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86. Making the Forensic Ties that Bind with Kristen Mittelman of Othram (Part 1 of 2)
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Kristen Mittelman, co-founder of Othram, a forensic DNA and genetic genealogy company that has revolutionized the resolution of cold cases, joins Jayson for a one-on-one conversation. They discuss how she and her husband, David, went from working on the Human Genome Project to attempting to identify victims, perpetrators and the unidentified who died.
Othram's technology has made what was once impossible possible and has played a key role in the University of Idaho murders, the Long Island Serial killer case, the disappearance of Brianna Maitland and many other lesser-known cases. Kristen discusses how there will be no equity until all victims have the best possible DNA technology, whether it's Othram’s or another, applied to their cases.
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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Transcript
Traditional Approaches in Law Enforcement
00:00:00
Speaker
What I would tell law enforcement to think about is they do, they have these relationships and sort of the the way we've always done it. And this is what we've always done. So we'll do it this way again, and we'll try that first. And, you know, we have relationships with these particular vendors and products and laboratories or whatever it may be. And so we're going to keep doing the same thing we've always done. and and hope for a better outcome, I guess, or hope for a different outcome.
Prioritizing Justice for Victims
00:00:31
Speaker
And I guess what I would say is this isn't about equity to technologies you've always used, vendors you've always used, processes you've always used. It's about equity to victims and their families. And if there is a better way to solve a case,
00:00:51
Speaker
then that way should be used first.
Embracing New Technologies in Law Enforcement
00:00:53
Speaker
In medicine, that's required. If tomorrow there's a new cancer drug that comes out on the market and it works 90% of the time and the drug that was out there before worked 70% of the time for a certain type of cancer, doctors would be required to use that chemotherapy first. And if they didn't, it would be malpractice.
The Founding of Othram
00:01:14
Speaker
That's Kristen Middleman, the co-founder of Othram, a company that uses DNA to identify victims, perpetrators, and unidentified people. This is the Silver Linings Handbook podcast. I'm Jason Blair.
00:01:43
Speaker
Kristin Middleman and her husband David founded Othrom, a company that's 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. Kristin's husband was a part of the Human Genome Project, an international research project that began in 1990 and was completed 13 years later. It had the goal of identifying the base pairs, the double-stranded nucleic acids made of two nucleobases that are bound together and form the building blocks of the DNA double helix.
00:02:34
Speaker
The project involved groundbreaking work on identifying, mapping, and sequencing all the genes of the human genome. Othrom has been involved in solving so many cases that people thought were beyond help using DNA. As of late, when there's a breakthrough with DNA in a high profile case, people in the criminal justice community openly speculate that that must have been the authorum. Despite what's seen on television, DNA at crime scenes is often too degraded, too difficult to extract, or too microscopic that law enforcement and traditional private labs have a hard time making effective use of this genetic material.
Othram's Cutting-edge DNA Techniques
00:03:18
Speaker
Ethereum focuses on extracting samples and using what's known as short tandem repeat and single nucleotide polymorphism testing. It also has developed an expertise in using forensic genetic genealogy, the concept of identifying relatives through the use of genetic databases to close unsolved murders and resolve disappearances and give a name to the unidentified. It's not an understatement to say that Othram
00:03:51
Speaker
which is based in Woodlands, Texas, a suburb of Houston, has revolutionized cold case resolution. According to news reports, in addition to its work on many high-profile cases, such as identifying DNA at the scene of the disappearance of Breonna Maitland, identifying the victims and suspects in the Long Island serial killer case, identifying the last known victim of the Green River Killer, and identifying DNA found at the crime scene of the four University of Idaho college students. Kristen, David, and their team have worked on many low profile cases and have used crowdfunding to purchase lab materials and other resources so law enforcement doesn't have to spend its resources to do so.
Kristin Middleman's Journey to Othram
00:04:39
Speaker
Kristin is a graduate of Baylor University where she obtained a bachelor's degree in biochemistry and molecular biology and she's also a graduate of Baylor College of Medicine where she earned a doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology.
00:05:10
Speaker
Kristin, I just wanted to thank you for joining, and I really appreciate your dedication to get here despite the fact that a hurricane hit Houston and woodlands where your office is. um And, you know, I've heard about the work that Othram has done over the years, um and and over time just got more and more intrigued by it. I had a friend who you know believes that she was the victim of um jerry lee jones the suspect um who is who is known as or the suspect in what's called the redhead murders.
00:05:47
Speaker
And, you know, one of the things that she had mentioned to me about author and, ah you know, was she really appreciated the fact that you guys were involved in identifying who some of the victims are. And then, of course, I saw you i saw you and listened to you on them Brett and Alice's podcast, The Prosecutors, and I was really just struck. in that podcast when you started talking about your mission. You know, I didn't know a lot about your values as a company, and it just really struck out or stuck out to me um
Ethics and Mission of Othram
00:06:21
Speaker
ah that you were really rooted, I think rooted in this idea of being able to help and make a difference. So I just wanted to let you know, I appreciate you and I appreciate that you're here.
00:06:33
Speaker
I appreciate the kind words and honestly, um me being able to get our mission across on that podcast and in it speaking to you or anyone means the world to me because it truly is the why and why behind authoring and it really is something we are all passionate about here at Othram. Hurricane are not. We're at work every single day. We make sure that we are here to help any law enforcement agency that needs help, any case that needs help. And I think our entire mission is to to make the intractable cases, the impossible to solve cases, solvable. And um I think that's something that comes with
00:07:16
Speaker
being, knowing what it feels like not to get justice, knowing what it feels like to have a loved one ah be a victim of a crime or have a loved one lost somewhere and not be able to get answers. And that's that's the ah heart and soul of Othrom. on dave You know, the first, we have these first principles and and the first principle at Othram is do what's best for the case, even if that means don't work the case here at Othram. Don't accept it. And um it's hard for people to understand, but honestly is, I think what has made us so successful, so unified as a family sort of here working together and what's made this a lot more than a job. It's made it truly ah a way of life for all of us here. So thank you for realizing that.
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, so it really aligns with my values. So, you know, back in, I think it was April of 2010, I started a business that was focused on mental health and two things I said to myself, we're never going to turn anyone away because of money. And the other thing that I said to myself, if we are the wrong person, even if we can make money off of it, if we're the wrong person for the job, we're going to find the right resources. And those are actually two of the things that really stuck out to me. When you brought up that idea of, you know, law enforcement can come to deep you with a case and if you don't feel like you can successfully
00:08:44
Speaker
do it and that you may exhaust what's available to be tested, you'll turn it away, um maybe for a later date or if technology advances. And then the other thing that just had me taken aback, because just because I had never thought of it, you said on the prosecutor's podcast, you said if we were if If we were in this to make money, we would all be doing something else. And I can't believe I hadn't really thought about that idea. Just thinking about David's background, his work on the Human Genome Project, you both
00:09:24
Speaker
you know ah being doctors, that you could make so much more money doing so many other things. And so I was curious, what motivated you guys in this direction? Was it something from your your lives or just your research? What absolutely is um is that both of us, but but actually almost everyone that is a key person here at Othrom has, like I said, either themselves been affected by crime or have someone close to them that's been affected by crime. We've we've lived through some sort of injustice and realized that
00:10:02
Speaker
It was something that was gonna continue in twenty eighteen i remember david had an exit from the medical ah lab he had built here in the woodlands and it was. It was a really happy time and i remember thinking maybe we can go travel for some time and take a little time off you know we've always worked a lot and time. And like you said, he was part of the first human genome project, the thousand human genome project, and he is part of the team. Some of us here
Innovative Ideas in Forensic DNA Technology
00:10:28
Speaker
actually are part of the team that built the standards with NIST that the FDA uses today to do this type of sequencing in medicine and to make life or death decisions. And so those are those are those National Institute of Standards and Technology standards over it, the overall standards. OK.
00:10:46
Speaker
that our country uses today. So every time you go to a doctor and and you get sequencing to tell you what type of chemotherapy might work best or to diagnose a disorder and and pick treatment for you, um those standards were built by a lot of the author team here. And so we were we were part of the medical field and the consumer field when they first started using this as you know a way to do personal genomics and tell you something about your health. And we knew sort of the uphill battle it would take to bring this into another field. And I actually thought David had lost his mind when he came home and he said, I'm going to build a forensic lab of the future. And I thought, who's going to give you evidence? We've been in medicine our whole life. Medicine at
00:11:32
Speaker
you know Medicine is a more funded area than forensics. Everyone knows that. um Consumer genomics was a very lucrative area at the time. I just thought, why why in the world would you try to to change the forensic flow right now and bring in genomics? It's going to be really hard to do. And he said, Kristen, if people are using our medical assays to run some of this forensic evidence, and yes, a case or two or five are gonna solve every now and then if you have enough DNA, if the mixture isn't mostly victim and it has more perpetrator DNA and it's easier to see, if you don't have contamination, but most of those forensic cases will never be solved, and even worse, they'll be destroyed, the evidence
00:12:23
Speaker
Sequencing DNA is a constructive process. It consumes the evidence forever. You can't go back and do it again. And so with that destructive process, you can actually take away someone's last chance to justice if you use an assay that is inappropriate or doesn't work. And he thought, you know, if we don't make forensics predictable, then people are not going to be afraid to keep committing crimes because most of the time they're not going to get caught. And we know that CODIS alone doesn't have a match. Most of that's that's the FBI's database that they use for DNA. Right. That's when you look at 20 markers and you upload it to the known perpetrator database.
00:13:11
Speaker
And you you try to get a hit with those known perpetrators to another crime. Unfortunately, when you have unidentified remains, which is a lot of the victim cases we work, those victims are not known perpetrators. And so they're not in CODIS ever. And when you have um most of your cases, you're not the people that are committing the crimes have not been put in CODIS yet. So you just don't get a match. And so what you have is a case that's been tested for DNA, but hasn't given you an answer as to the identity of the victim or the perpetrator.
00:13:45
Speaker
And our technology works very differently. It builds these DNA profiles that has hundreds and hundreds of thousands of markers so that you can upload it to a genealogical database consented for law enforcement use and get really distant relationships that allow you to work back and figure out someone's identity without having someone specific in a database. is Is the idea there and I think there are a lot of misconceptions both about like the breadth of what's in CODIS and the number of markers that it it can hit upon. And i I also think like there are a lot of misconceptions about the process of testing.
00:14:27
Speaker
DNA, um I think we kind of have, as a general public in our heads, this idea that, oh, law enforcement has DNA, so they should test it. But we don't really think about the idea of that testing isn't necessarily successful or they're not enough markers. To really uploaded into a database that it could be lost and that's where we sort of sat pre 2018 is that a fair sort of summary of where we were.
00:14:58
Speaker
Actually, where we were is people realized that CODIS alone, standard DNA testing that has been used across the country for all this time, was not sufficient alone to identify all these perpetrators or victims. And so they started to use these medical assays that we had built to try to infer identity using this genetic genealogy stuff, forensic genetic genealogy stuff. But the assay that they were using was built for fresh DNA, for DNA that when you go to the doctor and you give blood, there's a lot of DNA there, right? And it's not made it and it's not degraded. And it's put straight into a sterile test tube and stored in the right temperature and taken straight to a lab for testing. And so those assays are purpose built for
00:15:47
Speaker
really great dna but when you get dna from a crime scene you're looking at mixtures between perpetrators and victims you're looking at contamination from bacteria you're looking at contamination from animals plants anything that might have been out there exposure to the elements all of the things that don't exist in medical samples. And unfortunately, we had purpose built the medical assays to discard all that DNA. If it was fragmented and broken into pieces, discard it. If it was the smaller of the two contributors, discard it, right? And so I knew, and David knew, and most of us here at Othram knew, that those assays wouldn't work most of the time. And
00:16:30
Speaker
It actually led us to to feel like it was necessary to purpose build technology for forensic evidence. yeah right So it had been developed and you guys had been a part of developing it for a medical setting and that's why you it stuck out to you that this isn't necessarily the best. way to do it. It was actually the wrong way to do it. And that's what being done. And it most of the time wouldn't give you an answer, but it would consume the evidence. And although you can call a patient back and say, can you come back for another blood draw? You can't call a perpetrator back and say, Hey, we ran out of your DNA. We need some more. Could you swing by drop some more off?
00:17:14
Speaker
more DNA. So what happens is unfortunately they get away with that crime and then there's another victim and another victim. And we really felt strongly that we would be able to identify every unidentified victim and we would be able to identify perpetrators the first time they commit a crime if the correct technology was built. And so we took a few years to build forensic grade genome sequencing, which is genome sequencing, tailored for forensics, tailored to make those intractable samples more tractable. And I will sit here and tell you today, in 2024, we still cannot work on every piece of forensic
Overcoming Skepticism in DNA Technology
00:17:57
Speaker
evidence. We cannot. We have to say we're not ready because we're not certain we can bring value for quite a few cases. But
00:18:06
Speaker
We can work on a lot more than we could in 2019 and 2020, and we continue to get better every single month, every single year, and create more truth sets, more, we do more mock case work on the research side of Althrom, so that we can incorporate more and more evidence. But what we have done is we've made this predictable. We can tell law enforcement before we consume the sample and before we consume their budget that we are going to be able to help in their case and build one of these DNA profiles that will allow them to infer someone's identity.
00:18:44
Speaker
you You had mentioned earlier that when David first brought the idea to you, you sort of thought, and I'm summarizing your words because you didn't say this exactly, that he had lost his mind. um and but ah But I imagine like starting a business um carries all these risks no matter what the business is. you know ah You know starting something that no one else is doing in enhances or increases the rest could you tell tell me a little bit about what it was like during the early years to when you had your first successful case and i imagine there is a party after that.
00:19:28
Speaker
Oh yes, there were a ton of no's. No's, we will never send evidence to you. Who are you? No. You know, a ton of no's and a ton of closed doors. I actually told David once, you are jumping in a pool with no water head first. And you're telling me that it's going to be okay because if we build it, people will come. And I feel like How do you like the last words of many failed business person? And he was certain. He just said, well, we just have to build the right technology and and grow it by just working with one agency, one agency, one agency, one case. And at the beginning, his strategy was actually
00:20:14
Speaker
Give me that one case you've tried everything on. There's nothing to lose. You just have an empty tube of DNA. There's not much left and you have no technology that would ever work with that little bit amount of DNA. and it would work. And then that agency would be mind blown and would send us another case and another case. And then eventually when all those work, they would send us their backlog of DNA cases and want to use it and even contemporary cases where they didn't have that CODIS hit.
00:20:45
Speaker
And i think that's how often group we started to build relationships with one agency at a time one law enforcement agent at a time working on their sort of white whale case. And i remember one day david said on the phone to a law enforcement agent you know we work on cases that are impossible to cuz he was trying to think of the most difficult. case i yeah I remember laughing and thinking, it's true, but right now we're getting all of the impossible cases and trying to make them tractable. um Because of the predictability of this, we have earned a lot of trust. We work with hundreds of agencies across the US at this point, and a lot of them are up on our website. If you go look at all our cases, it says which agency sent us the case.
00:21:32
Speaker
um But there's hundreds. There's hundreds across the country. There's international agencies now in Canada, UK, Australia. It's pretty exciting. and i you know i I hear it all the time sort of like in the in the criminal justice and the law enforcement community now, especially in the last two or three years. where a DNA case will be solved and it'll be some small amount of DNA or it'll be an ancient case. And before it's even announced that you guys are involved, I'll see the speculation, right? Oh, it must have been Othram. It must have been Othram. That must feel good on some levels that you've become the people that other people feel can do the impossible.
00:22:17
Speaker
Yeah, it feels incredible to be at the forefront of this. And honestly, I i did. I doubted David. And I hate that I did because the the purpose behind this is is so great. The impact that this technology could have is so immense. And I'll talk to you a little bit about it um in a second. But I can't imagine doing anything more impactful, more purposeful. But I even, my my sort of my factual mind, my scientific mind, talked me out of it because I thought it was an impossible task. um you
00:22:54
Speaker
David was just, he he was fearless. And I think a lot of us sit here often and and and talk about what made us make that sort of jump from lucrative careers to something that was such a gamble. ah Because we're not building a new company. What we were building is an entire new way to test forensic evidence, an entire new field. right yeah and Yeah, the kind of thing that normally a university would do, right? You don't have the profit concerns. You're just doing research. It's not normally something that a a company would do if that makes sense.
00:23:32
Speaker
Well, maybe that's that's also part of it. Most of us here came from university backgrounds initially. I mean, David was an academic for years and a lot of the other scientists here were academics for years. So maybe and we had that academic mentality as part of us as well that sort of drove us to want to research, to make things better, to drive sort of. But we we realized that the government wasn't going to fund a new way to do forensic testing because No one really understood why the old way didn't really work a hundred percent of the time why it wasn't the best way to do it and i. We had to show them we had to show that if you do this in a predictable robust and scalable manner you get a very different outcome.
00:24:20
Speaker
I imagine the beginning had to be a lot of education of people in a community that you you weren't really coming from. how did that How did that start? That must have been so difficult. was. it was a lot like um i mean it It was so many no's that I honestly wasn't sure there was going to be a day of yes's. Even when something worked, people were very skeptical about Othrom and the technology. um I know that you said that now people
00:24:53
Speaker
when something works, people unanimously think of Othram and, yeah, I am so proud. there's There's a lot of pride that comes with that because- Can I confess? Yeah. So when i when I first heard of you and I heard about it, I was like, this is way too good to be true. I don't trust this. And that was my initial reaction. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. In a couple of years, we're going to find out that they're actually Theranos. But it's not me. I i think i I gave my very first crime con talk. And I was so nervous to get up there and be the face of this technology, because it does mean the world to me. And someone said, oh my gosh, she's like the next Theranos. And i I felt so bad when I saw that review. And I'm like, no. I get it.
00:25:39
Speaker
um It sounds too good to be true, but it's not. and And it's not something that was built in a day or two. There's um Envisioning the Future, Virginia Tech highlights a magazine that came out in 2011. Now 2011, that's what, seven years before the Golden State Killer even. And yeah yeah where David says, in his his like the big old little quote they put out there, the caption in that magazine, he says, these markers that are used for cancer and instability should be used for forensics as well. You know, this is something that we have been thinking about forever. Because originally, am I right about and I might be misconception here that when you look at a database like the FBI's CODIS database or the way that we handle DNA in cases before, you looked at a narrow set of markers, right? Like not the full profile. Is that fair?
00:26:36
Speaker
That's true. and You're also comparing it to those exact markers in known individuals. and so If you're in the CODIS database because you've committed a crime and you commit another crime and your DNA is tested, they will compare it to all of the DNA in that database and find you because you're already in there. and so they'll ah Jason is responsible for both of these crimes. But what happens? Hopefully, hopefully that never happens.
00:27:09
Speaker
yeah does it happen but But it's my example for today. but right But what usually happens is you have someone that's committed multiple crimes and their DNA is in the database. I'll take a contemporary example that we worked on, the Rachel Moran case. Maryland, yeah, Hartford County, I think. Yes. So she was a mom of five and she was ah sexually abused and murdered um on her hike in the morning. And when they entered that DNA into CODIS, what they saw is, oh, we have a match. The same man
00:27:47
Speaker
Committed a crime a few months ago in california against this woman and her nine-year-old daughter He attacked them at their house and so they knew that the same person had committed the crime But they didn't know the person's identity because the person's identity didn't exist in codis Sometimes we've worked cases where there were 13 crimes connected in CODIS or 12 crimes or five crimes connected in CODIS, but there is no one's identity. That's when our technology comes into play. It's actually complementary to the forensic system that exists now because we can take that DNA sample, build a different DNA profile that has more markers,
00:28:29
Speaker
upload those markers to the genealogical databases consented for law enforcement use. um We run FTDNA for forensics, the family treaty and a database and DNA. And so you can upload to that database and you can search every everyone that has consented for law enforcement use. And what you get is really, really distant relatives and the distance between the person that left DNA at the crime scene and each one of those relatives. You can find out that someone's a fifth cousin to this person, a third cousin to this person, a fourth cousin to this person. And so it's like a little sonar and your puzzle piece can only fit into one family unit and one generation. And it's just putting those pieces together in a way that we couldn't
00:29:18
Speaker
Normally because i was thinking of two things that you were talking i you know cuz i've heard of a lot of cases where let's say there's a blood sample. But it's so small that you can't get the all enough of the markers that you need for for for coders like in just taking this is a hypothetical. You may be able to build a broader profile because you're looking at many more markers and you know make a connection that couldn't ever be made in codis is not fair.
00:29:51
Speaker
100%. Cody was there to con confirm identity. We are there to infer identity. Got it. Got it. And so that I guess the second leg of that is really sort of the expertise and doing the genealogical analysis. You guys and you guys do that as well. You've become experts in that. Is that a fair Yes, we have um I think we have the largest private forensic genetic genealogy team um in the country and there are people that have worked you know thousands of these cases now and they they work really hard at doing this. We also ah have built software to to help our genealogy be more efficient and and and more effective and that's why you see the volume that you see coming out of author.
00:30:40
Speaker
I see you've been able to advance it so it's less of a manual process to to analyze it which allows you to be more efficient and move faster which i imagine in some ways probably gives and thinking about your mission and what you're talking about um the speed of being able to do it probably gives you. comfort because the faster you can do it, maybe the fewer victims there might be. That's exactly right. um There's a huge difference. In fact, I'm working on legislation where everyone is required to collect metrics as to what technology are you using? How efficient is it? Are you identifying someone at the end of it? And how fast are you identifying someone? And I was asked once, why do you care about the speed? And the answer is,
00:31:26
Speaker
if you're If there's an active perpetrator out there, if you catch them in seven days versus seven years, how many victims did you save? Right. Right. And there are victims that are about to be victims that were being stalked by serial killers and serial rapists that we have identified here at Othrom. And I'm sure these stories will eventually be public in public domain, but we let law enforcement do that. Where law enforcement knew by their GPS location and their cell phone
00:32:00
Speaker
Um, trackers that these people were staking that next victim and those victims have gone home to have normal lives, have, you know, holidays and never even know that they never knew they were gonna be victims. Wow. And that tim is amazing. that must be so rewarding. like Just the sitting back and thinking about that kind of gives me the chills, the idea that you know somebody could be targeting one of my loved ones or somebody I care deeply about, but because
00:32:34
Speaker
they've been caught by your technology that in 2017 didn't exist or 2016 that you actually save the life of someone I care about just causes me to pause and and think about how amazing that is. what One of the things that I was curious about in thinking about your approach it being very different, I think, from a lot of businesses where your traditional approach would be like, hoard our approach to doing this, don't talk about it much, become the sort of like miracle people, but don't let the industry change because... you know
00:33:15
Speaker
You're driven by a profit motive. And one of the things that I had heard you say was, you wish more laboratories started to take your approach to forensic science. Tell me tell me about that. That's actually the goal. So um the Carla Walker Act is the first bill that we've helped sort of push through the federal government, and it has three parts. The first part is to create funding for testing for this technology, because there's not enough funding to test all these cases, especially with new technologies.
Advocating for Federal Support in DNA Testing
00:33:49
Speaker
And the second part is to create funding, equal amount of funding, to be able to transfer this technology into state labs across the United States.
00:33:59
Speaker
And um the third part is to collect the metrics we just spoke of. And it's hugely important to us. One, Othrom in the world is incredible. And we've helped hundreds of people from becoming the next victim, maybe even thousands already. And we'll probably be able to help tens of thousands by the time, you know, next few years come by and and the way that this technology is scaling. But we can't help everyone and we can't work every case. And if there were thousands of bathrooms, if every state lab in this country used the right technology the first time and identified these perpetrators quicker, identified them the first time they committed a crime, we would help put serial crime to extinction. We would help
00:34:45
Speaker
identify every victim out there that's unidentified and give their families answers and allow them to have their voice back in justice one day. And to us, that's a whole lot more important than any amount of money you could give us. yeah how do you I'm curious about another piece that I had noticed DNA solves and I've seen I've seen these posts where someone will post a link to a case on DNA solves and I know you guys you guys are the driving force behind the work there where
00:35:17
Speaker
you know they'll They'll be crowdfunding money. I've noticed never a ridiculous amount of money, but for lab supplies and other things like that. and I'm curious, where did where did the idea of crowdfunding come from and is that to sort of like support law enforcement who may not have the resources to pay for all those things? Yes, exactly. and And it's another idea David came up with, and I thought he had lost his mind with. Again, here, you guys I'm telling you guys the truth. He is definitely the brains behind this. And I'm always like, this is not going to work. But we were working a case um where there was a hiker that had hiked across um the country and had met a whole bunch of people along the way. They knew him as mostly harmless. There was no identity. And he ended up dying in his tent.
00:36:09
Speaker
And every everyone wanted to know who he was, but no one had any idea. And Nick Thompson, who um was ah wired at the time, but he's the ah the CEO of the Atlantic I think right now, he um he actually called David and said, You know, we put out things on on this guy, no one has any information on him, you know, would this technology work? And David said yes. And he said, well, there's a lot of people that are interested. And David went online and he found all these online communities. And David said, you know what, we could probably crowdfund the amount of money you would take to solve these cases. And like you said, it's usually single digit numbers.
00:36:53
Speaker
$7,500 is what it costs to to fund one of these cases and do the DNA testing and the genealogy to help bring a lead in. and um And so that was the first case we crowdfunded. And within a day or so, a couple days, it was immediately funded and we were able to start the testing. And the testing ah pointed to a small town in Parrish, Louisiana. And even though it was a Cajun background and the genealogy would have taken a while, um what we did, Nick Thompson and David put targeted ads on Facebook to that little town in Parrish, Louisiana. And within a couple days, someone had called in the identity of mostly harmless. And so it was... It was a really good example to show that you can answer these questions rather quickly, efficiently, and with very few thousands of dollars. There are hundreds of cases in request today. Request is our law enforcement portal that have already passed feasibility analysis. That means we know we can bring value if we could test this evidence. And law enforcement want us to test the case, and there's no funding for those cases.
00:38:10
Speaker
And so the case of ah baby Angel Doe David made national news a couple days ago with that case. and Which case is that? yeah it's a It's a baby that was found murdered um in Texas and the AG had made an arrest ah ah about a week ago and we posted it up on the on the DNA solves or the recent case work on Othrom and there was no money for that case. That's a case that the crowd funded through DNA solves
00:38:43
Speaker
Many of our cases are still crowdfunds through DNA solves where people are pitching in five dollars to a case that's in their area of interest or a case that's a type of case they'd like to see solved or someone that sees a missing person and they're missing someone and they're hoping that that's their missing person. And it's really powerful, but it's a band-aid. It's a band-aid to a much bigger problem and that is that federal funding needs to be created to to be able to test all of these cases. um Everyone deserves justice. Everyone deserves their name back and no one should ever go nameless.
00:39:21
Speaker
And this is something that now works and it works robustly and predictably. So funding for it should be created, um in my opinion, and it should be part of the the federal government's function. Yeah. One of the other things I was thinking about, like, That idea, you guys are not just working cases that, you know, we're trying to identify a perpetrator. You're working cases where you're trying to identify the unidentified or find clues about the missing. But um I without naming the actual case, but it's a really well known. It's a really well known case in the in the Northeast. And I remember having a conversation with the father in that case, and it was a disappearance case.
00:40:09
Speaker
And he was making the point, and we weren't talking about Othram in the conversation, but later I found out that you guys were involved in it. And he was making the point that there was great comfort for him when the DNA was tested, and they found out that they were able to rule someone out. And that was just as important and just as powerful. And i i you know it was really interesting because I was talking to the father of the victim and he was making the point that that was really important and that was really powerful, that it it plays both it plays both roles. It helps the innocent who might be a suspect as well as the law enforcement in trying to bring suspects to justice.
00:40:56
Speaker
and Exactly. It reduces uncertainty. There are so many cases we have worked that are not going to ever be posted on DNA solves because the person we identified or the the DNA that we worked was actually not probative to this scene, was not the person that actually committed the crime. And it made sense after that person was identified. But this allowed us to remove that person from the CODIS database. It allows people to get exonerated. There's a case we worked where um It's in the sort of in the news, but there's someone that has spent 60 years in prison. And we worked on a piece of evidence that showed that that was that did not belong to him for the three homicides that he had been put in prison for. And he's still alive. He's 82 years old. And all is to be exonerated, right? it's There are so many stories out there, so many stories I can tell you where, like the case you're bringing up,
00:41:56
Speaker
The family just needs answers. I think the most the most powerful thing about this technology is that it removes uncertainty and it brings truth, unbiased truth to the investigation. um Whether or not you have identified the perpetrator, being able to exonerate someone, to remove someone from from doubt is just as important because it allows law enforcement to focus on the next lead, on the next person, on the next possible piece of evidence, and it allows the investigation to move forward. When you don't have those answers, you're kind of stuck.
00:42:35
Speaker
Yeah, I was, um yeah, in the example that I was giving before, you know, the state lab was having difficulty with testing the DNA, you all stepped in, you were able to identify the DNA, and it was a person who had a reasonable alibi. And so that was able to take that, that, that the family found like, such comfort in it, which, you know, I i wonder, and I wonder, do you guys, because I think of like your average you know laboratory worker at a state lab, you you often don't get to touch or find out the reactions of the families. And I'm just curious whether, do you get to see in your work the impact downstream for people or do you get to hear from them?
00:43:27
Speaker
A lot, and that's probably my favorite part of the job. i um I am actually surprised every day at how many family members actually reach out to us and want to come see the lab and see how the case was solved or how we worked on the evidence, want to say thank you, write letters to us, send cards, give us phone calls. um And every story is so crazy because these cases are so different, but every story boils down to they have waited for such a long time for answers and these answers have helped them turn the page. When something terrible happens to you or someone you love, I don't believe that
00:44:10
Speaker
you're going to get closure. I don't believe in closure in terrible situations like that. But what I believe is that the truth allows you to move to that next chapter. These people are all consumed by not knowing what happened to their loved one, where they are, or who committed a crime against them or someone they loved. And I've met family members that spent 50 years in the same house, went back to the crime scene every single Saturday night hoping the perpetrator would come back and relive it and they could confront them. I've met family members that hired detectives with the last little bit of dollars they had hoping they could find their loved one.
00:44:49
Speaker
family members that became law enforcement trying to solve their loved one's case. I've met victims that told me they hadn't slept in 30 something years because they didn't feel safe and they finally enclosed their eyes. And I've met people that were accused of the crime, that exiled themselves, that took themselves away from the world because people really believed they could have harmed that person they cared about and loved all of these years. that told me that they have seen the sun for the first time, and it changes you. Just listening to you talk, you know the way that you're talking about it, you know you sound like somebody who's walked in the shoes of um those people. And I wanted to ask are you, it it sounds like you are you were immensely grateful that you were wrong, and David was right on this one.
00:45:46
Speaker
Oh my gosh, you don't even know. And and even when I told him it's it's like jumping in a pool with no water, I you know prayed and hoped every night that that I was wrong and he was right and that he'd make it work. And and I knew that if anyone could, it would be this team. i just um You know, it seemed almost and impossible and it still seems so surreal to see so much of the law enforcement community embrace this technology rather quickly. I mean, look at the change that we've made in just a few years. In 2019, we announced five cases. I think we've announced five cases this week already. And so... Wow.
00:46:30
Speaker
completely change the velocity, the volume by which these cases are being worked, the types of cases that are being worked. We've gone from cold cases to contemporary cases. um The amount of time it takes for a law enforcement agency to flip something over to this kind of technology, it's all changed so quickly. So what's it the idea with law enforcement that they trusted you at first with the cold cases because you know what the heck, we've exhausted it, but now they're coming to you for the live cases? That's exactly right. At first it was, here's the case that there's no other hope for that case because there are no leads, there is no way to work it. Now,
00:47:12
Speaker
same law enforcement agents that trust us with those cold cases and they've been solved. Come back and say, look, we put it in CODIS. This person's not there. They're a repeat offender. Before they do it again, help us find them. Give us give us a lead. They're going to this technology first to get those leads rather than shifting through the 20,000 leads they might get from the public or whatever whatever tips they may have or eyewitnesses. They're trusting this technology first. and I mean, we've changed. The speed of this technology has changed. Initially, it would take us six to eight weeks to build one of these profiles. Now, because we have all of these thousands of solved cases that we use as standards or truth sets,
00:47:58
Speaker
we can set profiles in a day or two. so It makes a huge difference in how quickly we can help law enforcement identify a perpetrator as well. like The way that you describe it, it's almost like you're more than a laboratory on some levels and I wonder whether other labs can learn from this, but like you're really the combination of a laboratory and an investigative support function right like in terms of but being able to take it to that next space of the genetic genealogy piece of it. And I'm just curious and thinking about that. like What do you hope for the future of sort of forensic DNA work or forensic work more generally you know laboratories, law enforcement agencies?
Future Vision for DNA Technology in Crime Solving
00:48:43
Speaker
Yeah, we actually are not just a laboratory. In fact, our value, although we built new laboratory methods, was never to be a laboratory. We had to build a laboratory as a showcase to show that if you did it differently, it would work. But our hope is that the state laboratories would be the laboratories. so And we could be sort of that overflow for those impossible and tractable cases that are still too hard maybe or or don't fall within the certain categories that have already been worked through. But what we really have tried to build is is a system, a software system, and from the time you enter that law enforcement portal all the way through the reports that are being generated here at Othram that
00:49:30
Speaker
that you can take directly to court as a packet and take them into legislation and and help get someone convicted for a crime. All of that so that law enforcement can very quickly use this as a tool, a different kind of tool in their toolbox that I think was missing before. And my hope, my hope is that this tool is readily accessible and funded by our government and even required. If you have DNA in a case, and you have an unidentified victim or a perpetrator that isn't in CODIS, then you should immediately flip to this technology and you should immediately infer identity and help get that perpetrator off the street before the next crime and help give that victim their voice back and justice.
00:50:18
Speaker
I wanted to just give you a chance for any closing thoughts. And one of the things that sort of struck me is this idea of getting law enforcement agencies to um think of things in a new way. And like, you know, if you've been around the criminal justice system, you know, they're usually like 20 years behind everything or a government agency. And i' in terms of sort of like the mindset of people and and feel free to share anything you want as closing thoughts.
00:50:50
Speaker
I almost feel like in listening to you that the a mindset shift about what is possible and how not just what is possible in terms of DNA but also genetic genealogy and also in terms of like funding and resources and an assortment of other things that if there's sort of like a mindset shift like David had when he originally came up with the idea that that may move us forward. But but go go ahead, any closing thoughts that you have? I do. um You know, I feel but what I would tell law enforcement to think about is they do that have these relationships and sort of the the way we've always done it. And this is what we've always done. So we'll do it this way again, and we'll try that first. And, you know, we have relationships with these particular vendors and products and laboratories or whatever it may be. And so we're going to keep doing the same thing we've always done.
00:51:48
Speaker
and and hope for a better outcome, I guess, or hope for a different outcome. And I guess what I would say is this isn't about equity to technologies you've always used, vendors you've always used, processes you've always used. It's about equity to victims and their families. And if there is a better way to solve a case, then that way should be used first in medicine that's required if if tomorrow there's a new cancer drug that comes out on the market and it works ninety percent of the time and the drug that was out there before worked seventy percent of the time for a certain type of cancer. Doctors would be required to use that chemotherapy first and if they didn't it would be malpractice.
00:52:37
Speaker
I would like law enforcement to start thinking about the technologies and the methods that they use to solve cases in that way. How many times has that method solved my case? How many times has that method reduced the uncertainty in an investigation? And maybe we should try this new method that has this much higher success rate and see and compare. and once they do use it then maybe go to that first rather than trying everything else first and then going to that because if you can shift to using the right tool quicker
00:53:13
Speaker
And DNA testing is not always the right tool. I'm not saying that our technology is always the solution, but if you can think of your toolbox the way a doctor does, here are all the treatments and drugs that I have access to, and here are the percentages of efficiency, and I'm gonna go for the most effective one because that's what I'm told to do. If you can think of your toolbox that way in law enforcement rather than this is how we've always done it, then I think we can progress much faster and solve a lot of more cases much faster and give these victims and their families answers quicker. Yeah, and have like a powerful positive impact on the world on so many levels. So I wanted to just thank you, Kristen, for taking the time. I know you're busy and I know you have a hurricane to deal with, but i for taking the time to come and talk about this, because I think these are just such important issues to
00:54:08
Speaker
I mean, bringing justice to so many different people, whether you are somebody who is under a cloud of suspicion or you're innocent or or you are a victim who's looking for any... You were dead right. like There isn't closure in these kinds of things, but looking for some kind of answers. So thanks again for the work that you're doing and also taking the time to talk about it. Thank you so much for having me on. Honestly, we're amazing at DNA work and helping resolve some of these cases and and not very amazing and getting our voices out there to everyone. And so I appreciate you giving me this platform. Absolutely, absolutely.
00:54:52
Speaker
If you want to help fund a case or contribute your DNA, your support can help solve crimes, enable the identification of John and Jane Does, and bring closure to families. You can go to dnasolves.com. If you'd like to join us and our listeners for more discussions, we can be found on most social media platforms, including a listener driven Facebook group called the Silver Linings Fireside Chat. For deeper conversations with our guests and live conversations with other listeners, you can also join us on our Patreon at www.patreon dot.com forward slash the Silver Linings Handbook.
00:55:38
Speaker
I'm Jason Blair. This is the Silver Linings Handbook Podcast. We'll see you all again next week.