Criminology - A New Era In Crime Fighting

Episode Date: September 29, 2018

Forensic genealogy has ushered in a new era in crime-fighting. Season 4 of Criminology is all about cases solved in 2018 using forensic genealogy techniques and databases to match old DNA to suspects. GedMatch and Parabon are names that have been in the news lately as they have been used to solved cold cases. We will be covering these cases in depth over the course of Season 4. In this first episode, we lay the groundwork by diving into how law enforcement is using this public information to zero in on suspects to solve cold cases. We have a great conversation with Paul Holes about his work with a forensic genealogy that lead to the capture of Joseph DeAngelo in the infamous Golden State Killer case. We also talk with Curtis Rogers the founder of GedMatch which was instrumental in zeroing in on DeAngelo and a number of other cold case suspects. You can help support the show by going to patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Make Mother's Day feel bigger with double blooms at 1,800flowers.com slash podcast. That's 1,800flowers.com slash podcast. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. I'd like to welcome everyone back for season four of criminology. More if it's finally here and we're really excited about it. This season is all about the cases that you all have heard about in 2018 being solved with

the help of Jedmatch, Paribon and through forensic genealogy. All of these cases that have made headlines this year using the most cutting edge DNA science, technology and police work. And we all witnessed this firsthand when in the middle of season two of criminology during our Golden State killer coverage, Joseph DeAngelo was arrested for those crimes. I think we became aware that this was a new error in crime fighting and that the way police hunted criminals in cases with DNA evidence

would be changed forever. We've been watching the Domino's fall as one crime after another has been solved using these methods, and we're excited to present these cases this season on criminology. Before we dive in to this episode, we need to take care of some quick housekeeping, starting with our Patreon supporters who allow us to keep putting out this content. We had Charlene Freethy, Jess Plant, Sean McMahon, Jackie Holland, Stephanie Levin Dusky jumped out at our highest level, and Alicia Kirkpatrick. So big shout out to all those folks.

We appreciate the support. We appreciate all the people that continue to support us month after month. It really is amazing. Yeah, we can't thank you enough for your support. And our Patreon supporters get ad-free episodes of the podcast. As a matter of fact, this weekend, we're dropping a Q&A episode into our Patreon feed that we recorded a while back. And we discuss everything from true crime to what our favorite music is. So that should be fun, and it'll be available to all our Patreon supporters.

So if you aren't signed up yet, be sure to do so by visiting patreon.com slash criminology. And another thing we wanted to remind you about are the books that we have out based on the first two seasons of criminology. Season one is all about the Zodiac Killer, and that book is available on Amazon Now as both an e-book and as a paperback. which a lot of people have been asking about. So the paperback version is out right now. And don't forget that our season two book about the Golden State Killer is also out as an ebook on Amazon. And that will also be out soon in paperback. So be sure to check those out.

All right, Morf. Let's get into this episode. But we need to go back to where it all began in April of this year with the arrest of Joseph DeAngelo. You know, we were fortunate enough to have on Paul Holes a couple of times. You know, he's been a friend of the show, and he walked us through some of this process. But since we've last heard from Paul, some things have changed. Between Paul Holes retiring and new details coming out of DeAngelo's arrest and court proceedings, we know a little bit more about the process than we did before and just how it went down.

And since we really want to have a full understanding of that process, starting with the arrest of Joseph DeAngelo, Paul Holes joined us again to walk us through a little more detail of just how things went down. So Paul, welcome back to the show. We appreciate you coming on. Hey, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. So this season is all about cases that have been solved with DNA and forensic genealogy. The Golden State Killer was the first high-profile case to be solved using that method. And since then, there's been a slew of crimes and cold cases that have been solved the same way. Did you ever think when you uploaded the Golden State Killer's DNA profile into Jedmatch,

that there would be this ongoing ripple or domino effect of other cases being solved? You know, when I initially started researching into it, I could see the power of the technology. But frankly, I was so keyed in on the Golden State Killer aspect. I wasn't thinking about this could be, you know, precedent setting for other cases. You know, in hindsight, obviously having such a high-profile case like the Golden State Killer solved using the technique, it just makes sense that there would be this domino effect with other cases that have suitable evidence to use the technique on. And just to step back for a second, you know, we had talked before when you came on the show

that one of the hurdles you faced as an investigator in the case was that private DNA databases like Ancestry.com or 23 and me, they wouldn't just open up their doors for you to submit the Golden State Killer's DNA profile under their database. But you knew if you could, you would probably find a hit pretty easily. And, you know, obviously you tried Jedmatch and went the public database route. how did you come up with the idea to initially use, you know, a database like Jedmatch and then ultimately pick Jedmatch itself? I had heard of Jedmatch and Jedcom and DNA Jedcom. I had no idea what those websites were. And it really comes back down to that one case that I just coincidentally had involvement with in which I had the conference call in February

2017 with a San Bernardino detective named Peter Headley. And during that conversation, that's when I learned about the genealogy technique. So when I'm reaching out to the genetic genealogist who assisted in that case, Barbara Ray Venter, and I'm asking her, hey, can you help me on this case? And I'm not telling her which case it was. This is what I've got. There's conversations with her where she's throwing out these websites. and of course I'm taking copious notes.

In addition, I'm doing a bunch of research at home in terms of how the technology could be employed in identifying an offender. And that's when I started to learn more about Jedmatch. And what I ended up doing was taking my parents' own DNA profile that they had developed at Ancestry.com, downloading it out of Ancestry

and uploading it into Jedmatch so I could learn how to do. use the system. And it was during that process where I became, I was just absolutely stunned at how powerful the technology could be. And that's, once I had done that and I realized how it could be done, that's when I started hitting the agencies that had cases in the Golden State Killer series, saying, this is how we can solve the case if you just let me use some of your valuable DNA evidence. And once you did get it in there, and I assumed you picked that one in particular because it had the most profiles in it, would that be a correct assumption? Well, Jedmatch is not the one with the most genealogy DNA profiles.

That would be ancestry. And then, of course, you have 23 and Me and Family Tree DNA, but these are closed private systems. So it would require more legal action in order to be able to search those systems, whereas Jedmatch was open source and public. So the thought was, well, let's see what we can get out of Jedmatch, knowing that Jedmatch had a sampling of DNA profiles of people who had been tested in ancestry and tested in 23 and me and tested in family tree DNA, etc. You know, so they, it was sort of this mingling spot for people who had used different proprietary systems.

So it really was the easy way to go. And that's what we did initially is to get the results out of Jedmatch. And then if we failed at doing that, then we would explore what we could do and how we could go about searching those other sites that were closed. And once you made the decision to put that DNA, into the Jedmatch, how long did it take to see a hit? So, you know, when you upload into Jedmatch, your DNA profile, it does tell you it usually takes 24 to 48 hours for their algorithms to come back with the list of results. And we got a result. I was looking at results within a day after I had uploaded the profile.

What was that feeling like? that was you know it was a a moment in time in which it gave me hope you know i was coming off of a phase in my investigation where i was in the doldrums because it looks like i was just striking out um and you know started down this path pursuing the genealogy you know but going into it it's the expectation really was is you know i know if the right people are in the database, we can solve this case, but given the Golden State Killer's luck, chances of him having a close enough relative in the database is probably slim to none, and we're going to strike out on this. So when I saw the initial results, and they were on the order of third cousins, you know,

I was like, well, that's what I had used with my dad's DNA profile to be able to show how this technology works. So it gave me hope. But I didn't realize. at that time how hard working with third cousins was going to be when you're dealing with an unknown offender and trying to triangulate amongst

these distant relatives to identify him. And then once you found that DNA match in the database, that's just the start of it. You still needed to figure out how to trace that back to actual suspects, and that's where it involved the forensic

genealogy. Tell us about the whole process and how you went about, you know, interacting with Barbara Ray Vettner and to do that. Well, and I think, you know, part of the misconception out there is when you search a database like Jedmatch, you're not getting a match. You're getting a list of individuals that's sort of based on the amount of DNA they share with your profile, with the Golden State Killer. And so I was dealing initially with a list of 25 third cousins to the Golden State Killer. So it's not really a match and you have one person and now you're off and running trying to build a family tree. I was looking at 25 people plus in terms of how am I going to proceed to identify the Golden State

killer from all of these people that share a portion of their DNA with him. That's where Barbara Ray Bettner and her expertise just became absolutely invaluable, you know, because the conception going into this by us investigators was, we're just going to take, you know, each person and try to identify everybody they're related to, and the Golden State Killer is going to show up. And when she saw what we're doing, she was like, no, that's not how this technique is done. And so she gave us structure. and she explained how it is a triangulation method. What you're trying to do is you're trying to find common ancestors

between at least two of the people that share DNA with the Golden State Killer. And then once you find those common ancestors, and we're having to go back into the 1820s and the 1840s, once you link those two people in your match list, now you have to identify all the descendants under those common ancestors with the hope that your offender, the Golden State Killer, is also a descendant of those great, great grandparents. So she gave us the structure.

And, you know, the funny thing initially is I found out about her on that other case from San Bernardino. When I initially reached out to her, she asked me what I had. I sent her some information. And then all of a sudden, she went silent on me. And I thought she did not want to help. And sometimes these genealogists get a little skittish working with law enforcement. So I just continued to charge head with my FBI partner on this Steve Kramer.

And about six months later, Barbara just popped up out of the blue saying, hey, do you still need my help? And I was just like, yeah. And then she had a health situation in which she couldn't be able to help. And so she came in and came on board like at the most critical juncture for us to be successful. And then she gave us that structure and that guidance. And then as we are building the trees and there was five of us on the law enforcement side building the trees, she was overseeing the tree building and then coming in and assessing and giving us direction as to focus on these over here. These look more promising than the other ones.

And how long a process was that for her to come up with these people to give you to put that tree together? Well, you know, we were in the genealogy aspect for about four and a half months after we got the original DNA results. So she was in that process that entire time. Probably about two and a half months into it is when we linked two of the, matches and found the common ancestors. And then it took us about two months from that point to identify all these descendants and investigate the males that were kind of falling into the criteria that we knew about the Golden State Killer. And of course, you know, there was a match and the rest is history. He's arrested. Did you feel at the time this was going to be

sort of what it's turned into. Did you have any inkling? I know you said that the technology, you knew it had potential, but did you see all these potential cases that have been solved in the past several months getting solved on that quickly? You know, after going through the process and seeing how hard it was, the initial thought was that this technology will solve other cases. but most

of these cases are still going to be really tough to solve. I did not expect, you know, with the, I think, seven cases that I've become aware of that have been solved using this, that it would happen that rapidly as soon as, you know, the Golden State Killer success. Do you think your background in lab work and working with DNA gave you as an investigator a leg up in understanding the process and approaching it in a way that could help solve the case? Yes. There's no question about that. You know, many other investigators had thought of, for their own cases, you know, let's search ancestry or let's search 23 and me. So doing the genealogy aspect, there was nothing novel about that thought. But many of the investigators didn't

understand the DNA technology that's needed in order to do this search. And so that was an advantage that I had because as soon as I heard about it and then I started self-educating on it, that's the aha moment of I saw the power of the technology and that's when I pushed all the chips into the middle of the table saying, we need to pursue this in the Golden State Killer case. So having that scientific background and aptitude for that was an advantage. And this case sort of makes you a bit of a pioneer. Did you ever envision yourself being a pioneer in this kind of police work? No, no, not at all.

And it's interesting to see those types of statements being put out there. And I keep emphasizing, I did not invent this technique. I recognized it as a tool that could be exploited. and very likely could be successful. So I think that's where my contribution comes in is just that recognition of that tool. And I wasn't scared to pursue it. You do see individuals that will back away going,

oh, I'm not sure I want to go down that path. And once I was assured by legal minds, multiple legal minds, it met, you know, all the requirements of being a legal process, then it was full bore. And knowing that there would be some concerns from the public on privacy, that didn't stop me because I was completely comfortable that what we were doing was legal. And that's your main concern in that situation is that you're crossing your T's and dotting your eyes. you always are evaluating, you know, what you're doing as an investigator. Is this a legal process? You're

consulting with district attorneys. You're going in, you're getting warrants, talking to the judges. So, you know, you do want to make sure you're not overstepping anything that's going to potentially compromise the case down the road. And it seems like most people have been pretty accepting of this technology and using it to solve crime. and seeing what it's done, but there's a little bit of backlash of people. You touched on it a little bit, people with different concerns, privacy concerns, or whatever kind of concerns. What would you say to those kind of people that have those concerns about this whole process and the way it's being used to solve crimes? Well, you know, I completely understand why people might have some concerns. You know, there is a stigma of, you know, law enforcement having access to somebody's DNA. And I, I,

I look at it, knowing the technology and knowing exactly what I had access to and what I didn't. You know, I think for those people that have privacy concerns, it would be well worth their efforts to really learn what the technology is and what law enforcement is able to access and not access. Most notably, they're at no point in this process. Am I ever seeing anybody's, DNA profile that they've uploaded into GEDmatch. I can't see their genetic information. I can't download their genetic profile so I can start taking a look at whatever genetic or medical proclivities their genes might hold.

Basically, all I see is how much DNA the person in the database shares with the profile that I uploaded. It's as simple as looking at a number, 65. That just gives me a starting point to build a family tree to see if I can find a common ancestor between that person and the person that had my profile, the Golden State Killer. The crux of this technology is genealogy. The DNA just gives you the starting points, but everything that we do after we get that, that list of results, is all genealogy-based. And when you look at what genealogy is in terms of putting together families, it's going to open-source public government documents such as census records,

newspaper articles, obituaries, birth certificates, marriage licenses, etc., and figuring out who's related to who from that starting data point. Anybody can decide, I want to know, you know, Mike Morford's, family lineage and start building your family tree back in time once they've identified who you are. So we're just using what is publicly available as part of this technique, and that is really the bulk of the work in this technology. Over the past few months, with these cases that have been in the news that we've all heard being solved, how many of those people maybe reached out to you to say, you know, can you

give us a little guidance? Can you walk us through what you're? you did to assist us in our cases? There's been a couple of those agencies that I had talked to ahead of time. And they had already commenced kind of marching down the genealogy route, in part because they had a previous relationship with Parabon, and Parabon had done some phenotyping for them, so it was relatively quick for them to take. the previous DNA testing they had done on their case in order to be able to convert it into a genealogy profile and search Jedmatch. And of course, Parabon has, you know, gone out there and started to provide a great service to these agencies and have been successful.

You know, there's other agencies that have reached out to me on their cases, which right now, there is nothing in the headlines. saying they've solved their cases. And I've gone around and have provided some training to some law enforcement entities on how this process is done. So they have a better understanding on what it takes in order to do it. And so you think right now behind the scenes, there are other cases like this that are coming down the home stretch, hopefully if we're being solved using the same methods. Oh, there absolutely are, yes. You know, obviously the Golden State Killer is the most well-known one. that perhaps you've been associated with or worked on, but as an investigator, I'm sure you've worked on a lot of different cases that have been important to you. What are some of the cases that you

think that you know of that might benefit or be solved using the same method? Oh, wow. You know, any unsolved case that has, a fender DNA has the potential to be solved. And that's really the first thing that any agency needs to figure out is, do they have DNA from the offender in their case? Some cases will have a lot of DNA, and it's easy. Some cases will have very, very little DNA, and it could be very hard. Most notably, it would be something like the Zodiac case, which everybody would love to see solved, but the issue in that case is you don't have a great source of offender DNA if you have offender DNA at all.

that's going to be interesting to see as investigators in that series move forward, are they able to pull DNA off of an envelope flap or a stamp that they're confident came from the Zodiac? And then that DNA is sufficient in terms of quality and quantity in order to be able to produce this genealogy compatible profile. You know, one case that I had heavy involvement with that I am really hopeful this technique could help solve as a series in Northern California committed by an offender that we know as the NorCal rapist. This was a guy that hit seven times that we know of, not a real high volume guy starting out in the Roner Park Sonoma area and then moved around kind of the Northern California region over the course of

about, I think it was 15 years before he just disappeared. And he's, he is an offender based on what he was doing to his victims that needs to be caught. And I know we have his DNA. And now it's a matter of exploiting that evidence to see if we can identify him. So if there's bad guys out there that have committed these kind of crimes and off DNA, they need to be worried. Absolutely. You know, And that's something where, you know, you have offenders that realize they left DNA like DeAngelo, but think, I'm not in any database like the FBI's CODA system, so don't ever catch me. Well, now it doesn't matter. So if they left DNA, it doesn't matter if they have been sampled and put into a database themselves.

if they have a even a relatively distant relative that has decided to pursue their genealogy aspects and have been tested, it's possible that the offender can be identified through these genealogy databases. Awesome. That's good stuff, Paul. And we appreciate coming on.

You're always a wealth of information, especially with the topics that we're dealing with for this season. So I appreciate your time, and it's always good to have you on. It's always fun. Thanks for having me. So that was a really detailed account of just how the Golden State Killer was taken down. And you heard Paul mention Jedmatch several times.

And Jedmatch is something we've all heard, we've all read about in 2018. But what is Jedmatch exactly? To understand how this entire process works, it's important to have a full understanding of what Jedmatch is and how it's used. To get a full overview of Jedmatch, we thought who better to reach out to than the creator and owner of Jedmatch, Curtis Rogers. Curtis joined us to give us an inside look at Jedmatch

and how it works. And now here's our interview with Jedmatch creator and owner Curtis Rogers. Hi, Curtis, welcome to Criminology, and thank you for joining us on the podcast. Thank you for inviting me. Kurt, we've all heard a lot about Jedmatch in the news lately. It's sort of all over for people that follow true crime and see all these cases being solved. But can you tell us exactly in your own words what Jedmatch actually is?

Yeah, it's a website that was really designed for genealogy researchers, people who are trying to find relatives. And we have a database of autosomal DNA, which is different than forensics is using, but it gives you a much better opportunity to find relatives who are still living and have a common ancestor within the last five or six generations. And it turns out that this type of research

is also beneficial for forensics. And what inspired you to start Jedmatch and how did you come up with the name for it? I started JetMatch because I had a surname research, a surname project group with Family Tree DNA, the Rogers surname group. This is all Y DNA, the male chromosome DNA. And I wanted a website that was more proactive than what was being offered by Family Tree DNA.

So I found a person who was very capable of genetic, not with genetics, but with, with, computers and technical things, which I am not. And he came up with a terrific program. That's about the time autosomal DNA became available for genealogists. And all of a sudden, people were finding it. They had lots of living relatives. And they started sending emails to each other. You have a McGillicudy in your family.

No, but do you have A. Jones? No, do you have a Gawainan for hours and hours and hours? And I said to my, the person that was working, being technical matters, can we do a computer program that would match family trees? So people didn't have to constantly write back and forth to save them lots of time. And he came up with a program, and it was, I thought, brilliant. And I said it was too good for just my little surname group. We should start a company in which we can share this with other DNA researchers.

with other genealogy researchers. So we did that. Why Jedmatch? Because the family trees in the Latter-day Saints, LDS Church, Mormons, are called Jedcom. They had developed a program called a Jedcom so they could trade family trees online. And Jedcom has become a kind of accepted name now for family trees. So what we were doing was matching family trees. KidCom. So I decided to call it Jedmatch. That's how we got our name.

And what year did you launch? 2010. So how does the site, how does Jedmatch differ from, say, the big name, well-known commercial genealogy sites that are out there that people can join? We are an adjunct to them. We are not in competition with them. They test people, and then they can match people that they've tested with other people they've tested. Jedmatch, people can put their own DNA from whatever testing company they've used onto Jedmatch and then match with people who've been tested by other companies and they're willing to put their DNA on our site

or their genetic information on our site. So we also have some tremendous tools for researching. using genetics that are not available on testing company sites. So people want to be on Jedmatch. And the only way they can do that is to go tested by some other company. We don't do testing. So we are helping these companies, the testing companies, and they know it, and we work with them. And I personally have put my DNA profile into Jedmatch.

So all you're really doing is essentially uploading the data from your other results that you've already gotten into Jedmatch and it's matching with other people, correct? No, we do not upload anything. It's uploaded by the people who own that data, and that's the person who is tested. They have full control over their data. They can upload it to Jedmatch. They can delete it from Jedmatch. They have complete control over that. We do not do anything with their data other than provide tools so that they can find matches. And many of us first heard about Jedmatch after the arrest of the Golden State Killer, it became public knowledge that your database, Jedmatch, was used to find the suspect's relatives. Did you know at the time that

your database was being used for that purpose, or did you find out afterwards like everybody else? I found out experts just like everyone else. We had, in our policy statement, I always stated that the information that's available online could possibly be used for purposes other than in genealogy, but we never really specified. And frankly, I didn't think of law enforcement as being one of those uses. People could maybe try and use some of the email addresses or something of that type, which we do everything we can to prevent. But, hey, it's online. Things could happen. And we've always warned that. But law enforcement was not one of the things that we really had in mind. And I know your privacy policy on there is very clear. It essentially says do not put your DNA information in here unless you want to share it. So I think it was pretty cut in dry. And that's how they were able to access it to, you know, to catch the Golden State Killer. But since then, there's been several high-profile arrest. And Jedmatch obviously is making national news. And I assume there's been a large spike in data being uploaded to your site. What kind of number?

are you seeing from that? We're really not seeing any kind of a spike. We did for one or two days, see a spike where, you know, we notified everyone and we want to educate our users as much as we can. There's a spike of people who took their information off. However, there was only one day in which people, more people took information off and put it on. But the number of people putting it on really has grown steadily ever since we've.

reformed and continues to grow steadily. I can't say that we're really getting any more use because of the publicity we've received on this. I know some people want to upload their DNA to Jedmatch, obviously for genealogy purposes, but some of them actually want to do it to help solve crimes if they can. They want to build a database for law enforcement to use their DNA. But I've also heard some people say that they're worried about what can be gathered with the information. that they're putting into your site, what would you tell those people to alleviate their concerns about the data they're putting in there?

With all due respects, they don't really understand what's happening. Well, first of all, let me just say, the traditional forensics, you know, forensics in which you gather forensic evidence at the scene, and then you compare it to suspects. They point directly to suspects. Does it include the suspect or doesn't it? With our database, with our methods, it's a, I may be going in excess to call revolutionary.

I think it is. We do not point to a suspect. What we do, what is used by our site is to point to a path to finding a suspect. The problem with the Golden State Killer is they had plenty of evidence, but they had no suspect to compare it to. And how many other cases are like that? When you don't have a suspect, it goes into the dead case file, and maybe someone will look at it in future years or maybe not. And what happened now is we can take stuff that's in that dead case file and find a suspect.

And if we can find two or three suspects, four or five suspects, now the old method of forensics can point to those suspects and compare the DNA, any of it or whatever of it, whether it be DNA or hair samples or fingerprints, whatever. They can use those in the way they used to because they now have a suspect. So this is a whole new way of forensics looking at things. We are able to provide suspects where suspects did not exist before. And one thing with your database is that law enforcement does have the availability to access that were with some of the commercial sites they don't.

Okay. Let me, yeah, let me respond to that. You know, you're talking about, are we violating people's privacy? Well, first of all, we don't have any DNA in our site. You cannot find anyone else's DNA. But beyond that, we do not show, the only thing we show are matches. When we're doing the law enforcement type of things, we, as I say, point in the direction of down the pathway of finding suspects.

But that pathway includes not just our database, but hundreds of other databases that can be used by people who are well experienced in genealogy, for example. First thing I would want to do would be to look for family tree databases. There are hundreds of those. they could be found in your local library to just massive ones that are online. I'd want to look at social security indexes, maybe cemetery databases, newspapers, a big one. You find out a lot about relationships by looking at obituaries and marriages, who attended and who's involved, and on and on. So there are all these other databases. Now, if you're going to say that just,

Medmatch is violating people's privacy. You have to say the same thing about every one of these other databases because you're not going to find anyone using just Jedmatch. Every one of these databases is important, and everyone is a step towards finding the suspect. So Jedmatch, you're saying it's just a tool, along with several other kinds of tools that have long been available for people. It's a whole new way of looking at it.

It's a whole new paradigm. And you mentioned earlier that you didn't envision jet match being used to help law enforcement, but obviously that's something that it's doing and it's doing it in a way that's, as you mentioned, revolutionary. What's your personal take on that? Is that something that you're proud of, you know, helping all these people in these cases get closure? That is an issue that has kept me awake many, many nights. On one hand, I want to do everything I can to protect the people that are using our site. On the other hand, people like the Golden State Killer make Jack the Ripper look like a choir boy. And hey, it's good that he's

off the streets. And I can't tell you how many emails I have received from people who lived in California at the time whose whole life has been detected by this Golden State Killer, knowing that he was still out there. So to answer your question, I'm concerned. We can't prevent people from putting information on our site. We're there so people can. What we can do is educate them, make sure that they understand it. When they put their information on our site, it is visible to law enforcement and everyone else. So we've gone on a tremendous campaign to make sure as much as possible all of our people know, things like this interview, you know, to help people understand what happens. We don't think we're violating privacy anymore, as I said, than all these other

databases, but we still want to make sure that our people are as educated as possible. You talked earlier, let me answer a question of something you said earlier, which was about people wanting to put their DNA on our site. Yes, I've gotten many emails from people saying, yes, I want to make sure that I'm there. If I have a criminal in my background, I'd love to have them get caught. One letter in particular, one email stands out, and that's a woman who wrote me, Just two sentences saying, I want to make sure that my information is as visible as possible on your site. And the reason is my father was a serial killer. And I want to make sure that if any unsolved cases out there, the people involved can get finality.

You know, that is, I cried when I got that. First, of course, you're thinking, did you someone pulling your leg? No. I've got the full police report on that case. So she was not pulling my leg. So these people are reaching out to you and sort of complimenting or being positive about the results that law enforcement is getting using JetMatch. Yes, very, very strong support.

Now it could be that just people aren't going to write me and say, you know, foo on you. They'll just take their data and their information off. off of Jedmatch, and I would never know what their reason is. You know, because people are always putting their information on and taking out. Some people just want to put their information on for a day or two and see what matches they have and then take it off, and then they'll come back maybe a month or two later and do the same thing.

Some people want to do that. So I have no way of knowing what reason people have or take their data off. And certainly probably they're more motivated to rightly saying, gee, thank you for all you're doing rather than saying to heck with you. And do you plan on keeping it as accessible as it is now, or do you plan on at some point ever locking down or making it more private, I guess would be the right word? Genealogy is a contact support. You have to contact your relatives. And that's what we're there for, to help people to find and contact relatives.

I don't know how we could tighten down on it and still be of any value to, genealogists or to law enforcement or to whomever. No, at this point, we have no plans to do that. If someone has a great idea how we can do both, make sure that we fulfill the needs of genealogical researchers and at the same time make things more private, we're wide open to it. And I'd love to hear it. But I haven't found a way yet.

How many profiles currently do you have in in a jet match? Between a million and a million hundred thousand. It's pretty close to probably about a million, 50,000. Every day we get well over a thousand more. So that's going to be building up, and as time goes by, that number will continue to expand, hopefully. Sure does, yeah.

Well, as somebody that supports law enforcement and supports these cases being solved and people getting justice, you know, I think it's a very admirable thing that you've allowed law enforcement to take part in solving some of these crimes using JetMatch, even though that wasn't intended purpose necessarily. I applaud you for having it out there

for law enforcement to do that. Thank you. As I said, I just want everyone to go into it with their eyes open and let the marketplace decide. Let's not get regulations that'll kill the baby out with the bathwater. Absolutely. I appreciate you coming on, Carr, that really is informative, and, you know, I look forward to hearing more news about Jedmatch being used to solve some of these high-profile cases.

Happy to do it. Thank you very much. We hope that interview with Curtis Rogers was enlightening and helps to give you a full understanding of just how the Jedmatch database works in aiding law enforcement. Because as we go along this season, we'll be referring to that database repeatedly. And I think it's important that Curtis addressed privacy concerns. Because even though there are many people who support law enforcement using Jedmatch for catching criminals, there's also a lot of people that question its use, or at least they're worried about privacy concerns. So far, we've heard how Paul Holes and company use Jedmatch to ID Joseph DeAngelo and about that DNA database itself.

but the police work and database are just two tools used in this process. Yeah, Morph. In fact, you know, Paul Holes pointed out specifically that he needed help to find and pinpoint DeAngelo. And that help came in the form of forensic genealogy. And this forensic genealogy is going to play a huge role in the cases that we'll be discussing this season. We'll dive into that in the next episode.

And before most of us even heard of Jedmatch, there was another tool being used by law enforcement. And that tool came in the services of the company Parabon Nanolabs. And they've also been in the news lately in concert with many cases involving Jedmatch. We'll have an extensive conversation with Steve Armantrout of Parabon Nanolabs in the next episode. And he'll walk us through their history as well as their evolving. technology and support techniques in working with law enforcement, including their groundbreaking efforts to create composites of suspects based on their DNA. All right, Morth, this is a good place to wrap up episode one right here.

Everyone, make sure you are subscribed to the podcast if you're not already so that you don't miss a single episode. Also, if you haven't done so and you love the show, go out, give us a rating. That goes a long way towards helping. other people find the show. If you'd like to find us on social media, we're always around and we try to be responsive. You can find us on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod, or you can find us on Facebook by searching Criminology Podcast.

You can also join our discussion group on Facebook by searching Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. All right. It's it for episode one. We're excited about this season. We really think we're going to bring you some great information. And again, we're coming at you every week again. So we'll talk to you next week.

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