Speaker 1: You're listening to a Tenderfoot TV podcast.
Speaker 2: Girls.
Speaker 3: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
Speaker 3: those of the authors and participants and do not necessarily
Speaker 3: represent those of iHeartMedia, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. This
Speaker 3: series contains discussions of violence and sexual violence. Listener discretion
Speaker 3: is advised. Previously on Algorithm, I spoke with a caller
Speaker 3: who told me about Darren Vond's ruse and her theory
Speaker 3: about his motivation.
Speaker 1: His mom had to be everything about what he went
Speaker 1: out and kieled.
Speaker 3: And I asked Bond's lawyer, Guiko Kasich, what led Von
Speaker 3: to change his mind about the death penalty.
Speaker 2: From the very beginning is and when death I want death?
Speaker 2: I want death. And then all of a sudden, about.
Speaker 1: Three days, four days before we cut the play, he
Speaker 1: changed his mind.
Speaker 3: I hoped that Vond might now be open to confessing
Speaker 3: to more murders, so I sent him a letter, and
Speaker 3: months later I received a response from Vaughn where he
Speaker 3: agreed to an interview. I, Darren D. Vaughn would like
Speaker 3: to offer you a deal. You would have to write
Speaker 3: a report of the corruption that's ongoing at the Wabash
Speaker 3: Valley correctional facility, but when I contacted the Department of Corrections,
Speaker 3: they told me he wasn't interested. From iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV,
Speaker 3: this is algorithm. I'm ben Keebrick. I think beyond a
Speaker 3: new confession from Vaughn, one of the best chances we
Speaker 3: have of connecting him to additional crimes is DNA. Because
Speaker 3: of backlogs in DNA testing across the country, I wondered
Speaker 3: if police had ever checked for DNA evidence associated with
Speaker 3: the cold cases Hargrove had identified, or with other unsolved
Speaker 3: murderers or sexual assaults in the area. I came across
Speaker 3: an article from the Northwest Indiana Times that in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: Lake County, Indiana, had found over two hundred untested rape
Speaker 3: kits and made plans to test them. I was curious
Speaker 3: what came of that effort. The article mentioned one of
Speaker 3: the people involved was Lake County Deputy Prosecutor Nadia Wardrop,
Speaker 3: so I reached out to her for comment. Wardrop is
Speaker 3: one of four female deputy prosecutors who in twenty eighteen
Speaker 3: were brought in to reform the way crimes like sexual
Speaker 3: assault were handled. When I emailed Wardrop, she told me
Speaker 3: that she wanted to talk, but said she couldn't do
Speaker 3: so without permission and forwarded my email to their PR person.
Speaker 3: I looped back a week later and she told me
Speaker 3: she still hadn't gotten to go ahead, but recommended I
Speaker 3: contact the fair Haven Rape Crisis Center. It's a nonprofit
Speaker 3: group that was also involved in Lake County's initiative to
Speaker 3: test their untested rape kits. I called there and spoke
Speaker 3: to Becca Emerson.
Speaker 4: So, my name is Becca Emerson, and I am the
Speaker 4: anti trafficking coordinator at fair Haven Rape Crisis Center.
Speaker 3: It turned out that Becca was actually familiar with the podcast.
Speaker 5: Can I ask what podcast this is? I'm a big
Speaker 5: podcast listener, like to check out.
Speaker 3: So it's called Algorithm.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, I listened to your podcast.
Speaker 4: I was just listening to the one.
Speaker 5: Oh my god. I'm sorry. Now I'm like all Star starts.
Speaker 3: So when I was looking into this stuff, it looked
Speaker 3: like in twenty seventeen, there was this statewide initiative to
Speaker 3: look into untested rape kids.
Speaker 4: Yes, that is correct. So the statewide initiative was a
Speaker 4: voluntary initiative put forward by our state to see how
Speaker 4: many untested kits we had. Because back in twenty seventeen
Speaker 4: was when the discussion at a nationwide level of the backlog.
Speaker 5: Was starting to happen. So this was a big hot topic,
Speaker 5: and Indiana got on.
Speaker 4: Board and said, we need to test our kids.
Speaker 5: And we need to see how many we have to
Speaker 5: do that.
Speaker 4: So there was this initiative. It was not mandatory, and
Speaker 4: I believe ninety one out of our ninety two counties
Speaker 4: did participate.
Speaker 5: In Lake County was one of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Then I think when I was looking through the report,
Speaker 3: you know, they asked for all their jurisdictions to report,
Speaker 3: and it looked like maybe not all of them had.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Lake County did not have all of our jurisdiction's report.
Speaker 5: I do know that some of them did.
Speaker 4: And I do have those numbers, but not every jurisdiction
Speaker 4: in Lake County participated.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Do you happen to know which ones didn't or not?
Speaker 5: Off the top of my head. I do know that.
Speaker 4: Hammond Police Department had a pretty high number, one of
Speaker 4: our highest cities in our county.
Speaker 5: But I mean, we have.
Speaker 4: I think fourteen different municipalities in our county. We're the
Speaker 4: second largest county in the state. So in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: Lake County came together with our sexual assault Response team
Speaker 4: with our Prosecutor's office and said, we need to test
Speaker 4: every single kit. We need to test all of them
Speaker 4: going back, and we need to test every kit going forward.
Speaker 3: According to the audit, Lake County identified a total of
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty seven untested kits and they determine
Speaker 3: that two hundred and thirty eight of those kits should
Speaker 3: be tested. So out of this two hundred and thirty
Speaker 3: eight kits, how many of those kits have been tested?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 4: All of them we had, Like I said, I know
Speaker 4: I can speak for ham And Police Department for sure
Speaker 4: because I spoke to that detective directly a while ago
Speaker 4: about it. They were taking ten kits every week to
Speaker 4: be tested until their backlog was done. And within the
Speaker 4: first year after rape kit reform was passed, ham And
Speaker 4: Police Department had cleared their backlog. So all two hundred
Speaker 4: and thirty eight have been tested as of now.
Speaker 3: And when you say taking ten kits, is that they're
Speaker 3: like driving them to the lab where they do the
Speaker 3: testing or yes.
Speaker 4: Sir, every person who has possession of that kit, it
Speaker 4: needs to be documented who had it and when, so
Speaker 4: they have to personally drive that kit to our state lab,
Speaker 4: which is about forty five minutes away. So now what
Speaker 4: happens when somebody reports in Lake County? The law enforcement
Speaker 4: agency who is handling the case now has seventy two
Speaker 4: hours to pick up that kit from the medical facility
Speaker 4: where it was done, and then the lab tests all
Speaker 4: kits that come in on a first come, first serve basis.
Speaker 4: So sometimes it may take five to six seven weeks
Speaker 4: for the kit to be tested, but every kit is
Speaker 4: tested now. And now our entire state has adopted a
Speaker 4: tracking system, so when a victim is in the hospital
Speaker 4: and getting that exam done, they are given a pin
Speaker 4: number so that anytime the victim can go into the
Speaker 4: database and see where her kit is so they can
Speaker 4: look and see, Okay, it was picked up by law enforcement. Okay,
Speaker 4: now it was dropped off at the lab. Okay, now
Speaker 4: the lab is testing it.
Speaker 3: So I think I was reading online that the original
Speaker 3: plan was to dispose of kits that were like older
Speaker 3: than ten years old unless the victim came forward and
Speaker 3: specifically requested that their kit got tested. Do you know
Speaker 3: what happened with that?
Speaker 4: As far as my understanding, all kits up through twenty
Speaker 4: oh seven were tested.
Speaker 5: But I do know that some of our.
Speaker 4: Jurisdictions in our county went back even further and just
Speaker 4: tested all of their kits, So there were some that
Speaker 4: were tested from prior to ten years.
Speaker 5: Prior to that.
Speaker 3: So some places went back and tested older kids. But
Speaker 3: you're not sure about the details of that.
Speaker 5: Oh, I'm not okay.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm kind of curious about that, specifically with
Speaker 3: the algorithm stuff, because you know, there might have been
Speaker 3: this this serial killer active and kind of like the
Speaker 3: nineties to early two thousands. You know, just be interesting
Speaker 3: if if there were any kits from that period that
Speaker 3: we're getting tested.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately I don't know personally, but I mean, if you
Speaker 4: find out, let me know, because I've been following algorithms,
Speaker 4: so this case is very interesting to me as well.
Speaker 3: I asked doctor Lovell, the researcher that was involved in
Speaker 3: Cleveland's sexual Assault kid initiative, whether destroying rape kits was common.
Speaker 3: They said they would only test the kits going back
Speaker 3: ten years, and that they were going to like throw
Speaker 3: away their old kits unless victims came forward and said
Speaker 3: that they wanted them still tested. And you know it
Speaker 3: seems like costant basically nothing to keep those kits and
Speaker 3: kind of you never know even if you don't have
Speaker 3: the resources to do it. Now you know that things
Speaker 3: will get cheaper and stuff like that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think, and we've seen that as well, and
Speaker 6: there's been some I think political. Maybe it was CNN,
Speaker 6: I can't remember. Anyway, they did a pretty extensive analysis
Speaker 6: of destroying rape kits and destroying evidence.
Speaker 3: I found the article level was referring to. CNN had
Speaker 3: surveyed over two hundred police departments across all fifty states
Speaker 3: and found that almost half of them had destroyed some
Speaker 3: untested kits. Sometimes these kids had been destroyed improperly, and
Speaker 3: other times they're destroyed in accordance with policy.
Speaker 6: I think you see that quite a bit, that law enforcement.
Speaker 6: They all make their their own policies around how long
Speaker 6: they keep evidence. Some of them are mandated now by states,
Speaker 6: so Ohio now has uh I think it's the thirty
Speaker 6: years that they have to keep biological evidence. But you know,
Speaker 6: if they're following their practices, which they have you know,
Speaker 6: written out, and they say, oh, we only keep things
Speaker 6: ten years, otherwise we destroy it, I think some of
Speaker 6: those practices need to be re examined, and that means
Speaker 6: that you know, tax payers have to fit the bill
Speaker 6: to provide more storage facilities. But you know that to
Speaker 6: me doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem. And I think
Speaker 6: if the technology for DNA is telling us anything, it's
Speaker 6: that it's growing so fast and exponentially getting so much
Speaker 6: better that you know what, we couldn't get a DNA
Speaker 6: profile from now ten years from now, who knows. I mean,
Speaker 6: look at what genealogy testing has done, you know. So
Speaker 6: the thought that jurisdictions would just throw away evidence would
Speaker 6: suggest to me that they somehow think that what they're
Speaker 6: doing now has reached the pinnacle of all technology and
Speaker 6: that their investigative practices at the time were the best
Speaker 6: that they could possibly ever be, two things that I
Speaker 6: think you just can't assume. And it's a little disconcerting
Speaker 6: to hear about sort of putting all of the onus
Speaker 6: onto victims to reach out to the department and say, hey,
Speaker 6: I know I had this kit. I thought you tested it.
Speaker 6: How was I to know you didn't test it? And
Speaker 6: the cost of testing, by the way, as I said,
Speaker 6: has gone down quite dramatically, So just the testing is
Speaker 6: about five hundred dollars in Ohio, and then to have
Speaker 6: someone you know read the results and write a report
Speaker 6: is about another five hundred dollars. So you know, you're
Speaker 6: really talking about one thousand dollars per kit, which in
Speaker 6: the criminal justice system isn't a huge cost, you know,
Speaker 6: relative to the outcomes.
Speaker 3: I followed up with the Wake County Prosecutor's office to
Speaker 3: see if they had more information about what had happened
Speaker 3: to their older kids. I also wanted to know which
Speaker 3: jurisdictions within Lake County had participated in the audit. And
Speaker 3: I've been trying to get answers to these questions since
Speaker 3: the first.
Speaker 1: Week of July.
Speaker 3: It's now the last week of August and I've still
Speaker 3: heard nothing. And it's important to get answers to these questions.
Speaker 3: When you claim you've solved your rape kit backlog, there's
Speaker 3: a big difference between doing a proper accounting of all
Speaker 3: backlog kits and testing them and doing a partial accounting
Speaker 3: and then throwing away a substantial number of kits. After
Speaker 3: radio silence from the Lake County Prosecutor's Office, I continued digging.
Speaker 3: I came across another article about the initiative from the
Speaker 3: Chicago Tribune. It mentions that out of the two hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty seven kits found in the audit, one hundred
Speaker 3: and ninety four were found in Hammond, thirty one in
Speaker 3: East Chicago, and twenty two in Maryville. So if you
Speaker 3: add up those numbers, two hundred and forty seven of
Speaker 3: the kits were found from those jurisdictions alone. That leaves
Speaker 3: a maximum of ten kits that could have been found
Speaker 3: in Gary, despite the fact that Hammond found one hundred
Speaker 3: and ninety four kits and they have an almost identical
Speaker 3: population to Gary. I think the most parsimonious explanation here
Speaker 3: is that Gary didn't participate in the audit, and it's
Speaker 3: unclear to what extent they've kept backlog kits or tested them.
Speaker 3: I was also curious about why Lake County had chosen
Speaker 3: to destroy kits more than ten years old. That would
Speaker 3: mean they would not include kids from two thousand and
Speaker 3: seven or before. Interestingly, two thousand and seven is the
Speaker 3: last year that Hargrove's algorithm observed an increase in unsolved strangulations,
Speaker 3: and Vaughan was arrested the very next year. I wondered
Speaker 3: at first whether ten years might be the statute of
Speaker 3: limitations for rape in Indiana, but when I looked into it,
Speaker 3: type one felony rape has no statute of limitations in Indiana,
Speaker 3: So it's unclear to me why those kits would not
Speaker 3: be preserved. But even if Lake County had retained and
Speaker 3: tested all their kits, it wouldn't necessarily be able to
Speaker 3: link Darren Vaughn to a homicide only to a sexual
Speaker 3: assault because the twenty seventeen initiative in Indiana and most
Speaker 3: of the initiatives to address rape kit backlogs don't include
Speaker 3: DNA from homicide victims.
Speaker 5: I do believe that.
Speaker 4: This statewide audit was only for kits taken from a
Speaker 4: victim in a hospital.
Speaker 5: I don't know if any.
Speaker 4: Of them were taken from homicide victims.
Speaker 6: In Kyga County, if there was a murder rape, it
Speaker 6: went to the homicide unit as compared to the sex
Speaker 6: crimes unit. So if there was a rape, no homicide it,
Speaker 6: it was investigated differently and went to different units. So
Speaker 6: for the rape kits that we look at, there wasn't
Speaker 6: murders as part of that. There were rape homicides, but
Speaker 6: those were sort of in a different category.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so you guys didn't go back and look
Speaker 3: at those homicide associated ones as well.
Speaker 6: Not as part of the sexual salt kit initiative, but
Speaker 6: I know that Kyga County Prosecutor's office might also be
Speaker 6: looking at some of the rape homicides because there's funding
Speaker 6: now at the federal level to do some of that doing.
Speaker 6: I think what you're talking about here sort of expanding
Speaker 6: out the scope of it.
Speaker 3: In fact, last October, the Cuyahoga Prosecutor's Office announced that
Speaker 3: it had received a million dollar grant from the US
Speaker 3: Department of Justice to continue their sexual assault kit testing program,
Speaker 3: and part of that grant includes a pilot project to
Speaker 3: do forensic genealogy on thirty two samples from sexually motivated homicides.
Speaker 3: Forensic genealogy is the technique that was used to catch
Speaker 3: the Golden State killer. It doesn't just look for complete
Speaker 3: matches with someone on the CODIS database, but looks for
Speaker 3: partial matches and CODIS and public DNA databases to find
Speaker 3: relatives of the perpetrator. Then genealogical techniques and further investigation
Speaker 3: can be used to identify the offender. Other grants from
Speaker 3: the Department of Justice or funding similar efforts to help
Speaker 3: solve cold case homicides. It appears, though, that the emphasis
Speaker 3: is on going back to cold cases where a DNA
Speaker 3: profile of the perpetrator had already been generated, but that
Speaker 3: they had never matched it to a suspect, and the
Speaker 3: grants give money to use forensic genealogy to try to
Speaker 3: find that match. I couldn't find any grants funding going
Speaker 3: back and doing an accounting of all the cold case evidence.
Speaker 3: Doctor Lovell wonders if an approach similar to Cuyahoga County's
Speaker 3: sexual assault kit initiative might benefit homicide investigations as well.
Speaker 6: Sachi, you know, as successful as it has been, I
Speaker 6: think it shows that there's great value in going to
Speaker 6: the cold cases in cold case homicides as well and
Speaker 6: really trying to see is there evidence that could be tested.
Speaker 6: Is there something in terms of genealogy that could be
Speaker 6: done where all the evidence tested, you know, was it
Speaker 6: tested using current techniques or was it only tested for zerology?
Speaker 6: You know, things like that that they're starting to ask
Speaker 6: those questions.
Speaker 3: Last July, over a year ago now, I'd reached out
Speaker 3: to the Lake County corners to try to find out
Speaker 3: more information about the victims Hargrove had identified. I was
Speaker 3: curious if DNA evidence was collected and if it was
Speaker 3: ever tested and submitted to CODIS, the federal DNA database.
Speaker 3: I was unable to get answers from the coroner's department
Speaker 3: about these cases, perhaps because they were unsolved and therefore
Speaker 3: still open. I'm not sure, but I wonder to what
Speaker 3: extent older samples from cold cases have gone untested the
Speaker 3: way rape kits were. I hope that DNA evidence from
Speaker 3: old homicides like this have been preserved, and I hope
Speaker 3: if they haven't been tested yet, one day they will
Speaker 3: be investigating the algorithm and then Darren Vaughan has been
Speaker 3: a roller coaster. It wasn't at all what I imagined
Speaker 3: when I first began working on this project. And sometimes
Speaker 3: I feel I've gotten so far off my original path
Speaker 3: that I worry that I've gotten lost, that I'm missing
Speaker 3: something big, or maybe missing the forest for the trees.
Speaker 3: And sometimes I find myself wondering what's the point of
Speaker 3: solving these cold cases in the first place. Of course,
Speaker 3: they could potentially lead to the arrest of a violent criminal,
Speaker 3: a perpetrator who might kill again. But if we're looking
Speaker 3: specifically for a connection to Vaughan, then what's the point
Speaker 3: if he's already serving life in prison. I was hoping
Speaker 3: to find a connection to previous crimes to prove that
Speaker 3: Hargrove's algorithm had predictive value, that it was able to
Speaker 3: identify an active serial killer before the police did, and
Speaker 3: therefore that it would be a valuable tool for law enforcement.
Speaker 3: I think there's no doubt that the algorithm identified that
Speaker 3: something very unusual was going on in Gary with its
Speaker 3: identification of fifteen unsolved strangulations over a sixteen year period.
Speaker 3: I think it's very possible that some of these murders
Speaker 3: were the work of Vaughan or another serial killer. On
Speaker 3: the other hand, Gary is a very unusual city where
Speaker 3: many murders go unsolved, and it's a city full of
Speaker 3: abandoned buildings where bodies can be hidden or even dumped
Speaker 3: from homicides and other jurisdictions.
Speaker 2: So is this algorithm perfect? No? Can it produce false results? Absolutely.
Speaker 2: What we tell people always is what the algorithm does
Speaker 2: is to identify clusters of murders that have an elevated
Speaker 2: probability of containing serial murder. That just means if the
Speaker 2: FBI says that serial murder occurs in less than one
Speaker 2: percent of all homicides. We no longer believe that, but
Speaker 2: that's the official reckoning for how common serial murder is. Well,
Speaker 2: if less than one percent of murders are likely to
Speaker 2: be serial, our algorithm will do better than that. It
Speaker 2: will identify murders that have a better than one percent
Speaker 2: probability of containing serial murders. It turns out way better
Speaker 2: than one percent. We frequently are determining cases that are connected.
Speaker 2: But there is a failure rate, and what are some
Speaker 2: of the things that can go south on the algorithm.
Speaker 2: If you have a police department that has a relentlessly
Speaker 2: low clearance rate, like the Flint, Michigan Police Department, everything
Speaker 2: looks serial because there's a low clearance rate for every
Speaker 2: kind of murder, and there's not much you can do
Speaker 2: about that. And that's a problem because we're becoming less
Speaker 2: and less likely to solve a murder. In the United
Speaker 2: States today, there are dozens of major cities where most
Speaker 2: murders go unsolved. That means we're going to get false
Speaker 2: positives because of the algorithm's technique. We're trying to overcome
Speaker 2: those challenges, and we have actually We've made some improvements
Speaker 2: in the methods, but it's a problem.
Speaker 3: I want to look at the algorithm and the ways
Speaker 3: it might be better used shortly, but first I want
Speaker 3: to get hypothetical for a moment. Let's say we found
Speaker 3: evidence that Vaughn was connected to one or more murders
Speaker 3: on the algorithm's list, proof that Hargrove was right in
Speaker 3: his twenty ten letter. What should police have done. Create
Speaker 3: a task force to look into evidence that might connect
Speaker 3: the crimes, notify the public, and what if police find
Speaker 3: something more concrete, like DNA evidence or firearm forensics that
Speaker 3: definitively link multiple murders, does the public have a right
Speaker 3: to know that information, even though publicizing that information could
Speaker 3: let the killer know the detectives are onto them. It
Speaker 3: seems to me that in a situation like Vonn's twenty
Speaker 3: fourteen murders and Gary, where the victims share characteristics, that
Speaker 3: the police would have had some obligation to warn other
Speaker 3: possible victims. But it's hard for the police to stop
Speaker 3: a future homicide from taking place, and in the case
Speaker 3: of Vaughn's twenty fourteen murders and Gary, police weren't even
Speaker 3: aware of the murders until after Vaughn's arrest. There was
Speaker 3: a strong suggestion that some of the victims, like Tira Batty,
Speaker 3: had been murdered thanks to Marvin Clinton's own investigation, But
Speaker 3: without discovering the bodies and submitting supplemental homicide reports to
Speaker 3: the FBI, Hargrove's algorithm wouldn't have been able to detect
Speaker 3: the cluster of Vonn's twenty fourteen crimes. That made me
Speaker 3: curious about how many missing persons there are out there,
Speaker 3: and how many of them are really homicide victims. So
Speaker 3: I called up Todd Matthews and then to get the
Speaker 3: levels on my end. Can you tell me what you
Speaker 3: had for breakfast this morning?
Speaker 1: I had coffee. I had about five cups of coffee today.
Speaker 1: I'm like a snake, ill like it once a day.
Speaker 1: Just ate something nice and solid.
Speaker 3: After he helped identify it Jane Doe through webslew Thing,
Speaker 3: Matthews founded the Dough Network in nineteen ninety nine. It
Speaker 3: was a national database for missing persons and also unidentified bodies,
Speaker 3: with the hopes of connecting John and Jane Doe's to
Speaker 3: missing person reports. Similar to Hargrove, Matthews realized that police
Speaker 3: departments struggle with solving these kinds of cases, So we
Speaker 3: decided to create the Dough Network as a tool to
Speaker 3: help police officers and amateur slews with their investigations.
Speaker 1: That person could be alive and well, you don't know
Speaker 1: their circumstances. Some people it's mental illness, some it's dementia,
Speaker 1: drug abuse. Sometimes an accident, sometimes it's murdered. You just
Speaker 1: never know what you're going.
Speaker 3: To get In almost a decade after Matthews created the
Speaker 3: Dough Network, the Department of Justice decided they wanted to
Speaker 3: make their own official version called NamUs. That's nam us,
Speaker 3: and they brought in Matthews to help.
Speaker 1: The Department of Justice actually first contacted me with NamUs
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven to help them do what
Speaker 1: DO Network proved was possible.
Speaker 3: Like the DO Network, nemusless information like a missing person's demographics,
Speaker 3: when and where they were last seen, and a description
Speaker 3: of the circumstances of how they want missing. All that
Speaker 3: is available to the public. But with NAMIS, detectives working
Speaker 3: on the case can log in and access additional items
Speaker 3: the evidence.
Speaker 1: You know, something that though network wouldn't necessarily have its
Speaker 1: hands on like the dental records, DNA fingerprint analysis.
Speaker 3: Do you have a sense of kind of to what
Speaker 3: extent technology is being used in terms of police checking
Speaker 3: cell phone records or credit card records, things like that.
Speaker 1: You do see a lot of that, you know, pinging
Speaker 1: the cell phone and then if a cell phone's been disabled.
Speaker 1: You know, that kind of leads you to think of
Speaker 1: foul play possibly, But it is getting better as far
Speaker 1: if you if you swipe a card or carry a phone.
Speaker 1: It's hard to go missing. It's not easy to be
Speaker 1: a missing person and still work a sleep, you know,
Speaker 1: do something. It's it's hard to make yourself missing on
Speaker 1: purpose now, for the good or the bad. It's just
Speaker 1: harder to do it. And but it's going to happen.
Speaker 1: You know, people are going to be able to get
Speaker 1: around some of those things. They truly want to be missing.
Speaker 1: And that's where some of the privacy concerns come in.
Speaker 1: You know, if I want to go missing, can I
Speaker 1: is it morally okay for me to just allow my
Speaker 1: family to think that I'm you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: where I am. Yeah, a lot of issues, a lot
Speaker 1: of things to think about.
Speaker 3: This podcast is kind of looking into the work of
Speaker 3: this serial killer, and he was caught for one murder,
Speaker 3: confessed to six more murders, and led the police to
Speaker 3: their bodies. You know, some of them had been reported
Speaker 3: missing at that point. Others hadn't even been reported missing.
Speaker 3: I guess I'm curious of just like, how how good
Speaker 3: of a sense do we have of how big this
Speaker 3: problem actually is, and kind of are we doing everything
Speaker 3: we can be doing to keep track of this stuff
Speaker 3: and monitor it.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a silent mass disaster. It's called the nation's
Speaker 1: silent mass disaster because of the time frames the distances.
Speaker 3: According to NIMUS, there are currently over twenty thousand missing
Speaker 3: person cases is. Some of those will be resolved quickly
Speaker 3: with the missing person found alive and safe, but some
Speaker 3: are people who have been killed but their body was
Speaker 3: never found where if it was found, they're a John
Speaker 3: or Jane Doe waiting to be identified. But Matthew says
Speaker 3: the database isn't yet comprehensive. Whether cases get entered into
Speaker 3: NAMIS varies from state to state and jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: My homestead of Tennessee, I work with local officials and
Speaker 1: in thirty days in Tennessee, you're supposed to go if
Speaker 1: you're missing or unidentified in Tennessee within thirty days, you're
Speaker 1: supposed to go on the name of this website. Now, whether
Speaker 1: that happens or not, you know, there's no punishment phase
Speaker 1: or not. And the requiring of use of names in
Speaker 1: state law actually does other things. It begins a training
Speaker 1: process with law enforcements, so it now will be part
Speaker 1: of the training academies so that they know the laws
Speaker 1: that are required. And eventually, you know, things will change,
Speaker 1: and I think we planned a lot of stats that
Speaker 1: are going to grow and evolve knowledge. It's going to
Speaker 1: get better, and I think we're all going to get
Speaker 1: better at it. It just seems like it takes so long.
Speaker 1: If you're the family member of a missing you know,
Speaker 1: two seconds is a very painful time period. You know,
Speaker 1: there's probably nothing more scary than having a missing family
Speaker 1: member and you have no control over it. You have
Speaker 1: no idea if they're alive, they're dead, they're hungry, they're cold.
Speaker 1: You know, you have no idea of what to do
Speaker 1: or even word again looking you know, that's probably one
Speaker 1: of the most helpless feelings as described to me people
Speaker 1: that have done it all been described very similarly, the
Speaker 1: most helpless feeling that they've ever had. You know, I've
Speaker 1: had people I've known for years and they know of
Speaker 1: my work and recognize and appreciate it, and then suddenly
Speaker 1: they're in that situation. That's when things change dramatically. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't know until you're sitting in that chair, you
Speaker 1: don't know how bad it can be. Literally, there's a
Speaker 1: local missing person and I've known the boy's aunt for
Speaker 1: more than twenty years. Now I hear from her more frequently.
Speaker 1: They're looking for him. He's a young adult, he's had
Speaker 1: some drug issues, and he might not necessarily be on
Speaker 1: the top of the list for law enforcement to look for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't change her situation. He's still her nephew and
Speaker 1: she wants him found. Now. I don't blame her. And
Speaker 1: it's just by the time you realize how bad it
Speaker 1: can be, you're probably already snake bit, you know.
Speaker 3: And when you say, like, not at the top of
Speaker 3: the list for law enforcement to look for, what what
Speaker 3: do you mean by that?
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of times if somebody has had some trouble,
Speaker 1: it's just like, well are they missing or they just
Speaker 1: stand out of the way, have they done something? Are
Speaker 1: they hiding out for some reason? So it's just hard
Speaker 1: to sometimes see somebody that they might recognize as a
Speaker 1: criminal as a vulnerable victim. Now, I know the local
Speaker 1: boy that's missing, he has a really bad case of
Speaker 1: diabetes and he cannot survive with that medication. So unless
Speaker 1: he's found some way to buy medication some were he
Speaker 1: can't have survived. And his family knows that. So where's
Speaker 1: he at? So now into like day sixty five of
Speaker 1: his disappearance, the family realized that he can't survive. He's
Speaker 1: not come back to them, and it's getting way down
Speaker 1: the line now, you know. Now it's recovery of remains
Speaker 1: instead of finding somebody potentially in a bad situation.
Speaker 3: Does that police attitude frustrate you or do you think
Speaker 3: that that is just kind of the way that it is.
Speaker 1: It is the way that it is. It does get
Speaker 1: frustrating at time, especially when you know somebody like this person.
Speaker 1: I knew that family, and it's always this my son
Speaker 1: and never do that. Yeah, will my daughter didn't have
Speaker 1: a tattoo? Maybe she did, you just didn't know about it.
Speaker 1: So you're going to hear somebody say my child would
Speaker 1: never do that. My adult child would never, ever, ever
Speaker 1: ever not call me. And most of the time it's
Speaker 1: just like, well, maybe it is possible. But then when
Speaker 1: you do know people and you know who they are
Speaker 1: and their story is really making sense, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're right. Probably would not be without medication for
Speaker 1: this period of time, So something's wrong. Even though he
Speaker 1: might have done things that put him on the wrong
Speaker 1: side of the law, ultimately he is in danger. So
Speaker 1: we have to think about this differently. So it is
Speaker 1: frustrating at times, but understand because when I was with
Speaker 1: Department of Justice with NamUs, the volume of people reaching
Speaker 1: out can be overwhelming. So I can see how you
Speaker 1: can quickly get frustrated getting multiple calls, and we have
Speaker 1: to make it easier to do. We have to make
Speaker 1: more tools available to the family. They can enter their
Speaker 1: own missing person case and name us. They can start
Speaker 1: the ball rolling, so instead of waiting for law enforcement
Speaker 1: to it, they can start the process. They'll have to
Speaker 1: be validated, but at least it gives them something to
Speaker 1: do instead of waiting for somebody to come and help them.
Speaker 1: They can start the process. Because when you're getting validation
Speaker 1: reports coming back from a program that's developed by the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice. I mean, I think they're not just
Speaker 1: going to tell Justice Agency how they'll be bad. We're
Speaker 1: not going to look for him, you know. I think
Speaker 1: once they see that, we don't really need you to
Speaker 1: create a profile. US has a profile kind of takes
Speaker 1: a little bit out of their control and has that helped.
Speaker 1: It has helped, It's helped tremendously as it cleared it
Speaker 1: up completely.
Speaker 3: No, when you kind of like look really big picture,
Speaker 3: is there a direction that we're heading with technology or
Speaker 3: the way we investigate stuff.
Speaker 1: It's only going to improve ultimately. You know, it's going
Speaker 1: to be quicker to do the DNA test, encouraging the families.
Speaker 1: Like every at one point in time, every singer at
Speaker 1: my local high school's fingerprinted because I will go and
Speaker 1: bring local law enforcement in the forensic class and will
Speaker 1: thumb print everybody or fingerprintedy rdy to get a ten
Speaker 1: print and then you know, you put it away and
Speaker 1: God forbid, I hope I never have to see it again.
Speaker 1: So there's there's lots of things that can be done,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's at some price. You know, you
Speaker 1: are going to have to think about things that make
Speaker 1: you uncomfortable, and you know, thinking of a person that
Speaker 1: might be deceased, and that's not what you want, but
Speaker 1: it is what it is. We're all going to die eventually,
Speaker 1: and I think we can accept a natural death. It's
Speaker 1: just we're not programmed to have a missing person. There's
Speaker 1: no funeral, there's no closure, there's no explanation for it.
Speaker 1: There's no way to process. I've seen families grow stronger
Speaker 1: as a result of it, and then they go on
Speaker 1: to pass state laws and advocate and make sure nobody
Speaker 1: suffers what they suffer. I've seen other families deteriorate because
Speaker 1: of it because there's no way to move on. It
Speaker 1: just can be devastating. I had a local lady that
Speaker 1: her son's been missing for many years and she wanted
Speaker 1: to show me something. She tuk me to the grave.
Speaker 1: She actually had a tombstone put up for her son
Speaker 1: next to her and her husband. She goes, if we're gone,
Speaker 1: can you make sure he's buried here? If his body's found.
Speaker 1: She's given up. You know, she's she knows that she's
Speaker 1: at the end, and she's getting older, and you know
Speaker 1: it's going to become more and more difficult for her
Speaker 1: to try to find, and her hope of finding him
Speaker 1: during her lifetime is fading, and she only ones now
Speaker 1: is can you make sure he's buried here? Will you
Speaker 1: let him know our wishes? I don't want him lay
Speaker 1: in a lab in a box. You know, I can say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'll do everything in Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: your wishes and I'll make them known. You know. I
Speaker 1: have to think about will I even be around when
Speaker 1: his body's found? If it's found, so I think the
Speaker 1: best way to do is to tell that story, mention
Speaker 1: it somewhere, and then you know, that's it. You just
Speaker 1: have to share.
Speaker 3: When I began researching this show, I asked myself the question,
Speaker 3: with all the data we're collecting, storing, sorting, why is
Speaker 3: it that we're getting worse at solving homicides When it
Speaker 3: comes to policing. We are starting to do more with data,
Speaker 3: but we're not really doing it in any kind of
Speaker 3: systematic way. I think it's reasonable to worry about new
Speaker 3: technologies like facial recognition, that they might be moving our
Speaker 3: country towards some sort of surveillance state. But I think
Speaker 3: the real nightmare right now is much more banal. We're
Speaker 3: missing important connections we could be making and letting killers
Speaker 3: go free. One of the things that surprised me about
Speaker 3: Hargrove's algorithm was how simple it was. This wasn't some
Speaker 3: sort of deep learning neural network getting fed mountains of data.
Speaker 3: It was a simple, handcrafted algorithm getting basic demographic information
Speaker 3: about the victims along with the method of killing year
Speaker 3: in jurisdiction. And you can imagine that with richer data
Speaker 3: and a more involved algorithm, patterns might emerge more clearly.
Speaker 3: In fact, Hargrove has been working on an updated algorithm.
Speaker 3: I know you said, you know that you're still in
Speaker 3: publication for the algorithm two point zero. Is there anything
Speaker 3: you can talk about that.
Speaker 2: We want to get into a peer review journal, and
Speaker 2: so we're still writing. I can tell you that what
Speaker 2: is different about the newer version of the algorithm is
Speaker 2: it dynamic evaluates each murder. What the old algorithm did
Speaker 2: was just to create a group and then to assess
Speaker 2: what the clearance rate was for the group. The new
Speaker 2: algorithm individually assesses each murder and then decides whether or
Speaker 2: not that murder looks suspicious and that individual assessment is
Speaker 2: better and so it definitely is an improvement over the
Speaker 2: old and so once we get it published, we'll make
Speaker 2: it available. But we need that confirmation that we're onto something,
Speaker 2: and so we need others to look at it. And
Speaker 2: right now we're struggling with following the format for pure
Speaker 2: reviewed publications. And apparently one of our reviewers is a
Speaker 2: former cop and took offense to what we did. I
Speaker 2: guess he or she thought that the algorithm made police
Speaker 2: look bad. I don't understand that, because we've got several
Speaker 2: former cops on the list of authors with this project,
Speaker 2: that it's not our intent to ever make law enforcement
Speaker 2: look bad. We're just trying to provide a new tool
Speaker 2: and the toolkit.
Speaker 3: I'm hoping that a bunch of people listen to this podcast,
Speaker 3: and some of them might be data scientists or people
Speaker 3: like that. And I was curious, if someone wants to
Speaker 3: help you with this kind of work, they have some
Speaker 3: idea of something they want to try with the data,
Speaker 3: is that something you're interested in.
Speaker 2: We make our data available. If you go to murder
Speaker 2: data dot org and go to the data and docs tab,
Speaker 2: you can download everything, absolutely everything, the original algorithm and
Speaker 2: the raw data, and we encourage folks to use the
Speaker 2: data and see if they can come up with something useful.
Speaker 2: We are hoping that someone may be able to get
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence to do clever things with these records. So far,
Speaker 2: all attempts that have been made have not been successful,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't mean something good mightn't happen in the future.
Speaker 2: So we're hoping that bright people will take free data
Speaker 2: and see if they can come up with something clever.
Speaker 3: At the beginning of the podcast, I also mentioned as
Speaker 3: startling statistic that homicides today are being cleared at a
Speaker 3: much lower rate than in previous decades. No one knows
Speaker 3: exactly why the clearance rate for homicides is decreasing, but
Speaker 3: Hargarve has some ideas.
Speaker 2: Murder begets murder, and unsolved murder really begets murder. When
Speaker 2: most killings go unsolved, there starts to develop a narrative
Speaker 2: that the only way I'm going to get justice for
Speaker 2: my loved ones is to take the law into my
Speaker 2: own hands. Also, murderers who walk the street are available
Speaker 2: to kill again. Why wouldn't they they got away with
Speaker 2: it the first time. We are convinced that serial murder
Speaker 2: is much much more common than anyone ever dreamed of,
Speaker 2: even in their ninth Mars. Now, that's not to say
Speaker 2: that serial sexual murder is on the rise. It's not.
Speaker 2: The traditional Hollywood kind of serial killer is definitely on
Speaker 2: the decline. But the statistical serial killer, anyone who kills
Speaker 2: two or more people in separate incidents, that really is
Speaker 2: is certainly more common than is recognized. It is quite
Speaker 2: likely that the most common type of serial murder is
Speaker 2: the gang enforcer on a local street gang. How many
Speaker 2: of those killings get solved? I mean, increasingly, people who
Speaker 2: have gotten an adept at committing murder and getting away
Speaker 2: with it are just getting away with it. We believe
Speaker 2: that the decline in homicide clearance rate is primarily driven
Speaker 2: by a lack of leadership, a lack of public passion
Speaker 2: that murders should be solved, a lack of re sources
Speaker 2: for homicide detectives, a lack of accountability. The clearance rate
Speaker 2: for homicides should be a metric that policymakers carefully follow
Speaker 2: in determining whether or not a police department is effective.
Speaker 2: When mayors of cities pledge to get a handle on
Speaker 2: their murder problem, generally speaking, the murder rate starts to drop.
Speaker 2: Improved clearance rates will reduce the rate of which murder occurs.
Speaker 2: It's not easy and it's not cheap. Increasingly there's a
Speaker 2: competition for limited resources in major cities. Many cities cannot
Speaker 2: afford their pension plan. I mean, the fiscal challenges for
Speaker 2: modern government are becoming extreme. We in America have to
Speaker 2: make major crimes a higher priority. We cannot dismiss murders
Speaker 2: because well, just the kinds of people that get murdered
Speaker 2: I don't care about, which I'm afraid maybe part of
Speaker 2: the dreadful calculus as to what's happened. It is our
Speaker 2: hope at the Murder Accountability Project that our data become
Speaker 2: a political force. That people can look up the rate
Speaker 2: at which murders are cleared in their communities, and if
Speaker 2: they don't like what they see, they should have a
Speaker 2: conversation with their mayor and their city council members. That
Speaker 2: unsolved murder is simply unacceptable.
Speaker 3: And Hargrove's analysis of the declining clearance rate for murder
Speaker 3: shows that it is driven by homicides where the victim
Speaker 3: is black.
Speaker 2: The entirety of that declining homicide clearance rate was born
Speaker 2: by African American victims. In cases of Caucasian murder, Asian murder,
Speaker 2: Native American murder, those murders are about as likely to
Speaker 2: be solved today as they were fifty years ago. That's
Speaker 2: just a fact, and we should never ignore what the
Speaker 2: data show us today.
Speaker 3: If your loved one is murdered and they're white, there's
Speaker 3: over a six seventy five percent chance someone will be
Speaker 3: arrested for the crime. If they're black, the chance someone
Speaker 3: will be arrested drops below sixty percent, And the chance
Speaker 3: of being murdered is much higher for Black Americans, particularly
Speaker 3: young black men. As I mold over these statistics, I
Speaker 3: kept thinking back to my interview with Kerrie Rice, the
Speaker 3: police officer who responded to Vaughan's gasoline incident. When I
Speaker 3: googled him, I saw an article about how one of
Speaker 3: his sons had been shot and killed.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I saw that your family has kind of personally been
Speaker 3: affected by violent crime, yea, And I was just wondering
Speaker 3: if you wanted to talk a little bit about that
Speaker 3: and how it, you know, if it has changed the
Speaker 3: perspective on the work that you do.
Speaker 7: Like I say I have, I've had a lot of
Speaker 7: family members killed in this city all the way back
Speaker 7: far of ninety eight, but my nephew was Kilo actually
Speaker 7: before that and eighty six my older brother was killed.
Speaker 7: It really didn't affect me too much and doing my job.
Speaker 7: I know, I still had a job to do, and
Speaker 7: I did it, and it really, you know, after a while,
Speaker 7: you don't think about it too much. The last two
Speaker 7: people in my family actually they had two sons that
Speaker 7: were killed within in the past year.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, I guess it's homicide is one
Speaker 3: of the leading causes of death for young black men.
Speaker 3: And you know, I don't know if you have any
Speaker 3: thoughts from kind of your perspective and law enforcement or
Speaker 3: just in general what people can do as individuals or
Speaker 3: what we can do as a broader society to change that.
Speaker 7: Well, I really believe that there's two main things that
Speaker 7: need to be done, and one of them I was doing.
Speaker 7: I was running truancy court, making sure the kids went
Speaker 7: to school and got an education. And it's a shame
Speaker 7: that you have to make Some parents actually send their.
Speaker 1: Kids to school, but.
Speaker 7: They just don't understand how that affects a kid when
Speaker 7: they get older. I guarantee you at least seventy percent
Speaker 7: of people we arrest here. And Geary, you don't have
Speaker 7: a high school diploma, and I think that fees into
Speaker 7: the crime because everybody gonna grow up, everybody gonna want things,
Speaker 7: and you can't even reason fell out application your you know,
Speaker 7: your job.
Speaker 1: Choices are limited.
Speaker 7: So uh.
Speaker 1: And another thing.
Speaker 7: That I really think need to be addressed is mental health.
Speaker 7: You have a lot of females and if it's sexually
Speaker 7: molested and never got any treatment. They had a lot
Speaker 7: of males they have missed either sexually molested or have
Speaker 7: been in the car with somebody around somebody and they
Speaker 7: got shot and killed, or they've been shot before and
Speaker 7: they patched the body up, but they never talked to
Speaker 7: them about the mental issues. And you know, most men,
Speaker 7: they refuse to be a happen me and I like say,
Speaker 7: after what happened, you know in my family, I had
Speaker 7: to go, and I'm glad I went. But the average person,
Speaker 7: average male, don't want to go and they just don't
Speaker 7: understand unless they need it. But that's a lot of it,
Speaker 7: you know, the lack of education and people been abused
Speaker 7: and have no clue even now how that's really affecting
Speaker 7: their everyday decisions.
Speaker 3: Hargrove's algorithm can definitely highlight a place where something is
Speaker 3: going wrong, but when it comes to preventing future homicides,
Speaker 3: I don't think technology is going to provide us with
Speaker 3: any magic bullets. The real solutions are going to be
Speaker 3: less glamorous. They're solutions that sound almost like cliches, things
Speaker 3: we already know we should be doing. Supporting children and
Speaker 3: protecting them from abuse, providing mental health services, cleaning up
Speaker 3: neighborhoods and demolishing derelict buildings, and taking violent crime seriously,
Speaker 3: regardless of who the victim is or where the crime
Speaker 3: took place. This is the end of the weekly episodes
Speaker 3: of Algorithm, but it's not the end of the show.
Speaker 3: Many factors facilitated Darren Vond's killing spree, and there's still
Speaker 3: some angles I'd like to explore. I've already got bonus
Speaker 3: episodes planned and ideas for another season, but I'd love
Speaker 3: to hear your questions and your ideas. Please reach out
Speaker 3: to me or call and leave a voicemail at eight
Speaker 3: eight eight five zero one three three zero nine. We're
Speaker 3: going to have another Q and A episode soon, and
Speaker 3: if you haven't yet. Please do you subscribe to our
Speaker 3: podcast speeds you don't miss any updates and you can
Speaker 3: find all this information and the social media for the
Speaker 3: podcast in the show notes. This episode was written and
Speaker 3: produced by me ben Keebrick Algorithm is executive produced by
Speaker 3: Alex Williams, Donald Albright, and Matt Frederick. Production assistance and
Speaker 3: mix by Eric Quintana. The music is by Makeup and
Speaker 3: Vanity Set and Blue Doot Sessions. Thanks to Christina Dana,
Speaker 3: Miranda Hopkins, Jamie Albright, Rima l k Ali, Trevor Young,
Speaker 3: and Josh Thain for their help and notes. For more
Speaker 3: podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: You know, the awful truth is you could just about
Speaker 2: pick any major American city and take a shovel. I
Speaker 2: promise you. Serial murder is more common than we ever
Speaker 2: want to believe. If this project ends up having legs,
Speaker 2: Atlanta would be a good place to go. Frankly, that's
Speaker 2: the largest cluster our computer knows about. In fact, he
Speaker 2: was of the opinion that some of these might be
Speaker 2: solvable