Speaker 1: A warning this episode contains some graphic descriptions of crime
Speaker 1: scenes which might not be suitable for all listeners. In
Speaker 1: the fall of seven, Tanya van Kailenberg and Jay Cook
Speaker 1: took a ferry from their home in British Columbia to
Speaker 1: Washington State. They were planning to run an errand the
Speaker 1: next morning for Jay's father. A few days later, Tanya's
Speaker 1: body was found in a ditch seventy miles north of Seattle.
Speaker 1: She'd been raped with her hands bound behind her, and
Speaker 1: there was a bullet your head. Two days later, hunters
Speaker 1: found Jay under a bridge one county over. He had
Speaker 1: been strangled with a dog collar. A pack of cigarettes
Speaker 1: was stuffed in his mouth. Police had a theory. They
Speaker 1: suspected the couple had met the killer on the ferry
Speaker 1: and offered him a ride, but the leads ran out
Speaker 1: and the case went cold until a few months. H
Speaker 1: good morning and thank you all for being here. Yesterday
Speaker 1: we took into custody of fifty five year old Sea Technique,
Speaker 1: who was suspected of the murders of j Cooke, An,
Speaker 1: Tanya and Kylie Burke. William Earld Tabot the second has
Speaker 1: been booked into Snowoman County Jail on one count of
Speaker 1: first degree murder on a war. Thirty one years after
Speaker 1: the murder, police finally arrested a suspect. A woman named c. C.
Speaker 1: Moore 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, CECI hunt serial killers, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Pagat Kari and I'm Kristin Brown. And this week
Speaker 1: on Decrypted works lauring 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 twenty three meets. They
Speaker 1: promised to unite people with long lost family members, detect
Speaker 1: risk of disease, and even suggests personalized dieting regiments, but
Speaker 1: critics fear that our DNA could come to be used
Speaker 1: in ways that would compromise our privacy and even potentially
Speaker 1: land someone were 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 track. Yeah, I can
Speaker 1: put it in there. There were just a few miles
Speaker 1: from More the murder of Tanya van Kilemberg and Jay
Speaker 1: Cook took place. So I was just gonna say, I
Speaker 1: was just realizing this morning that this we're in the
Speaker 1: county right now where you solved your first case, right
Speaker 1: are we in Stahomish cool. I saw a sign that
Speaker 1: said this way, and I was was going to ask somebody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I realized Cecy was here in rural Washington State to
Speaker 1: do what she has done for years, help people piece
Speaker 1: together their family histories. She was speaking at the annual
Speaker 1: Northwest Genealogical Conference. The day before, I had watched her
Speaker 1: give a very technical talk about how to triangulate DNA
Speaker 1: relatives to fill stubborn gaps and genealogies. Afterward, about two
Speaker 1: dozen people rushed the stage to talk to her. One person,
Speaker 1: apparently a distant cousin, even asked her to pose for
Speaker 1: a picture. In this world, Cecymore is a star, but
Speaker 1: she fell into it by accident because until about twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, Cecy was an actress. Once she told me
Speaker 1: she had a gig where she had to pretend to
Speaker 1: be a bar Beam. She had come to our copy
Speaker 1: date joing a suitcase with multiple outfit options for the
Speaker 1: big banquet keynote she was giving later at the local
Speaker 1: country club. Because it wasn't acting that made cc famous,
Speaker 1: it was genealogy. About twenty years ago, my niece was
Speaker 1: getting married and I was trying to think of a
Speaker 1: good wedding gift, and I thought, Oh, a family tree
Speaker 1: would be a cool wedding gift. I think I'll try
Speaker 1: to put one together for her, and got online and
Speaker 1: found ancestry dot com and started trying to figure that
Speaker 1: out and became obsessed with in genealogy. Genealogists are like detectives,
Speaker 1: but for the family tree. They use things like marriage
Speaker 1: records and obituaries to piece together how people are related,
Speaker 1: and these days some of them, like Ceci, also used DNA.
Speaker 1: CEC made her mark using DNA to crack tough to
Speaker 1: solve mysteries like tracking down the birth parents of adopted children.
Speaker 1: Then Ceci's life took a turn. In April, police arrested
Speaker 1: a suspect in the long cold case of the Golden
Speaker 1: State Killer, a notorious serial killer who terrorized California in
Speaker 1: the nine seventies. And eighties. Huge break in a cold
Speaker 1: case terrorizing California for decades. Police say they now have
Speaker 1: a Golden State Killer in custody. Joseph D'Angelo is facing
Speaker 1: new charges this morning, four counts of murder in Santa Barbara,
Speaker 1: twelve murder charges now in all Cecy was gearing up
Speaker 1: for attack at the genetic testing company three and when
Speaker 1: news of the arrest happened. I woke up in a
Speaker 1: hotel room in Mountain View and saw the headline that
Speaker 1: the Golden State Killer had been arrested, and I knew
Speaker 1: immediately that it was through genetic genealogy techniques. It didn't
Speaker 1: come out immediately, but I knew that in the case
Speaker 1: of the Golden State Killer, law enforcement had used a
Speaker 1: genealogy website called jet match to find their suspect. Jet
Speaker 1: Match is sort of like a big community pository for
Speaker 1: DNA data. For example, I could upload my data from
Speaker 1: say twenty three and me and find out whether I
Speaker 1: might be related to someone else who uploaded data from
Speaker 1: a different service like ancestry. What police did in this
Speaker 1: case is they uploaded data from crime scene DNA and
Speaker 1: then looked for potential suspects in the family trees of
Speaker 1: other people who showed up as a genetic match, in
Speaker 1: other words, people who shared the killer's DNA. We've reunited
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of people with long lost family members,
Speaker 1: and it's exactly the same technique. So if we can
Speaker 1: do it there for adoptees, there's absolutely no reason we
Speaker 1: can't do it in these law enforcement cases as well.
Speaker 1: In the past, c C had been hesitant to go
Speaker 1: snooping through people's profiles for a purpose they'd never intended,
Speaker 1: but once the Golden State killer case was splashed across
Speaker 1: the headlines, she figured it was open season. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to do this until people knew that it was
Speaker 1: possible and that it was happening that their DNA could
Speaker 1: be used for this purpose. CC's work is possible in
Speaker 1: part because of a small software company called Parabon Nano Labs.
Speaker 1: A few years ago, Parabond created a program called Snapshot
Speaker 1: that can use crime scene DNA to do basically what
Speaker 1: a sketch artist does. It creates a vague picture of
Speaker 1: what a suspect might look like. It does this by
Speaker 1: processing crime scene DNA with the same kind of technology
Speaker 1: that companies like twenty three and me and ancestry use
Speaker 1: in the world of law enforcement. This hadn't really been
Speaker 1: done before I actually visited Parabon along with Business Week
Speaker 1: reporter Drake Bennett. Their technique provides a lot more data
Speaker 1: than crime scene labs usually work with. One standard test,
Speaker 1: for example, looks at just twenty three markers on the
Speaker 1: Y chromosome. Markers are unique places on a person's genome,
Speaker 1: but Parabon looks at thousands of markers and more data
Speaker 1: means you can get a lot more detail about what
Speaker 1: your suspect might be like and compare that data to
Speaker 1: the consumer DNA tests that millions of people are doing
Speaker 1: right now. And that's where CEC comes in. The data
Speaker 1: that Parabond generates to create its DNA sketches is similar
Speaker 1: to the data people upload to sites like jet match
Speaker 1: when they're looking for relatives. Last year, CEC reached out
Speaker 1: to Parabon to see if they could work together, and
Speaker 1: eventually the company hired her to head up a new
Speaker 1: unit devoted to forensic genetic genealogy. One of the first
Speaker 1: cases to come in was from Snohomish County in Washington State.
Speaker 1: It was the case of j Cook and Tanya Van
Speaker 1: Kuilenberg that we heard about at the start, and it
Speaker 1: was right after the Golden State killer arrest, so there
Speaker 1: was a lot of enthusiasm from law enforcement around the
Speaker 1: country about using this same technique. Cecy got to work
Speaker 1: and I kept waiting for matches to populate, but they
Speaker 1: didn't populate. That Friday night, I went to sleep, and
Speaker 1: I woke up Saturday morning to a list of DNA
Speaker 1: matches on jed match. She got really lucky. There in
Speaker 1: the list of matches was the geneological equivalent of winning
Speaker 1: the lottery. Two cousins who shared a lot of DNA
Speaker 1: with the suspect, but who didn't seem to be related
Speaker 1: to each other. So imagine a cousin on your dad's
Speaker 1: side of the family and another cousin on your mom's
Speaker 1: side of the family. Those two cousins aren't related to
Speaker 1: each other, but they are related to you. So that
Speaker 1: tells me I should be able to find a triangulation
Speaker 1: between them, meaning a place where those two family trees
Speaker 1: come together. From there, Cecy turned to all the traditional
Speaker 1: tools of genealogy to build a family tree for each
Speaker 1: of the people who showed up as a match. That
Speaker 1: meant searching through Facebook, newspaper archives, and local records to
Speaker 1: figure out who else these people were related to. Since
Speaker 1: the two cousins of the suspect weren't related to each other,
Speaker 1: cecy knew that somewhere there had to be a marriage
Speaker 1: between the two family. Eventually she found an obituary for
Speaker 1: a woman from one family who was carrying a last
Speaker 1: name from the other. Perhaps this was it. Cecie told
Speaker 1: me marriage records are pretty good in Washington State, so
Speaker 1: she was able to confirm that this was indeed the
Speaker 1: marriage she'd been looking for. And this resulted in four children,
Speaker 1: three of which were female, and so we only had
Speaker 1: one male. That one male was the only probable suspect.
Speaker 1: Within a few hours, ceci found herself staring at a name,
Speaker 1: William Earl Talbot. The second police collected a new DNA
Speaker 1: sample from him and confirmed it matched the DNA found
Speaker 1: at the crime scene. Then, on May seventeen, police took
Speaker 1: William Earl Talbot into custody. Of course, he hasn't been
Speaker 1: found guilty yet, but my work certain points right at him.
Speaker 1: William L. Talbot has been charged with both murders, but
Speaker 1: he's pleaded not guilty. If he's convicted, he could face
Speaker 1: the death penalty. The Snohomish case was just the first
Speaker 1: murder case CECI tried to crack. To date, Parabon and
Speaker 1: CC have solved more than a dozen cases, and they
Speaker 1: have dozens more in the works. Parabon has added three
Speaker 1: other full time genealogists to its stuff, with CCI heading
Speaker 1: up that team. But when people ship their DNA after
Speaker 1: or Ancestry to find out whether they're Italian or what
Speaker 1: their genes say about their taste for cilantro, they probably
Speaker 1: don't imagine it being used for a criminal investigation. The
Speaker 1: Golden State killer case bren already bubbling conversation about DNA
Speaker 1: and privacy. To a boy, all, when you send your
Speaker 1: saliva off to a DNA testing company, you're handing over
Speaker 1: x extremely sensitive, extremely personal information not just about yourself,
Speaker 1: but 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 hunt 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 cousins? 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 precinct and and
Speaker 1: give that list of those things so your shareff with
Speaker 1: your name and the answers. To be clear, it is
Speaker 1: highly unlikely that police would get hold of a whole
Speaker 1: vial of saliva from a crime scene and send it
Speaker 1: into a company like twenty three and me. Most of
Speaker 1: the time there are just tiny bits of DNA left
Speaker 1: behind at the scene of a crime. But the technology
Speaker 1: has already advanced enough that these kinds of searchers are
Speaker 1: actually 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 you earth because we're looking at you know, enough
Speaker 1: snips that we could make a prediction about what you
Speaker 1: look like based on your relative or whether your family
Speaker 1: has certain dispositions, then the whole families could be cut
Speaker 1: off because of one person's you know, cavalier approached to
Speaker 1: another privacy. 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: exkews 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 to 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 palace. 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
Speaker 1: West where people that don't have any law enforcement experience,
Speaker 1: are out there offering services to law enforcement, and there's
Speaker 1: no quality control, you know, there's no checks and balances,
Speaker 1: And I want to make sure that genetic genealogy is
Speaker 1: shown in the best possible way through these cases with
Speaker 1: law enforcement and that 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 criminals being looked at. Okay, So, P
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: going to need their services or not, because the model
Speaker 1: is premised on people not needing the services. And if
Speaker 1: an insurer could find out through a Google search if
Speaker 1: they might have to pay out an Alzheimer's claim on you,
Speaker 1: or they have to pay out at Parkinson's claim on you,
Speaker 1: or they're going to have to support you through thoseabilitating
Speaker 1: diseases or MS. Right, you know, I don't e think
Speaker 1: you're not going to get that protection. So there is one.
Speaker 1: It's called the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. It was passed
Speaker 1: in two thousand and it does offer some limited protection
Speaker 1: of how your data can be used, but it has
Speaker 1: a lot of loopholes, like, for example, it does not
Speaker 1: apply to life insurance, so life ensure could potentially just
Speaker 1: ask you like, hey, have you taken a DNA test?
Speaker 1: And if you have, you have to give them that
Speaker 1: information and maybe they could decide whether or not to
Speaker 1: give you life insurance coverage based on it. I also
Speaker 1: think that because the Golden state killer was such a
Speaker 1: brutal and violent case, there was a lot of public
Speaker 1: acceptance behind the idea that finally, this technique had allowed
Speaker 1: us to identify a suspect. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people think that because they are not violent criminals,
Speaker 1: using this kind of technique to hunt down very rare,
Speaker 1: very violent people won't affect them. And the unintended consequences
Speaker 1: of this technology are only just beginning to unfold. Denying
Speaker 1: someone life insurance is just one example of how this
Speaker 1: technology might be used, and we don't really know at
Speaker 1: this stage how far it could go, and I think
Speaker 1: that's the scariest part of this, right. This is a
Speaker 1: technology that is kind of in its infancy. You know,
Speaker 1: when cell phones first starting to be a thing, I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody ever imagined that we would be using
Speaker 1: them for everything besides actually making phone calls. And you know,
Speaker 1: now I carry my iPhone around with me all the
Speaker 1: time and it tracks my location. And to your point,
Speaker 1: cell phone data is only one type of personal data
Speaker 1: that we're entrusting to a third party company. So that
Speaker 1: repository of data is sitting in one place with your
Speaker 1: provider like Apple or Google, um, which is separate from
Speaker 1: the data that a company like twenty three and me
Speaker 1: would have on you if you complete one of these
Speaker 1: DNA tests, right. I think a really important part of
Speaker 1: this story is you know that it's not just the
Speaker 1: DNA data that CC is using to solve these crimes.
Speaker 1: She's going that data and then she's going on Facebook
Speaker 1: and looking at all the information people have shared there.
Speaker 1: And we're just sharing all of this data and not
Speaker 1: thinking about the consequences, And it's really hard to know
Speaker 1: where that will leave us in the future. So it
Speaker 1: makes me think that as a society, we're really just
Speaker 1: at the very beginning of understanding how much our data
Speaker 1: is worth and how to take care of it properly.
Speaker 1: Perhaps in the coming years regulators will have to step
Speaker 1: in and tell us what they think is a responsible
Speaker 1: way for companies to use our genetic information. And that's
Speaker 1: it for this week's Decrypted. Thanks for listening. Have you
Speaker 1: tried genetic testing? We want to hear your story. You
Speaker 1: can email us at decrypted at Bloomberg dot net or
Speaker 1: I'm on Twitter at Kristin V. Brown and I'm at
Speaker 1: pgat Cary. If you're a fan of the show, please
Speaker 1: consider leaving us a rating and a review. It really
Speaker 1: helps new listeners find the oh. This episode was produced
Speaker 1: by Pa Good, Kari and Liz Smith. Our story editor
Speaker 1: was Aki Edo. A big shout out to Drake Bennett.
Speaker 1: We've got a more in depth look at genetic genealogy
Speaker 1: and ccmore that will appear in Bloomberg Business Week shortly,
Speaker 1: so keep an eye out for that. Thanks also to
Speaker 1: Ann Vandermay, Emily Buso, and Magnus Henrikson. Francesco Levie is
Speaker 1: head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see you next week.