Speaker 1: Novel.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 3: I'm Annasinfield, the producer of The Girlfriends, and I'm here
Speaker 3: taking over the mic because I wanted to do something
Speaker 3: that's very close to my heart and the philosophy of
Speaker 3: the show. When we set out to make The Girlfriends,
Speaker 3: I insisted on providing concrete resources for any listeners who
Speaker 3: may relate to the hard topics that we cover. It's
Speaker 3: why we always partner with relevant charities, So if you're
Speaker 3: triggered or inspired by something we've mentioned, you've got somewhere
Speaker 3: legitimate to go for advice. But I've also done a
Speaker 3: lot of behind the scenes work to make sure that
Speaker 3: we actually know what we're talking about. You know, from
Speaker 3: boots on the ground reporting, intensive investigations, and countless conversations
Speaker 3: with experts, you probably only hear about one percent of
Speaker 3: the things that I get to learn during the production
Speaker 3: of the podcast, and.
Speaker 2: I want to pass some of it on.
Speaker 3: So let me introduce you to The Girlfriend's Guide, a
Speaker 3: mini series where I lay out how you can solve
Speaker 3: crimes and keep your girlfriends safe. We'll dive back into
Speaker 3: our archive of never heard before interviews, break down real
Speaker 3: life case studies, and give tangible tips on how you
Speaker 3: can do it yourself. Oh and just a quick heads up,
Speaker 3: we'll be discussing murder and acts of violence in this
Speaker 3: episode from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts. You're
Speaker 3: listening to The Girlfriend's Guide, Episode one, How to Identify
Speaker 3: a dough. I feel like I need to say something
Speaker 3: before we kick off. It's not normal for an everyday
Speaker 3: person to attempt to identify a dough, but lately I've
Speaker 3: noticed that more and more citizen sleuths are plugging the
Speaker 3: gaps left behind by law enforcements, dwindling resources, or, let's
Speaker 3: face it, lack of interest. It is estimated that four
Speaker 3: hundred unidentified bodies are found each year in the United States,
Speaker 3: and around one thousand of those people are still unidentified
Speaker 3: a year later, which means, sadly, cases build up and
Speaker 3: get forgotten. Today, there are over fourteen thousand unidentified bodies
Speaker 3: on NamUs, which is the US database for missing and
Speaker 3: unidentified people. Giving someone back their name is important. We
Speaker 3: spoke about that a lot on the Girlfriends But before
Speaker 3: we get stuck in, I want to ask you to
Speaker 3: act with caution. Identifying someone who's been resigned to a
Speaker 3: cold case is obviously a very caring and hard thing to.
Speaker 2: Do when you don't know who they are.
Speaker 3: But the fact is someone does at some point along
Speaker 3: the way, you might be tempted to contact their family
Speaker 3: and friends to help connect the dots for you. This
Speaker 3: may have become a challenge to be solved, but every
Speaker 3: new hope or reminder can be devastating for the people
Speaker 3: on the other side, So tread lightly on people's lives.
Speaker 3: Something you need to ask yourself is why am I
Speaker 3: doing this? And that is a really complex ethical question. Ultimately,
Speaker 3: you just have to be considerate, think about if it's
Speaker 3: appropriate to approach victims' families, and also then how you
Speaker 3: would do it Instead, I'd recommend approaching the authorities first
Speaker 3: so they can help you prove the connection before the
Speaker 3: family is informed. All Right, ethics briefly covered, let's get
Speaker 3: to it. So if you do find yourself interested in
Speaker 3: a case involving an unidentified person, what do you do
Speaker 3: and how do you identify them? Let's use an example
Speaker 3: that I've come to know really well well, the case
Speaker 3: of Heidie Bulch from season two of The Girlfriends. If
Speaker 3: you listen to the series, then you know that Heidi
Speaker 3: was identified twenty four years after her remains were discovered,
Speaker 3: but for a long time, the detectives really only had
Speaker 3: the information from the initial police reports to go off,
Speaker 3: which reads like some.
Speaker 2: Sort of murder mystery novel.
Speaker 3: Here is my Canadian friend pretending to be an American
Speaker 3: detective reading a summation of the police report.
Speaker 4: March nineteen eighty nine, two golfers discover a woman's head
Speaker 4: on a golf course in Hopewell Township, New Jersey, sixty
Speaker 4: five miles down from New York. A short while later,
Speaker 4: her legs were discovered in a wooded area sixty five
Speaker 4: miles away. A post mortem confirms that she was white,
Speaker 4: blond hair, blue eyes, and matching blue eyeshadow line. She
Speaker 4: has a couple of distinctive features, including a maul and scars.
Speaker 4: Her estimated age is around twenty to thirty. The legs
Speaker 4: are officially linked to the head via DNA analysis. No
Speaker 4: arms or torso are found.
Speaker 3: In the first few weeks of the investigation into what
Speaker 3: would one day be known as Heidi's remains, the detectives
Speaker 3: tried everything. They put out nationwide requests asking for information
Speaker 3: on any missing person.
Speaker 2: That would fit her description.
Speaker 3: They made flyers, they held press conferences, interviewed families of
Speaker 3: people who thought the remains could belong.
Speaker 2: To their loved one.
Speaker 3: Those were the textbook things that detectives would do back
Speaker 3: in the eighties when working on a live case with
Speaker 3: an unidentified body and an unknown killer. But none of
Speaker 3: it worked and eventually the case went cold. By the
Speaker 3: time the case was reopened in the twenty tens, there
Speaker 3: were new options available, and that is when things really
Speaker 3: started to heat up. An incredibly useful new resource available
Speaker 3: to the investigators the National Missing and Unidentified Person's System
Speaker 3: aka NamUs in the States.
Speaker 2: Me and my.
Speaker 3: Assistant producer Maddie use this a lot on the Girlfriends,
Speaker 3: and Maddie is brilliantly wonderfully here joining me to explain
Speaker 3: how you can also use NAMOUS to help with the
Speaker 3: Doe case.
Speaker 2: So, hey, Maddie, Hello Anna, Thanks.
Speaker 3: For having me tell me about NamUs. What actually is it?
Speaker 5: First of all, so NamUs is this amazingly vast database
Speaker 5: in the US which includes the profiles of every currently
Speaker 5: reported missing person and also every unidentified body. What's great
Speaker 5: about NamUs is that it's used by government agencies like
Speaker 5: the police and detectives, but also.
Speaker 1: Anyone can access it.
Speaker 5: So if you are looking to identify your own dough,
Speaker 5: this is an incredibly useful resource for you too.
Speaker 3: So what does it actually look like as a normal
Speaker 3: service and just accessing this online?
Speaker 2: What do you see?
Speaker 5: What you're going to see is thousands and thousands of
Speaker 5: profiles listed under missing people or on the unidentified body section.
Speaker 5: It's basically a way of cataloging the profiles of every
Speaker 5: single one of these people.
Speaker 3: And so you kind of would search via location, age,
Speaker 3: that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5: There's actually lots of different things. You can search by
Speaker 5: date that people went missing, date that body was found,
Speaker 5: estimated age, race, gender, So any small details that you
Speaker 5: do have about your dough is something that you can
Speaker 5: enter on there.
Speaker 3: And I think the idea is that every single unidentified case,
Speaker 3: every single missing person's case, is meant to be listed.
Speaker 3: Are there any instances when that doesn't happen? Theoretically No,
Speaker 3: Every missing person who has been reported as missing will
Speaker 3: be on there, and every unidentified dough will be on there.
Speaker 3: An exception to this, and it's something that actually happened
Speaker 3: in The Girlfriends Season two when we were looking for
Speaker 3: our dough. We couldn't find a matching profile on NAMOUS
Speaker 3: and this really confused us for a while, but it
Speaker 3: was actually a massive clue. Basically, if someone's not listed
Speaker 3: on there, it probably means that they have been identified.
Speaker 2: Mmm, I know, I wish we knew that much much
Speaker 2: earlier on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we definitely thought maybe we were going crazy and
Speaker 5: not searching it well enough. But no, that's another clue
Speaker 5: that you can definitely include in your investigation.
Speaker 3: And so you've got things like this government resource name US.
Speaker 3: But there's also other databases for missing people and unidentified people,
Speaker 3: aren't there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are.
Speaker 5: There are a bunch of independent volunteer run projects like
Speaker 5: the dough Network that we partnered with the Charlie Project.
Speaker 5: There's also databases that focus on more specific groups of people,
Speaker 5: like LGBTQ plus databases.
Speaker 1: There's one for people of color.
Speaker 5: And these have really been set up, I think in
Speaker 5: response to some of the inaction that comes from government
Speaker 5: agencies to serve a specific group which maybe hasn't got
Speaker 5: the attention that they deserve from government resources.
Speaker 3: Also in some cases just not having the expertise from
Speaker 3: the communities involved to identify things that could be clear clues. Yeah, totally,
Speaker 3: like someone's sexual orientation might not be listed on their
Speaker 3: names missing profile, but that's something that could lead to
Speaker 3: other clues about who they were. But what if you
Speaker 3: can't find the doe's information on these databases just like us,
Speaker 3: or you think there might be more information out there,
Speaker 3: or perhaps you think you know who it could be
Speaker 3: and you want to request extra information on their case.
Speaker 3: Well that's when you can deploy every journalist's favorite tool,
Speaker 3: the Freedom of Information Act request.
Speaker 2: After the break, we'll.
Speaker 3: Tell you all about how to access information from the
Speaker 3: authorities that just might solve your case.
Speaker 5: Fifth of December twenty twenty two. Hi, there, I'm a
Speaker 5: journalist from the UK and I'm wondering if you might
Speaker 5: be able to help me find out some information about
Speaker 5: a body that was discovered.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eight.
Speaker 5: Fourth of January twenty twenty three, Hi, I hope you've
Speaker 5: had a lovely holidays and a happy new year. I'm
Speaker 5: just wondering if you've got anywhere with tracking down those records.
Speaker 5: Ninth of January twenty twenty four did happy new year again.
Speaker 5: I'm writing to let you know that it has now
Speaker 5: been over a year since my initial request was sent
Speaker 5: to you on the fifth of December twenty twenty two,
Speaker 5: and we are yet to receive any progress at all
Speaker 5: on these records.
Speaker 1: Nothing's world.
Speaker 3: So, Maddie, that was a clip of you from season
Speaker 3: two getting really annoyed at the medical examiners for not
Speaker 3: responding to your Freedom of Information Act request. It's fair
Speaker 3: to say you've filed a lot and also you've had
Speaker 3: to deal with being disappointed a lot. How many times
Speaker 3: do you think you've done a for a request for
Speaker 3: the girlfriends alone?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that really was.
Speaker 5: The tip of the iceberg, I think from my calculations.
Speaker 5: In total, I filed about forty four freedom of information
Speaker 5: requests and some of those were obviously the medical Examiner,
Speaker 5: but then a lot of them were the NYPD, various courts,
Speaker 5: the district attorney, basically anyone I could think of that
Speaker 5: might have information.
Speaker 3: It was amazing we got so much information based off
Speaker 3: these for requests. I mean, I'd like, I don't think
Speaker 3: we would have solved this case if it wasn't for
Speaker 3: all of your foyers.
Speaker 2: So you like really saved the day there. Oh, thanks, Nna.
Speaker 5: That makes me feel better about the hours I've sunk
Speaker 5: into this.
Speaker 2: And the amount of moaning.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeahah.
Speaker 3: But I was thinking feoyer is something that's really standard
Speaker 3: kind of bread and butter stuff for us, and it's
Speaker 3: something that a lot of people probably have heard of,
Speaker 3: but they maybe don't know what it actually is.
Speaker 2: So could you break that down for the listeners.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, FEYER stands for Freedom of Information Act. Sometimes it's
Speaker 5: called FOIL as well, and then its freedom of information
Speaker 5: law has been in place since nineteen sixty seven, and
Speaker 5: it means that the public have a right to request
Speaker 5: access to records from any federal agency, and those federal
Speaker 5: agencies have to disclose any information requested unless it falls
Speaker 5: under one of the nine exemptions, which protect things like
Speaker 5: personal information or obviously national security.
Speaker 2: That's fair enough, Yeah, it's fair enough.
Speaker 5: It's described as a law that keeps citizens in the
Speaker 5: know about their governments.
Speaker 3: In what context can that be useful in the identification
Speaker 3: of a dough.
Speaker 5: To put it really simply, when you're trying to identify someone,
Speaker 5: the more information you have about them, the more likely
Speaker 5: you are to figure out who they are. And FOIL
Speaker 5: requests are really good way of accessing more information that
Speaker 5: wouldn't be immediately available on the Internet or elsewhere. So specifically,
Speaker 5: there are some very useful things you could look for,
Speaker 5: like post mortem records or medical examiner records in general
Speaker 5: could tell you more about how someone died and give
Speaker 5: other clues based on their estimated age or their medical records.
Speaker 1: Police reports can also be really interesting.
Speaker 5: We managed to access a trove of police files from
Speaker 5: the time that Heidi's body parts were found and she
Speaker 5: was being treated as Jane Doe, and you just never
Speaker 5: know what kind of clues you might get with something
Speaker 5: like that. In those reports, we found out that Heidi
Speaker 5: was wearing blue eyeshadow when she was found, and this
Speaker 5: could be something that we could ask someone who knew
Speaker 5: her and they could confirm that that's something she always wore,
Speaker 5: for example. And it also allows you to see what
Speaker 5: investigating might have already been done by law enforcement, so
Speaker 5: then you can pull together your information with theirs and
Speaker 5: see which leads you could follow next.
Speaker 3: This all sounds like obviously amazing in theory, but I
Speaker 3: think when I first started out as a journalist, the
Speaker 3: idea of doing a foyer felt like a sort of
Speaker 3: mystical beast, and I wasn't quite sure how I should
Speaker 3: be approaching it. So how do you literally file a
Speaker 3: foyer request.
Speaker 5: It depends a lot on the department that you're requesting
Speaker 5: information for, Okay, but there often are forms on a
Speaker 5: website that are pretty straightforward and easy to follow an email.
Speaker 5: If you're unsure, the best thing you can do is
Speaker 5: call up a records department at the institution you're trying
Speaker 5: to get information from and ask a nice person to
Speaker 5: talk you through it slowly as if you're very stupid,
Speaker 5: which is something that happened to me on multiple occasions,
Speaker 5: has probably led to the success of us getting this information.
Speaker 3: I think like the big takeaway that I want to
Speaker 3: make sure everyone has is that the point of foyers
Speaker 3: is that they are so that normal people can, as
Speaker 3: I think you said earlier, sort of like know what's
Speaker 3: happening in government. And so I think what I'd really
Speaker 3: like to instill in people is that it isn't some
Speaker 3: sort of elitist exercise to file a foyer. It's something
Speaker 3: that in theory, everybody should be able to do, and
Speaker 3: it's your right to do. It's your right exactly.
Speaker 5: Having said that, there are definitely some hurdles in getting
Speaker 5: information from foyer requests.
Speaker 2: A huge one is.
Speaker 1: The timeframe that they can take.
Speaker 5: It definitely varies by location and institution, but it can
Speaker 5: sometimes take six months just to get a response. And
Speaker 5: also what you can access is obviously limited. Often with
Speaker 5: medical examiners records. For example, the full post mortem can
Speaker 5: only be accessed by a relative of the deceased person,
Speaker 5: which of course makes things really hard when you don't
Speaker 5: even know who the person is. And whilst it's frustrating
Speaker 5: that there's a lot you can't access, it's for really
Speaker 5: good reason. But you just never know what you're going
Speaker 5: to get back once you send a request, so it's
Speaker 5: always always worth filing them just to see. And the
Speaker 5: feeling of waiting six months to hear if you've got
Speaker 5: access to some records and then seeing something in your
Speaker 5: inbox is truly the greatest thrill I can imagine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but also, you know, we're talking about kind of
Speaker 3: sloothing around online if you think that something's a live
Speaker 3: case or whatever. I think there's a lot of slothing
Speaker 3: around online and in kind of archival resources that we
Speaker 3: do things that kind of don't require foroyers. You know.
Speaker 3: The very specific example bringing it back to Heidi is
Speaker 3: that her case was actually eventually solved in part because
Speaker 3: the serial killer, Joel Rifkin, confessed to the murder in
Speaker 3: a book years later. And so you never know when
Speaker 3: that stuff's going to appear or if it's already out there,
Speaker 3: and you just need to kind of look for it.
Speaker 3: And so we did a lot of that, didn't we we'
Speaker 3: gleaned lots of information from articles and forums. Maddie, do
Speaker 3: you have any tips for how people can use the web.
Speaker 5: It definitely involves a lot of lurking around on random websites.
Speaker 5: The first thing is, if it's a contemporary case, there'll
Speaker 5: probably be some articles about it online and those will
Speaker 5: be easy to access.
Speaker 1: If it's a bit.
Speaker 5: Older, you might want to search on an online newspaper database.
Speaker 5: These are quite often behind payballs, but most libraries tend
Speaker 5: to let you use theirs for free. And then we
Speaker 5: looked in some really random places and found some quite
Speaker 5: useful information. Forums can be good. I remember we found
Speaker 5: a message on a forum from years ago of someone
Speaker 5: who said that they knew Heidi and were friends with her,
Speaker 5: and that gave us some information about where we think
Speaker 5: Heidi lived. But also Reddit is amazing. I love readit
Speaker 5: so much. And once we finished season one, we actually
Speaker 5: found a group of people on Reddit discussing who they
Speaker 5: thought the torso might be. So it's a great way
Speaker 5: to pull your information with other people. If you are
Speaker 5: looking into this case, there is a really good chance
Speaker 5: that someone else's and teaming together is only going to
Speaker 5: give you more information and make your case stronger.
Speaker 3: As you know if you listen to our second season,
Speaker 3: when Joel Rifkin admitted to Heidie's murder, he named the
Speaker 3: dough as Susie, and that meant that suddenly the detectives
Speaker 3: had something to cling onto, so they started searching for
Speaker 3: missing persons reports and arrest reports for somebody called Susie. Ultimately,
Speaker 3: this led them to finding a mugshot for a woman
Speaker 3: called Susan Spencer that looked very similar to their.
Speaker 2: Dough, Maddie.
Speaker 3: That's a very convoluted way of going about this, but
Speaker 3: that's often the way when it comes to unidentified cases.
Speaker 3: Are there any similar techniques that we could use to
Speaker 3: help identify a dough?
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely. I think NamUs again is really useful for this.
Speaker 5: If you have an unidentified person, there's a quite high
Speaker 5: likelihood that that person is missing from someone else and
Speaker 5: hopefully they will have reported them as missing, so there
Speaker 5: should be a profile on NamUs for that missing person.
Speaker 5: And what you can do is take the information you
Speaker 5: have about your dough, like when they were suspected to
Speaker 5: have died, how old they are, their gender, their race,
Speaker 5: and put those into a search of missing people and
Speaker 5: see if anyone matches or it could be a possible
Speaker 5: candidate for your dough. And you might not find just
Speaker 5: one person who's an exact match, but it might come
Speaker 5: up with a list of names that you can then
Speaker 5: work to rule out.
Speaker 3: But you've got to be flexible as well, don't you,
Speaker 3: in a bit like creative about it, because you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes people will have really changed since they were registered
Speaker 3: as a missing person, or they might have traveled to
Speaker 3: a state that the person who filed that missing person's
Speaker 3: report had no idea of and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: So with all these searches, it could get you closer
Speaker 5: and it could give you ideas of who it could be,
Speaker 5: but definitely take.
Speaker 1: It with a pinch of salt and keep a very
Speaker 1: open mind.
Speaker 3: And then I guess the next thing is that sometimes
Speaker 3: none of this works right, And that's something that happened
Speaker 3: to us when we were trying to identify the Jane
Speaker 3: Doe who ended up being Heidi from season one. We
Speaker 3: kept reaching these dead and so at one point I
Speaker 3: went full obsessive journalists and I started looking into killers
Speaker 3: from the time to see if I could match the
Speaker 3: case of our Jane Doe, you know how she was killed,
Speaker 3: her age, and see if it matched up with a
Speaker 3: killer's m o at points. In order to do this,
Speaker 3: I even had a phone call with the criminal profiler.
Speaker 3: And actually, what was kind of neat is I had
Speaker 3: that phone call with a criminal profiler. They told me
Speaker 3: a bunch of stuff, and then we received the Hope
Speaker 3: Well police report where they also had got the FBI
Speaker 3: to create a profile of the killer back in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty nine. And you got particularly into this, didn't you.
Speaker 1: I found this fascinating. Yeah, they asked.
Speaker 5: The FBI Behavioral Science Unit to create a profile of
Speaker 5: the killer very early on in their investigation, where they
Speaker 5: had so little to go on other than Heidi and
Speaker 5: the state that she was found in. And what's really
Speaker 5: really crazy about this now knowing about Joel Rifkin and
Speaker 5: who he is, the details are a really close. So
Speaker 5: some of the characteristics that they predicted this person would have.
Speaker 5: They'd be a white male in their twenties or thirties, single,
Speaker 5: living alone. They may have an occupation which involves travel,
Speaker 5: like sales, a truck driver, or construction. They're educated, and
Speaker 5: this is the one that actually gives me chills. They
Speaker 5: may not have killed before, but they will kill again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean, obviously we now know that Heidi
Speaker 3: was the first of what is predicted to have been
Speaker 3: seventeen victims.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's true, but it's also a really interesting and
Speaker 5: useful way of looking at a case like this to
Speaker 5: turn your attention to when you've reached a dead end
Speaker 5: trying to look at information about the victim, to try
Speaker 5: and think if you can find the person who did it,
Speaker 5: and if that would help you identify this person.
Speaker 3: Do you have kind of any other tips when it
Speaker 3: comes to foyers and getting that sort of information from
Speaker 3: authorities or I guess even the web.
Speaker 5: I would say my biggest tip is persistence. It's not
Speaker 5: an easy and it's not a quick process, and you
Speaker 5: will reach a lot of dead ends and rejections, but
Speaker 5: it is so worth it for the small glimmers of
Speaker 5: information that you do get.
Speaker 1: I would also say, befriend people.
Speaker 5: What you're coming up against is often a lot of
Speaker 5: bureaucracy and a lot of people who, even though your
Speaker 5: interest in this case is huge and finding out details
Speaker 5: is really important to you, is just one of a
Speaker 5: million other things they're doing. So if you can get
Speaker 5: a friend on the inside or someone who recognizes who
Speaker 5: you are and will help you, that's also going to
Speaker 5: be really useful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and just always send that extra email to the
Speaker 3: medical examiners. Okay, so we're at the point in the
Speaker 3: investigation where you hopefully have a hunch as to who
Speaker 3: your dough might be, like the Hopeworld detectives when they
Speaker 3: discovered Susie Spencer's arrest report. When you make that connection,
Speaker 3: like Maddie said, it is honestly one of the best
Speaker 3: and most exciting feelings in the world. But what do
Speaker 3: you do now and how do you prove it? That's
Speaker 3: after the break, so you think you know who your
Speaker 3: dough is, but proving it is an entirely different ballgame.
Speaker 3: The first port of call is to contact the agency
Speaker 3: like the police department who's handling the doe case and
Speaker 3: the missing person's case if there is one. Maddie, how
Speaker 3: do you go about doing that.
Speaker 5: The first thing to do would be look at name
Speaker 5: and see if there is a detective or an agency
Speaker 5: attached to the case, and there should also hopefully be
Speaker 5: contact details, or you can just look at what jurisdiction
Speaker 5: your case should probably come under, and then contact someone
Speaker 5: at the police station there. A big tip for this
Speaker 5: is when you do it, try and get someone's name
Speaker 5: or someone that will check back in with you if
Speaker 5: there are any new developments. Having a contact like that
Speaker 5: means that you'll probably be able to stay updated on
Speaker 5: the case, and that.
Speaker 1: Was just more likely to help you.
Speaker 3: So once you've spoken to the detectives in charge of
Speaker 3: the case, you do kind of need to leave it
Speaker 3: with them and hope that they look into it. Detectives
Speaker 3: will then investigate it further and if they think it's viable,
Speaker 3: they can compare the DNA of the dough with a
Speaker 3: family member of the missing person. This is actually what
Speaker 3: the Hopeworld detectives did after they figured out that the
Speaker 3: arrest record they found of Susan Spencer was actually listed
Speaker 3: under a false name. They instead matched up the mugshot
Speaker 3: with a missing person's photo of Heidi Bulch and then
Speaker 3: they track down Heidie's family and compare the family's DNA
Speaker 3: with the remains they found on the Hope Well golf
Speaker 3: course in nineteen eighty nine. But there is another similar
Speaker 3: route that deploys the use of DNA, and that's called
Speaker 3: complicatedly genetic genealogy. Maddie, What does that actually mean and
Speaker 3: how can you use it to identify a dough?
Speaker 5: Put simply, genetic genealogy is the combination of genetic analysis,
Speaker 5: so looking at DNA and the study of family trees,
Speaker 5: and then using pretty standard historical investigation to find out
Speaker 5: more about that.
Speaker 3: Okay, So if you were to kind of apply that
Speaker 3: to an actual situation, So say you've found a dough,
Speaker 3: what would people then do to try and study that
Speaker 3: in a genetic genealogy sort of context.
Speaker 5: So what you could do is take the DNA data
Speaker 5: from the dough and then enter it into a website
Speaker 5: like twenty three in meters or another one of those
Speaker 5: big genetic databases, and then you can see if there's
Speaker 5: any matches. Obviously, in a dream world, a perfect match
Speaker 5: with a parent would immediately appear and then you could
Speaker 5: contact that person maybe and you have identified them, but
Speaker 5: it could be a sibling.
Speaker 1: It could be a very distant relative.
Speaker 5: But what it might do is start to build out
Speaker 5: a family tree, which you can then investigate through other
Speaker 5: resources and get closer and closer to identifying who this
Speaker 5: person is.
Speaker 3: I mean that sounds amazing, the idea that you can
Speaker 3: just put some DNA data in and then, you know,
Speaker 3: pop outcomes a bunch of relatives and you whittle your
Speaker 3: way down into identifying the person. Other benefits outside of that,
Speaker 3: you must get a lot of information from DNA.
Speaker 5: I think it can really help with narrowing down locations
Speaker 5: that they're from. Further, might help you identify their ancestral homeland.
Speaker 5: I mean the dream is that there are living relatives
Speaker 5: and that they're people happy to speak to you, or
Speaker 5: their people who you could find out more about and
Speaker 5: then find out the identity of your dough.
Speaker 3: I guess one of the big downsides is that you
Speaker 3: can only work with what's in the system, can't you.
Speaker 3: It really relies on people having put their DNA data
Speaker 3: into the system in the first place, so that there
Speaker 3: can be connections.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5: I think, like so much of this research, it relies
Speaker 5: on community participation. But there are a couple of other
Speaker 5: drawbacks too. Another big one is concerns over privacy. Not
Speaker 5: everyone feels comfortable uploading their DNA and for that information
Speaker 5: to be owned by another website. Understandably, there's also the
Speaker 5: testing isn't perfect, the results can sometimes be a little misleading.
Speaker 5: But one of the biggest drawbacks is the costs. Actually,
Speaker 5: at one point on Series two, we considered extracting some
Speaker 5: DNA from Heidie's grave in Heart Island when thought she
Speaker 5: was there, and not only did the thought that just
Speaker 5: seem kind of prohibitively gruesome, but also it's incredibly expensive.
Speaker 5: And this is something I would say isn't necessarily accessible
Speaker 5: to just the average person trying to look into a case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's also just something that's quite hard to
Speaker 3: do on your own, isn't it. And so I guess
Speaker 3: like the one thing I would say there is, if
Speaker 3: that is a route that you're wanting to go down,
Speaker 3: there are volunteers at charities that specialize in this that
Speaker 3: will genuinely be happy to help you out. They can't
Speaker 3: take on every case, but people like DNA Doe do
Speaker 3: this every single day. They're the charity that we partnered with,
Speaker 3: and they're really great at responding to inquiries or just
Speaker 3: like perhaps giving you some advice, so do reach out
Speaker 3: to them. I hope our tips have been useful, But
Speaker 3: the truth is there is no one way to identify
Speaker 3: a dough. Each new clue will open up a new
Speaker 3: rabbit hole to fall down, and you've just got to
Speaker 3: dive in Alice in Wonderland style. Get obsessed with the
Speaker 3: necklace and finding out where it's from. Fixate on the
Speaker 3: location the dough was discovered, spend weeks pouring over small turns.
Speaker 2: Of phrases in news reports from the time.
Speaker 3: When I was trying to solve our dough case from
Speaker 3: seasons one and two. I was deep in those kinds
Speaker 3: of rabbit holes for a year and a half. At
Speaker 3: points I had to accept for my own sanity that
Speaker 3: maybe I'd never know who she was, or perhaps I would,
Speaker 3: but I'd never be able to prove it and share
Speaker 3: her story.
Speaker 2: With listeners like you.
Speaker 3: It felt like it was only at the last moment,
Speaker 3: when budgets were dwindling Faith was in crisis about to
Speaker 3: put out a show with no resolution, that we actually
Speaker 3: found the definitive proof that we needed. So my final
Speaker 3: piece of advice to you is to just have some faith.
Speaker 3: Sometimes new evidence can emerge and change everything, like that
Speaker 3: confession from Joelrih. Sometimes one new contact will give you
Speaker 3: access to materials that you've been trying to get for years.
Speaker 3: That's what happened for us, So good luck until next time.
Speaker 3: Hold your Girlfriend's Tight. The Girlfriend's Guide is produced by
Speaker 3: Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit novel
Speaker 3: dot Audio. This episode is produced and hosted by me
Speaker 3: Anna Sinfield. Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr and we've
Speaker 3: had some fantastic additional production by Lee Meyer, Leona Hamid,
Speaker 3: and Zaiana Yusuf. Max O'Brien is our executive producer. Production
Speaker 3: management from Shrie Houston and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing
Speaker 3: and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander. Music supervision
Speaker 3: by me Anna Sinfield and Nicholas Alexander. Original music composed
Speaker 3: and performed by Louisa Gerstein and produced by Louisa Gerstein
Speaker 3: and you guessed it Nicholas Alexander. The series artwork was
Speaker 3: designed by Christina Limcool. Story development by me Ana Sinfield.
Speaker 3: Willard Foxton is creative director our executive producers at iHeart
Speaker 3: are Katrina Norvell.
Speaker 2: And Nicki Etour.
Speaker 3: Special thanks to Ali Cantor, Carrie Lieberman, and Will Pearson
Speaker 3: at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carl Frankel and the
Speaker 3: whole team at WME. And special thanks to Daniel Laskrin
Speaker 3: for putting on your best detective voice