Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Shock and Dave c is here with us
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. That's right. Before
Speaker 1: we get started, though, we want to quickly plug our
Speaker 1: friends at co ED because we're trying to get the
Speaker 1: stuff you should know Army and their donation pool up
Speaker 1: to one million dollars. Yeah, so if you want to
Speaker 1: go contribute to the Cooperative for Education and they're ceaseless
Speaker 1: march towards breaking the cycle of poverty in Guatemala by
Speaker 1: making sure that children are able to get to school
Speaker 1: and stay in school and receive an education, then you
Speaker 1: can do that because they set up a page just
Speaker 1: for stuff you should know listeners to go donate so
Speaker 1: that we can know when we got to a million
Speaker 1: dollars um and that is Cooperative for Education dot org
Speaker 1: slash s y kay. And it's really easy to do
Speaker 1: and you can contribute as little or as much as
Speaker 1: you want and whatever amount you contribute, you have our thanks.
Speaker 1: That's right, and now on with a spooky show. That's right.
Speaker 1: So what what a dishes this Chuck the Spooky Phantom
Speaker 1: Edian that's what Dave thought. But now and you can
Speaker 1: understand how you would get that impression from the title,
Speaker 1: But the phantom of Hyle Braun is it Hyle You
Speaker 1: do the second syllable okay for an e I okay,
Speaker 1: so hile Braun sorry double end at the end, and
Speaker 1: the phantom of heil Braun would prove to be essentially
Speaker 1: what amounts to a criminal mastermind as far as we're concerned, Um,
Speaker 1: for being able to evade the police for so long
Speaker 1: despite being so sought after. I mean like they made
Speaker 1: international news. Um, this case. It it was that vexan.
Speaker 1: So we love cold cases, we love true crime cases,
Speaker 1: and this one is like really great, Yes, so big
Speaker 1: thanks to Olivia for helping us out with this one.
Speaker 1: Uh and she very stuteley starts with a brief overview
Speaker 1: of DNA forensics, which we covered a lot of times,
Speaker 1: but um, just as a reminder, this started out DNA
Speaker 1: forensics and collection and using it for criminal cases in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties in the UK. UH. Notably, I think
Speaker 1: the first case was the exoneration of a seventeen year
Speaker 1: old UH suspect in a rape and murder case of
Speaker 1: two girls. UM. Back then before they had this is
Speaker 1: like pre DNA database. UM. Their idea, which you know
Speaker 1: worked pretty well in this case, was to basically do
Speaker 1: a big genetic sweep and ask for five thousand local
Speaker 1: men to give up DNA samples of blood or saliva. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there was a local baker there named Colin Pitchfork
Speaker 1: told his friend Lu said like, hey, mate, would you
Speaker 1: mind donating your blood for me and his friend. I
Speaker 1: guess the word got around like hey, that's a weird
Speaker 1: thing to do. Uh. Someone overhears this in a pub
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, Colin Pitchfork is in fact
Speaker 1: arrested and another gentleman is exonerated. Yeah, through the use
Speaker 1: of DNA. And it was the guy who actually invented
Speaker 1: using DNA for forensics, Alec J. Jeffries, who became knighted,
Speaker 1: and he discovered it by accident. He was trying to
Speaker 1: find how um heritable diseases passed two families and realized like,
Speaker 1: oh wait, I can actually identify every single participant in
Speaker 1: this study because of their DNA and a light bulb
Speaker 1: went off and like that was that was an amazing
Speaker 1: first case. Like he exonerated somebody who was innocent and
Speaker 1: caught the bad guy and the murdering rape of two girls.
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't you can't possibly have a better first
Speaker 1: outing than that. Um And and so as it was old,
Speaker 1: DNA profiling took off like a rocket, particularly in the
Speaker 1: UK at first, but then it spread very quickly to
Speaker 1: other European countries and the US, And by nine the
Speaker 1: FBI said, hey, all of you UM police departments in
Speaker 1: the United States, you start sending your your samples into US,
Speaker 1: will create profiles, will run him against the database, and
Speaker 1: we will catch your bad guy for you. So it
Speaker 1: became much more standardized within three years of that first case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and all the private companies who were doing that before
Speaker 1: the FBI stepped up said thanks a lot. Yeah, now
Speaker 1: we're bankrupt, thanks a lot of FBI. We We had
Speaker 1: a pretty good racket going. But it did needed to
Speaker 1: be codified in the database became a very big part
Speaker 1: of it because, like I said, pre database they were
Speaker 1: doing and as you'll see in some of these crimes,
Speaker 1: even with the phantom things like genetic sweeps and genetic
Speaker 1: drag nets and things like that. Yeah, there was another
Speaker 1: guy who enters the picture in ninety seven he was
Speaker 1: from Austria's name was Roland van or Shot. I think
Speaker 1: I got it UM and he said, hey, you know
Speaker 1: how we only thought we could get DNA from blood,
Speaker 1: saliva or semen. It turns out we leave DNA everywhere.
Speaker 1: Everything we touch has little bits of UM d NA
Speaker 1: left behind. And here's a way to extract that and
Speaker 1: and UM identify it and profile it basically UM. And
Speaker 1: so now all of a sudden DNA goes from this
Speaker 1: is a really useful tool. Kind of two. We can
Speaker 1: use this and basically every case we come across somebody
Speaker 1: like UM uh steals a can of coke out of
Speaker 1: the Honor System coke machine, you could you could like
Speaker 1: profile their DNA and probably catch them from that. It
Speaker 1: was like it opened it up that much. It's you're dead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it stopped. It decreased UM Honor System co mashing crime
Speaker 1: by like five almost overnight. Uh. Those genetic dragnets were
Speaker 1: happening more and more, and then they eventually built up
Speaker 1: the database such where they were less and less necessary,
Speaker 1: especially when UM country started sharing data across their borders,
Speaker 1: which uh here in the United States we do that
Speaker 1: in an interstate fashion. Uh. And maybe with Canada and Mexico.
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure actually, but if they're lucky, if
Speaker 1: we're feeling like that. Uh. And but in Europe UM,
Speaker 1: this started happening about two thousand five, when Germany, Austria, Belgium, France,
Speaker 1: Luxembourg in the Netherlands said uh, and Spain said, hey,
Speaker 1: let's sign this treaty UM that means we can share
Speaker 1: our our DNA findings with each other UM. Two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: That was basically all of Europe, all the EU got
Speaker 1: on board. UH. And the reason we're talking about the
Speaker 1: EU s because all of these uh, myriad crimes that
Speaker 1: this phantom purportedly committed were in Europe, and mostly around Germany. Yes,
Speaker 1: and because these crimes were committed after Roland von uer
Speaker 1: shots um discovery that you can get DNA samples from
Speaker 1: just about anything UM, the European police had become well
Speaker 1: versed in lifting DNA from crime scenes, and so they
Speaker 1: were able to track the who would come to be
Speaker 1: called the Phantom of heilbron Um through the DNA left
Speaker 1: behind at these crime scenes. And apparently they were already
Speaker 1: tracking this person for a few years in a much
Speaker 1: more isolated way. But the whole thing blew up and
Speaker 1: the nickname that the Phantom of Heilbron All happened in
Speaker 1: I think April of two thousand seven, when a twenty
Speaker 1: two year old policewoman named Michelle kay Sweater was murdered
Speaker 1: while she was taking a lunch break. Can I correct
Speaker 1: your pronunciation? Yeah, I believe that would be Kaisa Vetta.
Speaker 1: That's much better when I say kay Sweater. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's okay. She was was murdered in cold blood. She
Speaker 1: was twenty years old on lunch break with a cop
Speaker 1: named Martin Arnold, and they were sitting in their patrol
Speaker 1: car and hal Bron and a couple of people jumped
Speaker 1: in the back seat shot them from behind. They stole
Speaker 1: their handcuffs, they stole their guns. Uh, and Kaisa Vetter died.
Speaker 1: Martin was only twenty five and was in a coma
Speaker 1: for weeks. And if you read any interviews with Martin Arnold,
Speaker 1: that just like you know, completely wrecked this guy's life. Uh.
Speaker 1: He lost memory from the point where he parked the
Speaker 1: car to eat and literally doesn't remember anything else except
Speaker 1: waking up in the hospital. So all that to say,
Speaker 1: there was no identification of anything, right, yeah, I saw
Speaker 1: that he couldn't. I can imagine if you're in a
Speaker 1: coma until they dislodge a bullet from your brain, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty good bet you're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to remember anything. Is he able to remember stuff? Now?
Speaker 1: Do you know? Like from that point on? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think he recovered. But um, it was just,
Speaker 1: you know, one of these sad stories of this young
Speaker 1: guy who was always wanted to be a cop early
Speaker 1: on on the job and you know, just gets And
Speaker 1: this was not a it's not like this crime happens
Speaker 1: a lot in the US, but it was a very huge,
Speaker 1: big deal crime and it like rocked Germany. It was
Speaker 1: such a big scary thing. Yeah, because Heilbron is not
Speaker 1: a huge, bustling metropolis. It's a small town. And the
Speaker 1: fact that the murder of a cop in the small
Speaker 1: town in Germany caught the entire country's attention and outrage,
Speaker 1: you know, it does go to show you like, that's
Speaker 1: a really big deal in Germany, or it was at
Speaker 1: least in two thousand and seven. And also I think
Speaker 1: the manner of the murder to where um, the perpetrator
Speaker 1: of the criminals, um got to drop on them so
Speaker 1: quickly that the cops weren't even able to like, um,
Speaker 1: get their weapons out, like they just completely by surprise.
Speaker 1: So it was an enormous deal. And it turned out
Speaker 1: that they were able to find some genetic material UM
Speaker 1: on the rear seat of the car and on the
Speaker 1: center console of the car, and they found on something
Speaker 1: really really surprising that UM. The only genetic material that
Speaker 1: they could work up a profile from belonged to a woman.
Speaker 1: And that did not fit the idea of Germans at
Speaker 1: the time of somebody who had jump in the backseat
Speaker 1: of a cop car and murder a pair of cops,
Speaker 1: or murder one and try to murder the other one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was shocking, but it was confusing at
Speaker 1: the same time, like no one understood sort of the
Speaker 1: findings that happened. UM. A few months later, Uh, they
Speaker 1: are working with the DNA and they said, hey, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, these samples match some other crimes that are happening. UM.
Speaker 1: Two other murders in particular. The first was from it's
Speaker 1: a cold case. Uh, this woman, I'm gonna say it's
Speaker 1: les a lot Schlanger. I was sixty two years old
Speaker 1: again in Germany and it's about a hundred miles west
Speaker 1: of Heilbroun. And on mate any third of that year,
Speaker 1: I had put some cakes in the oven. Her neighbor
Speaker 1: came by to have t knocked at the door. No
Speaker 1: one answered, and it turned out that she had been Schlinger,
Speaker 1: had been strangled with the wire from a flower bouquet
Speaker 1: in her sitting room. Cops investigated a bunch of witnesses.
Speaker 1: No one saw anything, no one heard anything. But we
Speaker 1: have this d N A on the rim of a
Speaker 1: teacup that matched the DNA from the killer of Michelle
Speaker 1: kaisaveta yeah, from cold case? Right, that's right. And then
Speaker 1: there was another two thousand one cold case in the
Speaker 1: murder of a man named Joseph Wallzenbach. How's that. That's great.
Speaker 1: He was an antique stealer, and he too was murdered
Speaker 1: with a weapon of opportunity, some garden twine that happened
Speaker 1: to be handy. Um strangled, So both both lise a
Speaker 1: lot and Um Joseph were strangled Um and he was
Speaker 1: strangled in his shop, and they they found d NA
Speaker 1: on his body, a few items in the shop, and
Speaker 1: then the back of a close which is so creepy
Speaker 1: that they assumed that, um, the phantom who would be
Speaker 1: come to be known as the Phantom, put the clothes
Speaker 1: sign out and left. Um, that's just cold, you know
Speaker 1: for sure, that kind of calculation. Yeah, that's like a
Speaker 1: movie shot right there. Yeah, it's just scary. So now
Speaker 1: we have three murders, um, and an attempted murder. Two
Speaker 1: of the victims were cops. UM, all of them linked
Speaker 1: to the same woman over the course from two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, all in roughly the same general area of Germany. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and two of the murders are similar enough, and that
Speaker 1: they were strangled with some kind of wire and I
Speaker 1: think both were missing just little amounts of money. Um,
Speaker 1: it didn't seem like a huge robbery kind of thing,
Speaker 1: but they were close enough to where there were some
Speaker 1: similarities to where they said, Okay, these make a little
Speaker 1: bit of sense together. However, except that it was a
Speaker 1: woman who was strangling, which is not common at all. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the cop one though that many years later
Speaker 1: was really kind of threw everyone for a loop. Um. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: the DNA all matched and so the media started in
Speaker 1: with his story. Like you said, the Phantom of heil
Speaker 1: Broom or the woman without a face. Yeah, and apparently
Speaker 1: she's been known as the woman without a face before
Speaker 1: when they were tracking those two cold cases that they've
Speaker 1: matched the DNA too before, and then with the murder
Speaker 1: of the police officer, Um, she became the Phantom of
Speaker 1: Heilbron Um. So now German UM investigators were like, we
Speaker 1: have a woman serial killer on our hands who's been
Speaker 1: active at least since and no one has seen her,
Speaker 1: and we need to find this person a S A P.
Speaker 1: Because she's now a cop killer. All right, I think
Speaker 1: it's a great cliffhanger. Yep. Should we take a break? Ye?
Speaker 1: All right, We'll be right back with more of the
Speaker 1: Phantom of heilbron right after this. So, Chuck, I have
Speaker 1: to say, I just want to say this, Um. There
Speaker 1: was a part where we're talking about DNA profile sharing
Speaker 1: the across the EU in two thousand seven, they also
Speaker 1: were sharing license plate information and that occurred to me
Speaker 1: that the font on those plates was false song suresh
Speaker 1: one day shrift. Yeah, and I just I spelled it out.
Speaker 1: I sounded it out. My god, I was gonna say
Speaker 1: it in this episode, come hell or high water. Good job,
Speaker 1: thanks um, all right. So where we last left you
Speaker 1: was there is the murder of a police officer, the
Speaker 1: serious wounding of another, and then two cold cases from
Speaker 1: many years before, all tied to the same d n
Speaker 1: A of what they know is one um. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, they start matching this DNA with these uh
Speaker 1: you know, people start sharing databases in crime um particulars
Speaker 1: around the EU, and they said, wait a minute, this
Speaker 1: person's DNA is everywhere. There's and and it's not murders.
Speaker 1: There are a dozen break INDs, and there are car
Speaker 1: thefts in Austria and in France and in Germany. And
Speaker 1: there's a break in in an office in Germany. There's
Speaker 1: a burglary in Mainz, Germany. The the gas cap of
Speaker 1: a car that was stolen had this d A d
Speaker 1: n A on it. In two thousand three, there was
Speaker 1: a toy pistol used in a robbery in France with
Speaker 1: this d n A on it. And everyone is like,
Speaker 1: that's why this name Phantom of Heilbron like locked in
Speaker 1: so much, because all of a sudden, like you could
Speaker 1: go on for an hour listing the crimes that this
Speaker 1: DNA was found at. Yeah, so we've got a female
Speaker 1: serial killer in Germany who also Pierce savoth taste for
Speaker 1: just common crimes as well, so much so that it
Speaker 1: seemed like she may have been more of a um
Speaker 1: like a burglar or robber who was totally fine with
Speaker 1: murder but didn't need to murder all the time. Um,
Speaker 1: more than a serial killer that liked to engage in
Speaker 1: petty crime and one of those, I just have to say,
Speaker 1: one of those um burglaries. A breaking at an office
Speaker 1: in Dietzenbach on New Year's Day two thousand three. One
Speaker 1: of the prosecutors in this case, who was tracking the phantom,
Speaker 1: named Gunter Horn, said that this was a professional job.
Speaker 1: It's a quote, but it was the theft of a
Speaker 1: can of loose change. So I thought that was kind
Speaker 1: of hilarious that he was like, this person is of
Speaker 1: aiding us that it's a professional job no matter what
Speaker 1: she's doing, even if she's stealing loose change in a
Speaker 1: coffee can from an office, doesn't matter. She's pro Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the kind of interesting thing about this case,
Speaker 1: I think is once you have this DNA at all
Speaker 1: these crimes, your your cop masterminds are going to start
Speaker 1: trying to piece together and they did in this case,
Speaker 1: like we gotta profile this person, and what kind of
Speaker 1: a person would I don't think we mentioned that was
Speaker 1: also the DNA was found on a heroin needle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a big turning point to a seven year
Speaker 1: old stepped on in Germany and his parents said, hey,
Speaker 1: can you investigate this? My kids stepped on this needle.
Speaker 1: They swabbed it and found that DNA. So all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, this profile was like, this is a drug user.
Speaker 1: Maybe she steals little bits to to fund the drug
Speaker 1: habit and maybe, like you said, the murders just happened
Speaker 1: out of necessity because of these petty crimes. So kind
Speaker 1: of the point is like, once you've got all these
Speaker 1: weird disparate crimes, um, you're still gonna have cops that
Speaker 1: are trying to tie them to a single sort of brain. Right,
Speaker 1: they were just trying to figure out who they were
Speaker 1: after basically. Um, So yeah, that heroin syringe from two
Speaker 1: thousand one really kind of explain things like the coffee
Speaker 1: came and of loose change, you know, um, those kind
Speaker 1: of robberies and breake ins um. And then there was
Speaker 1: another thing that kind of added to the puzzle as
Speaker 1: they were on her trail. Um in two thousand five
Speaker 1: in Verms in Germany. UM, a Roma man shot his
Speaker 1: brother and so the police were, um getting stuff from
Speaker 1: the crime scene. What's they called. They were collecting evidence
Speaker 1: from the crime scene, and um, the DNA they found
Speaker 1: on one of the bullets was the phantoms. So now
Speaker 1: they're like, okay, this kind of explains how she's making
Speaker 1: her way back and forth around the EU in France, Germany, Austria.
Speaker 1: She's she's basically looked up with the Roman community, if
Speaker 1: not Roma herself. Um. And then there was one other
Speaker 1: thing too, Um, she had accomplices in some of these crimes,
Speaker 1: and they were none of them would say a word
Speaker 1: about her. They all clammed up. Whenever the cops went
Speaker 1: to them and said, hey, you know this crime you
Speaker 1: got busted four we just found out that you had
Speaker 1: an accomplice, They would just not They just stopped talking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And uh, I think when I think it was the
Speaker 1: gunter Horn talked about the fact that I think his
Speaker 1: frustration and police's general frustration that even after these people
Speaker 1: are behind bars, they're still not talking and they're not
Speaker 1: saying anything. So they basically said what we kind of
Speaker 1: did was basically wait for reports to come in with
Speaker 1: this d n A turning up again and then we
Speaker 1: would have a new lead. And between I think, uh
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, summer two thousand seven and spring two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, um, they were like garden shed break ins.
Speaker 1: Sometimes food and drink was stolen. Um, nothing real big happened.
Speaker 1: But again lots of more crimes start trickling in. Um.
Speaker 1: And they think also the that those garden shed break ins,
Speaker 1: that she was spending the night in those garden sheds,
Speaker 1: So that would suggest also that she was aware she
Speaker 1: was being hunted and on the run. Yes, look right there,
Speaker 1: you can see a depression in the haystack right so. Um.
Speaker 1: So there was another one too, and I believe this
Speaker 1: was the last crime. They they Yeah, I think it
Speaker 1: was the last crime. No, it wasn't. There was another crime.
Speaker 1: It was a little odd, um it was. It took
Speaker 1: place in near the Luxembourg border where a woman who
Speaker 1: was the manager of the cleaning staff at a fishing lodge.
Speaker 1: Someone snuck up behind her, hit her on the head
Speaker 1: hard and made off with three hundred euros that I
Speaker 1: guess she had on her. And when they they did,
Speaker 1: they collected evidence in the room at that fishing lodge.
Speaker 1: They found the phantom's DNA there. Now, from what I saw,
Speaker 1: it wasn't on the woman or any weapon or anything
Speaker 1: like that, just in the room. So they didn't know
Speaker 1: whether she had been there before or whether she was
Speaker 1: involved in this. But either way they were like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now she's over by Luxembourg too. I flew out of
Speaker 1: Luxembourg once. Oh yeah, how how's the airport? I threw
Speaker 1: up in a trash can at the airport. Long story.
Speaker 1: Does it have to do with rope trauma? No? Now
Speaker 1: we have two mysteries. Almost got um. So the biggest
Speaker 1: crime aside from that initial uh police murder uh in
Speaker 1: these cold cases came in two thousand eight with a
Speaker 1: triple murder. This was in January two tho eight. The
Speaker 1: bodies of three used car dealers from Georgia European Georgia
Speaker 1: not here, We're found in the Rhine River in Germany
Speaker 1: and two men were arrested, a forty year old Iraqi
Speaker 1: and twenty six year old Somalian citizen. So they looked
Speaker 1: at these guys and say, we know what happened. Um.
Speaker 1: These car dealers were in town getting cars to sell
Speaker 1: back home, and they had a lot of cash on them,
Speaker 1: so you murder them for their me They searched the
Speaker 1: one suspect, the Iraqi suspect, and they found traces of
Speaker 1: you guessed it, the phantom of Heilbron DNA was in
Speaker 1: that car. Yeah, please question the guy. And again he's
Speaker 1: not talking. He has no nothing to say to the
Speaker 1: police about who this mystery woman is. Yep. So now
Speaker 1: she's shown that she's capable of, if not participating in,
Speaker 1: at least presiding over triple homicides. That is not that
Speaker 1: many people are capable of triple homicides, you know, But
Speaker 1: it's also kind of not surprising if you look at
Speaker 1: her past that she's also willing to get up in
Speaker 1: close and personal and strangle elderly citizens with garden twine.
Speaker 1: So it's not that big of a shock, but it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a big addition to the profile
Speaker 1: of of her that the police are coming up with.
Speaker 1: And so um, they started to put all this stuff
Speaker 1: together like that the syringe suggested that she used drugs,
Speaker 1: and you know, some of the pettier crime suggested that
Speaker 1: she was committing them to probably get drugs. Um. She
Speaker 1: generally stuck around southwestern Germany, but she also was capable
Speaker 1: of moving over to Austria and France, and so they
Speaker 1: said her connection with the Roma probably helps her do that. Um.
Speaker 1: So they were putting this together and they still weren't
Speaker 1: finding anybody. No one was emerging like she just kept
Speaker 1: eluding them crime after crime after crime. And one of
Speaker 1: the big problems was is there was either no eye
Speaker 1: witnesses to the crime or no eye witnesses saw her.
Speaker 1: And then one day, one day there was an attempted
Speaker 1: break in and star breaking in two thousand six. By
Speaker 1: the way, I'm expecting you to be like your way
Speaker 1: off if I'm way off, and if you say nothing,
Speaker 1: then I nailed it. That's how I'm taking these correct, okay,
Speaker 1: and and sar breaken uh that somebody saw the person
Speaker 1: attempting to to break in, and in that break in
Speaker 1: attempt they found the phantom's DNA. But the puzzler was
Speaker 1: that the person the eyewitness who saw the attempted burglar
Speaker 1: described a man with a soul patch, even a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible soul patch. And this added a whole another twist
Speaker 1: to the mystery, and one interesting thing notably though, is
Speaker 1: none of the crimes, even though there are crimes committed
Speaker 1: all over this area, none of them happened in Bavaria,
Speaker 1: which is a little unusual because it's right there. But
Speaker 1: just put a pin in that one, which suggested then
Speaker 1: to the cops that is possible that the phantom who
Speaker 1: they knew to have the sex of a female but
Speaker 1: had a soul patch, conceivably may have actually been a
Speaker 1: transgender man. So they added that to the profile as well,
Speaker 1: that's right, which I'm sure you know, added a whole
Speaker 1: other layer for them. Another layer that was added that
Speaker 1: we should mention was that Germany had I guess you
Speaker 1: could call a very um I guess to put it
Speaker 1: kindly rocky historical record of identifying races and ethnicities as
Speaker 1: a country. UM. So because of that, there were pretty
Speaker 1: strict laws on how Germany could use DNA and how
Speaker 1: much insight they could get from it. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: an investigator UH in Germany was not allowed to determine
Speaker 1: race or ethnicity, or hair or eye color using DNA.
Speaker 1: Um It was possible in Austria, so they're a little
Speaker 1: less strict there at the time, and they were able
Speaker 1: to take a closer look at this d n A
Speaker 1: and say, hey, we think we can't be sure because
Speaker 1: it's two thousand. What year was this seven or eight? Uh.
Speaker 1: We're pretty sure though that this woman probably has blonde
Speaker 1: hair and blue eyes. Um, so we got that going
Speaker 1: for us. Yeah, but they also said in some interviews
Speaker 1: that they're like, that's I mean, we're talking about Germany
Speaker 1: for one. But also they said that they was accurate,
Speaker 1: so the margin of error left the possibility of UM
Speaker 1: falsely arresting hundreds of thousands of Germans. So they essentially
Speaker 1: they might as well have not had any idea what
Speaker 1: her hair eye color was. Yeah. Again, this is the
Speaker 1: early days of d NA UM such that they also
Speaker 1: did a DNA dragnet. Uh. This is pretty pretty big,
Speaker 1: long shot, but they did saliva swab of about three
Speaker 1: thousand women in Belgium, France and southern Germany and Italy. Uh.
Speaker 1: They focused on drug users, unhoused women, women with criminal
Speaker 1: records that were pretty serious. They offered up big time money.
Speaker 1: I believe it got up to about three hundred thousand
Speaker 1: euros uh, a lot of dough um, but you know,
Speaker 1: nothing was helping out. And in total, I think They
Speaker 1: ended up spending what they guessed to be about sixteen
Speaker 1: thousand hours of police overtime pursuing the Phantom of Heilbroun,
Speaker 1: and yet she kept a luning him Chuck and I
Speaker 1: say that we take our second break and come back
Speaker 1: and talk about how she was finally apprehended. Let's do it. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So now we're in March two thousand nine. Um, this
Speaker 1: is uh finally the case that kind of breaks things
Speaker 1: wide open for the Phantom of Heilbron When police were
Speaker 1: investigating the death of a man who died in a
Speaker 1: fire and thought maybe he was an asylum seeker who
Speaker 1: had disappeared years before, and so they were trying to
Speaker 1: find out if this was the same the burned body
Speaker 1: that they found was the same as this asylum seeker.
Speaker 1: They tested a card where they know that this asylum
Speaker 1: seeker had given fingerprints, like here is my fingerprint d
Speaker 1: NA right here, and it matched the phantom. And they said,
Speaker 1: well that all right, I know this phantom matches have
Speaker 1: been crazy, but this is literally impossible. We know who
Speaker 1: this man was and it is a man. It is
Speaker 1: not a woman who had committed these crimes. So they
Speaker 1: said let's retest it and the DNA has disappeared from
Speaker 1: the card. And then everyone went, well, what in the
Speaker 1: wide wide world sports is are going on here? Right?
Speaker 1: And before they could answer that question, a German magazine
Speaker 1: named Stern came out and said, um, guys, there is
Speaker 1: no phantom of heil Braun who. Yeah, they've been chasing
Speaker 1: false positives from DNA matches, likely from contaminated equipment or swabs, right,
Speaker 1: And what they realized they had literally been tracking were
Speaker 1: cotton swabs. They have been tracking the DNA of a
Speaker 1: woman who worked in a cotton swab factory that they
Speaker 1: used to um take DNA sample from. That was the
Speaker 1: phantom of Heilbron was a I think a seventy one
Speaker 1: year old Polish grandmother who worked in the factory of
Speaker 1: the cotton swapmaker. Yeah, so I tried to find out
Speaker 1: who she was specifically, I couldn't and I also found
Speaker 1: that it was there were quite a few older Polish women.
Speaker 1: I guess that kind of thing happened sometimes where you
Speaker 1: hire a bunch of people out from an area, So
Speaker 1: it could have possibly been from other women in that
Speaker 1: same area who worked at the factory. Because I couldn't
Speaker 1: find her actual name, did you not that? I feel
Speaker 1: like I did see it somewhere in one of the articles. Okay,
Speaker 1: I didn't know if they tried to grant her a
Speaker 1: non unminimon I don't. I swear, I swear I saw it.
Speaker 1: I'm almost positive because I could see why they be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'd make her anonymous. But then in retrospect, she didn't
Speaker 1: do anything wrong. It wasn't her. But you avoid people
Speaker 1: from bothering this old lady. Sure, But as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, the cops. The first thing the cops did
Speaker 1: was throw the maker of these cotton swabs right under
Speaker 1: the bus. Because you can imagine everybody, the phantom of Heilbron,
Speaker 1: this internationally described criminal that the cops have been after
Speaker 1: for years, that the Heilbron police alone spent sixteen thousand
Speaker 1: overtime hours trying to catch, didn't exist. There was no phantom.
Speaker 1: It was such a on the cops faces that you
Speaker 1: they're still peeling it off. And so of course they said,
Speaker 1: this is the manufacturer's fault. What the hay is going on?
Speaker 1: Why is there other people's d n A on these
Speaker 1: cotton swabs when you're double double packaging, and we considered
Speaker 1: these one one cops said the Mercedes of cotton swabs,
Speaker 1: and the manufacturers like, well, we never said you could
Speaker 1: use them for d N a collection. Yeah. They've fired
Speaker 1: back pretty quickly and said these are for testing food
Speaker 1: guys or medical testing, hygienic tests like definitely not collecting DNA. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't think we mentioned either before this even happened.
Speaker 1: As soon as it sort of came out from Stern
Speaker 1: the magazine, there were investigators that said, sort of on
Speaker 1: the downlow, for at least six months, we've been kind
Speaker 1: of wondering and investigating whether or not this could have
Speaker 1: been a contaminated evidence case. Yeah. The other investigators were like, well,
Speaker 1: thank you for even mentioning that to us. They kept
Speaker 1: that pretty quiet though, Um to put a button on.
Speaker 1: The Bavarian thing is, Bavaria did not source their swabs
Speaker 1: from this company. So that's explains why there was never
Speaker 1: any DNA even though Bavaria is right there where all
Speaker 1: these crimes were happening. Yeah, and the company was Grinder
Speaker 1: bio One International, a g and the thing that that
Speaker 1: claimed that they were like, well, we never said this
Speaker 1: is for DNA collection. It's for like food, food stuff
Speaker 1: sampling and stuff like that. Um. The cops were like,
Speaker 1: well then why have you been selling them to police
Speaker 1: departments all over Austria and Germany? Um, you know, what's what?
Speaker 1: What did you think we were using them for? And
Speaker 1: the company was just like you wint them out and
Speaker 1: it was like it's the same you know. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a PR spokesperson shaped dust cloud just left at
Speaker 1: the podium. That was it. Well, they're like, I thought
Speaker 1: you were testing your give a coke, take a coke,
Speaker 1: saying in your office your honor your coke machine honor system. Alright,
Speaker 1: so I guess, uh, we should talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what this what happened because of this? Um it was,
Speaker 1: like you said, a big humiliation for the German police. Um.
Speaker 1: It was also a bit of a hit on d
Speaker 1: N a sampling. Um. You know, we've talked about DNA
Speaker 1: a lot over the years, and DNA is great in
Speaker 1: collection of DNA for exoneration and for for proving someone
Speaker 1: as guilty as is amazing and it's really come a
Speaker 1: long way. But DNA has always sort of giveth and
Speaker 1: taketh away in certain cases. Uh, it's not perfect, Like
Speaker 1: Livia says it's not a silver bullet, and I think
Speaker 1: it was sort of has always kind of been painted
Speaker 1: that way, especially for juries are like, you know, when
Speaker 1: they see DNA evidence, I think the first thing you
Speaker 1: think is that's like as iron glad as it gets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's not necessarily always the case. No, And as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, if you zoom out a couple
Speaker 1: of orders of magnitude and look at this case, the
Speaker 1: Phantom of Heilbron case needed to happen because people were
Speaker 1: being convicted on circumstantial DNA evidence alone, like their DNA
Speaker 1: had been found in the scene, not on the murder weapon,
Speaker 1: not on the body, just at the scene, and people
Speaker 1: are going to prison for that kind of stuff because judges,
Speaker 1: juries prosecutors saw DNA is like infallible. Basically, if your
Speaker 1: DNA was there, you were guilty essentially. So the Phantom
Speaker 1: of heil Bron case really slowed that down. And like
Speaker 1: you said, it didn't say d there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: wrong with DNA in using that for forensics. It's hey,
Speaker 1: this is a really good way to to come up
Speaker 1: with evidence, but you need to also do the old
Speaker 1: fashioned police work to fill it out to make sure
Speaker 1: you have the right person. So it just kind of
Speaker 1: slowed everybody down in like it was. I think it
Speaker 1: was really necessary because this is like the time when
Speaker 1: c s I was at its peak yet TV show
Speaker 1: was huge at like in two thousand and eight um
Speaker 1: and and like that had that was because everybody thought
Speaker 1: of d n A in that way, So it was
Speaker 1: good it happened in a sense. Yeah. Absolutely. There was
Speaker 1: one case, if you want to get specific from Olivia
Speaker 1: dug Up for us, where there was an English cab
Speaker 1: driver whose DNA was discovered from the fingernails of a
Speaker 1: murdered woman. And you know, a jury, here's that and
Speaker 1: they're like fingernails, Like of course he did it because
Speaker 1: she was fighting him off and got his DNA under
Speaker 1: her fingernails. But it was someone who rode in his
Speaker 1: cab and got a little little bit of that d
Speaker 1: NA on him, killed this woman and got that d
Speaker 1: n A on her. Uh. And I believe the cabby
Speaker 1: spent eight months in jail before they found out the
Speaker 1: truth and acquitted him. So that's a tough one though.
Speaker 1: Well sure, I mean that's an outlier, but it's just
Speaker 1: a good example of how it needs you need to
Speaker 1: tread a little lighter. I think one of the other
Speaker 1: things though, is it's not like this should have been
Speaker 1: a surprise for everybody, UM that d N A wasn't
Speaker 1: infallible because back in our friend or shoot or shot,
Speaker 1: the guy who said, hey, you can get d NA
Speaker 1: off of everything, his his research also showed you can
Speaker 1: also really really easily contaminate anything with d NA, So
Speaker 1: we should all be very careful. Everybody's like all we
Speaker 1: heard was we can get DNA samples off of anything.
Speaker 1: There's like, we didn't hear all that. We weren't within
Speaker 1: or shot. Oh man, that was amazing, chuck, holy hate.
Speaker 1: But that was that filled my heart. So there was
Speaker 1: there's an international standard, the International Organization for Standardization, I
Speaker 1: should say an international organization UM. They published a new
Speaker 1: standard called i s O three eight five that basically says,
Speaker 1: this is how you UM collect forensic evidence with DNA
Speaker 1: to minimize UM contamination that kind of stuff. And I
Speaker 1: read a forensic blog UM who was who said were
Speaker 1: these were the the DNA analysts not even doing control samples?
Speaker 1: And I went and looked it up. And a control
Speaker 1: sample is one of the most basic things you can
Speaker 1: do where you take your cotton swab that has, like say,
Speaker 1: a blood stain on it, and you pull off a
Speaker 1: little bit of the cotton swab that's not stained, and
Speaker 1: you test them both to make sure that the cotton
Speaker 1: swab that's not staying doesn't come back with any genetic material.
Speaker 1: If it does, your sample is compromised. And they weren't
Speaker 1: doing that apparently, or else they would have figured this
Speaker 1: out almost immediately. So they were not doing very basic stuff.
Speaker 1: And maybe it's because it hadn't been standardized, like this
Speaker 1: is what you're supposed to do by that time. But
Speaker 1: you know, in two thousands sixteen, finally they got around
Speaker 1: to saying, here's how you do it. Right. It's like
Speaker 1: when you put on a band aid. You take off
Speaker 1: the peely part and you hold it by the sticky part.
Speaker 1: You don't hold it by the bandage, right, and then
Speaker 1: you take a sample of the bandage and then you
Speaker 1: run it through your DNA profiling machine. Sure so, and
Speaker 1: there's actually those things exist. Now, there's something called rapid
Speaker 1: DNA machines. Yeah, because DNA is not going anywhere, nor
Speaker 1: should it. You can look no further than the Golden
Speaker 1: State killer case. Where they actually caught the serial killer
Speaker 1: who killed like scores of people, are raped scores of
Speaker 1: women and killed I think a dozen or more people. Um,
Speaker 1: just through his DNA They found it through like a
Speaker 1: genetic genealogy site. Um, they discovered this guy. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't actually want to get rid of d n A.
Speaker 1: But what seems to be problematic is we're going a
Speaker 1: different way where now police stations have these rapid DNA
Speaker 1: machines where you just throw a cotton swab in and
Speaker 1: it spits out a genetic profile that you can run
Speaker 1: in CODIS. But that you're taking the professional analyst out
Speaker 1: of the out of the equation, and that seems dangerous
Speaker 1: to a lot of people. Yeah. Absolutely, Um to button
Speaker 1: up the original case that sort of got this all started,
Speaker 1: which was the murder of Officer Michel Kaisaveta. Um it
Speaker 1: was Nazis, uh. What they found out, it was a
Speaker 1: very small terror of cell of just three people, the
Speaker 1: National Socialists underground uh, and they were tied to the
Speaker 1: larger Nazi movement, but they carried out a series of
Speaker 1: murders throughout Germany from two thousand seven and all except
Speaker 1: for the officers, all the other victims were immigrants, one
Speaker 1: Greek citizen and eight of Turkish origin. And it was
Speaker 1: two members of that group Uei Mundlos and Ui Bernhardt,
Speaker 1: the two the two Ouhis. They robbed a bank um
Speaker 1: in Eisenhocken, Germany. They were spotted um and this is
Speaker 1: after after the murder. This is in and how they
Speaker 1: got caught, well, not quite caught, but they were spotted.
Speaker 1: And as police approached their burned out care of and
Speaker 1: where they were hiding out, Moondlow's killed Boondhardt and then
Speaker 1: himself and what looked like a murder suicide, even though
Speaker 1: I think Brunehardt's last words were wall hold on man,
Speaker 1: that's dark, that's dark. But these are Nazis. But they
Speaker 1: also they they linked these guys to her murder um
Speaker 1: directly using DNA analysis. They found sweatpants that had been
Speaker 1: stained with blood that match Kaisa Vetters DNA and that
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of neat how it came full circle
Speaker 1: like that. But at the same time, it also strongly
Speaker 1: suggests that these guys were wearing sweatpants with the police
Speaker 1: woman's blood on them for three years. That's how gross
Speaker 1: these stupid Nazis were. Yeah, and you know, it's even
Speaker 1: funnier as I believe it's keys of Vetter After I
Speaker 1: had my whole thing at the beginning about the I
Speaker 1: and the E in German? Who keys of vetters? Even better? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I screwed up the whole thing. We just
Speaker 1: record it all, let's start from the beginning. So there
Speaker 1: were two other outcomes from this. One was, hey, you guys,
Speaker 1: UM ignored the murder of eight Turks and one Greek citizen. UM,
Speaker 1: but yet you spent sixteen thousand overtime hours chasing the phantom?
Speaker 1: How is that work? Why are you doing that? And
Speaker 1: then also it really showed and revealed just how much
Speaker 1: UM investigators will bend and shape their theories into really weird,
Speaker 1: ridiculous shapes just to make it fit the DNA evidence,
Speaker 1: rather than stopping and being like, wait, what what is
Speaker 1: this again? This doesn't make any sense? Are we do
Speaker 1: we have the right Are we on the right track?
Speaker 1: So that's it, everybody, that's the Phantom of Heilbron. It
Speaker 1: was a good one. That's an amazing story. And if
Speaker 1: you want to know more about the Phantom of Heilbron,
Speaker 1: you can search that on your favorite search engine and
Speaker 1: jump down that rabbit hole. And since I said rabbit hole,
Speaker 1: as always, that means it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1: This is a very kind of cool little thedendum from
Speaker 1: Eve in Libertyville, Illinois. Hey guys, well, listening to the
Speaker 1: Selects episode on invasive species and one of you kind
Speaker 1: of joke that would be crazy to shoot invasive plants
Speaker 1: to eliminate them. And now it's been years since that episode,
Speaker 1: but get this. I recently watched a nature documentary, Green
Speaker 1: Planet with David Edinborough, which is awesome, and there's a
Speaker 1: section on shooting invasive plants. Uh. In Maui, there's an
Speaker 1: invasive plant called the micnia that's native to Mexico, and
Speaker 1: sharp shooters and helicopters are being used to shoot the
Speaker 1: plants growing on steep hillsides with herbicides without affecting the
Speaker 1: entire ecosystem. Just another example of creative ways people have
Speaker 1: found to fight invasive species. Attached to link. Thanks for
Speaker 1: all you do. Eve in Libertyville, Illinois. Amazing, Thanks Eve.
Speaker 1: Did we did we create that? Chuck? Did we cause that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Let's say we did, Okay, between you
Speaker 1: me and Eve, we we did we came up with that.
Speaker 1: I know I got Jared of Subway arrested and boy
Speaker 1: did I misjudge him? Uh So that was from Eve. Eve. Eve,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot for that one. We always love hearing
Speaker 1: new facts about old episodes, and you can send us
Speaker 1: an email like Eve did to stuff podcast at iHeart
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
Speaker 1: of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.