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87. Making the Forensic Ties that Bind, Live Listeners Q&A with Kristen Mittelman of Othram (Part 2 of 2)
265 Plays2 months ago
In this second episode with Kristen Mittelman, co-founder of Othram, a forensic DNA and genetic genealogy company that has revolutionized the resolution of cold cases, Kirsten takes questions from listeners. Kristen discusses the most difficult cases Othram has solved, Othram's selection process, how Othram has built a data set that allows them to conduct genetic genealogy within underrepresented populations and more.
In the first episode, Kristen and Jayson sit down one-on-one to discuss the reasons for and the mission of Othram. Check that out as well.
If you want to support Othram’s efforts to give all victims and law enforcement agencies access to this technology, visit www.dnasolves.com.
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https://silverliningshandbook.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Septic Tank Sam Case
00:00:00
Speaker
There's a couple of cases that come to mind. We've done a lot of different types of cases. There was a case out of Canada and his name was Gordon Sanderson, but he was known as Septic Tank Sam because he was in a septic tank after years and years of being in there. This person was horrifically murdered. He ended up being indigenous and part of the 60s scoop and he was murdered and concealed in a septic tank. We were able to give him his name back um By being able to do DNA testing, that was a really difficult sample because the human DNA in there was much, much less in quantity to all the other bacteria on other DNA that was in there.
Breakthrough in Stephanie Isaacson Case
00:00:42
Speaker
There's a little girl that was walking to school in Las Vegas in broad daylight. Her name was Stephanie Isaacson. She was 14 years old. She was raped and murdered.
00:00:51
Speaker
And there was only 15 human cells left. It was a mixture of perpetrator and victim from 32 years ago, and there was contamination because she was found outside in a field. And so if I touch my hand, I've left hundreds of cells. So only 15 cells from 32 years ago, degradation, contamination, and we were able to identify that perpetrator and connect him to yet another crime three years earlier. um You know, I think about that example of septic tank Sam, you know, lots of things going on there. But, you know, like for a perpetrator sitting in the chair listening right now, like the idea of throwing somebody in a septic tank would have been a great way to get away with it because you know it's going to be very difficult to identify this person. But it sounds like that is not always going to be the case anymore.
00:01:44
Speaker
It's not going to be the case you anymore. You're going to be able to identify everyone, whether you you know treated them with chemicals in a barrel, whether you burnt them, whether you've set an explosion, whether we've done it all. And we're going to continue to make the technology better and better until we can do it all and help solve every case because no one, no one should not get justice because they can't get their name back.
Interview with Kristen Middleman: Role of DNA in Crime Solving
00:02:07
Speaker
That's Kristen Middleman, the co-founder of Othrom, a company that uses DNA to identify victims, perpetrators, and unidentified people. This is the Silver Linings Handbook podcast. I'm Jason Blagg.
00:02:38
Speaker
Kristin Middleman and her husband David founded Othrom, a company heralded for its pioneering work with DNA in 2018. Kristin currently serves as Othrom's Chief Business Development Officer, where she oversees the company's efforts to expand the use of its services among those attempting to identify victims, perpetrators, and the unidentified who have died. Othrom has been involved in solving so many cases that people thought were beyond DNA solving. We had an episode with Kristin last week where we explored some of the reasons and motivations behind Othrom and some of the work that they are trying to do and the way they're trying to change the industry.
00:03:25
Speaker
This week, we take questions from our listeners in an episode we had with Kristin. I hope you enjoy this episode and I hope you get a chance to go back and listen to the first one.
00:03:51
Speaker
Hey, guys. ah Good to see you all. Thank you for being patient. We were competing against a hurricane. And you know i I was very tempted to tell Kristin that she was headed back to the office doing a two hour drive on what should have been a 30 minute drive to go home. But um her her assistant reached out to me and said that she was almost there. And then I felt guilty about the idea of telling you to go home. So here we are. Oh, gosh. you and complete Look at all the trees on the, can you see them down there? I can see them. Those are trees down outside of the office. Yeah. See? ah Wow. Not good. Not good. So that's, that's dedication. So the first question I'll ask is, is the lab okay? Yes. The lab is perfect. Safe. and
00:04:40
Speaker
Perfectly running all day. Operating on its own power. It's something I don't really really think much about. i was um You may not know this, Kristen, but I was a journalist in my previous career, and this is like back in the day where were newspapers actually printed things. I mean, they still do, but it's less important. And we used to have all these generators on the roof of our building. And I'm so baffled. Why are these here? And then in my first year, the power went out in town and the printing presses were still running. And I was like, now I get it. I get it.
00:05:14
Speaker
Um, so guys, for those of you guys who are in the chat, Kristen and I actually recorded like the main episode. So I'm going to give you just a little bit of an intro and summary of what we talked about in that episode. And then I'm going to ask some of the questions that have been um Hand it over in advance. um So for those of you guys who don't know, Kristen is the co-founder of Othrom. It's a company that's really behind ah some of the amazing work and pioneering sort of forensic DNA work.
Challenges in Forensic Genetic Genealogy
00:05:51
Speaker
including both the genetic genealogy part and also the ability to, I think in my head and tell me if I have fumbled this, to extract DNA from places and situations where we couldn't normally extract it, whether it's contamination or whether it's um because it's such a small amount. And then the idea of being able to look at many more markers than labs traditionally look at, which allows you to build profiles that can um that can jump on things. Couple quick facts for you guys. You may not know this, but Kristin's husband, David, who founded Othron with her, was a part of the Human Genome Project. If you haven't heard about it, it's an international research project that began in, I think it was 1990, and it was completed 13 years later. It's really the foundation of the way, I think, and the easiest way to explain the foundation of the way that we explore DNA in medicine and other areas.
00:06:50
Speaker
um Right now, you know, a lot of times, as you guys probably know, because you pay attention to these things, it's not like CSI on television. DNA is often very degraded or it's difficult to extract or too microscopic. And what author has really done is move the ball forward in those areas. And, you know, we didn't talk about specific cases, but you guys all have probably seen in the news some of the amazing work they've done on cases, including
00:07:20
Speaker
ah cases related to guess that we've had um on the podcast and by the way when we get off christen i'll tell you which case that was and what family that was just so you have. have you'll you'll get You'll get a very positive feel from that. um and But I wanted to start off by asking just a couple questions that were um submitted in advance and then let the folks in the chat ask their questions. um The first one came from a friend of mine, retired FBI profiler, Julia Cowley. um She's the host of a podcast called The Consult, and you should probably go on there someday too.
00:08:00
Speaker
But you know her question was, Othram used IGG in the Rachel Moran case and traced the sample of the offender to El Salvador. And her question is, how difficult ah is it to use IGG when the offender may be from another country such as Mexico and I think it's kind of getting at that idea and we've seen this in other cases that in genetic genealogy when you don't have large samples of a certain population it can be more difficult. So I'll throw that one to you.
00:08:37
Speaker
Yes, and that's something that was a limitation to this technology when we started. The methods that were being used, used I built profiles that had less markers, and so you would need a very close relative in the database in order to be able to do the genealogy. And unfortunately, a lot of the populations are underrepresented in these databases consented for law enforcement use. And so what we did is we built these more comprehensive profiles. We call them high-performing DNA profiles because they have all of these markers that allow you to get really distant relationships.
00:09:14
Speaker
And so with our technology today, forensic grade genome sequencing, the limitations are much less because you're able to get these distant relationships. David has a slide I wish I had to show you right now. And he calls it sort of the tapestry of life. And it shows all the different biogeographical ancestries and how we're sort of related together. And um we have a paper coming out soon that will show exactly It's a study to show how this technology can be used across all different biogeographical ancestries. But in our case, um we have a case out of Canada where Susan Tice and Erin Gilmore were the two victims and the perpetrator we identified was First Nations and Indigenous.
00:10:00
Speaker
People thought this technology would not be um able to be used for this. The Rachel Moran case is a good example. If you go to DNA Solves and just read through our stories, you can see that the biogeographical identities of our victims and perpetrators are just across the entire spectrum of where you could fall. That's like backgrounds, right? Yeah, it works. It works for everyone. And and sometimes it's a little bit slower. The Rachel Moran case was a very hard genealogical case. And the FBI has incredible genealogists that worked that case and got to that answer. And so I um
00:10:40
Speaker
Sometimes it takes a little bit longer to get to an answer, but it doesn't mean that you can't get there and rather quickly. I mean, you know when when Rachel Moran was murdered and you can see that there's already an arrest. So even with a difficult case, um you can get to an answer rather quickly. One of the things I wanted to ask just sort of as a follow up to that, like, you know, in thinking about those law enforcement ah usable databases that have sort of those limited profiles, how do you build? yeah Is it express extrapolations that you're using or do you have a separate database that has more information on it or what's the as much as you can say, what's the what's the magic behind doing that?
00:11:26
Speaker
um being able to make those, those leaps. It's not extrapolations. What we are doing is we're building these DNA profiles that match to you. Even if you're a sixth cousin or a seventh cousin, we're all related to some degree. So you are able to get these really distant matches. So there's many distant matches and there's a different distance between each match and the DNA found at the crime scene, whether it's perpetrator or victim. And so we're able to work backwards towards figuring out where that person belongs in a family tree.
00:12:03
Speaker
So it's like you have one puzzle piece here, one puzzle piece here. And because you're looking at so many different markers, you can sort of take those puzzle pieces and sort of put them together in a way that, let's say, CODIS, where you only have a smaller number of markers, you might be able to touch on one distant relative or two, but not get enough of the puzzle pieces to put it together. In CODIS, it has to be self or a parent-child relationship or a full sibling. But even a half sibling wouldn't hit. So even if you had your half sibling in that database, you wouldn't see it. And so it would be inconclusive. So by having all of these markers, you're able to hit to all the relationships. And it's kind of like a sonar. You know you're this far away from this, this far away from this, this far away from this. And so you can only fit here.
00:12:55
Speaker
And that's how it goes back. Then CODIS can be used to do that confirmation in a lab that has to do with Othrom so that you use that test that has been used for 20 years in court, and you're able to take that to court and say, look, here I go. We've confirmed that Othrom found the right person, one in 16 quintillion chance it could be someone else. So this is ah another question from one of the guests who's on the live. and What he had asked was, he'd love to learn more about Othram's selection process, sort of how and and why you choose your cases, particularly those that you crowdsource for.
00:13:35
Speaker
And you know also, are there grant opportunities for case examination or or other things along those lines? And just to give you a background on the question answer, he's he's become sort of one of the experts on the LIS case, you know where you have a number of marginalized victims um that that you know to some extent, they there are questions about the way that law enforcement sort of handled it in the beginning. But you're also talking about families that don't have a lot of resources to pour. And we talked on the episode about the idea that many of these families would spend their last dime to get um some kind of answer. So you know so I guess, what what is the selection process? What's the process for crowdsourcing? And are there opportunities, grant opportunities or other financial funding opportunities?
Othram's Case Selection Criteria
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah, so we have absolutely no selection process other than the case is feasible for this technology. So we look at the DNA. Law enforcement has to want to work the case. That's number one. If law enforcement doesn't upload the DNA to the DNA portal and let us look at the reports and then send us the evidence, we can't work the case. So the law enforcement agency has to want to work the case. because they're the custodians of the DNA. Often we have families reach out and we'll have our case managers reach out to law enforcement and ask for the case, but unless law enforcement wants to work the case, we can't. Once law enforcement does want to work the case, funding is never never one of the criteria. We look and see, is this case feasible?
00:15:14
Speaker
if it is feasible then we proceed and we tell law enforcement we will try to figure out how to get funding if they don't have their own internal funding we work with philanthropists all across the country in different areas to try to see like we have a philanthropist in mississippi that funds every case in mississippi of an unidentified person we have a philanthropist in las vegas that funds sexual assaults and homicides in Las Vegas. All across the country, we have different people that help. And then we also have DNA solves. If the case is one that law enforcement is okay with us crowdfunding, we'll post the story up on DNA solves. no Five or six at a time. Sometimes they're perpetrator cases, so they don't want to do that on DNA solves. So we'll work with um
00:16:02
Speaker
media podcast anybody to try to find that case and see if if we can. You know get that case to the finish line um and so we have done we work with nonprofits across the country we've worked with grant programs across the country i have worked with members um in the senate and in the in the. ah sorry, in the Senate and the House, to create funding for certain law enforcement agencies to help solve their cases. And um obviously, you know, um extremely active in creating and entire budgets or line items for this technology in the federal government.
00:16:41
Speaker
true Yeah, I am one of the things and sort of just two more questions. One of the things that I mentioned when we were talking earlier, I had heard you on another interview and it really struck me two things that struck me were one, your deep desire to not turn anyone away. And ah just the the absolute sort of like mission orientation that you and David could, you know, with your backgrounds could be making a lot of money but working in medicine or some other place. And that and those things like really struck me and stuck out to me. Could you talk a little bit about your mission? I'm also curious where the name authoring comes from, so those two.
00:17:25
Speaker
right of We truly believe that it's not justice unless it can be provided to everyone. So we're trying to create the infrastructure to help every case be solved everywhere. So if you're working if your case happens to happen in a law enforcement agency that doesn't have a lab at all, and doesn't even know what DNA technology is, or your case happens in a big metropolitan area where there are tons of scientists and forensic scientists that are able to extract these samples, we want to be able to help those scenarios equally and just as quickly. um We want to be able to work any case, whether you have
00:18:06
Speaker
millions of dollars to spend on DNA testing at your agency, or no money to spend on DNA testing, whether the evidence is easy to use and easy to get an answer with, or whether the evidence seems to be intractable because of the low amounts of DNA, the mixture between perpetrator or victim, or like you said, contamination, degradation. And so what we tried to build is a robust process that allows you to bring in as many cases as possible. And what I want to say is there are still 30%, about 30% of the cases that come to author. We put on hold. We say we cannot run this today and tell you that we're going to succeed and build a profile. So we don't want to consume the evidence and we don't want to take your budget. we don't work ah We'll work a different case right now if you have funding for a different case, but hold on to this one. And what we do is we bin them. um
00:18:59
Speaker
initially like burnt remains were something that we we didn't um we weren't sure we could build profiles from. um And so now we've gone back and we've built so many profiles and so many mock casework studies where we were certain, then we brought all those back in and we solved them. Profiles, um DNA that has been treated with formaldehyde or another cross-linking agents that make it difficult for you to read the DNA, we've gone back and worked all of those cases. difficult mixtures. um So we don't stop, we don't give up on the case, but we say pause until we do enough research on the research side of the lab where we feel certain and then we tell you to come back and we solve the case. We help solve the case.
00:19:42
Speaker
It's an interesting thing too, because I don't think of many laboratories themselves having their own research arm. If I think of like, I'm in Virginia, the Virginia State Lab, like they do the work, right? And the universities all over the country do their own research. And I i had wondered as you were talking about some of those cases that you turn away, like How do you advance the ball if you're not actually taking those cases so you work separately on to do the research separately? You have a whole different arm. Different team and scientists. So if you walk down the halls of Othrom you will see the forensic lab is in the center and to the right and on the left side is only research and you can go down this long corridor and they're two completely different
00:20:29
Speaker
sets of people to completely different sets of minds and employees because it takes a very different type of scientist. A forensic scientist has to be precise, exact, follow the same protocol from beginning to end every time, document everything. A research scientist has to think outside the box, be able to make mistakes, figure out things, and break things to make things work better. And so you have two very different personality types, right? Like the creative, innovative, eccentric people, and then the very diligent, meticulous, you know, and and you're right, because it's almost like having two different companies, right? You've got a university. And our software engineers are completely different, too. And they're like the whole second level. And so you're all together in the lunchroom one day and you're like, Oh my gosh, what's happening here? But no, it's the coolest group of people because we are so completely different. But we're all really uniquely suited to bring value in the area that we were hired to bring value for. And you're right, most labs don't have all of this stuff put together.
00:21:35
Speaker
But it's necessary because how do you build a standard or a truth set that gives you the answer of how this case was worked and could it have been done faster, better, differently if you don't have the case from the very beginning, from extracting that DNA all the way through the people it took to go testify in the courtroom, whether it's the science, the genealogy, and everything in between. And that's what we built here at Othrom. Because you can't really control for your success and to understand your success if you're not touching the entire process. That's very smart.
00:22:09
Speaker
that that and so we not Yeah, so you're you're not just like you had mentioned those three things that you guys had sort of set aside, um being in one of them, right, was to be able to have metrics. And that was
Enhancing Justice through DNA Technology
00:22:24
Speaker
an important piece. Could you go through those three things, the three key things before you tell me the name, why where the name came from? yes So the three key parts of of the Carla Walker Act, which is the first bill for this technology in this country, are one, to create funding for law enforcement agencies to be able to test their DNA that hasn't given them an answer. It's sort of a DNA dead end using traditional DNA testing methods.
00:22:50
Speaker
And so um that's the first pot of funding. There's an equally large pot of funding to help and state labs be able to adopt and learn this technology so that they are able to do it in-house by themselves. And they're able to use the best possible technology to resolve all their cases, not just the ones they send to author them. And the third part Is the metrics um is being able to say if you use state dollars to test dna what method did you use.
00:23:22
Speaker
And did it work? Did you identify the victim or the perpetrator? And how long did it take? And that's hugely important. For medicine to get better, you have that sort of when you treat a patient, you have to report back how that patient responded to that treatment. And did they survive? How long did they survive? Whatever it is that you're reporting back. We don't have that in forensics right now. In forensics, you have metrics of did you run the DNA? Did you test that that forensic sample? But you don't have metrics on did it actually, productively give you the answer? And how long did it take? And that's the most important part. Victims need those answers. Families need those answers. But in order for you to prevent the next crime, you have to get that answer quickly, robustly, and predictably. And that's what we're here to do.
00:24:13
Speaker
And maybe one of the important aspects of it, thinking about forensic science compared to medicine, you know if all of a sudden tomorrow um you know I take medication for different things, um and I'll just take an example. One of mine is a mental health medication, right? And if all of a sudden somebody invented a more effective version, faster acting, more effective, fewer side effects, lower costs, you know my doctor would be in deep trouble if he decided, I'm not going to use it with my patients. But the same doesn't exist in forensic science where you know my laboratory can use technology from 1970 if it wants. um Maybe, is there something about changing the standards? And I swear at some point I'm going to let you answer the question. um
00:25:06
Speaker
I absolutely feel that that's necessary. I think if people were to see that you can you can predict what technologies will give you more answers and quicker, then I think the government can fund choose to fund those technologies over technologies that make them less. And I think And tied the funding to using things that are a little more advanced it's about using the best method for that case every single time, just like you would use the best drug for your patient every single time. And so, like you said, it's about bringing it back to every person making that decision on how this case is being tested and what technology is being used is tied to success rates and not just
00:25:55
Speaker
Oh, what I want to use the lab I've always used or my friend or go through the technology I've always done. It's about what is the most successful thing for that case. We get that answer. And so some point you'll probably be author will be a part of sort of like building that standard or that idea of, hey, in this situation, it's OK to do this, but in this situation, you really want to do this. So now I will give you the chance to answer about the name. The bathroom is the wall that protects the city in Lord of the Rings. So it's that wall that protects the city. It was a name that wasn't used for anything before. If you look at our logo, here I have it right here. I have my pen.
00:26:36
Speaker
and It is the hexagon, which is the carbon ring of life, but then the negative space inside is the person we're identifying. And then inside we do identify someone, we put the victim's picture inside of a hexagon on recent case work. And we tell their story because we feel like everyone should have their voice back in justice. And it's always the victims that you see in our hexagons, whether we identified their perpetrator or not, because it's their story we want remembered. of that. I love that. So I'll go ahead and throw it to the first question that came up. And the question that's coming from Catchlist, which is Raoul, is how accessible to author or DNA databases from other countries? And you may have addressed sort of how you kind of get there.
00:27:25
Speaker
um so um The databases that we're allowed to use for this type of technology are only databases that are consented for law enforcement use. And so you can you can use those databases regardless of where you're from, but those are the databases that are that can be used. So Rothram runs family treaty and a database, which is the largest database consented for law enforcement use. And we also run DNA solves. And then there's a database called gen match. That's it. Okay. And those are um my understanding is all of them are internationally accessible right now.
00:28:03
Speaker
Yes, they are. OK. So second question that came up was from Robert Palmer, who's the host of another podcast, Broken System Podcast, a great podcast that sort of focuses on, ah again, marginalized victims, people who wouldn't normally or who are not necessarily getting the attention that they want. But um you know is there ever a case that you see um And, you know, Robert, I'm not sure about the second part of your question. Are you asking? Yeah. I think he's asking, is there any case that I see where I feel like I have to get that case? Yes. Yes. Where you really want it.
00:28:47
Speaker
Every serial perpetrator case, I want to get that case and I want to help prevent the next crime as fast as possible because I know that this technology is the fastest way to get to an answer if you have DNA. And so um if I know that there's a serial predator out there personally, I have children, I have family, I have you know, friends that are in society, I would love to be able to identify that perpetrator before that next crime is committed. ah But there's not, you know, Othram never has gone for the the popular case or the famous case. um We have had agencies agencies send us the famous cases here or there, and I'm sure you guys have read all about them. We don't look for that. We look for the most feasible case and the quickest way to an answer. And we truly believe in and justice only being justice if it can be given to everyone.
00:29:37
Speaker
Can you talk a little bit about the, and we sort of talked about this before, the importance of speed, because one of the things, you know, I think most people would think, why is it so important to be fast? And then thinking about what your mission is, right? It makes complete sense to me why speed is important. And if you could talk a little bit about some of the things you guys have done to speed up the process, Yeah, we've created those truth sets for thousands of cases that we've been able to successfully work. And so now when we get a new piece of evidence in, we can compare it to the thousands of DNA cases that we've had before. And we know, wait a minute, we had a case that had very similar DNA here. The mixture was the same, the amount of contamination was the same, and this is the quickest way to
00:30:29
Speaker
To solve it and so we can build those profiles in a matter of days rather than building them in a matter of weeks because there's no trial and error you don't have to figure it out we've done it before in a very similar case or we've had a case where we've had this type of. chemical treatment to the case, or it was burnt in this extent to this extent, degraded to this extent, and we know exactly how to get to that answer quickly. um the and What we know about offender behavior is that there is a huge difference between identifying and capturing somebody in 14 days versus 14 years because how many dozens or hundreds of victims are we talking about?
00:31:10
Speaker
especially sexual predators, I mean, that is a repeat crime and almost always. And so if you are able to identify that person before the next attack, then you're able to spare someone from becoming that next victim and they can go on and live a perfectly normal life, not ever being a victim. To me, that is the greatest gift you can give to anyone and it makes society safer quicker. yeah Here's another one from Erin. She's asking, you know, Erin is asking, what's been your most difficult case so far and why?
00:31:47
Speaker
There's a couple cases that come to mind. We've done a lot of different types of cases. There was a case out of Canada um and his name was Gordon Sanderson, but he was and known as Septic Tank Sam because he was in a septic tank after years and years of being in there. This person was horrifically murdered. He ended up being indigenous and part of the 60s scoop and he was murdered and concealed in a septic tank. We were able to give him his name back um by being able to do DNA testing. That was a really difficult sample because the human DNA in there was much, much less in quantity to all the other bacteria on other DNA that was in there.
00:32:31
Speaker
um There's a little girl that was walking to school in Las Vegas in broad daylight. Her name was Stephanie Isaacson. She was 14 years old. She was raped and murdered, and there was only 15 human cells left. It was a mixture of perpetrator and victim from 32 years ago, and there was contamination because she was found outside in a field. and so If I touch my hand, I've left hundreds of cells. So only 15 cells from 32 years ago, degradation, contamination, and we were able to identify that perpetrator and connect them to yet another crime three years earlier. Wow. You know, I think about that example of septic tank Sam, you know, lots of things going on there. But, you know, like for a perpetrator sitting in the chair listening right now, like
00:33:21
Speaker
The idea of throwing somebody in a substance tank would have been a great way to get away with it because you know it's gonna be very difficult to identify this person but it sounds like that is not always gonna be the case anymore. It's not going to be the case anymore. You're going to be able to identify everyone, whether you you know treated them with chemicals in a barrel, whether you burnt them, whether you've set an explosion, whether we've done it all. And we're going to continue to make the technology better and better until we can do it all and help solve every case because no one no one should not get justice because they can't get their name back. And unfortunately,
00:33:58
Speaker
that often happens when you're on an and unidentified victim. Unless you have an eyewitness, how can that law enforcement agency, no matter how hard they try, solve that case? How could they piece together the last few weeks of that person's life or who they were with if they don't have a name? And almost always when we identify the victim, law enforcement is able to identify the person responsible for that crime. Yeah, I think one of the cool things about what I'm hearing you say too is this idea of equity and that your mission is not fulfilled if you can't equally bring justice to all sorts of people. it's not something
00:34:37
Speaker
like People rarely set bars like that for themselves. you know They tend to do that. But um Julia's got another question for you. If non-contaminated and non-mixture blood is collected from a crime scene, are there any reasons IGG wouldn't work in identifying the offender? And before you answer that question, let me say, um Julia, even though she was a FBI profiler, is also a scientist herself. She was a toxicologist before, so and my expectation is we'll get good questions from her. But is there any reason in that situation why IGG wouldn't work in identifying the offender?
00:35:14
Speaker
Yes, so IGG is investigative genetic genealogy. um People call what we do IGG or FGG, forensic genetic genealogy, as well. But I think you're meaning traditional IGG. That's when they're using medical assays or consumer DNA assays to run these samples. And those medical assays are targeted towards clean, single source DNA but that's not degraded, not contaminated. So if the blood that's collected is fresh, not degraded, not contaminated, there's no bacteria from the crime scene or the transfer and it was stored perfectly. um If you use traditional DNA methods for medicine, you should get some answer. Also, those methods target less
00:35:59
Speaker
markers than our method. So when you upload to the genealogical database consented for law enforcement use, you may not get matches because you don't have close enough relatives. There are not that many people that have consented their DNA for for law enforcement use. It's certainly not the same number of people that are in databases like consumer databases when you're trying to work an adoption case or something like that to find your relative, right? And so um You could use those methods, but it's cheaper to use forensic grade genome sequencing than use these other medical methods. It's not more expensive. And you are assuring that you know in advance whether or not you can build a profile that will help you get to an answer. Whereas when you use the medical methods, like if you were to use a microarray, you may consume the evidence and get no answer. And then you can't go back and get more evidence.
00:36:52
Speaker
And you had mentioned that part of what caught David's attention and caught your attention was the idea that you had had your hands in the process of developing the medical approach, which told you it's the wrong approach for the forensic. That's exactly right. A lot of us had worked on building those assays, not just medically, but also for consumers. David was the Chief Scientific Officer of Family Treaty and did a lot of this product building for being able to find who your relatives are and where you belong. um And so all of those, we knew both, right? But if if you've ever taken a test to find your relatives, it says don't spit in the tube an hour after eating, wait an hour after you eat, don't do this, don't do that. That's so that you have
00:37:37
Speaker
none of these mixtures, none of these contaminations. And unfortunately, that's not what comes from a crime scene. Even if it is just blood found there, if there's still other people that walk there, touched it, the temperature in the room or wherever the blood was found may have caused degradation. um It might have been exposed to elements. I mean, it's just never that straightforward. And why take the risk if you can do something that's predictive? Right, where you can actually predict whether it would work before you dive into it. So I have a good one here. Aaron's asking what historical case would you love to solve?
00:38:16
Speaker
every single one of them. um um I mean it. There has been no case that we have solved, even ones that were like hundreds of years old, right? Like over a century old, where I didn't meet someone from the family or someone from somewhere that really cared and still needed- There's that woman whose bones were found in a bag right in California in 1985 and then, you know, back I think you guys solved that case and she was born in 1864 or something. Yeah. yeah and And there's still someone in the family somewhere that has been affected by that crime. And so I'm telling you, every single one of these cases needs to be worked. That's why there can't be one author. um That's why there needs to be thousands of authors and this technology needs to be a standard tool that everyone is able to use.
00:39:11
Speaker
Right, right, right, right. Because you know you guys can help thousands eventually. Hundreds of thousands, no but that's not enough. Right, right, right, right. That makes perfect sense. So it looks like we don't. Do we have any more questions? Anybody want to throw a question in there before I ask my my own, which is, Kristen, what is your vision beyond authoring for DNA forensic science? like What would you hope for if you thought about all the labs that do this kind of work?
00:39:49
Speaker
what's what's kind of like if you've Yeah, if you ultimately got your goal in this area, what would it be? ah you know I would hope that it becomes something that is more like medicine, where where it is research-based, where everyone's working together, where the person that discovers the next best way to do it is quickly sort of implemented into everyone else's methods and everyone's working together. you don't hear you know someone say I'm not going to take that cancer drug because I didn't invent that cancer drug or I wasn't the first doctor that worked on it or or that wasn't invented by the first cancer doctor ever. and There's something about forensics where people are sort of stuck and I'm creating it or I was the founder of it, I was the mother of it, the father of it. you'll I've heard it all really over the last few years and it really doesn't matter if you're first, last, somewhere in between.
00:40:41
Speaker
We need so many people coming into forensics and making this better, more effective, more efficient, so that every victim and every family can get an answer, so that every perpetrator is caught the first time they cause a crime and not the 10th, 11th, and 12th. And so it just, I wish that it was actually a more collaborative collaborative space. I mean, I'll be really honest, the first few years at Othron were really lonely. And until we were able to get these advocates and people like you that heard the story and stuck us on here, the community is is quite close-knit and doesn't want any newcomers in it. But we should be welcoming everybody into this community. There should be funding for people to come into this community and create a field and create standards and create help. And it should be done in a careful way where people have to pass certain standards in order to start testing evidence. But we should be able to promote
00:41:37
Speaker
thousands of people, there should be an education sector for people that want to do genomics and forensics, for people that want to do DNA testing better, and there should be more people here trying to make this better because the more of us that work on this, the faster we're going to actually get to an answer and help more people. him Yeah, and one of the things that we talked about is it doesn't just help with um you know identifying perpetrators. It can be ah unidentified people and bringing it just It can give clues in missing cases, but it can also rule out potential suspects and take the cloud over their head or help innocent people resolve their cases. And I just think that that's that's that's such a cool piece of it. um Another question. i Wait, nope, wrong wrong one. But I do have another question for you. What kind of training or schooling is required for people who work with you? I'm sure lots of people have this question. I can only imagine what your inbox for job applications looks like.
00:42:40
Speaker
It's awesome. we We are so multidimensional that we have people that have ah backgrounds in forensic science and forensic degrees. We have people that have backgrounds in genomic science and genomic degrees. We have people that are research scientists, people that have worked on gene therapies, cancer treatments, things like that. We have engineers. We have software scientists and software engineers. we have i mean Everyone from people that are good at being able to bring in funding have worked at nonprofits are good at writing grants and creating grant opportunities. To people that were law enforcement x law enforcement agents that can help ah bring this technology to different law enforcement agencies across the country you.
00:43:29
Speaker
Think of it. We probably need you here at Akram because we just need a multitude of different people. What we're looking for is people that are extremely passionate and want to do the best by each case that comes their way and want to help people get answers and justice. Yeah. um But he didn't ask this question, but I think he's on the live. One of my friends and also ah who has a podcast that's coming out called Missing in a Moment, Jason Urce, his podcast is going to cover all unsolved missing persons cases. And one of the things that's kind of interesting about it is even before his first episode has really come out on the podcast feed, he's already had these neat conversations with
00:44:14
Speaker
family members who have these missing loved ones who have been missing for um such a long time. And, you know, it begs a question for me, you know, law enforcement might be slow to adopt it, but let's say I'm a family member and I know there's some genetic information. Law enforcement either can't move on it because they don't have the technology to do it or they're not. What what can family members, you think, do to help either help their case get to a place like Othrum or in terms of advocating or even just to advocate more generally for laboratories to take new approaches to things. so We have a national missing and unidentified registry in the United States called NamUs. um If family members can reach out to the NamUs liaisons in their area or people the and get their family member in that database,
00:45:15
Speaker
That helps a bigger team of people looking at the case. It gets a bigger team of people looking at the case and then allows for that bigger team of people to consult with a law enforcement agency that has your case and help them find funding and technologies that would allow for an identification or finding of that person. So I would say one of the first steps would be to get your loved one, your missing loved one into NamUs and see if that helps contact the NamUs liaison and see if if they will talk to an enforcement agency that might have the case, put your DNA into these data. NamUs is the national missing persons database that the department process runs. Okay. That's right. And also put your database in these databases consulted, I mean, consented for law enforcement use, because if the DNA is tested and your date your DNA is in there, there'll be no genealogy
Collaborations and Community Engagement
00:46:09
Speaker
needed. You'll be a quick
00:46:11
Speaker
and you'll get an answer much quicker. It'll cost the department less money, so that's that's always good. Put other things that I could think of. and if If you have a case and you really believe that authoring technology could be of use, you can email us at solve at authoring.com and we'll get a liaison on the case and and try to contact the law enforcement agency and see if we can help. Yeah. So let me, um, I'm going to, we've sort of like run out of time. I know Aaron has a question about a college degree in genetics, but I happen to have that answer for you, uh, uh, Aaron, and I'll get back to you, but I, do you have any closing thoughts you'd want to send out to the world about your work, your vision, what you hope comes out of it?
00:47:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I would like to tell families that have been sitting on unsolvable cases or missing someone or have lost someone that's unidentified somewhere that there is hope. I know that most of the people we meet felt hopeless for years and years and decades. And I hope that our technology, the stories on recent case work, those hexagons that we put up every single day. We have one up today in the middle of a hurricane. um give people hope and show them that technology is changing. There are people out there that are working day and night to try to make this more efficient, better, quicker, more robust, so that more cases can get answers. And we're going to get there. It may take a little bit of time, but we're going to get there.
00:47:47
Speaker
So Kristen, I know it's hot and humid and you're sitting on the first floor of Othram right now and probably have two kids who want to go home. um But would you would you mind taking two more questions real quick? Okay. All right. So first one is from um Dana Pole who does a lot of work around um unidentified persons and cold cases. do Does Othram partner with, ah work with or partner with other labs to solve cases? Yeah, we work with dozens of state labs across the country. um We have contracted relationships with, we work with a lot of state labs that we don't have contracted relationships with. We work with other private labs to solve cases if they come to us. We would work with anyone to solve a case as long as the law enforcement agency asked us.
00:48:34
Speaker
and That's a good one. And then I'll go ahead and throw up Aaron's question about, are there college degrees that could prepare people to work in genetics so your work can be happening everywhere? Yeah, we're partnering with several universities across our country and internationally to start helping create degree programs that will actually focus on genomics, genetics and forensics. Because right now there are forensic science degrees and then there's genomics and genetic degrees for medicine or consumer genetics. But we would love for this to become part of courses across the world.
00:49:12
Speaker
Yeah. OK, very cool. All right. Well, guys, we're going to go ahead and wrap up. I will definitely, Kristin, say for you all the really awesome comments in the chat, the appreciation for your work on Long Island. People, you know, Jill pointing out how just amazing the work is that you guys are doing. Jason pointing out that it's just unbelievable the impact. And I think probably some people who have been affected by the work um whether they've covered it or it's touched on some of their lives, I know are in the the chat. So it's really cool. And thank all of you guys for joining. And I will just take four minutes of your time so I can tell you that story. So see you guys much. All right. Be good. Thank you.
00:49:59
Speaker
by If you want to support author's efforts to give all victims and law enforcement agencies access to its technology, visit www.dnasolves dot.com. If you'd like to join us for more discussions with me and other listeners, we can be found on most social media platforms, including a listener-driven Facebook group called the Silver Linings fire facade chat. For deeper conversations with our guests and live conversations like this one with other listeners, you can also join us on our Patreon at www.patreon dot.com forward slash the Silver Linings Handbook.