Speaker 1: Hey, everyone is Zaki. Today we're re airing one of
Speaker 1: my favorite episodes from last year. It's about a woman
Speaker 1: called c. C. Moore who's helping the police self homicide
Speaker 1: cases using these databases of consumer DNA test results. A
Speaker 1: lot has happened since then, so keep listening till the end,
Speaker 1: when reporter Christen Brown will update us on the recent
Speaker 1: developments and warning that the story includes some graphic descriptions
Speaker 1: of a crime scene. Okay, here's the episode. In the
Speaker 1: fall of seven, Tanya van Kileenberg and j Cook took
Speaker 1: a ferry from their home in British Columbia to Washington State.
Speaker 1: They were planning to run an errand the next morning
Speaker 1: for Jay's father. A few days later, Tanya's body was
Speaker 1: found in a ditch seventy miles north of Seattle. She's
Speaker 1: been raped with her hands bound behind her, and there
Speaker 1: was a bullet your head. Two days later, hunters found
Speaker 1: j under a bridge one county over. He had been
Speaker 1: strangled with a dog collar. A pack of cigarettes was
Speaker 1: stuffed in his mouth. Police had a theory. They suspected
Speaker 1: the couple had met the killer on the ferry and
Speaker 1: offered him a ride, but the leads ran out and
Speaker 1: the case went cold until a few months ago. Good morning,
Speaker 1: and thank you all for being here. Yesterday we took
Speaker 1: into custody of fifty five year old sea technic who
Speaker 1: was suspected of the murders of jacob In Tanya and
Speaker 1: Kylie Burke. William Earld Tabot the second has been booked
Speaker 1: into Snowman County Jail on one count of first degree
Speaker 1: murder on a war. Thirty one years after the murder,
Speaker 1: police finally arrested a suspect. A woman named Cecy Moore
Speaker 1: helped crack the case using a new and controversial technology.
Speaker 1: At the time, CECI was known for solving the mysteries
Speaker 1: of people's family histories. Today, c s hunt serial killers. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Pia Gadkari and I'm Kristin Brown. And this week
Speaker 1: on Decrypted, we're exploring the unintended consequences of consumer DNA tests.
Speaker 1: These services are booming, with millions of people sending their
Speaker 1: spit into companies like Ancestry and three met. They promised
Speaker 1: to unite people with long lost family members, detect risk
Speaker 1: of disease, and even suggests personalized dieting regimens, but critics
Speaker 1: fear that our DNA could come to be used in
Speaker 1: ways that would compromise our privacy and even potentially land
Speaker 1: someone we're related to in jail. Stay with us, Okay.
Speaker 1: It was a classically cold and gray Pacific Northwest day
Speaker 1: when I picked CC More up at our hotel about
Speaker 1: an hour and a half outside Seattle. Hey, do you
Speaker 1: want to put that in the trunk? Yeah? There were
Speaker 1: just a few miles from More the murder of Tanya
Speaker 1: van Kilemberg and Jay Cook took place. So I was
Speaker 1: just gonna say, I was just realizing this morning that
Speaker 1: this We're in the county right now where you solved
Speaker 1: your first case, right are we in Snahomas Cool? I
Speaker 1: saw a sign that said this way, and I was
Speaker 1: was going to ask somebody. Yeah, I realized Cecy was
Speaker 1: here in rural Washington state to do what she has
Speaker 1: done for years, help people piece together their family histories.
Speaker 1: She was speaking at the annual Northwest Genealogical Conference. The
Speaker 1: day before, I had watched her give a very technical
Speaker 1: talk about how to triangulate DNA relatives to fill stubborn
Speaker 1: gaps and genealogies. Afterward, about two dozen people rushed the
Speaker 1: stage to talk to her. One person, apparently a distant cousin,
Speaker 1: even asked her to pose for a picture. In this world,
Speaker 1: Cecy Moore is a star, but she fell into it
Speaker 1: by accident because until about twenty years ago, Cecy was
Speaker 1: an actress. Once she told me she had a gig
Speaker 1: where she had to pretend to be a barbeam. She
Speaker 1: had come to our copy date joining a suitcase with
Speaker 1: multiple outfit options for the big banquet keynote she was
Speaker 1: giving later at the local country club. Because it wasn't
Speaker 1: acting that made CC famous, it was genealogy. About twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, my niece was getting married and I was
Speaker 1: trying to think of a good wedding gift, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: a family tree would be a cool wedding gift. I
Speaker 1: think I'll try to put one together for her, and
Speaker 1: got online and found ancestry dot com and started trying
Speaker 1: to figure that out and became obsessed with in genealogy.
Speaker 1: Genealogists are like detectives, but for the family tree, they
Speaker 1: used things like Mary Dge records and obituaries to piece
Speaker 1: together how people are related, and these days some of them,
Speaker 1: like Ceci, also used DNA. Cecy made her mark using
Speaker 1: DNA to crack tough to solve mysteries like tracking down
Speaker 1: the birth parents of adopted children. Then Ceci's life took
Speaker 1: a turn. In April, police arrested a suspect in the
Speaker 1: long cold case of the Golden State Killer, a notorious
Speaker 1: serial killer who terrorized California in the nineteen seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: Huge break in a cold case terrorizing California for decades,
Speaker 1: police say they now have a Golden State Killer in custody.
Speaker 1: Joseph de'angelo is facing new charges this morning, four counts
Speaker 1: of murder in Santa Barbara, twelve murder charges now in all.
Speaker 1: Cecie was gearing up for attack at the genetic testing
Speaker 1: company twenty three and me when news of the arrest happened.
Speaker 1: I woke up in a hotel room in Mountain View
Speaker 1: and saw the headline that the Golden State Killer had
Speaker 1: been rested, and I knew immediately that it was through
Speaker 1: genetic genealogy techniques. It didn't come out immediately, but I
Speaker 1: knew that in the case of the Golden State Killer,
Speaker 1: law enforcement had used a genealogy website called jet match
Speaker 1: to find their suspect. Jet Match is sort of like
Speaker 1: a big community repository for DNA data. For example, I
Speaker 1: could upload my data from say twenty three and me
Speaker 1: and find out whether I might be related to someone
Speaker 1: else who uploaded data from a different service like ancestry.
Speaker 1: What police did in this case is they uploaded data
Speaker 1: from crime scene DNA and then looked for potential suspects
Speaker 1: in the family trees of other people who showed up
Speaker 1: as a genetic match, in other words, people who shared
Speaker 1: the killer's DNA. We've reunited tens of thousands of people
Speaker 1: with long lost family members, and it's exactly the same technique.
Speaker 1: So if we can do it there for adoptees, there's
Speaker 1: absolutely no reason we can't do it in these law
Speaker 1: enforcement cases as well. In the past, Cecy had been
Speaker 1: hesitant to go snooping through people's profiles for a purpose
Speaker 1: they'd never intended, but once the Golden State killer case
Speaker 1: was splashed across the headlines, she figured it was open season.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to do this until people knew that
Speaker 1: it was possible and that it was happening that their
Speaker 1: DNA could be used for this purpose. CC's work is
Speaker 1: possible in part because of a small software company called
Speaker 1: Parabond Nano Labs. A few years ago, Parabond created a
Speaker 1: program called Snapshot that can use crime scene DNA to
Speaker 1: do basically what a sketch artist does. It creates a
Speaker 1: vague picture of what a suspect might look like. It
Speaker 1: does this by processing crime scene DNA with the same
Speaker 1: kind of technology that companies like twenty three and Me
Speaker 1: and Ancestry use in the world of law enforcement. This
Speaker 1: hadn't really been done before I actually visited Parabon along
Speaker 1: with Business Week reporter Drake Bennett. Their technique provides a
Speaker 1: lot more data than crime scene labs usually work with.
Speaker 1: One standard test, for example, looks at just twenty three
Speaker 1: markers on the Y chromosome. Markers are unique places on
Speaker 1: a person's genome, but Parabon looks at thousands of markers,
Speaker 1: and more data means you can get a lot more
Speaker 1: detail about what your suspect might be like and compare
Speaker 1: that data to the consumer DNA tests that millions of
Speaker 1: people are doing right now. And that's where CC comes in.
Speaker 1: The data that Parabond generates to create its DNA sketches
Speaker 1: is similar to the data people upload to sites like
Speaker 1: jet match when they're looking for relatives. Last year, cec
Speaker 1: reached out to Parabon to see if they could work together,
Speaker 1: and eventually the company hired her to head up a
Speaker 1: new unit devoted to forensic genetic genealogy. One of the
Speaker 1: first cases to come in was from Snowhomish County in
Speaker 1: Washington State. It was the case of j Cook and
Speaker 1: Tanya van Kuilemberg that we heard about at the start,
Speaker 1: and it was right after the Golden State killer arrest,
Speaker 1: so there was a lot of enthusiasm from law enforcement
Speaker 1: around the country about using this same technique. Cecie got
Speaker 1: to work and I kept waiting for matches to populate,
Speaker 1: but they didn't populate. That Friday night, I went to
Speaker 1: sleep and I woke up Saturday morning to a list
Speaker 1: of DNA matches on JED match. She got really lucky.
Speaker 1: There In the list of matches was the geneological equivalent
Speaker 1: of winning the lottery. Two cousins who shared a lot
Speaker 1: of DNA with the suspect, but who didn't seem to
Speaker 1: be related to each other. So imagine a cousin on
Speaker 1: your dad's side of the family and another cousin on
Speaker 1: your mom's side of the family. Those two cousins aren't
Speaker 1: related to each other, but they are related to you,
Speaker 1: So that tells me I should be able to find
Speaker 1: a triangulation between them, meaning a place where those two
Speaker 1: family trees come together. From there, Cecie turned to all
Speaker 1: the traditional tools of genealogy to build a family tree
Speaker 1: for each of the people who showed up as a match.
Speaker 1: That meant searching through Facebook, newspaper archives, and local records
Speaker 1: to figure out who else these people were related to.
Speaker 1: Since the two cousins of the suspect weren't related to
Speaker 1: each other, ceci knew that somewhere there had to be
Speaker 1: a marriage between the two families. Eventually, she found an
Speaker 1: obituary for a woman from one family who was carrying
Speaker 1: a last name from the other. Perhaps this was it,
Speaker 1: Cecie told me. Marriage records are pretty good in Washington State,
Speaker 1: so she was able to confirm that this was indeed
Speaker 1: the marriage she'd been looking for. And this resulted in
Speaker 1: four children, three of which were female, and so we
Speaker 1: only had one male. That one male was the only
Speaker 1: probable suspect. Within a few hours, cc found herself staring
Speaker 1: at a name, William Earl Talbot. The second police collected
Speaker 1: a new DNA sample from him and confirmed it matched
Speaker 1: the DNA found at the crime scene. Then, on May seventeen,
Speaker 1: police took William Earl Talbot into custody. Of course, he
Speaker 1: hasn't been found guilty yet, but my work certainly points
Speaker 1: right at him. William L. Talbot has been charged with
Speaker 1: both murders, but he's pleaded not guilty. If he's convicted,
Speaker 1: he could face the death penalty. The Snohomish case was
Speaker 1: just the first murder case CCI tried to crack. To date,
Speaker 1: Parabon and CC have solved more than a dozen cases,
Speaker 1: and they have dozens more in the works. Parabon has
Speaker 1: added three other full time genealogists to its staff, with
Speaker 1: CC heading up that team. But when people ship their
Speaker 1: DNA after me or ancestry to find out whether they're
Speaker 1: Italian or what their g say about their taste for cilantro,
Speaker 1: they probably don't imagine it being used for a criminal investigation.
Speaker 1: The Golden State killer case bren already bubbling conversation about
Speaker 1: DNA and privacy to a boil. When you send your
Speaker 1: saliva off to a DNA testing company, you're handing over
Speaker 1: extremely sensitive, extremely personal information, not just about yourself, but
Speaker 1: about other people you're related to. Consumer genetic testing companies.
Speaker 1: So companies like Ancestry and twenty three and me don't
Speaker 1: in general share data with law enforcement unless they're legally
Speaker 1: compelled to. But that data gets shared in lots of
Speaker 1: other ways. For example, DNA testing companies are already using
Speaker 1: the data for research over time. There could be other
Speaker 1: uses for that data too. For example, what if advertisers
Speaker 1: one day used it to Taylor adds to you. What
Speaker 1: if authorities used it not just to down serial killers
Speaker 1: but petty criminals. I got into some of this with
Speaker 1: Aaron Murphy. She's a law professor, and yu, I mean
Speaker 1: the police. You were able to use DNA to determine
Speaker 1: something that probably people in the world do not know,
Speaker 1: which is who is your six cousin? I mean, I
Speaker 1: always say, now, I don't think people have fully internalized
Speaker 1: that they may be the person who's the pivot. Aaron
Speaker 1: thinks that if we fully grasped the scope of what
Speaker 1: law enforcement could learn about any of us by using
Speaker 1: these new DNA technologies, we'd be truly shocked. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: say like, okay, we'll go on twenty three and me
Speaker 1: and look at the list of things that they're going
Speaker 1: to tell you about, and then tell me if you
Speaker 1: want to march down to your local prestinct and give
Speaker 1: that list of those things, so your sheariff with your
Speaker 1: name and the answers to be clear. It is highly
Speaker 1: unlikely that police would get hold of a whole vial
Speaker 1: of saliva from a crime scene and send it into
Speaker 1: a company like twenty three and me. Most of the
Speaker 1: time there are just tiny bit of DNA left behind
Speaker 1: at the scene of a crime. But the technology has
Speaker 1: already advanced enough that these kinds of searchers are actually
Speaker 1: possible through a pair bond nano labs and jet match,
Speaker 1: and your information could be exposed even if you don't
Speaker 1: take one of these spit tests yourself. The key thing
Speaker 1: here is that it doesn't have to be you, you know,
Speaker 1: if they can find that information out through a relative
Speaker 1: of yours, because we're looking at you know, enough snips
Speaker 1: that we could make a prediction about what you look
Speaker 1: like based on your relative or whether your family has
Speaker 1: certain dispositions. Then the whole families could be cut off
Speaker 1: because of one person's you know, cavalier approached to another
Speaker 1: private day. There actually is a precedent for what police
Speaker 1: can and cannot do when it comes to locating criminal
Speaker 1: suspects through their relatives. Police can upload crime scene data
Speaker 1: to a government criminal DNA database called CODIS to see
Speaker 1: if there's a match to anyone else. One major concern, though,
Speaker 1: with using CODIS in this way, is that the database
Speaker 1: excuse towards people of color, meaning that searching it for
Speaker 1: family matches just continues to disproportionately imprisoned minority populations. But
Speaker 1: privacy is a concern too, so in California, for example,
Speaker 1: police can only use codeis after they've exhausted all other
Speaker 1: search tools. It's called familial search. But some states have
Speaker 1: strict laws governing when police are allowed to use it,
Speaker 1: and at least one state has actually forbid it altogether.
Speaker 1: Those rules, though, only govern that federal database. Big open
Speaker 1: platforms where people can voluntarily upload their data, services like
Speaker 1: judd match are private. That means CC's investigations are not
Speaker 1: subject to those same strict rules that apply to government
Speaker 1: DNA databases. In fact, she's already solved one case that
Speaker 1: didn't meet California's rules for familial search. It was a
Speaker 1: three month old rape case in Utah, but CC is
Speaker 1: wary of her powers. She worries, for one, about genealogists
Speaker 1: who don't know what they're doing, leading police to the
Speaker 1: wrong suspect. That's actually already sort of happened once a
Speaker 1: few years back, using a slightly different technology. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't like the idea of this being the wild West,
Speaker 1: where people that don't have any law enforcement experience are
Speaker 1: out there offering services to law enforcement and there's no
Speaker 1: quality control, you know, there's no checks and balances, And
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that genetic genealogy is shown
Speaker 1: in the best possible way through these cases with law
Speaker 1: enforcement and if there aren't unnecessary missteps or negative outcomes.
Speaker 1: But CC doesn't have the same concerns about people's privacy.
Speaker 1: She said it would be hard for jed match users
Speaker 1: at this point to not know that she's creeping around
Speaker 1: in there, and she thinks her work might prevent some
Speaker 1: innocent people from being wrongly suspected. Now, yes, some innocent
Speaker 1: family members are going to get pulled into investigations, but
Speaker 1: it's going to eliminate dozens or hundreds, or sometimes even
Speaker 1: thousands of innocent people that are completely unrelated to the
Speaker 1: crime or the criminal being looked at. Okay, so, PA,
Speaker 1: after hearing about all of this, I have to know,
Speaker 1: have you ever taken a DNA test? You know? I haven't,
Speaker 1: and I guess at some level it's because I was
Speaker 1: always a little creeped out about it. But actually quite
Speaker 1: a few of my relatives have done these tests, and
Speaker 1: so I know I'm exposed. I just don't know how much.
Speaker 1: So there was actually a very interesting study that just
Speaker 1: came out that answers that question. So this researcher from
Speaker 1: Colombia and another DNA testing company called my Heritage found
Speaker 1: that if you are an American of European descent, there
Speaker 1: is a sixty percent chance that you have a relative
Speaker 1: that has done a DNA test that could expose you.
Speaker 1: So basically, we're approaching all of us being exposed. And
Speaker 1: that's basically what happened in the case of the Golden
Speaker 1: State killer. He didn't actually take one of these DNA
Speaker 1: tests himself, but obviously someone he's related to did, and
Speaker 1: not just that, they then took the second step of
Speaker 1: uploading their results to jet match, this open source community platform,
Speaker 1: and without that second step police would never have been
Speaker 1: able to crack the case. I think when people take
Speaker 1: these tests, even if they have, you know, maybe thought
Speaker 1: about these consequences, it still seems unrealistic that anything really
Speaker 1: bad would happen because of sharing their data. But actually,
Speaker 1: you know, Aaron Murphy is one of the most cynical
Speaker 1: people I've met when it comes to genetic privacy, and
Speaker 1: she had a lot of thoughts about the kinds of
Speaker 1: bad things that might happen. The whole purpose of insurers,
Speaker 1: whether a health insurer or a life insure or a
Speaker 1: long term disability insure, is to predict whether people are
Speaker 1: in neither services or not, because the model was premised
Speaker 1: on people not needing the services. And if an insurer
Speaker 1: could find out through a Google search if they might
Speaker 1: have to pay out an Alzheimer's claim on you, or
Speaker 1: they have to pay out at Parkinson's claim on you,
Speaker 1: or they're going to have to support you through the
Speaker 1: stabilitating diseases or MS. Right, you know, don't you think
Speaker 1: you're not going to get that protection? So there is
Speaker 1: one law. It's called the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. It
Speaker 1: was passed in two tho eight, and it does offer
Speaker 1: some limited protection of how your data can be used,
Speaker 1: but it has a lot of loopholes, like, for example,
Speaker 1: it does not apply to life insurance, so a life
Speaker 1: ensure could potentially just ask you like, hey, have you
Speaker 1: taken a DNA test? And if you have, you have
Speaker 1: to give them that information and maybe they could decide
Speaker 1: whether or not to give you life insurance coverage based
Speaker 1: on it. I also think that because the Golden State
Speaker 1: killer was such a brutal and violent case, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of public septance behind the idea that finally
Speaker 1: this technique had allowed us to identify a suspect. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think that because they
Speaker 1: are not violent criminals, using this kind of technique to
Speaker 1: hunt down very rare, very violent people won't affect them.
Speaker 1: And the unintended consequences of this technology are only just
Speaker 1: beginning to unfold. Denying someone life insurance is just one
Speaker 1: example of how this technology might be used, and we
Speaker 1: don't really know at this stage how far it could go.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the scariest part of this, right.
Speaker 1: This is a technology that is kind of in its infancy.
Speaker 1: You know, when cell phones first starting to be a thing,
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody ever imagined that we would be
Speaker 1: using them for everything besides actually making phone calls. And
Speaker 1: you know, now I carry my iPhone around with me
Speaker 1: all the time and it tracks my location. And to
Speaker 1: your point, cell phone data is only one type of
Speaker 1: personal data that we're entrusting to a third party company.
Speaker 1: So that repository of data is sitting in one place
Speaker 1: with your provider like Apple or Google um, which is
Speaker 1: separate from the data that a company like twenty three
Speaker 1: and me would have on you if you complete one
Speaker 1: of these DNA tests, right. I think a really important
Speaker 1: part of this story is you know that it's not
Speaker 1: just the DNA data that CC is using to solve
Speaker 1: these crimes. She's getting that data and then she's going
Speaker 1: on Facebook and looking at all the information people have
Speaker 1: shared there. And we're just sharing all of this data
Speaker 1: and not thinking about the consequences, and it's really hard
Speaker 1: to know where that will leave us in the future.
Speaker 1: So it makes me think that as a society, we're
Speaker 1: really just at the very beginning of understanding how much
Speaker 1: our data is worth and how to take care of
Speaker 1: it properly. Perhaps in the coming years, regulators will have
Speaker 1: to step in and tell us what they think is
Speaker 1: a responsible way for companies to use our genetic information. Hey,
Speaker 1: Kersten's going good. So we're now in the present day.
Speaker 1: It's October, almost exactly a year after we first published
Speaker 1: your story. A lot's happened since then. Give us the lowdown. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so a lot has happened. I think the biggest thing
Speaker 1: for me is that it's become very clear that forensic
Speaker 1: genetic genealogy it's a tool, a technology that is not
Speaker 1: going away anytime soon. This has now been used to
Speaker 1: solve dozens and dozens and dozens of cold cases and
Speaker 1: now also a lot of active cases. The Department of
Speaker 1: Justice actually issued this really interesting preliminary policy report on
Speaker 1: it as an investigative tool. But it was interesting because
Speaker 1: there was also a cautionary note in that policy report.
Speaker 1: They said this tool should be used as a last
Speaker 1: resort because it is invasive, and they recognize that. Interesting.
Speaker 1: What else is new? Yeah, so, I think one of
Speaker 1: the most interesting things that has happened is we've started
Speaker 1: to see this technology used for different kinds of cases.
Speaker 1: There was one really controversial case just this year in
Speaker 1: which jed match allowed police in Utah to use it
Speaker 1: for a violent assault. Previously, it had mainly been used
Speaker 1: for murders. I think there had been a few rapes
Speaker 1: even but for some reason, this really upset users. They
Speaker 1: felt like this was a violation of their privacy. They
Speaker 1: had not consented to their information being used for this
Speaker 1: kind of criminal investigation. That it was just too far
Speaker 1: down the slippery slope. You know what's next using it
Speaker 1: to prosecute shoplifters. And because of that backlash, jed match
Speaker 1: actually had to make their site opt in instead of
Speaker 1: opt out, which means that overnight it went from every
Speaker 1: jed match user being automatically available to the police to
Speaker 1: search unless they said they didn't want to do that,
Speaker 1: to the opposite. And so their database went from having
Speaker 1: more than a million people whose profiles the police could
Speaker 1: access in order to do these investigations to having last
Speaker 1: Night checked in with them. A few weeks ago, they
Speaker 1: had just a hundred and thirty thousand people in their database,
Speaker 1: which makes it almost useless to investigators. So what are
Speaker 1: investigators using now? So there's one of their site, family
Speaker 1: tree DNA, that has opened itself up to these kinds
Speaker 1: of investigations. I think that jud match has been adding users.
Speaker 1: They told me seven or eight hundred every week, so
Speaker 1: they're hoping they get those numbers back up. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's definitely this technology took a hit when that happened.
Speaker 1: And it's still the case that the major DNA testing
Speaker 1: companies like twenty three and me don't cooperate with law enforcement,
Speaker 1: right right, and ME and S three have made very
Speaker 1: clear that unless they are subpoenat, unless they are legally compelled,
Speaker 1: if they are not going to let law enforcement look
Speaker 1: at their records. Now that you know, we've known about
Speaker 1: this use of DNA testing for I guess a little
Speaker 1: over a year, do you get the sense that people
Speaker 1: are more accepting of this technology. I think people are
Speaker 1: actually less accepting of it. You know, people are really
Speaker 1: conscious now of the ways their data is used, you know,
Speaker 1: not just by DNA testing companies, but by Facebook, by Instagram. Right.
Speaker 1: So we see this increasing sensitivity to violations of people's privacy,
Speaker 1: including in this space. But I think that that might
Speaker 1: change as we see different use cases of this technology.
Speaker 1: There was one recent instance that really started to change
Speaker 1: my mind about this. Maybe. There was this rape case,
Speaker 1: Angie Dodd rape case. For a long time, the wrong
Speaker 1: person was in prison for her rape and murder. This
Speaker 1: guy named Christopher Tap and the victim's mother pushed to
Speaker 1: use genealogy to try and figure out who actually did this,
Speaker 1: and they found another potential suspect, and Christopher Tap was
Speaker 1: exonerated after being wrongfully imprisoned for more than two decades.
Speaker 1: So I think that showed me that there's all different
Speaker 1: kinds of powers this technology has, and it makes me
Speaker 1: wonder what other ways this technology will be used that
Speaker 1: we haven't thought about yet. Maybe. And what's our protagonist
Speaker 1: cc More up to these days? Oh my gosh, cecy More.
Speaker 1: She's so busy. Usually I have to email her like
Speaker 1: seven times before she emails you back. Now, CC has
Speaker 1: solved more of these cases than anybody else. She now
Speaker 1: has this whole team that works with her solving these crimes.
Speaker 1: She's definitely solved more than fifty of these cases. At
Speaker 1: this point. She's just you know, working away, sitting on
Speaker 1: our couch doing her DNA sleeping. Well, thanks for this
Speaker 1: update today, You're welcome. This episode was originally produced by
Speaker 1: p I get Cary and Liz Smith. The update was
Speaker 1: produced by me Aki Ito and Ethan Brooks with help
Speaker 1: from Toe for Foreheads. Our story editors are Anne vander May.
Speaker 1: And Emily Busso. Francesca Levi is ahead of Bloomberg Podcasts.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next week.