On any given day in southern California, hundreds of investigators are working more than ten thousand unsolved cases. That's thousands of friends and families who have lost loved ones, thousands of people who got away with a crime, and thousands of murderers who still walk the streets. Killers who may be your neighbor, go to your church, or could be dating a close friend. This is unsolved with Steve Gregory. Okay, now we're getting to sit down with Pete Headley
from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department. He's retired from the Crimes against Children's Unit. Been there, he was there, she said, four decades, right, you were there forty years. On the radio show you you did this really amazing job of breaking down the case of this guy that was known from birth as Terry Rasmussen, but we learned that he was a Curtis Kimball and Bob Evans. How many aliases do you think this guy had? We're
not sure how many total, because we don't guess victims. If you had to guess, probably once he took a show on the road full time, you know, about nineteen eighty. I figure every three years he changed his name again and then he was finally caught in two thousand and two. Right, Yeah, using Larry Vanner for unson June's murder. Larry Vanner, Right, Okay, so um, but you know what's interesting about all this too, is that you've been bringing up during the radio show. You were bringing
up the genealogy and the you know, the geneological DNA. So tell me how all that worked, because you're you picked it up in twenty twelve. Of the science and all the activity was there, but you know, we're going back to the eighties when DNA was just starting to become a thing,
So talk about all the science behind that. Yeah. Law enforcement databases is quotas, which is a very basic profile of DNA, and it lets you do a direct comparison or immediate family member only with the SNIP profile that the different DNA sites use from twenty three a family tree DNA. It's more information and it lets you see extended family out to fourth fifth cousins, and that's where we're using to be able to identify people, whether they're a DOE or
suspect. There's only two databases that let law enforcement access it, and that's Family Tree DNA and JED match. So if you're on Ancestry twenty three am, etc. Please I plead to everyone transfer your day to family Tree, DNA and JED match. It's a very minimal charge for FT DNA to transfer in and then opt in for law enforcement matching. So but now critics say,
Pete that you know that's just more intrusion on someone's personal life. How do you assure someone that that information is not going to be used for nefarious purposes. With a snip profile, it's just showing us how you're related to other people, And people say, oh, I don't want law enforcement poking around in my DNA. Also we can see is what you can see how you're related to other people in the site. That's it. There's no medical information, none of that. We don't have access to any of that.
But I mean, in some way, though, aren't you asking someone to voluntarily give their information on the outside chance it could help increminate a relative that may be it? Yeah, and I know some people are against that, but personally, if one of my relatives was out raping and murdering, please use my DNA to catch them. On the other hand, though, it
could also help you find lost relatives. Absolutely, the genetic genealogists that we're using this for the adoptees laid the groundwork, so it's just building off of what they've done already, and they say, oh, there's all kinds of rude surprises that can come up. Well, the adoptees when you're identifying them, they have the same thing happening. There's affairs in the family that turns
out their fathers not their father. So it's nothing new there. And I've run into that on cases where how is this person related to the family line on tracking down and it turns out her grandmother had an affair and her father was a result of that affair, and those can be very delicate conversations, and so it's it's still there for adoptees. It's been there. It's nothing
new. And another thing that came out of this case amazing technology With the Barbrook victims, their DNA was very degraded, a lot of back refreshing everyone who those victims are, okay, they were victims of Terry Brasmus and there were murdered back in New Hampshire and the bear Brook State Park and dumped in barrels so they weren't found for years. Right, that's the woman and the children that were found in the barrels and his bio child, and the DNA
was very degraded, a lot of bacterial overgrowth. And Professor Green from UC Santa Cruz had been working on DNA and Barbara Reinventer, the Tonight Genealogists saw what he was doing and we contacted him and said, hey, this is what's going on. What do you think And within a year he had it he can get a DNA profile from a single strand of rootless hair, and that's how they DNA on the Berrebert victims for the SNIP profile. And he's been doing he has his own lab now, Astery Labs, and he's been
doing cases for law enforcement and FBI. After we identified him, I had a call from Steve Kramer, that at the time was working out at Elliott La FBI office and asking me about the LESA case. So I briefed him on it and I was like, this is amazing. If you're dead ended, you still got a shot at it now, and told him if you've got something you're working on, you've got to talk to Barbara Venner. I couldn't have done it without her to build the family trees at all. And
he did. And the team that was working on the Golden State Killer brought Barbara in and she's the one that identified the Golden State Killer. You know, once I publicly announced that that was IgG investigative genetic genealogy, it's just exploded. Now it's grown a cross the country. Everybody's using it. And again, I know there's an asayer saying it's a privacy issue, but I just don't see where they're going with it, because again I can't see your
medical information or anything else, just how you're related to other people. I think it just goes back to people who don't trust the government. Yeah, and really is what it boils down to. But so when you go back, you think about the Golden State Killer case and how far back that goes also, Oh yeah, and you know they were able to do this, you know the science. So now the professor Green, was he working in
like investigative forensics. Was he in that field? No? No, he was working on dinosaur DNA, you know, ancient DNA, and then he'd started working with hair. So the barrels and when the woman and the three children found in the barrels. Were the barrels buried, No, they were on they were film. Um, some of the lids had popped open a little bit water had gotten in, so you know, and then the barrels had tipped over. And it was in a park, right, you said,
yeah, it's out in a forest on a forest. And so then that then that had been degraded over the time. And this guy was able to figure that out. Huh. Yeah, it took him a year or though, you said, right, Yeah, and he's got it dialed in now and from one hair, and he's helped on a lot of cases. Now he has his own lab. Wow. So this one case you stumbled on back in twenty twelve become the basis of science that's being used all around
the country now that it's exploding everywhere. Yeah, maybe there's gonna be closure for more and more people. Oh yeah, and that's what it's about. It's for the victims. Give them closure, the victims. Families. Um, Marlesa's family, the woman in the barrel, and you know, they they've been wondering for years and years trying to find her, their sister and find out what happened to her. Is that everything? Yeah, do we cover everything? Okay? Good, doesn't make sure? Okay, well then
Pete, thanks for thanks for all of the history lesson too. I mean, this is all fascinating stuff, and this is this is the wave of the future for policing. I think for absolutely, I think it is this family, the familial DNA, and I think this is all the future of policing and I appreciate you bringing it to our attention. Okay, thank you.