Speaker 1: The day I was adopted. The things that I know
Speaker 1: were that Diane went into labor, was taken to the hospital.
Speaker 1: I was told that there was a huge media frenzy outside.
Speaker 1: So once I was born, I was told that she
Speaker 1: did not hold me. But the way that she tells
Speaker 1: it is that she spent hours with me in the
Speaker 1: hospital holding me as a baby. So I'm not really
Speaker 1: sure which is the right. You know, I don't know
Speaker 1: which is true. I'm trying to think of the word
Speaker 1: that I wanted to say, but I don't know. An
Speaker 1: officer took me out the back to hide from the
Speaker 1: media and rushed me over to a hotel nearby. That's
Speaker 1: where my parents were waiting.
Speaker 2: Did your adoptive parents know who you were related to?
Speaker 1: Yes, my adoptive parents didn't know. My mom even told
Speaker 1: me that, you know, she had or her and my
Speaker 1: father had gone to my grandfather and was like, you know,
Speaker 1: we've got this child. We're very excited about it. But
Speaker 1: you know, she is Diane Down's daughter. How do you feel?
Speaker 1: And you know he just said she's a babcock. You know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter where she came from, she's ours, you know,
Speaker 1: in some in a roundabout way. My mom did tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about the day I was born,
Speaker 1: and that they were waiting at that hotel room and
Speaker 1: the officer coming through the door holding the little baby girl,
Speaker 1: and she said that she looked down at me and
Speaker 1: that I was perfect. You know, that didn't matter where
Speaker 1: I came from, you know, because I'm her daughter, and
Speaker 1: to her, I was perfect.
Speaker 3: Dana Timms was able to confirm some of what Becky
Speaker 3: had heard about the day she was born.
Speaker 1: I was told that the day that I was born,
Speaker 1: that Diane held me for a very long time, for
Speaker 1: a couple of hours. Then I was also told that
Speaker 1: I had to be snuck out the back of the
Speaker 1: hospital by authorities because of the media that was out
Speaker 1: front covering the story.
Speaker 4: Do you know anything about that? That's probably true, although
Speaker 4: it was you were born ten days after her conviction,
Speaker 4: so I'm not sure that. I mean, certainly, the Lane
Speaker 4: Kenny sheriffs didn't alert the press to say, hey, Diane's
Speaker 4: been taken to the hospital, so if they took you
Speaker 4: out the back, it would have been as a precaution,
Speaker 4: not that there was a row of TV camera set
Speaker 4: up there. Okay, but yeah, I think she held you
Speaker 4: for maybe even longer than two hours, and she let
Speaker 4: Doug Welch, one of the Lenkheady Sheriff's detectives, hold you also.
Speaker 4: I'll say also that during the trial, as she was
Speaker 4: sort of continuing to get fuller, as her pregnancy was
Speaker 4: moving along, she was constantly it was hands on her belly,
Speaker 4: and it was sort of like she had a little
Speaker 4: partner every day who was helping bring her strength in
Speaker 4: a tough situation. Definitely got the feeling that she was
Speaker 4: holding you all that time.
Speaker 3: The idea of Diane's court room pregnancy and subsequent birth
Speaker 3: after conviction were perhaps an important part of Becky's own
Speaker 3: experience to come. She experienced pregnancy and her teens, and
Speaker 3: the experience wasn't easy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I begged them, I said, please don't tell
Speaker 1: my dad, you know, he can't let me at least
Speaker 1: tell him that I'm pregnant, you know. And they ended
Speaker 1: up telling him. And I talked to my dad later
Speaker 1: about it. I was like, I asked them not to
Speaker 1: tell you. He's like, you're a minor, like so, and
Speaker 1: that's how I phrased it. I knew something was wrong.
Speaker 1: There was a reason you were not at boot camp,
Speaker 1: you know. And so he's like, that's how we found out.
Speaker 2: You must have been going through so many emotions.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. I remember I was just crying and
Speaker 1: it got to the point where nobody was telling me anything.
Speaker 1: At MEP's in Portland, I just left. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to boot camp obviously, I can't just
Speaker 1: sit here and do nothing. And I left and I
Speaker 1: went back to where I was staying, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: sat down on the couch next to Christians biological father
Speaker 1: and sat there for a while in silence. Then I
Speaker 1: looked over at him and I'm like, I'm pregnant. He says,
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 5: That was it.
Speaker 1: We sat there for like an hour, just silent, and
Speaker 1: later on I asked him, I'm like, what do you mean,
Speaker 1: how did you know? He's like, because you're back.
Speaker 3: Becky's second pregnancy was initially planned with her then boyfriend,
Speaker 3: a different man from her first pregnancy. She loved him
Speaker 3: and they wanted a child together. Unfortunately, things began to
Speaker 3: fall apart and the situation became difficult.
Speaker 1: It was a high risk of pregnancy. I was bedridden
Speaker 1: for most of it. I didn't want to give up
Speaker 1: on our family. So I ended up staying in a
Speaker 1: homeless shelter because they couldn't work, and he went back
Speaker 1: to his ex and they just they were awful. They
Speaker 1: just kept telling me, you know, that they were going
Speaker 1: to take him from me, or they were going to
Speaker 1: have the state take him from me, and it's all
Speaker 1: these horrible things things whereas I'm here in Clement Falls
Speaker 1: trying to make our family work, and it didn't. So
Speaker 1: I called my parents, you know, and I asked for help.
Speaker 3: Becky's parents agreed to take her in and help take
Speaker 3: care of her during the pregnancy, but on the condition
Speaker 3: that she consider adoption.
Speaker 1: So I didn't decide until I was eight months pregnant
Speaker 1: that adoption was what was going to be best. I
Speaker 1: fought it, I really, I tried so hard to get
Speaker 1: everything right in my life just so that I could
Speaker 1: keep him. But in about eight months I had to
Speaker 1: just accept that I couldn't. And so we got a
Speaker 1: hold of the adoption agency and they brought all these
Speaker 1: folders of families, just family after family after family, and
Speaker 1: I just remember going through the pages and just thinking,
Speaker 1: like these people cannot raise my child. Is you know,
Speaker 1: this isn't the right place for him. I had to
Speaker 1: pick somewhere that was perfect. And in one of the
Speaker 1: very last folders that I got were the ones they
Speaker 1: had already had a son and they just couldn't have
Speaker 1: children together. So that was who I chose, and you know,
Speaker 1: I met them and they they were just amazing.
Speaker 3: Letting go wasn't easy for Becky. In many ways, giving
Speaker 3: up her second child mirror Diane's own experience with her,
Speaker 3: but Becky was able to control the narrative. As difficult
Speaker 3: as the situation was, she was able to ensure that
Speaker 3: he went to a family who would love him.
Speaker 1: I didn't even hold him for very long, and they
Speaker 1: just had to take him because I didn't let go.
Speaker 1: So they took him and the family was in a
Speaker 1: room close by, and they spent those first two days
Speaker 1: in the hospital with them. You know how mom stays
Speaker 1: in the first.
Speaker 6: Day ought to do that.
Speaker 1: I had to go home and recover, And two days
Speaker 1: later I get a call from the hospital. They forgot
Speaker 1: to have me sign the adoption baby. They left those
Speaker 1: parts out, so I actually had to go back into
Speaker 1: the hospital and see them and see the baby and
Speaker 1: sign over my rights. Right then, after two days of
Speaker 1: just misery because I gave my child away. It was
Speaker 1: the hardest moment of my life. But he is with
Speaker 1: an amazing family. He's doing so great. I get pictures
Speaker 1: every year on his birthday, and you know, it's an
Speaker 1: open adoption. But at this point, I feel that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna wait until he's ready to find me. I don't
Speaker 1: want to push myself into his life. And they didn't
Speaker 1: hide that he was adopted, so you know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: when he's ready, or if he's ever ready, he'll find me.
Speaker 3: Perhaps thinking back on her own situation and her curiosity
Speaker 3: about her own biological parents that could consider whether or
Speaker 3: not the son she gave up for adoption would one
Speaker 3: day wonder about her and who she was, so she
Speaker 3: made sure he would have the answers if he ever
Speaker 3: wanted them.
Speaker 1: Of course, I wrote him a letter and gave it
Speaker 1: to the parents to give him when he was old
Speaker 1: enough to just. I remember writing it when I had
Speaker 1: decided to put him up when I get my apartment,
Speaker 1: and I just I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote,
Speaker 1: and the thing probably was ten pages long, and and
Speaker 1: I just realized that I need to, you know, short
Speaker 1: and sweet, just just a letter to know, let him
Speaker 1: know that I loved him, and then I was really
Speaker 1: doing what I thought was best. I'm terrified that he
Speaker 1: may think bad of me, that he thinks that he
Speaker 1: was unloved, or that he was unwanted or didn't have
Speaker 1: that connection, because you know, he was part of my heart.
Speaker 3: Shortly after this difficult experience, Becky reached out to Diane
Speaker 3: for the first time.
Speaker 2: Do you remember what you wrote, did Diane?
Speaker 1: I think it was pretty general. The first letter, you know,
Speaker 1: said that I think I'm a near biological daughter. Here's
Speaker 1: my day to birth time, and here's what I look like,
Speaker 1: just all the basics.
Speaker 2: And then when you reached out to her, this was
Speaker 2: only because you just had your son up for adoption.
Speaker 2: He he is now in the picture of with another family.
Speaker 2: Is that correct correct?
Speaker 3: We've spoken about the nature of their correspondence in an
Speaker 3: earlier episode, but the letters immediately devolved into Diane attacking
Speaker 3: Becky for wanting to know about her biological father, and
Speaker 3: over the years, Diane has continued to deny that Becky
Speaker 3: is her daughter. Diane recently went so far as to
Speaker 3: claim that Becky could be a disinherited niece out to
Speaker 3: con Diane out of Amy's inheritance. I've corresponded with Diane
Speaker 3: through emails, and she is somehow has flipped it to
Speaker 3: that you're not her biological daughter. Amy is somewhere out
Speaker 3: there and she hasn't reconnected with Amy, and she only
Speaker 3: uses Amy as the name of that little girl, which
Speaker 3: is you.
Speaker 2: How does that make you feel?
Speaker 4: Hearing the name Aim?
Speaker 2: How does that make you feel?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: Is about the same as hearing the Hungry like Wolf song.
Speaker 1: It just kind of sense chills up your spine a
Speaker 1: little bit. I don't identify with it because I don't.
Speaker 1: It doesn't fit me. I don't feel like it's my name.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the letters, when she started with her conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: and you know, really getting into stories that I just
Speaker 1: didn't want to hear, and I asked her to stop
Speaker 1: writing me. Is when she decided that I wasn't her daughter,
Speaker 1: I am assuming because I rejected her. I asked her
Speaker 1: to stop writing me. And at that point then I
Speaker 1: was the enemy as well, and she decided that I
Speaker 1: was the one who was after her, and I didn't
Speaker 1: want to feed into that, so I didn't continue conversating.
Speaker 3: There's quite a bit of anecdotal evidence to suggest that
Speaker 3: Becky is Diane's daughter, but the only way to remove
Speaker 3: any lingering doubts Becky might is through DNA. For this,
Speaker 3: we check back in with Michelle Leonard, the DNA detective.
Speaker 3: With both Becky as well as Diane's brother James, having
Speaker 3: submitted samples, Michelle is finally able to start putting together
Speaker 3: the pieces of the larger puzzle.
Speaker 6: So with Becky's ancestry results, you get two main components.
Speaker 6: You get an ethnicity estimate, and you get the DNA
Speaker 6: match list. And I'm sitting here looking at Becky's results
Speaker 6: page at the moment, and I'm going to open up
Speaker 6: her ethnicity estimate and I'm going to go through what
Speaker 6: that tells us. So first up, so it's telling us
Speaker 6: that Becky is forty six percent Germanic Europe, forty two
Speaker 6: percent England, Wales and Northwestern Europe, five percent Eastern Europe
Speaker 6: and Russia four percent Norway three percent Baltics.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. I was told that I have Danish ancestry.
Speaker 6: One of the other things I've done in preparation for
Speaker 6: the case is I've built a tree out for your
Speaker 6: maternal side, but your Frederickson line goes back to Denmark
Speaker 6: came over to the United States after your great great grandfather,
Speaker 6: Christian Peter Fredrickson, who was born in eighteen sixty seven,
Speaker 6: So he was the immigrant who came to the United
Speaker 6: States and died in South Dakota.
Speaker 7: What I think is interesting, just right off the top,
Speaker 7: is you said Frederickson line that confirms that Becky is
Speaker 7: in fact the biological daughter of Diane.
Speaker 6: Downs absolutely one. Yeah, there's there's no doubt about that whatsoever.
Speaker 6: That is definite, especially since Diane's brother has also taken
Speaker 6: a test and Becky matches him exactly as you would
Speaker 6: expect for an uncle niece relationship, So there's no mystery
Speaker 6: as to the maternal side.
Speaker 7: Becky, how do you feel about that, because there has
Speaker 7: been speculation and doubt, especially from Diane herself, saying that
Speaker 7: you weren't her daughter.
Speaker 1: Like you said, Diane has denied I'm her biological daughter
Speaker 1: for a really long time. In her very first letter,
Speaker 1: she was excited to have me as her daughter, but
Speaker 1: then you know, it quickly went to I was not
Speaker 1: her daughter, and ever since then she has believed that
Speaker 1: I'm not her biological daughter. So I mean those results
Speaker 1: are super huge for me. That's every emotion you can
Speaker 1: think of is what I feel. I have seen my
Speaker 1: adopted birth certificate, but I've never had this kind of proof,
Speaker 1: like this is zero doubt I am her biological daughter,
Speaker 1: and there's been a lot of stipulation out there and
Speaker 1: people weren't quite sure if I was that child that
Speaker 1: you know, she was pregnant with when she was on trial,
Speaker 1: So I don't know. It just kind of shows that
Speaker 1: it's real.
Speaker 3: Zecky's maternal line established and having finally received confirmation that
Speaker 3: she is in fact Diane's biological daughter, Becky's next question,
Speaker 3: and perhaps to her, the most important, is to begin
Speaker 3: tracing the paternal line. In order to do that, Michelle
Speaker 3: has to begin by building a family tree.
Speaker 6: I want to know who your maternal ancestors are because
Speaker 6: that helps me with eliminating DNA matches that result from
Speaker 6: your maternal side. So that's why I've built out a
Speaker 6: maternal tree to help me with doing that, and basically
Speaker 6: with outside of the Danish ancestors, that just shows that
Speaker 6: your maternal ancestry has been in the United States in general,
Speaker 6: in most lines for a number of generations. The longer
Speaker 6: that the lines have been in the United States, the
Speaker 6: more DNA matches you tend to get to them, which
Speaker 6: is another thing that is important to know about when
Speaker 6: you're trying to work out the DNA. So if we
Speaker 6: go back to the ethnicity side of things, we've obviously
Speaker 6: got this forty six percent Germanic Europe showing up and
Speaker 6: this little bit Eastern Europe and Russia. The little bit
Speaker 6: that's categorizes Norway might well be the Danish the Germanic Europe.
Speaker 6: If you can look at the map, it covers quite
Speaker 6: a large area which takes in the likes of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg,
Speaker 6: Belgium and the Netherlands. So it's quite clear you have
Speaker 6: some strong and a large amount of ancestry from this
Speaker 6: part of Europe. From your ethnicity estimate.
Speaker 1: Well that makes sense. I mean I'm five nine and
Speaker 1: blonde hair, green eyes, and yeah, yeah, like I'm from
Speaker 1: that region.
Speaker 3: As Michean Packspecky's estimated ethnicities, she warns that they're accurate
Speaker 3: to some extent, but they don't give much detail at
Speaker 3: a micro level.
Speaker 6: It does make sense in those terms, yes, and the
Speaker 6: looking down the rest of it obviously there's the forty
Speaker 6: two percent England, Wales and northwestern Europe. I suspect that
Speaker 6: quite a lot of that is your maternal side, those
Speaker 6: American lines that have maybe come over from England, Wales,
Speaker 6: et cetera further back in time. I always say, don't
Speaker 6: read too much into the ethnicity estimate as a whole.
Speaker 6: It's very interesting to see, especially when you have one
Speaker 6: side of your ancestry that's unknown. It can really give
Speaker 6: you a clue as to the direction to look in,
Speaker 6: but it's never going to solve the case, and there's
Speaker 6: always going to be, you know, things that aren't quite
Speaker 6: right with ethnicity estimates as well. I say, they're generally
Speaker 6: accurate to the continental level, but when you try to
Speaker 6: drill them down further to country level, it's much more
Speaker 6: difficult to do, and they have to be taken with
Speaker 6: a bit of a pinch of salt.
Speaker 3: At the same time, Michelle believes that even with the
Speaker 3: information she has currently and with a few more database emissions,
Speaker 3: she will be able to trace Becky's paternity.
Speaker 1: So do you think we're going to be able to
Speaker 1: solve the mystery?
Speaker 6: I really do think we are the key, However, to
Speaker 6: solving the mystery. Isn't the ethnicity estimate. Like I say,
Speaker 6: it can give us a clue, and that bit about
Speaker 6: the Germanic Europe is interesting, but it's not going to
Speaker 6: tell us who your biological father is. The key are
Speaker 6: the DNA matches.
Speaker 1: His DNA is not on file, then he's not submitted.
Speaker 6: No, you don't have a parent match, which is, as
Speaker 6: I say, not at all unusual. The vast majority of
Speaker 6: people looking for a birth parent when they take a
Speaker 6: DNA test will not find that birth parent has already tested.
Speaker 6: If you will, and they're very lucky. If they do
Speaker 6: it easier, it does make it easier, but most don't.
Speaker 6: So Obviously, your top match is your maternal uncle, and
Speaker 6: you're sharing a lot of DNA with him, nearly seventeen
Speaker 6: hundred centi morgans as we call it. And that's a
Speaker 6: really significant amount of DNA, exactly the right amount to
Speaker 6: be sharing with a full uncle.
Speaker 3: But it turns out that James isn't Becky's only high
Speaker 3: level match.
Speaker 6: However, with that amount of DNA, there are a number
Speaker 6: of different relationships that you could have with someone, and
Speaker 6: your second highest match is sharing We are fifteen hundred
Speaker 6: cent of Morgans with you.
Speaker 1: So, so what is that? That another and her uncle?
Speaker 6: So this is a female match. This person is either
Speaker 6: a grandmother, a full aunt, or a half sibling. She
Speaker 6: is one of those three relationships. Now at this point
Speaker 6: we don't know which. But she's what I call a
Speaker 6: jackpop match, and she does not match your maternal uncle. Therefore,
Speaker 6: given the size of the match, and given how closely
Speaker 6: related he is to you, she is most definitely a
Speaker 6: paternal match. Either a paternal grandmother, a paternal aunt, or
Speaker 6: a paternal half sibling, half sister. She's one of those.
Speaker 6: It is. It's very exciting. There are caveats though.
Speaker 3: Even though there is a high level match, there are
Speaker 3: obstacles in the way. Not all users on DNA databases,
Speaker 3: even those that appear to be relatives as matches, are
Speaker 3: easy to track down, nor do they always want to be.
Speaker 6: She has no tree, and she has a user name
Speaker 6: that is quite privatized. And I have tried everything I
Speaker 6: could think of to see if this concoction of letters
Speaker 6: and numbers has been used by somebody somewhere that I
Speaker 6: could identify who this person is, and it hasn't. They've
Speaker 6: been very smart and maintaining their privacy on the site
Speaker 6: with the name that they've used. The one thing that
Speaker 6: I can tell from it is that she is not
Speaker 6: a grandmother. She's not your paternal grandmother, simply because I'm
Speaker 6: able to look at all of the matches that she
Speaker 6: has and she's clearly matching to, you know, both sides
Speaker 6: of your paternal ancestry, and not just one. So that
Speaker 6: suggests to me that we can narrow her down to
Speaker 6: being either your paternal aunt or half sister. So she's
Speaker 6: one of those two relationships with you.
Speaker 3: Michall also cautions against the natural tendency that many of
Speaker 3: us would have in the situation.
Speaker 6: A lot of people when they see such a jackpot match,
Speaker 6: the very first thing they're going to want to do
Speaker 6: is fire off a message to that person. It's human nature,
Speaker 6: and it's normal to want to do that, and in
Speaker 6: many cases it's the right thing to do, and then
Speaker 6: some it's not. At this point in time, we don't
Speaker 6: know if she's a paternal aunt, we don't know if
Speaker 6: she's a paternal half sister, and contact is the most
Speaker 6: delicate thing that we're going to be doing with this situation.
Speaker 6: It could be that she is your birth father's daughter.
Speaker 6: It could be she's his sister, but either way, we're
Speaker 6: not going straight to the source. If we message her
Speaker 6: and we give her this information and then she goes
Speaker 6: to him, whether he's her brother or he's her father,
Speaker 6: and says, dad or brother, what's this? Who's this person?
Speaker 5: What do you know?
Speaker 6: And maybe nothing, and maybe he knows something, and maybe
Speaker 6: that puts him in a very difficult situation, and that
Speaker 6: makes him less likely to want to have contact because
Speaker 6: we've gone through his family and not given him the
Speaker 6: opportunity to tell them himself, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: There have been some speculation that Becky's father may not
Speaker 3: know his identity, but there are a number of things
Speaker 3: that indicate that he very likely does, in fact know
Speaker 3: that Becky exists.
Speaker 6: So I think that it's best to hang back from
Speaker 6: making that contact with her at this point in time
Speaker 6: until I've at least until I've done a full evaluation.
Speaker 6: I might be able to identify her through her more
Speaker 6: distant relatives. I might be able to identify who her
Speaker 6: father or her brother is. And if that's possible, then
Speaker 6: you always want to go straight to the birth person,
Speaker 6: the birth parents, if at all possible, because that gives
Speaker 6: them the opportunity then to tell their family if they
Speaker 6: want to do that. Of course, it might be that
Speaker 6: we'd no, we get to that point and we get
Speaker 6: no reply, and then we can always go back and
Speaker 6: try contacting her at that point.
Speaker 1: That's one thing that I'm a little bit nervous about
Speaker 1: is the contact if he is alive, because I've been
Speaker 1: public with my story for ten years and he has
Speaker 1: not contacted me. I'm worried that he may not want
Speaker 1: to contact me, he may not know he's my biological father,
Speaker 1: or he's deceased. So it's I am very nervous about
Speaker 1: that first contact.
Speaker 7: I think with you, Becky, I've been thinking about that
Speaker 7: as well, how public you've been over the last ten years.
Speaker 7: And then also as I was digging in a little
Speaker 7: bit more about what Anne Rule has reported on.
Speaker 8: Her contact with your birth father.
Speaker 5: If that's in fact true, I don't have any reason
Speaker 5: to doubt she's lying.
Speaker 7: But if it is true that she did have contact.
Speaker 8: With your birth father and she made a deal with.
Speaker 5: Him, he would know then that Diane Brown's you know,
Speaker 5: obviously had a child and that he has a child
Speaker 5: with her, you know, I'm not a man, so I
Speaker 5: don't know if there's shame that he We don't know
Speaker 5: the circumstances how he came into the position of being
Speaker 5: with Diane intimately, if that was as it's been quoted
Speaker 5: in books and resources, is that he was duped into
Speaker 5: this affair or whether he went into it willingly. But
Speaker 5: I could imagine this is somewhat shameful to know that
Speaker 5: he he had sex with a convicted child killer.
Speaker 1: It's just the same as it's shameful to be the daughter.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Several names have floated for who Becky's father might be,
Speaker 3: but with annerl's use him in alias, his real name
Speaker 3: may have died with her. No one else seems to
Speaker 3: know exactly who he might be.
Speaker 5: So what's interesting, Michelle, is that everybody has a theory
Speaker 5: who Becky's father is, So any theories.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so I spoke to the nanny. She had the
Speaker 7: theory it was a defense attorney, which is ruled out,
Speaker 7: so that's not the case. But everybody speculates who had
Speaker 7: this access on a daily basis with Diane that could
Speaker 7: be potentially the father based on what I have researched
Speaker 7: and Rull gave the statement that she made a deal
Speaker 7: that she would use his story in the book but
Speaker 7: change his name, you know, make a pen name for him,
Speaker 7: and then also changes profession, which she changes profession in
Speaker 7: the book to teacher. But then interesting enough, when we.
Speaker 8: Talked to reporters, they all said, we heard it was
Speaker 8: a local reporter. And there's so many people who are
Speaker 8: attached to this case that want to know the results
Speaker 8: and are curious in a different fashion to Becky.
Speaker 6: I mean, I always say the proof is in the DNA. Yeah.
Speaker 6: The problem with what you've got You've got a jackpop match,
Speaker 6: and at the same time you you've got the unlucky
Speaker 6: status of being from almost certainly from very recent immigrants,
Speaker 6: which means that there are less DNA matches to work with.
Speaker 6: Like I said, the vast majority of your matches are maternal.
Speaker 6: That you know, sort of issue of oh, we've got
Speaker 6: fewer matches to work with, yet at the same time
Speaker 6: we've got the jackpot match.
Speaker 3: Michelle plans to die far beyond the DNA results and
Speaker 3: using whatever name she's able to find, she'll build a
Speaker 3: paternal family tree bit by bit until she's able to
Speaker 3: solidify the identities of Becky's closest relatives on her father's side.
Speaker 6: And next, what I want to do is a full
Speaker 6: evaluation of the paternal matches that she does have. I
Speaker 6: want to build their trees. I want to try and
Speaker 6: find their connections, and of course the fact that it
Speaker 6: is recent immigration from countries like Poland and the Ukraine
Speaker 6: does make that more difficult. But I will try my
Speaker 6: very best to build these people back to their ancestors
Speaker 6: and see if I can find connections. And if I
Speaker 6: can do that, I might be able to solve it
Speaker 6: through these more distant matches. It just depends how lucky
Speaker 6: we are with them and how possible it is to
Speaker 6: build the trees back and find the connections, and at
Speaker 6: that point we can make a decision on contacting the
Speaker 6: jackpot match, or if I've been lucky, that maybe contacting
Speaker 6: the birth father himself. So that's why I'm saying, hold
Speaker 6: off on any contact with the high match at the
Speaker 6: moment until I've done this.
Speaker 3: Having been through this scenario many times with others, there's
Speaker 3: an approach Michelle recommends for those who may be contacting
Speaker 3: possible family members for the first time.
Speaker 6: I say, you know, you have to do it. Very cautiously.
Speaker 6: You don't want to barrel in there telling them your
Speaker 6: life story. In a first message. You have to gauge
Speaker 6: what they may know and what they may be willing
Speaker 6: to how you know, when you make a first contact,
Speaker 6: you have to make it short. You want to say,
Speaker 6: you know, hey, we have a close match, but you
Speaker 6: don't want to say, oh, I think I'm your daughter,
Speaker 6: or I think I'm your sister, or you know, you
Speaker 6: don't want to go into that detail, just you know,
Speaker 6: are you know, are you interested in exploring our match?
Speaker 6: Is there anything you could tell me about your ancestry?
Speaker 6: General questions?
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 6: I think one of the worst mistakes is if you're
Speaker 6: looking for a birth parent and you instantly see you
Speaker 6: have half siblings, or you have aunts or you know,
Speaker 6: first cousins, people that are close to that man, and
Speaker 6: you know you've worked out who he is, but you
Speaker 6: instead go on Facebook and message his daughter, because then
Speaker 6: you might be opening up a can of worms that
Speaker 6: leads you to alienating the person that you're trying to
Speaker 6: get in contact with before you've even managed to speak
Speaker 6: to them. And going about these things the right way
Speaker 6: doesn't always result in a positive outcome. If you can
Speaker 6: possibly get to the birth parent themselves. Always you want
Speaker 6: to do that.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking it's funny that all of your don't
Speaker 1: do is when contacting is exactly what I did. When
Speaker 1: I contacted i Am, I said, I think I'm weird daughter.
Speaker 1: I told her my entire life story, and I think
Speaker 1: I overwhelmed her. You know, it was just like I was.
Speaker 1: I was kind of excited to contact her, which is weird,
Speaker 1: I know, but you know, it's still where I come from.
Speaker 1: And so I got a little over excited when I
Speaker 1: wrote my letter.
Speaker 6: And it's it's It's natural, isn't it to get over
Speaker 6: excited contacting someone who's so closely related to you, And
Speaker 6: what's right for one person isn't right for another. And
Speaker 6: I always say keep the first, you know, contact sure
Speaker 6: and gender. But when they if they come back and
Speaker 6: they're super interested and they're telling you their life story,
Speaker 6: you know, then get into it because you know obviously
Speaker 6: there's they want to hear it. And of course I'm
Speaker 6: talking from the perspective of finding people as a DNA
Speaker 6: match and not from having adoption papers and the like,
Speaker 6: and knowing this person is supposedly your birth parent. My
Speaker 6: first thought isn't let's fire off a message to her
Speaker 6: straight away. I want to do some more digging and
Speaker 6: find out if I can work out who she is
Speaker 6: and maybe work from her to get to your birth parent.
Speaker 3: With the Jackpop match of Becky's paternal side, discovering the
Speaker 3: identity of Becky's father seems likely in many ways. Finding
Speaker 3: out would be the culmination of her journey and the
Speaker 3: reconciliation and acceptance of who she is. The question is
Speaker 3: whether or not her biological father will feel the same.
Speaker 3: On the next episode of Happy Face Presents Two Face,
Speaker 3: in a bizarre letter from Diane Downs to her post
Speaker 3: conviction attorney, she completely changes her version of the events
Speaker 3: that took place that night of the shooting and what
Speaker 3: happens when Diana escapes from prison. Ben Bolan is our
Speaker 3: executive producer, Melissa Moore is our co executive producer. Maya
Speaker 3: Cole is our primary producer, Paul Dekant is our supervising producer,
Speaker 3: Sam T. Garnian is our researcher, and Matt Riddle is
Speaker 3: our story editor. Featured music by dream Tent. Happy Phase
Speaker 3: Presents Two Phase is a production of iHeartRadio