Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Tears from tiny tot boy lead cops to cold blooded killer

Episode Date: March 25, 2020

Nearly forty years ago, the body of a newborn was found abandoned in a ditch near a cornfield in Sioux Falls, S.D. Tears were frozen on his cheeks. Who left the child, wrapped in a blanket, to die? Has DNA led to a killer?Joining Nancy Grace today: Darryl Cohen - Former Assistant District Attorney, Fulton County, Georgia, Defense Attorney  Bobby Chacon - Former Special Agent FBI, current star of Facebook Series "Curse of Akakor"  Joseph Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics Jacksonville State University, Author of "Blood Beneath My Feet" Caryn Stark- NYC Psychologist Shera LaPoint - Genetic Genealogist, The Gene Hunter Kristen Quon - WCYB Bristol, Va., Reporter Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Nancy Grace is coming to Fox Nation. I want justice. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace premieres March 9th only on Fox Nation. A little baby found dead in a cornfield ditch near Sioux Falls. Placenta, umbilical cord, all there. The baby, was it dead? Was it left to die?

I want answers. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for joining us here on Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111 Triumph. Why would anyone leave a baby's body or a living baby, placenta and umbilical cord, in a cornfield ditch? That's what I want to know right now. Joining me, an all-star panel to break it down and put it back together again, former prosecutor, now defense attorney, Daryl Cohen, who practices all over the U.S., joining me from the Atlanta jurisdiction, former special agent with the FBI, current star of Facebook series Curse of Akakor, Bobby Chacon.

Karen Stark, New York psychologist. You can find her at karenstark.com with a C. Professor of Forensics, Jacksonville State University and author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon. Joseph Scott Morgan, genetic genealogist known as the gene hunter. Cheryl LaPointe. But right now to Chrissy Kwan with WCYB Bristol, Virginia,

reporter joining us. I want to just start with how the little baby was found. Take a listen now to our friends joining us. He just, Brad had just bought a different vehicle, and we were trying it out, and that's why we were out in that area. We were turning around and in an approach and that's where we seen the blankets and I just, curiosity got the best of me. I don't know why. I think it's because it's a new blanket. It looked like a newer blanket and everything. But there's times where I wish I hadn't found him. There's other times where I'm glad I did.

I just wish I could have found him earlier when he was still alive, before he died. He never got a chance to do anything. I mean, never got a chance to do anything. I mean, never got a chance to live. Well, just in that very brief statement, I learned so much. I learned the little baby boy, the infant, the newborn, was found by accident by someone unrelated to the infant. I hear that there was a brand new baby blanket. Someone had gone and bought a brand new baby blanket and buried with the baby.

That tells me it's someone connected to the baby. Not that the baby was stolen from the hospital or from a home birth. This is someone that cared to go buy a baby blanket. You were hearing the voice of Argus leader Lauren Townsley speaking to Lee Litz, but I want you to take another listen to what Argus has to say, the man who finds the baby dead. It just, uh, I have a lot of feelings for people like that and things like that. Like I say, I just hope they could find the woman that did that and put her away. This is what's happening.

But I think it's just the fact that I found him is probably the biggest reason that it's not at me so bad well it means I don't have to think about where that gal is anymore try to figure out who did this to him I'm just happy, all I can say.

You know, I've seen a lot of dead bodies and I've been to a lot of homicide crime scenes, seen a lot of witnesses, victims, perps die in the hospital. But you know what? Daryl Cohen, former prosecutor, now defense attorney, you never get used to it, especially when it's never happened to you before, when you come upon a dead body, Daryl. I mean, with all the cases we've prosecuted, certainly you've been on a homicide scene. Nancy, you never get used to a dead body, especially a baby's dead body. You could see it 10 million times and it does the same thing to you. You get chills, you get sick, you get disappointed. You look at it, say, this cannot be happening. I cannot be seeing what I think I'm seeing. And you're an absolute, utter, and complete denial. It is one of the worst possible moments of your life,

and every time it happens, it happens for the first time. It is horrible. There's no way to explain it. There's no way to explain the feelings that you have. You have to go through it, and you don't want anyone else to ever go through it. You know, you stated it perfectly. And to you, Bobby Chacon, a former special agent, FBI, and star on Facebook. Bobby, I recall talking to you about a young girl who went missing and you ended up overseeing supervising a dive effort in freezing cold temps with a tent out in the middle of a frozen lake and a hole cut in the

ice going down with the divers going down and instead of bringing up the girl's body, they were bringing up body parts in individual bags. And that's just one of the many cases you and I have dissected. But even for me, I never have gotten over seeing a dead human body. It just, just something that's, when you see, for me anyway, when I see a spider or a snake, I know I'm going to be fine, but there's something innately, instinctively repellent. I back off immediately. And I had to get over that with the twins. Because when you see a spider in the house, it's on you. Okay, you got to get it. So what I'm saying is there's something in us, it's instinctive when you see a dead body. I don't know what that is. I guess I'll have to go to the

shrink on it. But Bobby, that never goes away when you see a dead body, much less as a civilian seeing one. Yeah, no, it doesn't. Nancy. I recovered my first child in 1996 from a quarry in West Virginia, and it's like it happened yesterday. And over the next 19 years running the FBI DIBE program, there were many other children that we were called upon to recover. And you're right, any dead body, any homicide scene is horrific. But when you have to recover a child child and me and my divers were literally the first ones to put our hands on that child since the killer who deposited, you know, who disposed

of the body and bringing that child back to the parents and back to the corner boat or van, it never goes away. I'm long retired now and I still, you know, get help with dealing with the after effects of so many children meeting their violent ends from predators. And and and I, you know, the divers, you know, I used to care for my divers and make sure they got the care that they needed. But but it doesn't go away. And it has, you know, effects on you that you need to monitor. You need to have outlets. You need to have help dealing with because as human beings, we just aren't equipped most of the time to deal with this on our own. And yeah, it's, it's something that doesn't go away. Even when I read stories now like this or getting involved with stories like this, there are minor triggers that I have to be aware of that, that I have to use the tools that I've been given in my toolbox to deal with it.

What about it, Joseph Scott Morgan? I mean, you are billed as a death investigator. When you go home with your beautiful wife, does it stick in your mind, the dead body you handled that day or one a year ago or one or 20 years ago, or do you focus on the here and now? Keep your head straight. In order to keep your head straight, you have to force yourself to focus on the here and now. But the problem is, is that every death has a residue that that hangs with you for the remainder of your life and it it never goes away because

for people in my field in medical legal death investigation it's not just homicides it's the entire gamut and many times we're the only people there to even note that this person even existed so you bear that burden you know when i i I talk to young cops and police academy, which I instruct, you know, every year, three or four times, I tell them that you're given a bag. And for every death that you you handle, imagine every death is a one pound stone and you put it in that bag and you carry it with you for the rest of your life. You can't forget it. And so you have to develop those tools, but nothing impacts you anymore than the death of a child. And that sounds cliche, but it is the honest to goodness truth.

It just, you see promise there, you see the potential there. And many times in a case like this, you just see these children that are discarded like so much garbage and it breaks, absolutely breaks your heart. And there's nobody you can really talk to about it that really identifies with what you've seen. So, yeah, it's haunting to say the very least. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. When you're talking about, especially a civilian, suddenly finding a dead body,

that's what we're talking about right now, the discovery of a child's dead body. Take a listen, not just a child, an infant. Take a listen now to Sioux Falls police presser. That area of Sioux Falls, which is now deep and residential, as you can see by the photo at the crime scene, was a field approach cornfield. As they were test driving this vehicle, they turned around on that approach and they saw what looked like just some blankets in the ditch. They decided to get out and inspect it and found a deceased baby. The investigators worked really diligently during that time. However, they did not have anything that we have today as far as DNA technology and the advances that we

have today. They ran out of and the advances that we have today. They ran out of leads very quickly. There's some few phone calls that came in. They were followed up to a woman answering the door holding the baby or a woman answering the door still obviously pregnant. They simply got no tips at all that warranted anything that would point us to this family. The case never gets closed. These don't go closed. However, it does go cold. Guys, you were just hearing the detective, Michael Webb, speaking about an infant boy found in a ditch.

Let's go straight out to our reporter joining us from WCYB, Bristol, Virginia, Kristen Kwan. Kristen, thank you so much for being with us. Let's just start with the discovery of the body. People found the little baby while out test driving a car and saw what looked to be blankets in a ditch. I'm really surprised they got out and looked because a lot of people just keep on going. So let's just start at the beginning. Kristen, what happened? Right. So a man named Lee, he was test driving this Jeep, a vehicle, when he noticed that wine colored blanket in the ditch near the cornfield.

And for some reason, for whatever reason, it just kind of seemed odd to him. So they pulled over the car and that's when they discovered the baby in the blanket. What can you tell me about the condition of the baby, later named Baby Andrew, since no one knew who the baby was? What can you tell me? Well, they said when they picked up the blankets and saw the baby that, you know, they knew that the baby was dead, and that it was still attached to the placenta, still its umbilical cord and that tears were actually frozen to its face just horrific tears frozen to the baby's face i gotta tell you even now my twins are 12 and nothing stabs me in the heart like seeing one of them cry. And when they were newborns and I heard them cry, I don't know if it's instinctive.

What it is, it just makes you run to them, or it made me run to them. Take a listen to Sioux Falls police presser. This is the police chief, Matt Burns. On February 28, 1981, SFPD units responded to the area of what is now 33rd and Sycamore Avenue for a report of a baby lying in a ditch. Arriving officers found a deceased, full-term, newborn male there, but no other identifying information. He had been loosely wrapped in a blood-stained blanket and left all alone in the cold.

An autopsy revealed that the infant was born alive and had been breathing, but had slowly succumbed to exposure. Detectives followed up on the available leads, but there were not many, and they soon dried up. As our community came to grips with the horror of the crime that was committed, no suspects or family could be identified. St. Michael's Cemetery graciously offered to return the baby and gave him the name of Andrew John Doe. You are hearing Sioux Falls Police. That was the police chief, Matt Burns, speaking. And I just learned a lot

from hearing the police presser, Joseph Scott Morgan, death investigator. We know the baby was loosely wrapped in a bloodstained blanket that was new, left alone in the cold. But the baby boy died not from strangulation or asphyxiation, died from being out in the elements. All right, number one, how do you know the baby's born alive? Joe Scott Morgan. You know, because Nancy, I mean, I think one of the most horrific things that you just mentioned a second ago is that the child had frozen tears on the child's face. And that gives us an indication that the child was alive. This child actually dwindled away in these freezing cold temperatures. This is in Sioux Falls in February, Nancy. This is a harsh, harsh environment. The child has nothing but a couple of blankets

wrapped around it. And the child was alive at that point in time, alive to the point where the child was crying. You know, this newborn, the most fragile among us, is alive. One of the things that they would have done at autopsy in particular is, and I don't want to be too graphic here, but when they do do the autopsy, they will check and actually see if the child's lungs had actually been expanded at that point, Tom. I don't think that's graphic. Yeah, to give an indication as to whether or not the child had actually inhalated oxygen. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Yeah.

Just what are you saying? Okay. What I'm saying. What do you mean? How can you look at the lungs? What do you see specifically? Speak regular people talk, not doctor talk. Okay.

What do you see when you look at that sliver of lung or the lungs as you absorb them? Yeah. Okay. at that sliver of lung or the lungs as you absorb them naturally. Okay. First off, if we're looking at the lung in total that is not dissected or cut, we're looking to see if the lungs are actually expanded. And that means they've taken air on the little stacks. It's like blowing up a balloon. Kind of like blowing up a balloon, yeah.

You see it expanded versus flat. Right. balloon kind of like blowing up a balloon yeah and it's flat right and so if the child had been born deceased those lungs would not uh have been in this manner it would have been like a deflated balloon for instance and that's one of the biggest indicators back during this time uh when this child was found uh a standard procedure at autopsy would have been into something that's called the float test where you literally take a bucket of water. You take these tiny little precious lungs. And you say tiny, how big are a child's lungs? Well, for this, yeah, probably about the size of a fist with a newborn baby. I could give you specific weight, but I don't think that most

people can identify with it. But if you think about if you'll ball your fist up as tight as you possibly can, that's going to give you an indication as to the size of these lungs. And if the lungs are placed into, say, this big bucket of water and they float, that's why it's called a float test. That means that the lungs have literally been aerated or filled with air. And that gives you an indication that the child was, in fact, alive. Do you talk like this when you get home? Do you say things, the lungs were aerated? Do you say things like that? Yeah, yeah.

And the life has stayed with you, apparently. That was just curiosity. My son's got a great vocabulary, by the way. So there you go. Well, as long as he's talking about dead bodies, I'm sure he has a lot to say. Okay, off that and on to this. Back to Kristen Kwan joining us from Bristol, Virginia, WCYB. How did they know the blanket was new?

And I need to know that to go to my shrink. Right, so they examined the blankets and they could see that they were newer. And then they could see some other things that the mother actually had left too. What else was left? Somebody left with the baby. There were some clothing items, some women's clothing items that were left as well. Do you know what? I can't remember at this time what exactly they were, but they were women's items. You know, very curious, very curious indeed that women's

clothing was also left there. It would almost indicate a double murder that the mother had been killed as well. This little baby dubbed Baby Andrew John Doe found dead with the placenta still attached to the infant, blood found on women's underwear, a shirt, and some Kleenex-like material next to him. Now, we have learned that from the police affidavit. Had been breathing, but slowly succumbed to exposure. And I am quoting directly from the police chief, Matt Burns. Detectives followed up. The case goes cold. Hi, guys.

Nancy Grace here. I have investigated and prosecuted literally thousands of felony cases. I have covered literally thousands of cases of missing people, adults and children, unsolved homicides, violent crimes. My question is, what can we do about it? I don't want to just sit back and report on it. I want to take action. And I know you must feel the same way. And here is the news. We have all worked so hard to bring to you

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Available for pre-order now. Crimeonline.com. Pre-order now and know that portions of our proceeds goes to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, for those of you just joining us, thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. A baby boy is found dead with tears dried on his face. Who would do that? To renowned psychologist Karen Stark, what does it mean to you that this particular cornfield ditch was chosen to discard the baby? Well, as you said, Nancy, there's a good indication that whoever disposed of the baby lives close to this area is very familiar with the cornfield. And then if you're talking about the

clothes that were found along with the baby, the things, the blanket, I would think either somebody there took the clothes from the mother because there's underwear with blood, whoever gave birth to the baby, and buried them, you know, tried to get rid of them along with the baby, or else the mother herself may have done that. Somebody who has some feeling, not enough to make sure this baby survives, but puts a blanket on it, so there's a little tenderness there, and gets rid of evidence so that no one will know that this has occurred. Okay, I'm just a JD. You're the psychologist. To Daryl Cohen, former prosecutor, now defense attorney, practicing across the

country. Daryl, have you noticed in cases you prosecuted and defended, because I have in cases I prosecuted, when someone takes the time to cover the face. I had one case where a girl murdered her mother, a 19-ish-year-old girl, murdered her mother and put a wicker basket over her head. All right, I've had other cases where if the person was killed outdoors, the body would be covered in leaves or a blanket or a newspaper or something. And that always tells me, and I don't know statistically why, I just know from experience, that means the killer knew the victim. Because a random killer is not going to take the time to cover up the body.

They're just going to get the hay out of there. Absolutely. Absolutely. It tells me that it was mom who, and obviously this is more subjective. I'm just conjecturing more than anything else is it was mom and she may have felt that she had to do what she did and she didn't know anything else to do. She was in a terrible position in her life. And because of that, she is in a terrible position in her life that may be true but uh i don't know how you would compare that to dying alone and naked in the elements crying in a ditch oh nancy this is horrible i am not excusing anything she did i'm trying to get into her head

and if i get into her head and feel like maybe just maybe she was thinking that she was a victim and she didn't know what to do. She had no money. She had no place to turn, nothing there. So what did she do? I asked you about the baby, and now you're on the mom. Look, I'm not arguing about the right to choose, a woman's right to choose whether she wants to keep a baby or not.

That's not what this is about. This is about murder. The baby was born alive. Now, I'm not saying I am pro or anti-abortion. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about murder. And in case you didn't know it, Daryl Cohen, I'm against it.

Take a listen to... Nancy, I'm against it too. Well, if it weren't for murder, your business would dry up and you'd go hungry. I think this woman, if she did what I think she did, is despicable, it's horrendous,

and she will find her own special place in a horrible place. But I'm trying to get in her head. Well, I didn't know you believed in hell, Daryl Cohen. Guys, take a listen to Sioux Falls Police Presser Detective Michael Webb speaking. We don't forget about these cases. We never do. And about 10 years ago, we started taking a different look on this and see what we can do.

Given the advancements of technology and DNA to solve this case. It was a unique case in that we didn't have a family to work with, to talk to, to assure them that we were doing everything we can for their family because no one came forward to this baby. Ten years ago after talking with some cold case investigators across the country, we talked about the best way to obtain DNA and it would have to be from the baby himself. We learned through a presence DNA initiative on unidentified human remains that the University of North Texas was under a grant and they could assist in this. We contacted them as well as the process of getting the baby's DNA.

So we did coordinate with St. Michael's Cemetery and got an order to exhume the body of Andrew John Doe. To Kristen Kwan, WCYB, Bristol, Virginia, the baby was given a funeral, I understand, at St. Michael's. Is that correct? That's correct, yes. The community, I mean, obviously when they heard about this horrible thing, they kind of came together and just wanted to do something. And a bunch of people showed up for a baby that they didn't even know to give it a funeral. I'm curious, with all of that outpouring of community empathy, no one knew of a woman that had been pregnant and now suddenly wasn't?

Kristen? At that time, no. No one came forward to report a missing baby or they didn't have anything. And that's kind of one of the reasons that this case went cold. Joining me right now is a special guest. She is the so-called Jane Hunter. Exactly what is that, Cheryl LaPointe, a genetic genealogist? Nancy, a genetic genealogist is someone who uses DNA that we get from direct-to-consumer DNA tests

to be able to figure out familial connections. We are able to use these matches that we get from these companies that give us a list of our matches, and we can find our shared answers, the common ancestors in our lines, and we can build family trees to find the people we're looking for. To Bobby G. Cone, former special agent, FBI, current star of Facebook series Curse of Akakor, I'm just curious that the whole community shows up for the little baby's funeral, St. Michael's, allows the child to be buried there. But nobody comes forward and says, hey, I know so-and-so was pregnant, now she's not, and I never saw the baby. Nobody comes forward.

Bobby Chacon? Yeah, it's very unusual. I think investigators often use gatherings like that to develop sources who do exactly what you just described and come forward because sometimes they don't feel comfortable or, you know, you know, and they don't feel comfortable coming directly to the police. But the police do go or they should go to those gatherings to try to find someone in the community, because that's where the answers lie. Exactly what you just said. Someone in the community must have known or should have known that that that that woman was pregnant and carried to term um it's very difficult to hide a fact like that in a small community um so you would think that investigators would have scoured that that type of service memorial service and try to find somebody down bobby you're talking about a a

graveside funeral stakeout to see who shows up. Right. Right. Unfortunately, sometimes that's where those people do congregate. And also, the mom or the killer may be there. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A little baby who dies of exposure in a ditch by a cornfield. How exactly do you die of exposure, Joseph Scott Morgan? I mean, you're outside and you die.

How does that happen? How does the effect of being in the elements end up in death? Well, it's commonly referred to as hypothermia, which means your body temperature drops well below what is considered to be normal. You know, our normal body temp is 98.6 Fahrenheit. Your body cannot maintain all of its systems if it drops, say, two to three degrees below that level. And you'll see people begin to convulse. You'll see people begin to hallucinate.

Now, you take that, and that's in an adult, you take that and you magnify that tenfold relative to a newborn because they are so very fragile. Remember, Nancy, this child still had the placenta and the umbilical cord attached. This child was alive. So there was some type of awareness here. The child is shivering. The child is going into shock eventually. And this is not, I hate to tell you this, this wasn't a sudden death. Okay. This is a protracted languishing event that took place with this child. The child would have begun to feel the effects as soon as this person deposited this poor little creature there in this ditch in these blankets. And so it just kind of the

icy fingers of death literally just wrapped their hand around this baby. And it took, it probably took an hour for the child to die, I would imagine. And it would have been a horrific death. So explain to me, to Cheryl LaPointe joining us, the gene hunter, genetic genealogist. So back when the baby was found in the corn ditch, I assume blood and tissues were taken. But how do you, without anyone to compare it to, how do you go about getting some type of a DNA match? It's like fingerprints. Okay. You find a fingerprint on a murder scene and it's a great fingerprint, but who do you compare it to?

You run it through APHIS, which is fingerprint database. Nothing. You have to have something to compare it to. And then I suddenly catch Jackie Howard and I get her drink and I compare it. And then I find out, oh, it was her at the murder scene. But I had something to compare it to Jackie. So with this baby's DNA, what do you compare it to when you don't have a suspect? Nancy, from that crime scene, we actually had DNA from a baby and the mother's DNA from the articles of clothing that had blood on it. And that DNA, with the new technologies that we have now, you know, it's very unlikely that the mother would have actually taken a direct-to-consumer DNA test. I doubt that happened. But the mother would have relatives

that may have taken those tests. And when that happens, we can... You mean like Ancestry.com. The other day I said Forever 21. That's not a gene DNA database. But Ancestry.com and there are many other like it. That one just happens to come to mind. You're saying that maybe one of her family members, if not her, did that. And now you can trace the infant's DNA to that family member. Is that what you're saying?

Yes, ma'am. That's exactly what I'm saying. FamilyTreeDNAAncestry.com, 23andMe. And as genealogists, as genetic genealogists, we use a site called GEDmatch that we upload DNA to. Say I tested at Ancestry and you tested at FamilyTreeDNA. Instead of testing at each company, we can upload to GEDmatch and compare our results. And that is one of the sites that we use as genetic genealogists and law enforcement uses to be able to find the DNA that was left at a crime scene. So if you give your DNA to, let's just say Ancestry.com, are you telling me that that is then uploaded without your knowledge to GEDmatch?

No, ma'am, absolutely not. That has never happened. That is a voluntary upload. Oh, I see. I'm working, okay, like I uploaded my own results there to find other matches who tested at other companies. And again, your DNA code isn't shown. All we get is a list of people that you match. Interesting.

I want you to take a listen now to KELOLAND news reporter Perry Groton. Investigators back in 1981 had the forensic foresight to save blood DNA from baby Andrew John Doe. So that if we do have a suspect at some later time, we could match this blood type against that person and see whether they could be the possible parent. That parent would emerge 38 years later through a series of DNA breakthroughs and dead ends. These cases are frustrating, disappointing. I think you got to learn you're going to have more failures than successes. The DNA search ramped up in 2009 when Sioux Falls police worked with researchers from North

Texas University to examine evidence from baby Andrew. The problem tree was built in the early early 2000's. The family tree was built by the University of Texas University to examine evidence from baby Andrew. The problem in this case is the rules of DNA. We were checking a database against. We didn't know who police enlisted the help of another lab in

Virginia as well as genealogy websites like ancestry dot com to piece together branches of a family tree were able to continue to build that family tree through old birth announcements, old marriage announcements, and things like that. Homing in on suspect Teresa Bentis, investigators conducted what's known as a trash pull last month. They took samples from a water bottle, Coors Light beer can, and cigarette butts for the

crucial DNA link that would lead to her arrest. Wow. Did you hear that? From cigarette butts from a, I think they said, beer can, a water bottle by going through her trash. Daryl Cohen, people would say, hey, hey, hey, wait, wait, wait. Why did they it in your trash, that's too bad because cops can take that. There is no constitutional protection for your belongings unless they're in a place where you expect privacy, like your home, your car, your car trunk, your safe, your whatever, a box, you have a suitcase in your trunk. That gets constitutional protections for privacy.

But if you abandon something, throw it away, that's fair game for police. Here's an example, Daryl. I remember when the inquirer would go through, for instance, Elizabeth Taylor or Michael Jackson or whoever's trash. Then they'd lay out, oh, look, Elizabeth Taylor had 10 pints of Chunky Monkey. And that would be the article. It's abandoned. And once he goes out to the street, it's fair game. So that's how the cops got a hold of her cigarette butts and beer cans.

Exactly. Wait, now I thought I was expecting a little more from you, Daryl, really. Alright. Well, exactly means that once she gave it up, it is no longer hers. She has no right. She has no right. She has no right of privacy. It is gone.

It is gone. It is gone. And that's helpful. So, you know, Jackie, watch out where you throw all those beer cans. So, Cheryl LaPointe, how did they hone in on her? So Nancy, once they had this DNA sample in what's called a SNP file, the genetic genealogists were actually able to, through the DNA matches, find connections and build a family tree. And like we use obituaries, we use different sites to find living people. And it's basically an investigation of finding out who belongs in the family tree.

And we look for suspects and find who they are. To Kristen Kwan, K-W-A-N, what has become of the mom, Teresa Rose Bentos? So the mom, of course, was brought to the police station to do an interview. And the police affidavit, if you read it, has a lot of information in it about what she says, but basically she was arrested for that. The mom in this case, Teresa Rose Bentis, now 57, charged in the death of a baby found in a ditch 38 years ago. Police using DNA off cigarettes and beer cans to track back to Teresa Rose Bentis. The reality, this woman now charged in the death of a baby. Justice delayed, but not justice denied. Nancy Grace Crime Story

signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.