Speaker 1: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
Speaker 1: those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
Speaker 1: and do not necessarily represent those of iHeart Media, Stuff Media,
Speaker 1: or its employees. It's so warm and conquered tonight that
Speaker 1: people have their doors and windows open, but the police
Speaker 1: are saying lock up tight. Sacramento's infamous East Area rapist
Speaker 1: may still be in town. He raped a twenty nine
Speaker 1: year old housewife near the Ignacio Valley shopping Center at
Speaker 1: five thirty this morning. Her husband was tied up nearby
Speaker 1: and had to listen. When you look at what the
Speaker 1: East Area rapist was doing, he committed fifteen attacks where
Speaker 1: he's predominantly going into houses. Women would be asleep inside
Speaker 1: their houses. Sometimes these were mothers and their kids were
Speaker 1: another room. This is a retired forensic scientist and cold
Speaker 1: case investigator, Paul Holmes. He spent over twenty years obsessively
Speaker 1: searching for the Golden State Killer, who was also known
Speaker 1: as the East Area Rapist, the Vassilia Ransacker, and the
Speaker 1: Original night Stalker. One man thought to be responded for
Speaker 1: over fifty rates and a dozen murders in northern California,
Speaker 1: and he would always have a ski mask on. He
Speaker 1: would go to these women as are laying asleep in
Speaker 1: the bed, get them flipped over toward their face down,
Speaker 1: and tie their hands behind their back. As he's doing this,
Speaker 1: he's talking through clenched teeth and telling them you need
Speaker 1: to do what I say or I'm gonna kill you.
Speaker 1: He planned his attacks, he employed solid tactics. He often
Speaker 1: would have approached the house from one direction and leave
Speaker 1: the house in a different directions, so if there were
Speaker 1: witnesses seeing him coming, they didn't see him going, or
Speaker 1: vice versa. He would park his car many blocks away.
Speaker 1: During the canvas, of course, law enforcement is going out
Speaker 1: and talking to neighbors and hey, did you see any
Speaker 1: strange vehicles parked out front? Nobody ever really saw his
Speaker 1: vehicle because it was so parked, so far away, so
Speaker 1: very tactically sound. A man in a mask robbed, tied,
Speaker 1: and stabbed them, leaving them for dad. Subjects stated, I
Speaker 1: want to report a murder, no a double murder. I
Speaker 1: did it. A man who wore an evil style executioner's hood,
Speaker 1: carried a knife and gun and intended to use them.
Speaker 1: They have an arrestipe because they can't cove it, I'm
Speaker 1: not damn Zodiac? Who is the Zodiac and where is he?
Speaker 1: From My Heart Radio, How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV.
Speaker 1: This is Monster the Zodiac Killer. How investigators solve cases
Speaker 1: is constantly changing with improved technology. The most recent game
Speaker 1: changer forensic genealogy. The technique uses a mix of genetics
Speaker 1: and family trees. It's helps solve a growing list of
Speaker 1: decades olds. The capture of the alleged Golden State Killer
Speaker 1: has made forensic geneology famous, and it's this case has
Speaker 1: breathed new life into the hunt for the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 1: For several years, Paul Holes had almost no success with
Speaker 1: the Golden State Killer case. Every suspect and every tip
Speaker 1: would eventually lead to a dead end. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: Holes was working a completely separate case that ended up
Speaker 1: connecting to another case that he encountered. Forensic genealogy holds
Speaker 1: takes us back to the very beginning of that sequence
Speaker 1: with the murder of unsuon June. She was killed by
Speaker 1: her boyfriend Larry Vanner in February at two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: this is that five months after my last prime suspect
Speaker 1: was eliminated I'm in the doldrums, but I have a
Speaker 1: conference call in another case that I had been involved with.
Speaker 1: It was a two thousand and two homicide and Asian
Speaker 1: female had been bludged to death, buried underneath her house
Speaker 1: with kitty litter piled on top of her. We had
Speaker 1: always referred to it as a kitty letter case. And
Speaker 1: very quickly after this case, her living boyfriend, Larry Vanner,
Speaker 1: had been arrested. Larry Vanner was interesting in that we
Speaker 1: can never identify really who he was. Larry Vanner wasn't
Speaker 1: his real name. He had ten different names and we
Speaker 1: couldn't tell which one he had been given at birth.
Speaker 1: He had many different birthdays that he had given law
Speaker 1: enforcement over the years, different social Security numbers. He was
Speaker 1: a mystery man. Then investigators connected Larry Vanner to a
Speaker 1: different case, the bear Brook murders, and it was on
Speaker 1: this case that Paul Hols learned how forensic genealogy could work.
Speaker 1: It was two fifty five gallon barrels, one found another
Speaker 1: found in two thousand and one. Barrel was an adult
Speaker 1: female and a little girl, and the other barrel was
Speaker 1: two little girls. So that was a family that had
Speaker 1: been killed. But the other child in that second barrel
Speaker 1: wasn't related to this family. Well, through d n A,
Speaker 1: they showed that that other child was a biological child
Speaker 1: of Larry Vanner and then ultimately he's caught killing unsun
Speaker 1: June in two thousand and two in Contracost County. Amazing case.
Speaker 1: But I'm going I got to figure out how this
Speaker 1: technique has done. How can I use this to catch
Speaker 1: the East Air rapist a k a. The Golden State Killer.
Speaker 1: Forensic genealogy is a layered technique. At the base, it's
Speaker 1: a map of an individual's DNA profile. Private genealogy companies
Speaker 1: begin selling personal genetic profiles in the early eighties. At
Speaker 1: the time, it was a niche market, but it's grown
Speaker 1: in popularity in recent years. One of these companies, twenty
Speaker 1: three and Me, now both surround five million customers worldwide.
Speaker 1: So the team and I visited their headquarters to learn
Speaker 1: more about their product. My name is Kate Black. I'm
Speaker 1: the global Privacy Officer and Senior council at twenty three
Speaker 1: and Me. Twenty three and Me is a consumer genetics
Speaker 1: testing service, so anybody can order a test online, spit
Speaker 1: in a tube. It's quite a large bit of spit.
Speaker 1: It takes about thirty minutes to fill up the whole tube,
Speaker 1: send that off in the mail to one of our laboratories,
Speaker 1: and then within usually eight weeks, get a account rich
Speaker 1: with reports and information about their DNA selves, everything from
Speaker 1: ancestry like your ethnicity breakdown where your ancestors were from,
Speaker 1: as well as some health and wellness related information like traits,
Speaker 1: how you may respond or react to caffeine consumption, and
Speaker 1: more of the serious health results like whether or not
Speaker 1: you have the genes associated with late onset Alzheimer's. Our
Speaker 1: mission is really to give people you know, full access
Speaker 1: to understand their genetics and their genetic self, and that
Speaker 1: absolutely requires an enormous amount of trust in us. As
Speaker 1: a brand and a company, we take privacy very seriously.
Speaker 1: We want to make sure that we are not only
Speaker 1: upholding our own kind of ethical standards and privacy requirements,
Speaker 1: but also that we're meeting the expectations of our customers
Speaker 1: and understanding that they're not just a customer or data point.
Speaker 1: They're really a person with a variety of different things
Speaker 1: that may have brought them to us, and that we
Speaker 1: can fulfill that journey for them in a way that
Speaker 1: won't be surprising or unnerving or have unintended consequences. Around
Speaker 1: the same time, twenty three and me got its start,
Speaker 1: so did forensic genealogy. I think DNA is the most
Speaker 1: conclusive evidence we hang out at the moment. This is
Speaker 1: Colleen Fitzpatrick, owner and founder of Identifyingders International. It's a
Speaker 1: company that uses DNA for a number of sir. This
Speaker 1: is including finding missing persons in assisting law enforcement. If
Speaker 1: anyone knows about DNA, it's her. Well. I'm the founder
Speaker 1: of modern forensic genealogy. I wrote the book, and when
Speaker 1: I wrote the book in two thousand five, it created
Speaker 1: a revolution. It went forward into the forensic community itself
Speaker 1: to mean the application of genealogical techniques and support of
Speaker 1: the legal system. At first, I was having fun with
Speaker 1: the hobby side, identifying old photographs, helping people look at
Speaker 1: their records and squeezed juice out of them that they
Speaker 1: didn't know it was there. But then because of my
Speaker 1: science background, I was starting to be hired for some
Speaker 1: real cases, some really interesting cases. I was contacted by
Speaker 1: the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory to help them identify
Speaker 1: a frozen human arm and hand in a glacier, Alaska,
Speaker 1: and that became the hand in the Snow case, which
Speaker 1: I was very important in solving. And then from there,
Speaker 1: you know, went into the Titanic Baby and Amelia. Ever
Speaker 1: at those kind of cases became you know, really more
Speaker 1: accessible and interesting with DNA developments. I worked about seventy
Speaker 1: cases in thirty countries and I got almost all of them.
Speaker 1: Paul Hole has learned about forensic genealogy during the bare
Speaker 1: Brooks case and he used the technique to catch the
Speaker 1: alleged Golden State Killer. But how exactly does the process work?
Speaker 1: We gave him a call. What we were working with
Speaker 1: was a semen sample off of the victim's vaginal swab.
Speaker 1: Right there. The DNA that we're interested in is contained
Speaker 1: within the sperm heads of the semen and it's mixed
Speaker 1: with the females d NA. So now you need to
Speaker 1: have a law enforcement lab, those forensic analysts who are
Speaker 1: very well versed at this process. You need them to
Speaker 1: go in and separate out the Golden State Killers sperm
Speaker 1: DNA from all the victims DNA that's on that vaginal swap.
Speaker 1: Once the Golden State Killers DNA was isolated, it was
Speaker 1: sent to a private lab, and at the lab, a
Speaker 1: SNIP profile was created. SNIP profile s n P for
Speaker 1: single nucleotide polymorphism just basically a a testing process that
Speaker 1: looks at hundreds of thousands of single points of DNA
Speaker 1: across the genome in order to kind of map the
Speaker 1: genome out in a partial way. Turnaround time can be
Speaker 1: anywhere from two weeks to two months, depending on the lab.
Speaker 1: Hole says it's still faster than some forensic labs, which
Speaker 1: can get caught in backlogs. The information is then uploaded
Speaker 1: into jet match, a public online database that compiles info
Speaker 1: from multiple DNA sites. Jet Match also shows relationships between
Speaker 1: DNA profiles. That's because the original purpose of jed match
Speaker 1: was for people to research genealogy and build family trees,
Speaker 1: but since it's public, it also means law enforcement can
Speaker 1: use any of this data in their investigations. Jed match
Speaker 1: tells you it takes generally twenty four to eight hours
Speaker 1: for their servers to an essence to the algorithms I
Speaker 1: found with the Golden State killer that within twenty four
Speaker 1: hours after upload, I had my initial search results. How
Speaker 1: closely or distantly are related is dependent on how much
Speaker 1: DNA you share. Our top results only shared less than
Speaker 1: one percent of their DNA, which was on the order
Speaker 1: of roughly a third cousin. From here, traditional genealogy work
Speaker 1: kicks in, like hunting down birth certificates and death records
Speaker 1: to trace family lineage. There's five of us on our
Speaker 1: team on the law enforcement side, and then we had
Speaker 1: the genetic genealogist Barbara ray Venter, who was the one
Speaker 1: who was kind of guiding us. The five of us
Speaker 1: were the ones that were really building the trees, and
Speaker 1: Barbara was kind of, you know, checking in the tree
Speaker 1: that we ultimately linked together where we found to the
Speaker 1: Golden State killer, Joseph de'angelo um. You know, the common
Speaker 1: ancestors had been born in the eighteen forties. Once we
Speaker 1: started identifying all their descendants, that family tree very you know,
Speaker 1: quickly grew to having well over a thousand individuals entered
Speaker 1: into this tree. Most of them were long dead because
Speaker 1: they're just ancestors. But you have to identify everybody. You
Speaker 1: don't want to miss the one person who could potentially
Speaker 1: be the parent of your offender. It took us four
Speaker 1: and a half months, you know, from the time we
Speaker 1: got the initial DNA search results to the time that
Speaker 1: de Angelo was taken into custody. Holes is adamant that
Speaker 1: this genealogy provides an investigative lead. He says, once a
Speaker 1: suspect is identified, law enforcement still needs to secure a
Speaker 1: direct DNA sample. Then that direct sample is compared to
Speaker 1: the original sample used in the forensic genealogy process. This
Speaker 1: is done in case an error was made while building
Speaker 1: out the family tree with the Angelo. Even though we
Speaker 1: kind of identified him, he has some circumstantial evidence that
Speaker 1: seemed to corroborate that he could be the guy. It
Speaker 1: was like he got to get that direct DNA sample,
Speaker 1: So he was put under surveillance and then the first
Speaker 1: DNA sample was collected and it was enough to basically
Speaker 1: tell us he's the guy, but we needed to get
Speaker 1: a second sample due to some of the complexities of
Speaker 1: the first sample. The second sample left no doubt he
Speaker 1: matched to the Golden State Killer's DNA. As I was
Speaker 1: working through this case, I'm looking to see while is
Speaker 1: there DNA had this newf angle DNA technology, and I
Speaker 1: was able to find three cases out in Contracost the
Speaker 1: county that still had evidence the DNA evidence that have
Speaker 1: been collected from the women's bodies from back in the day,
Speaker 1: and I was able to get DNA from each of
Speaker 1: those three cases, and and the DNA profile from those
Speaker 1: three cases was the same. I'm sitting at p F
Speaker 1: Chang's and Kirk Campbell from Zack d A's office calls me.
Speaker 1: And Kirk opens up by saying, Paul, you absolutely cannot
Speaker 1: tell anybody this. So immediately I knew, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: going to be a different phone call. And then he said,
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what the lab has, but they're
Speaker 1: really excited. And I was asking him more, what did
Speaker 1: they tell you? What did they say? They said, well,
Speaker 1: they got a partial DNA profile, something about twenty markers,
Speaker 1: like it's m Kirk, it's head. And so now we're
Speaker 1: sitting in our rental cheap Cherokee and the p F
Speaker 1: Chang's parking lot. It's it's an oh my god type
Speaker 1: of mo moment. And then Steve Kramer, my partner from
Speaker 1: the FBI, calls and he's on speaker in the jeeps,
Speaker 1: so my wife is hearing Steve and I now strategizing
Speaker 1: about what are the next steps and what are we
Speaker 1: going to do? Now? Do I need to get on
Speaker 1: the next flight out of here. For over forty years,
Speaker 1: countless victims have waited for justice. Yesterday, in arrest warrant
Speaker 1: was issued, a complaint was filed charging that individual with
Speaker 1: two counts of murder. The answer was and always was
Speaker 1: going to be in the d N A April, authorities
Speaker 1: arrest and charge seventy two year old Joseph James D'Angelo
Speaker 1: with eight counts of first degree murder. As of this recording,
Speaker 1: he's on trial for the crimes attributed to the Golden
Speaker 1: State Killer. Since d'angelo's arrest, almost two dozen other cases
Speaker 1: have been solved with the help of forensic genealogy, and
Speaker 1: that number is steadily climbing. However, this new technique is
Speaker 1: already stirring debate. Most people, of course that are are
Speaker 1: against it. It's a privacy concern Fourth Amendment unreasonable search
Speaker 1: against their genetic information. People in the genealogy databases did
Speaker 1: not explicitly consent to allow law enforcement to search their
Speaker 1: genealogy DNA profiles in order to help solve a case.
Speaker 1: Companies like twenty three and Me and Ancestry have policies
Speaker 1: to keep law enforcement from directly accessing their private databases,
Speaker 1: but for public databases like jet match, there aren't any
Speaker 1: laws regulating searches. There's a lot of people out there that,
Speaker 1: of course, are are very upset about law enforcement utilizing
Speaker 1: this tool. But I think because of the kinds of
Speaker 1: cases that are being solved with it, that there's a
Speaker 1: balance in terms of people's perception society's acceptance of the
Speaker 1: tool being used. Paul Holes says, what people are afraid
Speaker 1: law enforcement has access to is very different compared to
Speaker 1: what they actually have access to. I never had access
Speaker 1: to anybody's DNA profile the database and ordered for me
Speaker 1: to see their genetic information. For me to kind of
Speaker 1: invade their genetic privacy, I have to have access to
Speaker 1: their DNA profile and I never had that. All I
Speaker 1: got were search results of people who shared a percentage
Speaker 1: of DNA, and the results only tell me how much
Speaker 1: DNA they shared. Still, some privacy advocates are worried that
Speaker 1: this technique will cause more innocent people to be targeted
Speaker 1: as possible suspects. At least that's the reasoning behind a
Speaker 1: bill Maryland lawmakers introduced in January. If it passes, it
Speaker 1: would completely block Maryland law enforcements ability to use forensic genealogy.
Speaker 1: More specifically, investigators would be banned from using DNA databases
Speaker 1: to identify unknown DNA found at crime scenes, but Paul
Speaker 1: Hols argues forensic genealogy is less invasive than typical police work.
Speaker 1: Through the use of genealogy in the Golden State Killer case,
Speaker 1: we saved hundreds of men from having the government take
Speaker 1: possession of their DNA. Considering traditional law enforcement investigations, we
Speaker 1: were having women calling in saying, you know, my ex
Speaker 1: husband looks like this hand drawn sketch of the Golden
Speaker 1: State Killer from eight I think he might be the guy.
Speaker 1: And then we would go on to her ex husband's house,
Speaker 1: knock on his door, and actually asked for his DNA.
Speaker 1: We took possession of his DNA sample. Through the use
Speaker 1: of genealogy in the Golden State Killer case, we saved
Speaker 1: hundreds of men from having the government take possession of
Speaker 1: their DNA. As though it is, it's sort of that
Speaker 1: balancing act of Okay, yeah, we're searching a genealogy database
Speaker 1: where identifying people who are relatives based on their DNA,
Speaker 1: But the intrusion is is minuscule compared to how legally
Speaker 1: law enforcement works. Every single day across the nation. Holes
Speaker 1: also argues forensic genealogy isn't a tool to be used regularly.
Speaker 1: Use it on your homicide cases, your your sexual assault,
Speaker 1: your serial sexual assault cases, or if you have that
Speaker 1: active public safety threat. You know, this guy has killed somebody,
Speaker 1: you don't know who he is, he's left his DNA,
Speaker 1: and he is out there potentially going to kill other people.
Speaker 1: And that it's that's the type of thing where you
Speaker 1: bring in this tool sort of as the last resort.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like, you know, you think of it
Speaker 1: as as the nuclear weapon, and you go and you
Speaker 1: try to figure out who this guy is using the
Speaker 1: genealogy in order to get him in custody before can
Speaker 1: rape and or kill somebody else. Holes does see where
Speaker 1: concerns could rise if law enforcement expands its use into
Speaker 1: everyday crimes. I think that's where you'll see sort of
Speaker 1: the balance shift where people are going to start getting
Speaker 1: uncomfortable with it, and that's where you know legislation will
Speaker 1: come in and restrict law enforcements use. But Holes says,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, people who are decision
Speaker 1: makers need to understand what the investigative genealogy technique is
Speaker 1: and what it isn't before they pass laws based on perception.
Speaker 1: In the spring of confirmed Zodiac letters were sent to
Speaker 1: a lab for DNA testing. The hope is to pull
Speaker 1: enough DNA for a full genetic profile and then use
Speaker 1: that profile for forensic genealogy. This isn't the first time
Speaker 1: law enforcement has turned to DNA for answers. In the
Speaker 1: Zodiac case, the prime suspect, Arthur Lee Allen, died in
Speaker 1: August of authorities seized that opportunity to preserve some brain
Speaker 1: tissue for further testing. This is Zodiac expert Michael Butterfield.
Speaker 1: Several years later, in the late nineteen nineties, the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Police Department submitted suspected Zodiac communications to the crime
Speaker 1: lab for DNA analysis. According to retired Inspector Vince Rippetto,
Speaker 1: DNA was found on a Zodiac communication and that DNA
Speaker 1: did not match Arthur Lee Allen. Several years later, in
Speaker 1: two thousand two, San Francisco Police inspectors Mike Maloney and
Speaker 1: Kelly Carroll submitted suspected Zodiac communications to the crime lab
Speaker 1: for further DNA testing. Dr Cindy Holt of the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Police DNA lab examined the Zodiac letters and envelopes,
Speaker 1: and she stated that a partial genetic profile was found
Speaker 1: on an envelope sent with the Zodiac communication in November
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty nine. According to Holt, that sample was
Speaker 1: sufficient to exclude suspects, but not sufficient to positively identify anyone. However,
Speaker 1: some critics didn't believe law enforcement had found a partial
Speaker 1: DNA profile. They believed it was all for show. I
Speaker 1: was shown the DNA profile that they obtained when I
Speaker 1: went out to San Francisco p D at one time,
Speaker 1: so I saw what they actually got. So they did
Speaker 1: get a low level DNA profile, but hold says there
Speaker 1: were other concerns as well. There's no confidence that you
Speaker 1: could say was actually the offender's DNA. If the Zodiac,
Speaker 1: for example, licked the stamps, licked these envelope flaps of
Speaker 1: the letters that he sent in, why can't they get
Speaker 1: his DNA. But you also have to be concerned about, well,
Speaker 1: whose DNA is actually on those items they're sent in
Speaker 1: after the fact, they're not present at the crime scene
Speaker 1: where you know the offender wasn't at I had, you know,
Speaker 1: an old time BLO detective. He had some involvement in
Speaker 1: Zodiac back in the day, and he goes, you know,
Speaker 1: I remember growing up, you know, as a kid going
Speaker 1: into the post office to mail letter back in the
Speaker 1: late sixties, and you hand the guy an open envelope,
Speaker 1: but he would lick the envelope and he would lick
Speaker 1: the stamp. Well, who's to say that didn't happen with
Speaker 1: these particular envelopes and stamps that were sent in, right,
Speaker 1: So how can we say for sure that if they
Speaker 1: do get DNA from the secondary or peripheral items of evidence,
Speaker 1: that it's actually Zodiac DNA. I would have greater confidence
Speaker 1: if they get the same DNA profile from multiple items
Speaker 1: like that, then it looks like it's probably the originator
Speaker 1: of that evidence versus a secondary person that handled that evidence.
Speaker 1: I sure would like to see primary evidence in the
Speaker 1: Zodiac case produced a DNA profile. Well, with DNA, you
Speaker 1: never know, you just never know, and you never know
Speaker 1: the power of your what you're testing is. But if
Speaker 1: it's kind of a degraded, a low level sample, you know,
Speaker 1: you can be surprised. This is Colleen Fitzpatrick again. One
Speaker 1: of the cases she worked on was the so called
Speaker 1: Unknown Child of the Titanic. We had to do multiple
Speaker 1: rounds of testing on that. We really didn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of DNA to start with, and at the end
Speaker 1: somebody told me or my understanding was there was enough
Speaker 1: DNA for one cell of that child's body left and
Speaker 1: that's what did the trick. So that was using ninety
Speaker 1: year old, nine year old DNA that had been in
Speaker 1: the ground in Halifax, Nova Scotia and had been exposed
Speaker 1: to acid rain for as long as that's been around,
Speaker 1: and yet there was enough DNA in that baby, a
Speaker 1: baby's body to make the identify action. Here's another example
Speaker 1: of degraded and contaminated DNA that was still usable. We
Speaker 1: had Buckskin Girl under the DNA dough project. That was
Speaker 1: from a blood sample that was thirty seven years old.
Speaker 1: It had been doped with hepperine to keep it from coagulating,
Speaker 1: and it had not been refrigerated for thirty seven years,
Speaker 1: and it worked like a charm. So you know, when
Speaker 1: you don't think it's gonna work, it does. So you
Speaker 1: never can tell with DNA, and with the zodiac and
Speaker 1: the stamps, you never can tell is worth trying. We
Speaker 1: wanted to know more about these stamps does a small
Speaker 1: amount of saliva typically provide a good DNA sample? This
Speaker 1: really interesting question. I don't think there's enough data in
Speaker 1: recent months to say one way or the other. I'd
Speaker 1: say definitely maybe, because again you never know. You know,
Speaker 1: I know I had talked to a lab extensively at
Speaker 1: one time about somebody, I'll grab a coffee cop can
Speaker 1: you get the DNA off that? But basically they said
Speaker 1: that's a low probability, high risk, whereas if you had
Speaker 1: DNA like from fingernails or under fingernails, that was a
Speaker 1: higher chance in a lower risk. And I think this
Speaker 1: stamp is probably medium because you never can tell where
Speaker 1: the stamp has been. As Paul Hole has said earlier,
Speaker 1: it takes more than DNA for these cases to be solved.
Speaker 1: But I'd like to point out that nobody is really
Speaker 1: just convicted on DNA evidence. Even if the DNA matches,
Speaker 1: there's other things that come in, like, you know, was
Speaker 1: the guy in that area? You know? Did he have
Speaker 1: a criminal record, did he leave fingerprints? Is that his shirt?
Speaker 1: Is that his a tennis shoe size? There's a lot
Speaker 1: to it. It's not just DNA. Now at eleven, the
Speaker 1: new hunt for the Zodiac Killer. Tonight, Bay Area police
Speaker 1: may have found the key to finally cracking the case.
Speaker 1: Good Evening, I'm Elizabeth cut and I'm Kendasita first the
Speaker 1: suspected Golden State Killer because the Zodeiac Killer be next
Speaker 1: KPI X five Andrea Boorba joins us from the newsroom
Speaker 1: with the decades old evidence getting new attention Tonight, Andrea
Speaker 1: well Ken Elizabeth the Zodiac Killer is responsible for at
Speaker 1: least five murders in the late sixties and early seventies. Tonight,
Speaker 1: the case that was considered all but unsolvable may have
Speaker 1: new legs. The Zodiac Killer, who's killing spree in ciphers
Speaker 1: around the Bay Area draw worldwide attention to this day,
Speaker 1: maybe weeks away from being unmasked. The Sacramento Bea reports
Speaker 1: that Ballejo police have submitted letters and envelopes from the
Speaker 1: Zodiac Killer to a private lab to obtain a DNA
Speaker 1: profile the hope that those envelopes he looked closed years
Speaker 1: ago might be the final piece to crack the case.
Speaker 1: The lead Ballejo detective in the Zodiac case told the
Speaker 1: Sacramento be he hopes to use the same open source
Speaker 1: DNA database technique that helped identify Joseph D'Angelo as the
Speaker 1: suspect in the Golden State Killer case. Now, those DNA
Speaker 1: results are expected in a few weeks. In the newsroom
Speaker 1: Entrea four, But KPIs it's been almost a year since
Speaker 1: investigators sent the Zodiac's letters to a lab for DNA testing. Well,
Speaker 1: this is promising. It's been hard for us to find
Speaker 1: much new information. Here's Officer Ryan rails Back of the
Speaker 1: Riverside Police Department. This case is still technically open even
Speaker 1: though it occurred back fifty years ago. Plus it is
Speaker 1: still open because it hasn't been solved. We haven't had
Speaker 1: any real updates on this case in many years. And
Speaker 1: here's Lieutenant Joseph Kono Fileo Police Department's Detective Division commander.
Speaker 1: The case is open, so yeah, we will. We will
Speaker 1: not release specifics regards to where we are just because of,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously the investigative integrity of the case. San
Speaker 1: Francisco reporter Kevin Fagan rodan or dticle about the Zodiac
Speaker 1: for the fiftieth anniversary in December. In it, an anonymous
Speaker 1: police source says, quote, with the Golden State Killer, they
Speaker 1: had a full strand of DNA not Zodiac. We have
Speaker 1: chrons and not good ones end quote. Paul Holes agrees
Speaker 1: the critical step in that case is they need to
Speaker 1: find DNA from the Zodiac as of you know, the
Speaker 1: best information and the most recent information I have. They
Speaker 1: were still looking. Everybody's saying, oh, investigative genealogy is going
Speaker 1: to solve Zodiac. Well, first you have to have the
Speaker 1: Zodiac's DNA as of you know, the information that I know,
Speaker 1: and it's dated. They hadn't recovered that yet. And as
Speaker 1: for the DNA found in the early two thousand's, Paul
Speaker 1: Holes explains, it's the same problem. What I saw was
Speaker 1: it was so scrappy that I probably with DNA interpretations
Speaker 1: today that they may not even be allowed to use
Speaker 1: such a low level DNA profile for comparison purposes. It's
Speaker 1: so low level. Is it due to some environmental contamination
Speaker 1: either on the outside and the surface of the stamp?
Speaker 1: Somebody has handled it during the DNA testing process itself
Speaker 1: and has nothing to do with the Zodiacs DNA. They
Speaker 1: need to get a better sample, in my opinion, than
Speaker 1: what they actually obtained back in the day. Holes is
Speaker 1: talking about federal regulations placed on testing DNA the FBI
Speaker 1: and the Scientific Oversight Committee governs all forensic testing labs
Speaker 1: UH and how they do their DNA testing and how
Speaker 1: they interpret the DNA results, And in many ways, it's
Speaker 1: to help standardize the interpretation of these DNA profiles that
Speaker 1: often are very complex, and so over time these interpretation
Speaker 1: sidelines have become more and more strict because just you know, I,
Speaker 1: you know, learning from real life case examples, they solved
Speaker 1: where the more lax interpretation guidelines could cause misinterpretations to occur,
Speaker 1: and so they said, we can't have that, and we
Speaker 1: need to be as conservative as possible because we don't
Speaker 1: want to falsely incriminate somebody by misinterpreting a DNA result.
Speaker 1: Investigators have been working on this case for decades. Everyone
Speaker 1: wants to see it solved, but ultimately everything hinges on
Speaker 1: the DNA. If they find a Zodiac d n A,
Speaker 1: then it becomes a solvable case. If they don't find
Speaker 1: his DNA, the chances of it being solved become almost zero.
Speaker 1: Next time, un Monster Zoe yet killer. And of course
Speaker 1: there's been theories over the years that they invented the
Speaker 1: zodiac to sell more newspapers. Send the letter to the
Speaker 1: paper he said to prove that I was it kills him.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you only things that I know and the police. No.
Speaker 1: But if you go through and read the police, of course,
Speaker 1: it's almost verbatim on what the police said and the
Speaker 1: police of courts, and exactly what I heard the police
Speaker 1: say on the radio that night. Popular culture about serial
Speaker 1: killers is not dedicated to making us ask difficult questions. Instead,
Speaker 1: it gives us easy answers. That's what we find appealing
Speaker 1: about it. There's nothing fun about Earnie and you know,
Speaker 1: wacky ciphers and letters that you know taunt and say,
Speaker 1: I like hunting the most dangerous game. Yeah, great, the
Speaker 1: guy belongs to freaking prison. If I could go back
Speaker 1: and give myself some advice when I was first starting out,
Speaker 1: be skept to goal of everything. Monster the Zodiac Killer
Speaker 1: is a fifteen episode podcast produced by I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. Donald Albright and I
Speaker 1: are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers
Speaker 1: Meredith Stepman, Mason Lindsay, and Christina Dana. Jason Hope is
Speaker 1: executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works, along with
Speaker 1: producers Trevor Young, Miranda Hawkins, ben Kybrick, and Josh Thane
Speaker 1: Scott Benjamin provides additional voice talent. Matt Frederick is our host.
Speaker 1: Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. If you
Speaker 1: haven't already, make sure to check out the first season
Speaker 1: of Monster called Atlanta Monster, about the Atlanta child murders
Speaker 1: from the late seventies to the early eighties. Download the
Speaker 1: ten episode season right now. Have questions or comments, email
Speaker 1: us at Monster at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can call us at one eight three three two,
Speaker 1: eat five six six six seven. Thanks for listening. H