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And stay safe. Previously on LISC, Long Island Serial Killer. We know that this guy is organized. rather than disorganized. He's very careful. He plans it. He carries out the murders very carefully. He disposes of the bodies very carefully. He takes very little risk. So I think profiling can help push a suspect's buttons. Certainly an interview helps you understand the scene, but it's only one tool in a load of other tools that detectives use. So when you had burner phones in play,
Just writing a court order for a burner phone doesn't necessarily just solve the case. Most of the time, burner phones are not described to anybody real. Last week, we began looking at what it would take to solve the List case, based on experts and how they see most of these cases resolved. So when working homicide investigations, they're pretty much solved four ways, either through witnesses, surveillance video.
DNA or phone work. And then phone work, I entail social media. Previously, we covered video surveillance and cell phone intel. The next big factor, DNA. It has been a game changer in so many cases and has already played a role in the LISC investigation. DNA has definitely changed over the last 10 years, 11 years. But the state police labs...
are very, very limited compared to what some private labs can do. So in a lot of my cases, and I'm sure in the List case as well, we use private labs to test items differently than our state lab would. So there's different extraction methods for DNA, such as a method called MVAC, which basically takes an item and uses a vacuum-type device to extract DNA. There's genealogy.
A lot of these private labs have contracts with genealogy companies. So if you have a partial profile or a full DNA profile, you can send them to the lab and they can kind of give you a nice investigative lead on who that DNA either might belong to. or if it belongs to a family member of a certain individual. So there's several labs that I work with, and I'm sure the people working on LISC work with as well. We'll delve into genetic genealogy and DNA analysis.
But you'll be shocked to hear that New York is actually the last state in the country to utilize this breakthrough method. But the DNA aspect is a complex subject, and that is especially true when it comes to LISC. There's a lot of confusion and some misinformation regarding how the DNA process works and whose DNA Suffolk County PD might have in their possession. And this might be where some of that confusion started.
We believe that the belt was handled by the suspect and did not belong to any of the victims. That comment about the belt launched a massive amount of speculation. The main question being, do they have list DNA? Before we get into that, let's first discuss the does. Clearly, SCPD has their DNA. It was how a doe was identified.
But overall, it's important to understand what genetic genealogy is and how it works to give names to the does, or to catch a killer, and what you and I can actually do to help with that. I am Cece Moore. I'm the chief genetic genealogist at Parabon NanoLabs, but I've been a genetic genealogist for well over a decade. I am...
The pioneer really of the techniques that are being used for law enforcement, I developed them originally for unknown parentage, meaning adoption, donor conception, foundlings, etc. If you follow true crime, or lately just follow the news, you've probably heard of Parabon Labs. They've been solving cases left and right through genetic genealogy. And leading that charge for Parabon is C.C. Moore. Parabon is a genetic technology company, and they started with...
where they would take DNA from a crime scene or an unidentified individual and use that to predict their traits. So what they look like in general, color hair, color eyes, skin color, shape face, etc. And that was really cutting edge. What became very important for my work is that in doing so, Parabon pioneered SNP genotyping analysis on crime scene DNA.
And that was the challenge that needed to be overcome for genetic genealogy to be able to be applied to these unidentified deceased individuals cases, as well as violent criminal suspect cases. We asked Cece to explain how their process works so the average listener could understand it. Traditional genetic forensic profiles have been based on STRs, a type of genetic marker.
And they look at about 20 of them, typically. And traditionally, they only looked at 13 until more recently. So they're looking at a fairly small number of genetic markers called STRs. Yeah, it's complex and hard to follow. So you'll just have to trust our summary here. CC and Parabon use specific DNA markers from a doe or suspect. Then compare that to DNA that is on a public DNA database. a list is generated of people who share DNA with that unknown person we're trying to identify.
And so we're not getting a lot of information about these people. We're just getting a list of amounts of DNA shared, basically. You share about 1% with this person, which means you'd be... possibly third cousins. Maybe you share 3%, your second cousins. And if they're able to find a match to distant relatives, then the real work starts.
So once we get the list of people who share DNA, we go through, we predict their approximate relationship to the unknown person. We build their family trees. And that sounds easier than it is because... Oftentimes there's not a lot of information on that match list. Someone might use an alias or initials and we just have their email address and we've got to figure out who they are. And on law enforcement cases, we try hard not to reach out to the match list.
As much as possible. Jane or John Doe case, we have more leeway to do that than we would on a suspect case. And just to clarify. It's a higher bar because using DNA to name a suspect in, let's say, a rape or murder case naturally creates a massive amount of fallout for that family and everyone involved.
And sometimes the families are a huge help and a big part of identifying these people. But many times not. Many times we're just working away, identifying these matches, identifying their parents and grandparents. And in that way, we reverse engineer the family tree of the unknown person based on the family trees of the people sharing significant amounts of DNA with them. So we might end up with, say, 12 key matches.
And we have found three different genetic networks, meaning three groups of matches, who all descend from a set of common ancestors. Just finding the family through DNA can be a lot of work. But it basically only means they've narrowed it down to a tree. Now they have to go through every branch of that family tree to find out which one the unidentified person belongs to.
Then we're going to do reverse genealogy or descendancy research where we build forward in time from those common ancestors. We're trying to find somebody who's in the right place at the right time, the right gender, the right age. to be this unidentified individual. And we need to find someone who's related to all those matches.
So on different branches of their family tree, we're hoping we have matches from both their mother's side and their dad's side, and maybe all four of their grandparents' ancestral lines. And if we can triangulate the descendants of those. common ancestral couples or genetic networks, that is when we have the really high confidence. And with Manorville Jane Doe, it was this process that they worked, and how we came to know Valerie Mack.
and more importantly, how her family finally found her and were able to bring her home. However, I know many of us have wondered, why wasn't this process done faster and for the other does? Cece Moore was able to explain that, and what we can actually do to help the whole process. First off, it's been a New York problem. It wasn't until 2019 that labs like Parabon were finally able to work in the state.
It's so exciting. It's the only state that required us to apply. Any other state we can freely work in at this point. And so it was a really long process for us to... get that license to work in New York and to perform genetic genealogy. Now, it's been a disadvantage for New York cases. previously, because nobody was allowed to perform genetic genealogy there except for the FBI, who had gotten, I believe, permission to do that on the case that you're covering.
which is terrific, but they can only work so many cases, of course. And there's only so many cases that they can get involved in. And so New York's been way behind the rest of the country at having... their cases solved using investigative genetic genealogy. Parabon spent over two and a half years, more like three years, going through this process because they originally applied for it.
And it's cost a lot of money. You know, it's been a really intense, long, expensive process. So we are thrilled to finally be approved. Now we didn't get fully to the bottom of why New York was the last state to approve this process. It seems it was all about a massive amount of bureaucratic red tape. But it's not worth delving into because there's little reasoning that would make sense. And hopefully we'll have a lot of successes there like we have all over the country.
In order to do that, law enforcement just needs to reach out to us. A lot of times I get messages from families of victims and from concerned citizens who want us to work a case. We would love to work any case. You know, there seems to be a misconception that I pick and choose cases I want to work on. We will work any case that law enforcement asks us to work, contracts with us to work, and has viable DNA for genetic genealogy. So that means the families, the concerned citizens.
need to encourage the agencies that are in charge of that case to reach out to us. So that's one thing we can do, especially if you're in New York, as they sometimes seem to need a bit of extra encouragement. But for labs like Parabon, There's an even bigger hurdle they face, and most of us can do something to help. We are not able to access the databases of the largest...
genetic genealogy companies. So we can't compare law enforcement files, including Jane and John Doe's, against the databases of AncestryDNA and 23andMe. So if you are an adoptee looking for your family, you can compare against about 30 million profiles in those companies. But if you are working a law enforcement case... and you are trying to identify a deceased individual, then you are only going to be limited to using family tree DNA and GEDmatch.
Those two she mentioned are small opt-into databases and have only a fraction of the profiles to test against. So the terms of service at Ancestry.com, 23andMe, and MyHeritageDNA. bar law enforcement from using their databases for these types of comparisons. And so we're really limited in who we're able to compare against. And because of that...
Often identifying an unknown person can take much longer, or sometimes it just can't happen at all. I think everyone should have the right to choose how their own DNA is used. So people shouldn't be afraid to test. and participate in direct consumer DNA testing just because they might have hesitation about law enforcement accessing their DNA. There's still the choice. You know, you still have to...
really make the decision to actively participate in order to be in the pool of matching. I think people should be able to decide. Of course, I would love it. if Ancestry.com and 23andMe would enable sharing some sort of opt-in, but they are not willing to do that, at least at this time. So just to be clear.
23andMe, Ancestry.com, those sorts of companies do not share your DNA profile with law enforcement. But it would be great if those sites made it easier for their customers to upload their data to Family Tree DNA or GEDmatch. Just that would massively grow those accessible databases and help bring more names to the unidentified. So if those sites are listening or someone out there wants to launch a letter writing campaign, let's make it happen.
For the rest of us listening and who have had our DNA tested... So if you want to be part of the pool that helps solve these cases, you have to upload your raw data file to GEDmatch and or Family Tree DNA. And GEDmatch is not a DNA testing company. You can't send your DNA into them. They are a raw data repository, which means you have to have tested elsewhere.
And then you have to go through some steps to download your raw DNA file from whatever company you tested at, and then take it over to GEDmatch, upload it, and opt in to law enforcement matching. If you've had your DNA tested or plan on doing it, and you want to help those like CC do their work, you can look up how to upload your DNA data to the accessible databases Family Tree DNA and GEDmatch. Or...
Be on the lookout for our special episode where we'll walk you through the process. Now for the others who might be concerned with privacy to do a DNA test with a 23andMe type company or those who have done one. but are hesitant about having their DNA profile uploaded to an accessible database. Here's Cece to address those concerns. Well, it's hard for me to speak to the downside because I think most of the fears are based on misconceptions.
And that's why I spend a lot of time trying to help educate the public and dispel misconceptions about what we're doing. It's not nearly as invasive as people think. We are comparing a file of about... 800,000 or so genetic markers against another file of about a similar number of markers and we're not getting access to people's private information. So I think the main issue is the misinformation, in some cases fear-mongering, that is happening about this whole technique and field.
Now, on the other hand, I do strongly believe people have the right to decide how their own DNA is used, but I want them to be educated. And so they're making that decision based on the reality, not on... concerns or risks that are not valid. And she's not dismissing concerns people have. It is literally the building blocks of who we are. But it's just using that to find others like it.
to ultimately connect an unidentified person back to their family. I think genetic information is especially sensitive. People put all kinds of personal information out there, particularly on social media. by their choice, but there's also a lot of information that is compiled about us without our choice, like credit reports and people search databases where you can learn a lot about a person that is much more personal, in my opinion.
than just comparing their DNA file against someone else's DNA file. No system is perfect, of course, but it's important to hear how this works from the expert in this world, especially when we've been living in a world as of late. That seems more than willing to embrace conspiracy theories. So it's never just one person that becomes a quote unquote genetic informant on a case.
One worry some have with their DNA being accessible is that they alone might be responsible for sending someone from their family to jail. are always going to use multiple cousins, multiple relatives to come to our hypotheses about the identification of an individual, whether it's a suspect or an unidentified deceased person.
So I think that's important. No one person should feel the burden that their DNA alone is going to implicate someone in their family. But it's not only about bringing closure to something in the past. And the other thing I think it's really important to remember is that most people are victimized by somebody in their family, someone they know, someone they're close to.
Although it's extremely difficult for the families that discover they have a violent criminal in their family, I think it's really important to think about the fact that you really don't want those people having access to your loved ones. As difficult as it might be to find out your uncle or your cousin is a rapist or a murderer, do you want those people sitting around your Thanksgiving table having access to your children?
to your elderly relatives, to your loved ones. And so I think a lot of times people are looking at this really the wrong way. It's never fun for a family to discover that one of their loved ones. is a violent criminal. But it's important to get these people away from our loved ones to identify who they are so they're not victimizing. their own family members. But we are not the judge and jury here. Our job is to help identify the contributor of the DNA. And then it's out of our hands.
And law enforcement has to just take that as a tip. And there's a more upbeat side, if you will, to these revelations that should be considered as well. Every case I work, there have been dozens or hundreds or even thousands of innocent people that have been investigated as persons of interest.
Sometimes hundreds of people have had their DNA taken and compared. And many of those people have suffered under the burden of suspicion among their communities, sometimes family members. And when we're able to identify... the true perpetrator, all of those thousands and thousands of people have finally had that burden of suspicion completely lifted off their shoulders after years and decades.
in many of these cases. And I've heard from a lot of those people who said their lives have been so negatively impacted over the years, and that once we were able to help solve the case, it's totally changed their life. And so I want people to think about that. We're not only exonerating people formally.
But many, many people are being informally exonerated, meaning they hadn't been charged with the crime, but they had been under suspicion of that crime. And once we solve it, they finally can move on from that. And there's one last aspect to all of this that Cece discussed that was eye-opening and showed why these labs need our help. I do need to speak to the limitations. Not every case is solvable, at least not immediately, with genetic genealogy.
That is because our databases are limited and they are heavily weighted toward people of European ancestry and particularly Northwest European ancestry. So if a person that we're trying to identify is an immigrant or comes from a recent immigrant family, it is extremely challenging to identify them using investigative genetic genealogy because we just don't have...
those population groups represented heavily in the databases we have access to. So for instance, if we're working a case where the person or their parents or even grandparents immigrated from say Guatemala. We're just not going to have enough matches in the database generally, unless we get really lucky, in order to be able to identify that person right now. We think peaches and the others will be identified soon.
But what Cece is talking about is most certainly why it has taken so long. It's always going to be easier to identify someone who has deep roots in the United States, deep ancestral roots. So typically white people, Caucasian people with... Northwest European ancestry are going to have the most and strongest DNA matches in our databases in general. There are exceptions. We've certainly identified some African-Americans, some Latin Americans.
but it's more difficult. There is less representation in our databases and the genealogy can be a lot harder. If we're having to try to trace someone's genealogy outside the U.S. and perhaps through a different language, that is going to be more difficult. And for African Americans that are descended from enslaved individuals...
Of course, you hit that brick wall of slavery. Now, it's not a solid brick wall. If you watch Finding Your Roots, you know we can sometimes or often trace back further. But in genetic genealogy, when you're dealing with an unknown person... It can be very challenging because we're trying to find common ancestors back before slavery ended in some cases. And so I have a lot of doe cases.
a number of them that are African-American that so far haven't been able to identify them. I've worked really hard on them and my team has worked really hard on them, but it's very population-based. as far as the chances of being able to use investigative genetic genealogy to help solve the case. Peaches is one of the Jane Doe's in this case, and she's African-American.
So we might get lucky and she might have some pretty close relatives in the database. I worked one African-American doe case where there was a full sibling. Like, wow, you know, and I encourage all families with missing individuals, missing loved ones to make sure their DNA is in these databases where we can access it.
Hopefully Cece has shed some light on her work with genetic genealogy and why it's so key to these sorts of cases. And their work is only as strong as the DNA databases. So please consider uploading your DNA profile to Family Tree DNA or GEDmatch. Have you ever heard about the woman who woke up in a cold sweat like she just had a nightmare, but she knew what she saw while she was sleeping was more than just a bad dream?
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Now, returning back to DNA confusion in the List case, there's always been the question, does SCPD have the killer's DNA? Information about the possibility of other DNA collected during the investigation will not be discussed. Those comments from Commissioner Hart at that January 2020 press conference
are what led some to assume that SCPD did indeed have list DNA. However, there's another theory here, that SCPD does not have list DNA. That Commissioner Hart's comments were to head off this question from the press. as scpd wants to keep this guessing and the pressure on and hopes he'll stay dormant or slip up now where do we land with all of this well of course we hope that scpd has his dna but
When it comes to what's known about all the evidence SCPD collected along Ocean Parkway, it's next to impossible to think Lisk's DNA was among it. Oh my. The breakdown in... Proper handling can occur any step of the way. First of all, if you have evidence deposited at a scene And it sits there a long time before anybody gets to it. Well, you know, it's nobody's fault. It didn't get mishandled. But the natural elements can break down. This is Dr. Elizabeth Johnson.
a DNA expert talking about one of the many factors that can affect the process. She's been working in this field for over 20 years. I am Elizabeth Johnson. I have my PhD in immunology, but... After doing medical research at MD Anderson Cancer Center, I went down the street to start the DNA lab at the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office, whereas...
The work I did at Harris County was for law enforcement. This county, where she set up their DNA lab, also happens to contain the fourth largest city in the United States, Houston, Texas. Since 2003, I stepped away from the lab for the most part and started doing private consultation. It's been in this capacity that Dr. Johnson has advised in and testified at hundreds of trials.
helping to educate juries lawyers and judges in the incredibly complex workings of dna and dna as evidence she has seen it all how the dna process can go right and how during the multi-step process to becoming viable evidence It can go horribly wrong. Well, are there standard practices for recovering DNA? Loosely there are, but there's certainly a lot of variation because...
You don't always have trained crime scene technicians going out to collect evidence. That would be the best situation. A lot of times you've got rural police... department detectives going out and collecting things. It just depends on who's processing the scene. So with LISC in step one, DNA collection, we can assume it was done correctly.
given that SCPD ranks as one of the wealthiest police departments in the country. But there's a bigger problem with what would have been found along Ocean Parkway. With your Long Island cases, the bodies were... out there for varying lengths of time exposed to the elements. So, again, it depends on what kind of biological evidence was deposited. If it was sperm...
you have a better chance that that's going to last a bit longer than just, say, saliva. With the victims, we know that any potential DNA evidence from Lisk...
would have been the most viable with Amber Costello. She disappeared at the beginning of September 2010 and was found just three months later in December. If we're talking about spermatozoa, the longest that I've seen... in a body is about a month after they were killed so it's three months might maybe be possible but i've not seen it so you're really talking about a diminishing
return on what sort of evidence you're going to be able to successfully analyze from those bodies. So given that, the elements. And with what her former roommate Dave Schaller shared about the state of her remains when he had to identify Amber, the chance that a viable DNA sample from Lisk was obtained, if there was one to begin with, is virtually non-existent.
So if that's true, then one can assume what that means about the other victims who were out there much longer, in most cases for years. But, as a reminder, there's this. I'm not going to get into the specifics on why we do indeed believe that, but we do believe that this item was handled by the suspect and did not belong to any of the victims. For some, Commissioner Hart's comments imply that they had List DNA because he'd handled the belt.
Now, we can speculate all we want, but that's why we sought out experts. Again, here's Dr. Libby Johnson. pretty much zero chance you're going to find the DNA of the owner. It's just not going to happen, especially for, say, the exposed surfaces. If there was some kind of, like...
nook and cranny in which maybe blood could have been deposited. You know, not likely on a belt, but if some protected nook or cranny had... something like a blood stain in it, you might have a little bit better chance, but just the visible surfaces of the belt, hardly any chance at all of recovering the owner's DNA.
There is some good news, but first, it might be helpful to understand a bit about DNA, beyond what we've learned from detective shows. If you're going to be working on bones that have been out in the elements for a long time... The best type of bone to work with is some thicker piece of bone, something like a leg bone. That would be perfect. Some sort of...
fragment of bone is really not going to give you a very good result. And the reason is the thicker bones like the leg bones, the cells within are going to be better protected. than the cells within thinner pieces of bone because bone is porous and the bacteria get into the bones. The sunlight affects the material.
This should dispel the notion that simply whenever some sort of remains are found, you can extract that person's DNA. I don't want anybody to think that you can find a quarter-sized piece of bone out in the elements. It's been out there for years and hold your breath that you're going to get a good result. So to get the type of DNA needed just for identifying a doe, there needs to be cells.
And from the start, those are attacked or compromised by exposure, sunlight, bacteria. But let's say a perpetrator's DNA was collected correctly from a scene. There are still many hurdles before it can yield results. How long will DNA evidence last depending on how it's stored? Well, the short answer is biological material is always going to be best preserved.
in a frozen state. And unfortunately, we're dealing with sometimes very large pieces of evidence. Sometimes it's pieces of carpet. Sometimes it's... large things, pieces of drywall. There's the storage issue of DNA and was it and is it being stored correctly? Now, if it makes it past that hurdle, then there's the lab and processing. Every lab is...
free to set their own protocols. They have to validate the protocols they use and they have to write them down and they have to pass audits and show that they are following them. And sometimes... I'll tell you they don't do enough, especially on the validation. I'll give you an example. There's a new software that's being used to calculate statistics on...
DNA profiles. And it's complicated. It's very complex and it requires some very intense in-house validation work before it can be used. Well, I have seen... That type of validation work ranged from a couple of hundred pages down to maybe 30 pages at other labs that aren't doing such a great job. But they are both accredited labs.
passing their accreditation. It does not mean that all labs that are accredited are doing things the same way or equally good. So again, it goes back to it's very important to be wary of all the things that can go wrong, and if possible, have a second set of eyes look over things, especially when the stakes are very, very high.
With all those steps, we can only hope that SCPD has handled things correctly. But it brings us back to our earlier point, that when it comes to what was collected along Ocean Parkway, it's unlikely that List's DNA was present. However...
There are two victims we alluded to in an earlier episode that the entire List case could hinge on, Jessica Taylor and Peaches. Their torsos, according to reports in SCPD, were found three to five days after their deaths that means if dna was left behind especially semen and if it was collected and stored correctly There's a high probability that SCPD is in possession of a viable DNA profile of LISC. So for comparing DNA, about 10 years ago, you either needed a suspect or you would have to...
upload a DNA profile you would get from a piece of evidence into a system, a national system called CODIS. And CODIS, what they do is they have DNA from past offenders for major crimes and things like that. That's our area detective talking about how DNA is matched up. So if SCPD does have list DNA, he most certainly wasn't in CODIS, as they'd already have him locked away. That means it'll come down to familial DNA. the same process they used to finally catch the Golden State Killer.
One of the cases I worked on that was recently solved was the Golden State serial killer, also known as the original Night Stalker serial killer, also known as the East Area Rapist in Sacramento, also known as the Visalia Ransacker.
Again, this is criminologist Dr. Rossmo. And it was only by DNA that they linked them together, because behaviorally, no one ever thought they were connected, even though they were all in California. But they were in different locations, slightly different time periods.
In the 1970s, the Golden State Killer left his DNA all over crime scenes, and it wasn't until the last few years, through genetic genealogy in a private lab, that they were finally able to put the monster behind bars. So it can take a while. But if SCPD has less DNA, we can be hopeful for the same outcome, that a lab like Parabon, now able to operate in New York, is working on it and will have news soon.
Now we'll touch on the last aspect of the Big Four that helped solve cases. Which leads us into, where do we go from here? We recovered the 10 remains. They're all connected. My belief is they're all connected. This is former SCPD Police Commissioner Dormer talking about how the public plays such a big role in solving these cases. The probabilities are that it's one killer.
How do you bring this guy in? How do you reel him in? My belief is that our best investigative tool is the media, shows like we're doing, by the way, where we reach out to the public. You know, I would recommend that on the anniversaries of the finding of the bodies, of the finding of the remains, that the police department, the task force... have a press conference attended by national media local and national media and again display
the information we have. I think that they, on the anniversaries, they should put this out to the media. It may jog somebody's memory. That was Dormer back at the beginning of 2014 after he had moved on from the SCPD. But his passion to solve the case kept him out there talking about it. This guy may have made a mistake. He may have slipped up in front of somebody, in front of his girlfriend, his wife, where he's made a comment.
Somebody may have some information, but they're not sure if they should make the call. It may be from fear. It's anonymous. When you make the call to the PD, the call will come in anonymously and a tip with a name.
could solve this case. Somewhere, someone knows something that could be the tipping point on the investigation. And in the absence of law enforcement being able to solve the case, It's our hope that either someone is out there with new leads and is courageous enough to come forward, or that the powerful worldwide community of web sleuthers can pick up where investigators left off.
Stay tuned for next week's bonus episode when we spend time with one person who has gone to great lengths so that the public can find out more about this case and others like it. The creator of Gilgocase.com. I run gogocase.com. If you're not familiar with it, it's a website devoted to the Long Island serial killer case to help educate people and keep attention on the case. What advice would you give to aspiring web sleuths?
For any aspiring web sleuths out there, I have some advice. I would say follow the evidence, stick to the facts, leave no stone unturned, but try to base your theories... off of what the facts are. This episode was written, produced and recorded by myself, Chris Moss, Jonathan Beal and Shannon McGarvey. Editing and musical composition by Blake Maples. Executive producers are Jonathan Nowzarden, Jonathan Beal, and me, Chris Moss. Brought to you by Mopac Audio.