Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Brutal serial rapist hides from justice for decades. CAPTURED thanks to new DNA tool.

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

Three brutal rapes go unpunished for more than 20 years. But now using investigative genetic geneaology, police finds the rapist living across the country in Georgia. The suspect is a retired federal corrections officer. Joining Nancy Grace to talk about the case: Sacramento DA Anne Marie Schubert, Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn, DNA expert with  Scales Biological Laboratory, Inc George Schiro, Joseph Scott Morgan  Forensics expert, Judge Ashley Wilcott and reporter Dave Mack. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. May 5th, 1992. A 52-year-old Sacramento area woman returns to her home in this Rosemont neighborhood. And as the sun is going down, she walks in. Her life would never be the same. And was almost immediately accosted and assaulted by someone who was lying in wait inside of her residence.

For the next over three hours, she was assaulted, sexually assaulted, and various sexual acts were committed against her. Neighbors do gather to talk near the house where Wednesday night, a 44-year-old woman came home to find a rapist waiting for her. She was blindfolded, bound, and repeatedly raped and beaten for what police say was at least an hour. Suspect physically attacked her, bound her, and sexually assaulted her. In the first two cases, women were raped and tortured with a knife in their own home. In the third case, he reportedly used a stun gun and dragged a college student off and committed, quote, monstrous crimes.

How does one man get away with repeated rapes and for years? I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. And could it be true that this rapist, a brutal rapist, even working as a part-time lecturer on law enforcement? I'm telling you something. Again, I've tried a lot of rape cases. This guy needs to rot in hell. With me right now, an all-star lineup, very special guests joining us from Sacramento, the Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert. Also with us, the Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn, George Skiro, DNA expert at Scales Biological Laboratory, Inc., renowned forensic expert, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, Joseph Scott Morgan, judge, trial lawyer at AshleyWilcott.com. Ashley Wilcott joining me right now, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, Dave Mack. Dave, I know what a rape is

all about, as does every woman listening to this story right now. But this isn't just a story. These are real victims that suffered. You know, people say they'll get closure when the perp is finally arrested. There's no such thing. It affects you the rest of your life. But just tell me something, Dave Mack. How many rape victims are we talking about that we know of?

And how does this guy elude police? I think the key is talking about that we know of? And how does this guy elude police? I think the key is you said that we know of, because when you look at what we're actually charging them with between now, it's between 1992 and 1994. Two of the women were attacked in their homes where he was lying in wait. And the third one was apparently particularly heinous, where he grabs a 22-year- old off a jogging trail uses a stun gun and then drags her off and attacks her so we've got different mo's here in the same guide

the one thing we have is the dna linking him to all three of those but then you mentioned he actually was a guest lecturer about law enforcement and ended up spending 10 years in sacramento minnow before he leaves to work in the federal penal system. He was hiding in plain sight. You know, to Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn. Again, welcome, Daniel, and to District Attorney Schubert. Daniel, I've got to ask you a question. Toward the last, let me just think, maybe seven years that I prosecuted, I began to specialize in serial

murders and serial rapes. When you start seeing similarities between rape, MO, modus operandi, method of operation, it's just got to drive you crazy knowing this may be the same guy. What about when the MOs are different and you can't really link them together? Yeah, well, normally we don't see two distinct differences, but this one there was. And this one's also unique in that Anne-Marie, when she was a deputy DA and one of our retired detectives now, submitted for the first John Doe warrant based on DNA in California back then, and this is the one. So the detective, this was one of his only open cases, and now it's solved. So there's great work by the detectives in Amory. Take a listen to our friend Becca Habacker. This was one of the three attacks

that 59-year-old Mark Mantufalo is accused of committing between 1992 and 94. One woman was raped in her Sacramento County home. Another woman was attacked on a jogging path in Davis. And a third woman was raped in her home in Sacramento. All three women survived their attacks. I can tell you that the victim in the case out of Yolo County has been notified that the man who did this to her is in custody. She's very happy. At a news conference Monday afternoon, Sacramento area law enforcement explained just how they connected three crime scenes from the early 90s to this guy who was arrested at his home near Atlanta on Friday. We knew these crimes were all

committed by the same suspect because they were linked by DNA left at each of the three crime scenes. This is so critical right now. the investigative tool of linking DNA. With me, Sacramento's District Attorney Anne Marie Schiebert. District Attorney Schiebert, please explain why this is so critical that this type of genealogical DNA be allowed across the country. Well, there's no question that since the arrest of the Golden State Killer that this new tool that law enforcement is using is really changing the world. I mean, it's helping us go back decades. I mean, we know from the Golden State Killer, it's gone back 40

years. We've seen over 60 cases across the country that in just over a year where individuals that, as Dave says, are just living right amongst us have been identified. At least three cases now have been resolved. One horrific one was the kidnap, rape, and murder of April Tinsley. But there's no question it's changing the world. It's bringing people to justice. It's lifting clouds off of individuals who had been suspected for years but were, in fact, innocent. And ultimately, it's making our community safer.

And really, the most important thing is prosecutors and and law enforcement it's giving hope to victims that they long thought perhaps was was had vanished so it's a tremendous tool that we're going to continue to use within our power and do everything we can to make our community safe and speaking of april tinsley that district attorney emory schubert just brought up listen to kate snow eight-year-old april Tinsley went missing walking to a friend's house. Her body was found in a ditch. Thirty years. Thirty years this family has waited for answers. Tinsley's killer taunted detectives with a message scrawled on a barn.

Then, in 2004, threatening notes found on young girls' bicycles. But after all these years, it only took weeks to solve the case using a new, cutting-edge DNA analysis. Parabon Labs compared the suspect's DNA to a public database of genealogy information, results people get from a test like 23andMe. They found distant cousins to build the family tree backward, then looked for descendants and narrowed the search to two brothers. It really had to be one or the other

because they were carrying the right mix of DNA. Investigators collected DNA from one of the brothers' trash and got a match. John Miller was arrested Sunday. In just three months, Parabon has identified four other killers and is working 40 more cases. According to April Tinsley's family, allegedly getting closure as 59-year-old perp sentenced to 80 years behind bars. This is 30 years after he rapes and kills an eight-year-old little girl, then taunting cops with condom clues. Their words to him, burn in hell, you monster. I feel the same way and thank god for this new tool genealogical dna crime stories with nancy grace

eight-year-old april tinsley went missing walking to a friend's house her body was found in a ditch 30 years 30 years this family has waited for answers tinsley's killer taunted detectives with a message scrawled on a barn then Then, in 2004, threatening notes found on young girls' bicycles. But after all these years, it only took weeks to solve the case using a new, cutting-edge DNA analysis. Parabon Labs compared the suspect's DNA to a public database of genealogy information, results people get from a test like 23andMe. They found distant cousins to build the family tree backward,

then looked for descendants and narrowed the search to two brothers. It really had to be one or the other because they were carrying the right mix of DNA. Investigators collected DNA from one of the brothers' trash and got a match. John Miller was arrested Sunday. In just three months, Parabon has identified four other killers and is working 40 more cases. What a perv. This guy not only rapes and kills an eight-year-old girl throwing her body into a ditch like she's trash, but then taunts investigators and cops, leaving condoms, rubbers as clues, taunting notes saying he did the crime.

Mother Janet Tinsley begged prosecutors to seek the death penalty against Miller. The case goes cold for a long, long time. And then finally, thanks to genealogical DNA, he is behind bars. And let me go to you, special guest George Skiro, DNA expert with Scales Biological Laboratory, Inc. George, I remember the first time I tried a DNA case. I didn't really even understand what I was dealing with. But I insisted the crime lab bring in blowups of what they could see under the microscope. So I could explain it to the jury. He got up there with all, it looked like a bad film from an old camera that you just unroll.

I looked at it. I looked at the jury. And I said, why don't you just try to explain it to us verbally? Because unless you're a scientist and you're looking at this, it looks like a bunch of dots. So explain to me, how do I know? I mean, the odds are like one in 5 trillion that this is the guy. I mean, the odds are incredible. You're dead in the water if you get a DNA match. Explain to me what

genealogical DNA is and why it's so important. Nancy, genealogical DNA is a different type of DNA than we look at in crime labs and forensic works. It's actually looking at physical locations on the chromosomes that are very close together so that when these are passed down through families, they're linked. So that's why they can go out so far and look at the second cousins and third cousins. Then once they get that DNA matched to a potential relative, they can use conventional genealogical methods to backtrack and look at family trees, build a family tree to get back to the individual itself. Then what can be done is once they find that individual, they can take a DNA. Okay, wait a minute.

You know what? I'm drinking out of the fire hydrant right now. It was just too much too fast. I'm trying to compare what you're telling me. You know, Paul Holes, one of the detectives on the Golden State Killer case, he actually had to draw a chart for me to understand this, George Skiro, because I thought, you know, foolishly, that you have DNA from the murder or the rape. And then through, let's just say one of these genealogical websites where people trace themselves back to Ireland, okay, where everybody is from Ireland.

And I thought it was just that simple. It's not. You have to go back generations and generations and generations. And you take this grandma and this great-grandpa and you take it all the way down multiple generations to get a match. Now, can you just explain this in a nutshell, Skiro? We're not all scientists like you. Okay, I'm just a JD. Break it down. Well, essentially, it's looking for links between families and then following those links, following those breadcrumbs until you get to that individual you're looking for.

And then you can take his DNA and compare it to the forensic DNA sample and see if there's a match. And that's what gives you those huge numbers in terms of making an identification. District Attorney from Sacramento, Ann Marieie Schiebert with us. DA Schiebert, I don't understand why there is opposition to genealogical DNA use. Oh, it's just, I think there's just, you know, some people out there that are privacy individuals, but I think it's important for people to understand is that cops never get their hands on people's DNA in these genealogy sites. It's not like they're out there, you know, collecting somebody's actual profile.

And that's an important message that the public needs to understand is that they're simply given a list, like everybody else that decides to go onto one of these sites to find their biological parents or, you know, adoptees do this or individuals that were products of perhaps sperm donors. Cops are never given that actual profile. They're simply said, well, you might have this relative, second cousin twice removed, and that's what they take.

So they're never doing anything with somebody's actual profile. The profile they have is the bad guys who left it behind at a crime scene. So that's what's important to remember is that, and it's an incredible tool that law enforcement, you know, we expect our law enforcement to keep us safe. And what we're doing, what people like Chief Hahn and our sheriff and our law enforcement partners are doing is they are doing everything they can within the bounds of the law to make sure that they are identifying violent criminals. We're not going after people that are breaking into cars. We're simply going after individuals who have committed horrific, horrific crimes. You know, one of the victims that I saw one time on the Golden State Killer said,

you know, this wasn't a rape that lasted three hours. It lasted 42 years. So we have to remember that we are balancing privacy versus public safety. When we're talking about violent criminals, we're using the tools that we have within the bounds of the law to bring those people to justice. Joining me, forensics expert, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, professor at Jacksonville State University, Joseph Scott Morgan.

Joe Scott, okay, let me wrap my mind around this because I understand DNA. I understand DNA matches. I understand how you get DNA. But on these genealogical websites, in my mind, there's not really a privacy issue because someone somewhere in your family has given a DNA sample, usually through saliva. The Constitution protects you from police banging down your door, no offense, Police Chief Daniel Hahn, or forcing you to give a confession. But the Constitution does not protect you from somebody in your family

or a distant relative from handing over their DNA to a website. Yes, you're right, Nancy. That is not the case. You're not protected constitutionally from something, for instance, that a familial connection has done. So that's not off limits at this point. I think that echoing what the DA said, I think that there are privacy concerns among certain people because they just don't understand. And one of the things that needs to happen is further education about this just so that people feel safe. Because as you stated, it's confusing. It is.

It's just confusing. I teach, lightly teach DNA to criminal justice students. And still at the end of the day, it's still, you know, you'll see big question marks over their heads, you know, wondering, well, how does all of this work? Because the science behind it is highly complex. To Judge Ashley Wilcott joining me, Ashley, here's the bottom line. When Joe Scott Morgan says, trying to explain it to people, the defense bar understands full well. They're not idiots. Okay.

They understand full well what DNA is, how it works, and how this works, genealogical DNA. So what is the possible complaint? I mean, I'm so proud of District Attorney Anne-Marie Schubert and Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn. They've got a violent rapist off the street. You don't like genealogical DNA? Fine, you invite him over to your house for Sunday dinner and to spend the night. That'll be a cold day in hell when that happens. Nobody wants them in their neighborhood, but they don't want Anne-Marie Schubert and Daniel Hahn to use genealogical DNA. What's the argument?

Well, let me start first by saying I completely agree that the interest of the public far outweighs the right to privacy. If defense wants to argue right to privacy, now don't interrupt because I know you're about to scream there's no privacy. But I think defense attorneys in zealously representing their client, whether I agree with it or not, there's a constitutional right they have to being represented. They are arguing, listen, they did have a right to privacy because perhaps he did not submit his own DNA. Perhaps a different family member submitted their DNA and it led to him. And they're going to argue. And I don't agree with this argument. So don't misunderstand me, listeners, but they are going to try to argue. Even if he chose to do it, he was doing it to accompany, to get the results for himself, not for law enforcement, to be able to access and that there does exist a right to privacy.

This is a new area of law. Again, I believe they can completely legally be obtained with subpoena like the police have done. However, I think a defense attorney is going to argue, listen, new area of law. We want courts to rule on this because there is a right to privacy. crime stories with nancy grace yeah you shocked me people who live in this east sacramento neighborhood where mark mantefell lived for more than a decade couldn't believe he's being charged in several violent rape cases MANTAFEL LIVED FOR MORE THAN A DECADE... COULDN'T BELIEVE HE'S BEING CHARGED IN SEVERAL VIOLENT RAPE CASES BETWEEN 1992 AND 1994. 3 3

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3 3 3 3 3 3 of 1993, according to school officials. He also worked in the federal prison system as an administrator, retiring in Florida back in 2014. But police say he sexually assaulted three women decades ago. In the first two cases, women were raped and tortured with a knife in their own home. In the third case, he reportedly used a stun gun and dragged a college student off and committed, quote, monstrous crimes. Our friend Rachel Wolf at CBS 13, you're hearing neighbors to Mark Manteffel reacting, reacting to the discovery that he is a brutal rapist. After lecturing on criminal justice and working within the system,

the criminal justice system, he moves clear across the country as far away from his crimes as he could get to the other side, to the East Coast from the West Coast. But DNA manages to track him down. And believe it or not, all of you ladies listening, all of you men listening who have a wife, a daughter, a sister, and of course you had a mother. Imagine this guy's foot coming through her kitchen window one night. And now there are opponents to the use of genealogical DNA. With me, special guest Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn and the elected District Attorney of Sacramento, Ann Marie Schubert. I just, I don't get it. I guess I should know by now that a defense attorney

is paid and ethically bound to do everything they can under the law to get the client off. But good grief. This guy, I mean, the neighbors thought he was such a nice, quiet guy that blended into the neighborhood. I wonder how many rapes he committed or other crimes he committed where he potentially used a condom or didn't leave DNA. To Anne-Marie Schubert, what do you say to your opponents? Well, what I say to the opponents is that we're striking the right balances. You know, our job in law enforcement is to protect the community, to bring justice to victims, and to remove violent predators from our community. And that's exactly what this is.

This is an investigative lead. It's no different than a match off the DNA database from CODIS. It's giving Chief Hahn or our law enforcement partners a lead, which then they go out and do their jobs, and they identify these individuals. And so when somebody wants to say this is, you know, they don't like it, well, they don't like it because people get caught. And that's the reality. The public overwhelmingly supports this. We know that because studies have been done since the arrest of the Golden State Killer where 90% of the public plus wants us to use it for violent crime to help us solve missing persons, help us solve crime involving children, judge, trial lawyer, and anchor, I compare this, if I were doing an appellate brief on this, to the theory of the plain view doctrine.

In other words, let's just pretend, Ashley Wilcott, that I walk by your giant, luxurious SUV, and I look in, and I see, let's see, since marijuana is legal in so many places, let me just say a line of coke. All right. I see it's right there on your dashboard. You've been snorting up again at lunchtime in your SUV, Ashley. I hate to tell you this. So I catch you. It's in plain view. You left it there.

And then your defense is, I didn't do it. My best friend, Joe Scott Morgan, did it. That's not going to work. It's in plain view. It doesn't really matter anymore. It's your car. Long story short, with genealogical DNA, the target, this guy, Mark Mantefeu, may say, I didn't give my DNA. You didn't have the right to do that. Well, somebody in your family did, and it's out there for me to find in plain view, and you're busted. Tell me what's wrong with that argument, Ashley. I don't think there's anything wrong with that argument, but I want to add

something to that, Nancy. Don't forget the judicial system is involved. So it's not as if law enforcement went out and said, half-cocked, we're going to get all of these samples of DNA and we're going to start comparing them. No, they had to go through the judicial process, which again is in place to safeguard constitutional rights. So a judge had to sign a warrant or they had to get a subpoena that said they could access this. And so that's another safeguard to ensure they're not just going out and looking

and going into homes and pulling information to say, we're going to consider whether these hundred residents did this. Instead, rather, they're using the system in place, just like you're saying, in plain view. It protects individuals. And if you want to engage in criminal activity, there's absolutely a right for a judicial system to be involved, to give the right for law enforcement to subpoena or access DNA submitted by choice to a company. Take a listen to our friends at Fox 40. In 1993, around the time of his three alleged

rapes, Mantafo was a Sacramento State student and a guest lecturer in criminal justice at the school. His law enforcement career would span more than two decades working with the federal bureau of prisons in atlanta and miami at one point coming under investigation for accusations he was trying to plant evidence on an inmate according to court documents the message should be clear if you committed a violent crime in this community and you left your dna you can expect that we're going to try to solve that crime and bring you to justice sacramento county district District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert says it took a collaborative effort among sheriffs and police detectives and FBI agents to track Mantiful down. Like the infamous East Area Rapist case, using DNA technology to match Mantiful's DNA left at crime scenes with that of someone in his family tree.

With me, Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn. Chief Hahn, question. Did he not leave any fingerprints at the crime scene, any of his crime scenes? Because I imagine his prints were taken if he this about the DNA. First and foremost, who wouldn't want this guy off the street? Who wants this guy still out on the street after horrific crimes that he did in people's homes where he was there for hours? And then secondly, DNA is such a good piece of evidence because it's unique to the suspect. It's legal. There were warrants in various stages of this case. And you leave DNA pretty much everywhere you go. So you don't have to necessarily leave fingerprints because if you go. So you don't have to necessarily leave fingerprints

because if you wear gloves, you don't have fingerprints. But it's hard not to be somewhere for hours and do the kind of crimes he did and not leave your DNA all over that house. You know, the reason he managed to outsmart everyone, clearly, is because he was in law enforcement. He knew how to cover his tracks. He knew every trick in law enforcement. He knew how to cover his tracks.

He knew every trick in the book. To Anne-Marie Schiebert, the Sacramento District Attorney, D.A. Schiebert, how did you get around the statute of limitations? On murder, there is no statute, but on rape, in many jurisdictions, there is, although that tide is shifting. Yeah, so in California, back in the early 90s, the statute of limitations was six years. And so, you know, I think it was probably serendipity, as I call it, when I got a phone call from Pete Willover, who's a SAC PD detective, one of the best I've ever seen, called me late in 99, frustrated because he had a

couple of very horrific crimes. This one plus another one that the guy ended up getting caught on. And coincidentally, at the time that he called me, I had read a story about another prosecutor in another state doing this idea of charging an unknown person but alleging his DNA as his description. And so I, myself, and my colleagues did a lot of research on it in California law, looked at it, felt very strongly that we could do it. And I felt like, well, this guy, whoever it is, needs to be held accountable. And if we don't do this, he's going to get away with it. So we did it on this case. We did it on another case. The other case, the guy got ended up getting caught. This is a guy named Paul Robinson, tried it, went all the way to the Cal Supreme Court, and it was upheld. And that guy's sitting in prison for about 65 years now. So it was something

that we felt strongly that, you know, these are horrific crimes, this particular case plus the other case. And we felt like we wanted to do everything within our legal tool bag to comply with that statute of limitations, even though we didn't have a name, we could ultimately put a face to that profile, that DNA profile. And that's what we did. And in this case, it worked. Take a listen to our friends at CBS 13. The FBI tracked him down at his home in Decatur, Georgia, using the same technology called genetic genealogy that led to an arrest in the East Area Rapist case last year. Without our ability to use DNA and genetic genealogy, we would not have this predator in custody right now,

and maybe never would. The Sacramento County District Attorney says catching a predator THE D.A. SAYS IT'S A PRETTY IMPORTANT THING TO DO. I WOULDN'T HAVE PUT THIS PREDATOR IN CUSTODY RIGHT NOW AND MAYBE NEVER WOULD. THE SACRAMENTO COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY SAYS CATCHING A PREDATOR LIKE MARK MANTIFEL IS ABOUT PASSION, PATIENCE AND PERSISTENCE. I'M PROUD TO SAY WE HAVE PUT

A FACE TO THAT DNA PROFILE AND TODAY, A QUARTER OF A CENTURY LATER, A SILENT WITNESS HAS SPOKEN. THE D.A. PRAISED THE INGENUITY AND TEAMWORK OF DETECTIVES WHO HAD THE FORESIGHT TO KEEP DNA TEST ingenuity and teamwork of detectives who had the foresight to keep DNA test kits longer than the law allowed at the time. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

Serial rapist is busted thanks to cutting-edge technology, the same type that helped identify the suspected East Area rapist last year. Today, law enforcement announced the arrest of a former Sacramento man who had worked in federal prisons and lectured at Sacramento State. CBS 13's Rachel Wolfe tells us more about who he is and how it took decades for authorities to track him down, Rachel. The authorities here tell us that Mark Manifold lived in this area. He went to Sac State, even lectured there briefly, as you said.

But he is actually being accused of sexually assaulting several women connected through DNA technology that didn't even exist when those crimes were committed. Genetic genealogy has led to dozens of arrests nationwide, including suspected Golden State killer Joseph DeAngelo. By putting crime scene DNA profiles in a public database like GEDmatch, authorities can identify relatives of a suspect. Then genealogists build family trees to find the actual suspect. That's what pointed detectives in Washington state to William Talbot. He was just found guilty of murdering a couple in 1987,

the first conviction by jury tied to genetic genealogy. This truly is a revolution in crime fighting and genetic genealogy is not going away now. But it also raises privacy questions because information from innocent people is being used without their knowledge. Last month, GEDmatch changed its policies so law enforcement can only search users who give their consent. You are hearing our friends at CBS 13, Rachel Wolfe and NBC News, Joe Fryer. The debate over privacy raging. I can't agree at all with the opponents of genealogical DNA to Sacramento District Attorney Anne-Marie Schubert.

Who is it that is opposing your use of genealogical DNA to put violent criminals behind bars? I think it's, you know, there are individuals that are privacy, you know, advocates that feel like law enforcement shouldn't be able to use this tool. I mean, it's probably somewhat of an anti-law enforcement effort. But, you know, the most important thing I want to keep in mind for the listeners is that we in Sacramento and those of us in California have taken a very proactive effort since the arrest of the Golden State Killer to get out there to educate law enforcement and the public, but law enforcement on how to not only do this, but to balance that privacy interest, which, you know, there is a privacy interest. But as the judge said, you know, public safety

far outweighs it. But we're out there. We're not, like I said earlier, we're not going to use this tool on low-level nonviolent crimes. We're using this in a manner that is identifying individuals for violent crimes. And we're establishing a best practice model in California that we're pushing not just across this country, but across this world, because we want to maintain this tool. We don't want somebody to ban it because they don't understand it, which it is complex. But the most important thing to understand is that we are proactively educating our law enforcement partners on one, how the tool works, but to make sure that we are doing it in the appropriate cases. Can I add something, Nancy? Yeah.

Listen, here's my question. For all of those individuals whose DNA is being run without their knowledge as they claim the right to privacy people claim, what's the harm to them? If they haven't committed the atrocious, horrific crime that's being investigated, what is the harm? I don't see that there's a harm to this process. To Joe Scott Morgan, forensics expert and author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, Joe Scott actually really brings up a good point because if I have a distant relative that commits a rape and murder and somehow my DNA is examined to finally reach the identity of that distant cousin, I don't know about it. It doesn't affect my life. I'm happy they did. I have no problem with it.

The only person that has a problem with it is the perpetrator, Joe Scott Morgan. Yeah, and I think that people that are going to be looking at privacy here, they have a fear that, you know, in the long run, what are the gatekeepers over these databases going to do and handle the sensitive information? But I got to bring this back all the way back to one point, Nancy. the important thing here to remember is that all those decades ago we had law enforcement people that were on the ground that were doing their job. That means that they were able to collect DNA evidence at that point. Tom, they didn't know how far reaching DNA was

going to be. They were able to collect this physical evidence. They did. They went out and did their job and did a good job at the scene. Remember, what we're dealing with here is very, very fragile biological evidence. And all these years later, all these years later, it would still remain intact so that they could put this guy behind bars. To special guest George Sciuro, DNA expert at Skills Biological Lab. George, explain to me, are these genealogical websites, you know, like Ancestry.com and all of that. How does, for instance, Ancestry.com get your DNA? Explain how it works. Well, Nancy, people

doing genealogical research will have their DNA tested using certain kits, and they'll take those, they'll put them into Ancestry.com, and they'll look for relatives to see if anyone, you know, if they can find a distant cousin or do family trees and that sort of thing. Then there's also a public database called GEDmatch, and this is the number one thing I think that I would encourage your listeners to do if they are in GEDmatch. GEDmatch recently changed their terms of service in that they're automatically opting out everyone from law enforcement searches of the database. If any of your listeners are members of GEDmatch, they need to make sure they're interested in continuing to solve these crimes as GEDmatch is done.

They need to opt in so that law enforcement can search those profiles. And that I think is the number one take home message that I would have for your listeners is if you're a member of GEDmatch to go ahead and opt in, because that's going to give us a broader area to search and to be able to find these potential killers and rapists and get them off the street. To put it in a nutshell, George Guero, don't people just spit into a container repeatedly and that's how they get their DNA? Essentially either that or sometimes it's by a swab. But yes, they'll just spit in, send it in, get the results. And then, like I said, once they get those results from Ancestry.com, 23andMe, they can then upload those to the public database in GEDmatch in order to get their DNA profiles out there to see if they can find any relatives, potential biological parents,

and those sort of things. To Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn, Chief Hahn, what did it feel like? Do you remember the moment that you discovered there had been a positive match and you somehow, after all these years, caught the rapist? Yeah, we've had several of those over the last year and a half. So it's a really good day when you hear your guys go, okay, we have some leads and we're working on them to confirm them. So, yeah, there's been a lot. And a lot of times we can do it through the criminal database. But like these guys, the Golden State Killer, NorCal Rapist, and then this guy, they hadn't been arrested and have a lengthy criminal history through the courts. So they were literally hiding in plain sight. And I don't know how we would catch them other than this. You know, I'm thinking a lot right now about a little girl,

April Tinsley, an eight-year-old little girl, kidnapped, brutally raped, murdered, her body thrown in a ditch through genealogical DNA. Her killer, an Indiana man, John D. Miller. When he got in court, he stood up. Oh, he was so shaky. All he could do was say his name to a packed courtroom, and his voice shook. He was afraid of the law. He was afraid of justice. But when he had that eight-year-old little girl, he wasn't afraid. He killed her. Genealogical DNA may be the only solution to put people like April Tinsley's killer behind bars, demons like Mark Mantefell behind bars. To all of our guests, but especially Sacramento D.A. Amory Schubert, Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn, thank you for being with us and please continue to fight the good fight.

Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. To find out more about investigative genetic genealogy, go to iminfor for justice.org. You're listening to an I heart podcast.