeth Diane Downs,
Speaker 1: was listed as my biological mother, but there was no
Speaker 1: mention of a father.
Speaker 9: And that's very common that there's just a big blank
Speaker 9: for the father. Very common, you know, in all time
Speaker 9: periods and in all places, really, And I agree with
Speaker 9: what you're saying about the aspect of taking back control
Speaker 9: in a sense in terms of what you can get
Speaker 9: from documents, that varies from state to state, from country
Speaker 9: to country. That varies a lot. But what doesn't vary
Speaker 9: is the fact that whatever you might get from adoption
Speaker 9: papers or from hearsay, from what somebody may be able
Speaker 9: to tell you is simply something that is very difficult
Speaker 9: to corroborate, in fact, impossible to corroborate without that DNA evidence.
Speaker 4: Michelle's believe is that documents can sometimes have false information,
Speaker 4: but DNA evidence is more or less irrefutable.
Speaker 9: I always say that with this, while I want to
Speaker 9: know everything that it's possible to know about the adoption
Speaker 9: papers and the hearsay evidence, I always follow the DNA.
Speaker 9: Always put the DNA first, and I don't let that
Speaker 9: other evidence the documentary evidence or the hearsay evidence cloud
Speaker 9: my judgment and lead to confirmation bias because that information
Speaker 9: can always be wrong or falsely given. The DNA, however,
Speaker 9: if followed correctly, will lead to the truth. And you'll
Speaker 9: hear people say a lot things like DNA doesn't lie,
Speaker 9: human beings do. And while that is very generally true,
Speaker 9: it's also quite an overused and oversimplified saying, because a
Speaker 9: DNA results on their own can be misinterpreted at times,
Speaker 9: in that if you don't know what you're doing with them,
Speaker 9: and you're trying to find an unknown father, you could
Speaker 9: misinterpret the DNA matches and end up identifying the wrong
Speaker 9: man or several wrong men. I've seen that happen before.
Speaker 9: Tister is looking for answers that hit upon someone with
Speaker 9: a similar name to one given in an adoption document,
Speaker 9: or they perhaps message a match who says, oh, I
Speaker 9: think it could be my dad's cousin, and people get
Speaker 9: taken along in the wave of that, and when somebody
Speaker 9: who understands the DNA looks at it properly realizes that
Speaker 9: the DNA doesn't support that conclusion of it being that man.
Speaker 9: So it's a bit more complicated than simply saying DNA
Speaker 9: will give you the truth. DNA doesn't lie. That is true,
Speaker 9: but at the same time, it has to be worked
Speaker 9: with correctly in order to get to the correct answer.
Speaker 2: DNA is a very scientific way of going about a
Speaker 2: very emotional process. There's no denying that your clients and
Speaker 2: Becky here are absolutely going to be subjected to strong
Speaker 2: emotions about this. And then also there's questions about when
Speaker 2: you find Becky's father, what do we do with that information,
Speaker 2: Because I've read different reports from Diane downs herself where
Speaker 2: she has said the father knows he's the father, he's
Speaker 2: a dear friend of mine, and so there's that and
Speaker 2: the reports, and then Becky's heard other things.
Speaker 1: Oh, there's so many stories circling around my biological father.
Speaker 1: I've heard that he doesn't know that he's the father.
Speaker 1: I've heard that he has fought for me when I
Speaker 1: was born to keep custody. I heard that he was
Speaker 1: a reporter during the case. I also heard that he
Speaker 1: was worked at the mail office with Diane. And then
Speaker 1: I also heard it was just some guy that was
Speaker 1: a husband of her cellmate. I mean, there's just so
Speaker 1: many stories. I would really love to just find that
Speaker 1: one answer.
Speaker 4: And there's also the possibility that he's aware of who
Speaker 4: he is and simply doesn't have any desire to be involved.
Speaker 1: That's something that I am worried about too, because I
Speaker 1: have been so out there, you know, I've been open
Speaker 1: about who I am, and if he had wanted to
Speaker 1: contact me, I've been in the media for ten years now,
Speaker 1: you know, So why hasn't he My fear is that
Speaker 1: maybe he has passed away, or he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: be found, or he just doesn't know.
Speaker 9: It's a very tough thing to do, and you have
Speaker 9: to go into it understanding that it's going to bring
Speaker 9: up an awful lot of emotion. You have to have
Speaker 9: a good support network on hand, and you might want
Speaker 9: to even consider professional support, counseling and that kind of
Speaker 9: thing to help through the process in terms of when
Speaker 9: you get to that point, if you get to that point,
Speaker 9: because not all cases are solvable, or at least not
Speaker 9: all cases are immediately solvable. Some take weeks, some take months,
Speaker 9: some take years, and depending on the ethnicity of the
Speaker 9: man in question, sometime there are some cases that will
Speaker 9: take years. Yet because if he's of an ethnicity, say
Speaker 9: that there isn't a society that tends to DNA test.
Speaker 9: Then that makes life a lot more difficult, because if
Speaker 9: you don't have the matches to work with, you can't
Speaker 9: identify the man on the end of it. But having
Speaker 9: said all that, if you get to that point you
Speaker 9: identify a person. First off, you might have a number
Speaker 9: of candidates. You know, the DNA might be pointing to
Speaker 9: a particular family, say, but there might be three brothers,
Speaker 9: or you might only be able to say, well, it's
Speaker 9: one of these brothers, or it's one of their first cousins,
Speaker 9: it's one of these five men, for instance. And the
Speaker 9: only way to get to the bottom of which one
Speaker 9: of the five is is target testing. On those lines,
Speaker 9: anyone who DNA tests, they can find shops and surprises.
Speaker 9: They can find some close ancestors aren't who they believe
Speaker 9: them to be, so for instance, finding out your father's
Speaker 9: not your father, or your grandfather wasn't your grandfather. These
Speaker 9: things can happen. Also, they might find that they have
Speaker 9: close relatives they didn't know existed, like say Becky testing
Speaker 9: and showing up on somebody's list. She could be a
Speaker 9: close relative, a half sibling, a first cousin they never
Speaker 9: knew existed. So in terms of contacting people, in most
Speaker 9: cases you're going to have several candidates and you might
Speaker 9: have to narrow things down to the right one. But
Speaker 9: if you do know exactly who it is, then there
Speaker 9: are a number of prevailing ideas on who should make
Speaker 9: the contact and how that contact should be made.
Speaker 4: It's clear that for Becky this whole process is going
Speaker 4: to be extremely emotional. It's not only her own discoveries
Speaker 4: that she's concerned about, but also the effect it might
Speaker 4: have on the people who raised her and took care
Speaker 4: of her.
Speaker 3: Also.
Speaker 4: At this point, Becky's could be whatever she imagines him
Speaker 4: to be, but once she knows, whatever fantasy or vision
Speaker 4: she has might be crushed.
Speaker 1: There's so many aspects to it that, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to hurt my adopted parents because I do
Speaker 1: love them. And then there's the fact that I am
Speaker 1: on this journey that I never thought I was going
Speaker 1: to go on. I found Diane and I didn't want
Speaker 1: to know anymore. And now there's this search for finding
Speaker 1: in the other half. And I've always been able just
Speaker 1: to pretend that my biological dad's an amazing person that
Speaker 1: he loves me, and that I don't know some great
Speaker 1: person that hasn't done anything wrong and is a positive
Speaker 1: person in society. But the reality is I don't know,
Speaker 1: and he may not be a positive person. He may
Speaker 1: not be the person that I thought he was my
Speaker 1: whole life.
Speaker 9: Absolutely, Yeah, as I say that, this is not a
Speaker 9: comfortable thing to do, and it's not an easy thing
Speaker 9: to do, and it can be emotionally training, and there
Speaker 9: can be times where client has to step back and
Speaker 9: so you know, this is taking over my life and
Speaker 9: I need a break from it for a while. And
Speaker 9: I think anyone if they get to that point, then
Speaker 9: they need to take that break from it, if they're
Speaker 9: getting scared about getting close to the truth and things
Speaker 9: like that. And that's a really really important point when
Speaker 9: you're doing something like this. It's not just about identifying someone.
Speaker 9: It's the whole range of emotions and how that person
Speaker 9: is feeling at any given point in the process is
Speaker 9: extremely important and has to be taken on board. And
Speaker 9: I completely understand what Becky is saying about having this
Speaker 9: fantasy about this great person in society that while she
Speaker 9: doesn't know that can remain intact. But at the same time,
Speaker 9: there's that gnawing away because of not knowing. Clients who
Speaker 9: have found out things about their birth parents that they
Speaker 9: didn't expect and that they found very tough to deal
Speaker 9: with that because they had built up an image of
Speaker 9: a person that didn't exist in essence, that wasn't the reality.
Speaker 9: And others of course have been pleasantly surprised by what
Speaker 9: they found. It's every single case is so individual, and
Speaker 9: there's just no way to generalize about any of this
Speaker 9: at all.
Speaker 4: Michelle explained to Becky and me in depth about how
Speaker 4: the process will work. Once Becky sends in her sample
Speaker 4: and receives her profile, Michelle will wade through all of
Speaker 4: the potential DNA relatives and form a complex family tree,
Speaker 4: gradually forming the branches that directly connect Becky to anyone
Speaker 4: else in the database who may hold clues to her
Speaker 4: father's identity.
Speaker 9: I want to have that maternal side as reference, so
Speaker 9: you want the maternal tree, but just as good, in fact,
Speaker 9: even better than having the maternal tree as well, is
Speaker 9: having a close maternal relatives test that the closest that
Speaker 9: you can test, and when you're trying to solve a mystery,
Speaker 9: I want to just be working on the pertinent matches,
Speaker 9: the paternal matches, and if a maternal relatives can tell
Speaker 9: even better because everyone that matches them as well, I
Speaker 9: can just eliminate them. I can put them in a
Speaker 9: group maternal and I can just put them to one side.
Speaker 9: And the people that don't match your uncle are the
Speaker 9: people I really want to look at because they're going
Speaker 9: to be on the paternal side. So actually your uncle
Speaker 9: testing is something I would hugely recommend in this situation.
Speaker 2: Awesome, amazing, thank you Michelle for taking the time to
Speaker 2: speak with Becky and I.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Michelle, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Thankfully James did in fact submit his DNA, so hopefully
Speaker 4: Michelle will in fact be able to find a complete
Speaker 4: picture of Becky's maternal line which will not only help
Speaker 4: begin the search for her paternal lineage, but also provide
Speaker 4: Becky the conclusive confirmation that she is in fact Diane's daughter,
Speaker 4: despite Diane's recent claims to the contrary. All that remains
Speaker 4: now is to wait for the results.
Speaker 1: And it's that big web where there's so many more things,
Speaker 1: which is the reason that I have never done DNA
Speaker 1: Testine have been a little bit worried about how deep
Speaker 1: it goes.
Speaker 3: You know, it's good. We need to know. You know my.
Speaker 1: Heritage, and you know what health problems run in the family.
Speaker 1: But I've never been ready to find my biological father
Speaker 1: until now.
Speaker 2: Well I can see how emotional that I've I've been
Speaker 2: thinking about your process and how we've were parallel and
Speaker 2: different in these ways. Like I told Michelle, just the
Speaker 2: fact that I know who my mom is and I've
Speaker 2: never had to fantasize about who she is. But she
Speaker 2: said it so well, like, yeah, what do you do
Speaker 2: with that fantasy if it's not real? If the father
Speaker 2: that you painted in your mind. I mean, this is
Speaker 2: a big part of your structure and your history. This
Speaker 2: is ingrained and how you've been able to formulate who
Speaker 2: you are as a person.
Speaker 3: Yeah, luckily I had my adopted parents.
Speaker 1: And I've always said, you know that blood doesn't my
Speaker 1: blood in my veins may be somebody else's.
Speaker 3: But well, let me think about that.
Speaker 1: Getics that I have don't make me who I am.
Speaker 1: You know, there's that nature versus nurture concept. And I
Speaker 1: was raised right. I was raised with good family ethics
Speaker 1: and values and morals, and you know, I think my
Speaker 1: genetics have played a part in a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that I've done. But even if my biological father
Speaker 1: is somebody that doesn't live up to that fantasy, I
Speaker 1: think that I'll be okay because I have that strong
Speaker 1: family structure.
Speaker 4: It's taken Becky a long time to reach the point
Speaker 4: where she's prepared to accept the idea that her biological
Speaker 4: father is out there. It could potentially be located thanks
Speaker 4: to DNA, and what that will ultimately mean for her
Speaker 4: sense of identity remains to be seen, along with the
Speaker 4: uncertainty that he's even willing to cooperate or come forward.
Speaker 4: On the next episode of Happy Face Presents to Face
Speaker 4: Diane Down's trial, we explore her aspects of Diane's trial,
Speaker 4: as some of her bizarre behavior leading up to and
Speaker 4: during the trial, as well as a strange letter she
Speaker 4: wrote to our attorney after us all over. Ben Bolan
Speaker 4: is our executive producer, Melissa Moore is our co executive producer.
Speaker 4: Maya Cole is our primary producer. Paul Decand is our
Speaker 4: supervising producer. Sam T. Garnian is our researcher, and Matt
Speaker 4: Riddle is our story editor. Featured music by dream Tent
Speaker 4: Happy Face presents to Face as a production of iHeartRadio