The Deck - Jodine Serrin (7 of Diamonds, California) - Part 2

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Our card this week is Jodine Serrin, the 7 of Diamonds from California.In 1995, Marisa Patti met David Mabrito on the beach in Oceanside, California – it was love at first sight. Twenty-three years later, he would be found responsible for the brutal murder and desecration of 39-year-old Jodine Serrin in her own bedroom. In the wake of the solve, Marisa and her son were left on their own to figure out how this man they loved, trusted, and built a life with could have committed such an unthinkable crime. Today, they’re still trying to make sense of it all. Marisa’s story is one we rarely get in true crime: a raw, unflinching look at what it means to live in the aftermath – not just for victims' families, but for the ones closest to the killer.On Crime Junkie we walked through every detail of Jodine Serrin’s case that led police to her killer: David Mabrito. Make sure you’ve listened to that episode, MURDERED: Jodine Serrin - Part 1, before you start this one.Call to action:The biggest limitation in investigative genetic genealogy isn’t the science or even the know-how. It’s the databases. You can help solve a cold case if you are willing and able to share your DNA to public databases like GEDmatch or FamilyTreeDNA. It only takes a couple of steps, and it’s completely free. Follow the steps linked here to get started.If you find yourself facing similarly unique and harrowing challenges as Marisa and her son, and you feel comfortable sharing your story and the community services you found helpful, if any, please email us at [e-mail] you or someone you know is in crisis or feeling suicidal, please reach out for help by calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255), where trained counselors are available 24/7 to provide support. View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/jodine-serrin.Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcTo support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org.The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AFText Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!

Our card this week is Jody and Sarin, the Seven of Diamonds from California. Today's story is unlike any we've told on this show before, not just because of the fact that the victim's parents unknowingly witnessed the assault of their daughter take place, or the fact that we get to hear from someone who knew the killer before investigative genetic genealogy revealed him to be one of the most sadistic killers I've ever covered on this show. This episode is really different because this story is actually being told over two of my podcasts. On this week's episode of Crime Junkie, we walked through every detail of Jodine Saren's case, the crime scene, the investigation, and the twist that led police to her killer, a man named David Mabrito.

You'll want to listen to that before you dive into this episode, which is told not through the investigator's lens like we so often do, but through the lens of David's ex-wife, Marissa Mabrito, who loved him, trusted him, built a life with him, and was sharing a home with him at the time he killed Jodine. She is still trying to make sense of it all, still trying to reconcile the man she knew and loved with the monster he turned out to be. Her story is one we rarely get in true crime. A raw, unflinching look at what it means to live in the aftermath,

not just for victims' families, but for the ones closest to the killer. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. Marissa Patti first laid eyes on David Mabrito in October of 1995 on the beach in Oceanside, California. It was 11 years before Jodine Saren, or Jody, as everyone knew her, would be murdered and desecrated in her own bedroom, and 23 years before David would be found responsible for the crime. Back in 1995, there is no way she could have lived. known that a simple invitation from a stranger to go surfing would so profoundly shape her life. Here's Marissa talking with our reporter, Nicole Kagan.

Okay, so 1995 you meet, you go to the beach together, is it just like a spark from the start? Yeah, yeah. He went surfing, he was putting on his wetsuit, and I told my friend and then told him later on, I'm going to marry him and have his kids, and they're going to have his eyes and my nose. and that's pretty much what happened. Wow. And how old were you? I was 16. David was 10 years older than Marissa, and she was living with a friend when she met him.

But their relationship progressed at turbo speed. And four days after this beach date in 1995, Marissa moved in with David. What was David like sort of when you were getting to know him early in your relationship? Very protective. He was always very protective of me. He was very deep, very, very deep thinker and very into like martial arts and Japanese culture. And he knew the Bible frontwards and backwards. The first two years, it was very fast.

There was drugs involved on both of our parts and a lot of immaturity and kind of growing up. He never had like a group of friends that he would bring around. He knew a lot of people, but he didn't like have. of friends that he hung out with. He was kind of a loner. After living together for almost two years, both Marissa and David decided to get sober. I need to say, David, when he would,

his substance abuse issue was with meth. He wasn't a drinker, but when he would drink, he could have one shot, especially if it was whiskey, and it would completely change him, almost like a chemical imbalance to it, like his body is rejecting it, his face would change.

And that would also happen when he was using meth. And so whenever he used meth, I knew immediately. Did you ever notice any violent tendencies at all? We had a couple encounters when he was on drugs. And, well, when we both were. But I had gotten sober first. So it was that in-between period before he got sober. and I was asleep.

He had been awake for a couple days and I woke up and got mad. I don't even know what he was doing, but I had gotten mad. And it was about 2 o'clock in the morning and he had me pinned on the couch and had dislocated my shoulders and my neighbors across the street

had heard and ran over and got him off of me and the police came and he was arrested. That was the second time he was arrested within a two-week span. The first time he was on meth as well and I called the police because I was just done and I was tired and I wanted to go to sleep. These arrests happen in August of 1997. Both were for being under the influence and in the possession of a controlled substance.

Marissa never pressed charges for the assault though. So on the record at least, both offenses were nonviolent, which meant David was eligible to go to drug court, an alternative to jail for people charged with nonviolent drug offense. Mrs. Marissa said David was actually in the program's inaugural class in San Diego County. The focus of the court is treatment and recovery and includes therapy, drug testing, and regular check-in points with a judge. And after David completed the year-long program, all charges were dismissed. And Marissa said things were really good for a while. Once he got sober, it was a whole different, I mean, he was just a whole different person. He was happy. He had a

really, really rough childhood, an upbringing that any kids should not have to go through. Marissa is referring to the fact that David was sexually abused when he was six years old and that there was mental illness in the family. He held a lot of trauma inside. I mean, it's part of the reason he turned to drug use. But when he got sober, he was happy and thriving and working and we were, you know, paying bills and I got pregnant. And then once we had our son, he was an amazing dad. He was hands-on.

He was waking up. I was trying to nurse. He would wake up in the middle of the night to sit with me or help, changing diapers. And everything from that moment on, when we had our son, everything was about him. And the son rose and set on our son. Marissa and David had been together for five years when their son, who were calling Dan was born in 2000. Two years later, they got married and shortly after bought a condo.

Marissa was just 23. And their marriage did go smoothly at first. But around 2005, things began to fracture. It was just, as I tell anybody, don't get married when you're that young. From who you are from 20 to 26, so it was night and day. And I kind of grew up and we wanted to. wanted different things and at some point I just said, you know, I can't do this anymore. We tried to work it out because we wanted to do it for our son.

I think it was just really hard back then and I had different visions of where our future was and I felt like I was maturing but he was still kind of staying the same. What would you say sort of sparked maybe we should separate or maybe we should file for divorce? We were arguing a lot. We were arguing a lot. And then I had found out that he had cheated on me, and I had found out that she had gotten pregnant and had an abortion. And so it was just a huge betrayal for me, and it was an insecurity anyways because being 10 years younger at the time when I met him, you know, and he was beautiful.

Girls would flock to him, and I was never the petite, skinny, blonde, typical girl, you know, and all of these girls are going to him, and of course he's noticing. So I felt insecure. It was just something I couldn't get over, so. And I had never been alone. I had been with him since I was 16, so to even want to separate was a big step for me, and now I'm doing it with, you know, a three- or four-year-old. So it was really scary.

And our separation and our divorce was very different, than other people's. We did it amicably. We didn't have lawyers. We didn't, you know, do any of that. We literally wrote something up on a piece of paper. Even though the divorce was finalized on February 1, 2006, and Marissa bought her own place, not much else changed.

As far as the divorce and how we raised our son, we didn't do separate holidays or birthdays. It was all together. to the point where he started dating somebody and she didn't like that. But that was the agreement we had. Like our son didn't choose us. We chose each other and brought him in. So the custody that we had,

I had him most of the time when school started, but he would come over every day and see him. It was never like you can't come over, you know, open access, if you will. The thinking behind this open access custody agreement was that it would give Dan the most normal life possible. He wouldn't have to live in one reality with his mom and then another one with his dad. Their quote-unquote separation was more symbolic than physical. But that proximity brought on some other parenting challenges.

You know, in hindsight, my son did see a lot of arguing and fighting and whatnot. At the time you think that you're shielding them from that and you're not, I would get really frustrated because he would just do whatever he wanted and I'm cleaning up his messes. why do I have to be the mother of two children when I have one is how I felt. This is how most of 2006 went. Marissa was working as an office manager in Carlsbad, California, and David was working as a tile setter, which wasn't the most stable job. Sometimes he'd have to hustle to make ends meet. He had an especially hard time keeping up with child support payments.

Marissa actually found out later that her dad was giving David money to make sure he was meeting his child support obligatory. And David didn't really have a permanent living situation at this point either. He would move from place to place, sometimes staying in a house of his own, but when things got rough, he would sleep on Marissa's couch. That's where he was staying on Valentine's Day 2007. And he returned to sleep on that couch after brutally beating, killing, and desecrating the body of Jody Sarin in front of a full-length mirror over the course of 10 hours. When David came home after the murder, and after almost being caught by Jody's father art,

Marissa was none the wiser. I never noticed anything. I think that's probably like one of the hardest things I had to swallow and try to understand. And I'm going back and I'm looking at pictures that we took at that time frame and to see if I noticed anything different. And I didn't. And I don't know if it was just me being oblivious or I had focus elsewhere. I don't know.

In 2007, it's not like the police noticed anything either. David was just a regular guy. Here's Carlsbad Police Lieutenant, Eric Covanda. He took on the case in 2016. He's not what you would picture in your head of some offender that, you know, has got like somehow stayed out of Codas, but it's been doing like all these heinous crimes for all these years or something, like some monster, right? A couple of days after the murder, Marissa and Dan went on a 12-day vacation to Hawaii with Marissa's aunt and cousin.

David stayed back at Marissa's house to watch Dan's dog. When they got back, it was business as usual. They carried on with their lives and David carried on with his while living on her couch. Aside from the deadly secret David now had to protect, things were pretty much normal for around four years. Then came the first real sign to Marissa that something might have been. been wrong all along. In January of 2011, David Mabrito died by suicide by way of a drug overdose. A week before his death, he'd been pulled over by a police officer because he matched the

description of the suspect in a local bank robbery. David wasn't involved in that at all, but as part of their investigation of him, they took a sample of his DNA. and that sent him into a tailspin. Because David's DNA was all over Jody's condo. They'd never found a match in Kodis, but if that sample he'd given ever made its way into the database, he knew what would happen.

And he apparently didn't want to deal with those consequences. So he took his own life. But he was the only one who knew about his involvement in Jody's murder. Because the bank robber case ended up going in a different direction, which meant that the PD. never ended up processing David's sample. So Marissa and Dan were left with no explanation for David's suicide. There was no warning, and he left no note. Until the toxicology report came back, they weren't even sure that it was a suicide. And for years, with no other explanation,

they couldn't help but blame themselves for what happened. Marissa and Dan both got heavily involved with the survivors of suicide loss support group. And Marissa said that she sort of began to put David on this pedestal in her mind. She forgot all the bad parts of their relationship and only remembered the good. And it stayed that way, all the way up until October 2018. That's when two investigators showed up at her door. My son and his friend were walking out of the house. My boyfriend and I are in the backyard having a cocktail after work.

And my son and his friend come back in and like, hey, mom, there's some Carl's bad detectives here. they want to talk to you, and I'm, you know, thinking like, why would they be here? What did you do? And they were already in the house. They're like, nobody's in trouble. It's, you know, we're investigating a cold case, and I'm just so confused. The men at Marissa's door were Lieutenant Eric Covanda and DA investigator Tony Johnson. They told her they were working on the murder of Jodine Sarin and had narrowed their suspect pool

to someone in David's lineage. And so I gave him my MyHeritage account and was trying to give them any information. And they said, well, you know, let's play a process of elimination. You know, would you be willing to give your DNA to rule you out of the family situation? And, you know, with your son, I said, well, he's 18. You know, he can give his own permission.

And he said, absolutely, I'll give it. not thinking or not knowing how this is going to fully impact his life or, you know, our life at that point. It was about a week later when investigators heard back from the lab. They said that with the DNA samples from Marissa and Dan, they could say with confidence that David was Jody's killer. But before telling either family, Lieutenant Covanda wanted even more certainty. So he went back to Marissa. but this time they're questioning is very different. And they have a notebook with them, and they're asking me about my sex life.

And I have this new relationship that I'm eight months into, and he's sitting in the other room. My son is upstairs in his room with his girlfriend watching a movie. And I finally get frustrated. I said, you know, I see where this question is going to, like, do you think that he did this? Like, I, you know, and then I started, like, hyperventilating. And it's while all of this was happening that something from Jody's case file, which Lieutenant Covanda brought with him,

caught Marissa's eye. It was the one thing that the killer had left behind in Jody's apartment besides his DNA. I just happened to look over and I saw a picture of shoes in the book and I said, can I see those? And they showed them to me and I knew that they were Davids because I bought them.

And I got sick to my stomach. She recognized the shoes, but she kind of didn't really say anything right away. She's just kind of like, I think she had like this moment where she kind of realized, oh, I guess we might be going down that path, right? And at that moment, they said, do those like familiar? And at that moment, I'm like, no. I said no.

Because I'm thinking, I have to buy time. How am I going to tell my son? What are we going to do? How is this going to happen? Detectives and Marissa parted ways without confirming anything out loud. But they each knew. And after some direct comparison testing, the next. week, Lieutenant Eric Covanda was calling Marissa, asking her to come into the station because

they had something important that they wanted to talk to her about. Marissa remembers that day like it was yesterday. My boyfriend and I were out to dinner and Eric's like, hey, can we set a time up to meet tomorrow? And I just felt something. I'm like, I need you to tell me now. And he's like, I really don't want to talk over the phone. Like, this is my life. I can't wait. Like, I need to know now. And by this time I was home, and he said that it was him. Do you want to pause for a bit? It destroyed me. And then we drove. I didn't tell my son, I think I collapsed. And my boyfriend said, you know, he was talking to him on the phone. And that's when we came here to the police

station and they gave me a timeline and I found out more details that I didn't know but on the timeline I just remember being so angry and confused and hurt because they had told Jodine's family rightfully so first but they saw this timeline and there's pictures of my son and I on it it's hard for me to look at those pictures now but they're of him and his football game in high school and when we saw that I got really, really angry and said, why would you put my son on there where they can see this? And he just said, Marissa, as soon as they saw this, the first thing they asked was how was your son? The first thing that Art asked is what's going to happen to the boy? Now, we're here to talk about resolving the murder of his daughter.

And he's concerned about this young man and like the depth of humanity involved in this whole thing and the way that the two sides at the end of the day care about each other, right? It was really touching. And it just, they're really good people. And it was just, it made it that much harder because even though it's not our fault and we were victims in it too, you can't help it feel. some sort of guilt or responsibility because someone we loved did this

and the things that he did it just, it made me, like, I got sick. I had to go to the bathroom and I got sick and couldn't believe, like, what I was hearing and I kept asking, are you sure? Within an hour of Jodine Solve going public, Marissa had reporters knocking on her door. The calls to her landline were so,

overwhelming that she had to take it off the hook. She was terrified. Reporters were going to show up at Dan's school. She grew paranoid about leaving her house. She took time off work. She didn't sleep. She cried every day for a month straight. She couldn't focus. She racked her brain to try and figure out if there were any signs at all at the time that her living ex-husband had just committed a murder. There weren't. The only thing that was different, I mean, and it's not even different for him because he would do it all the time. He shaved his head. It was the only difference. And when I met him, he had long hair. He had long hair to the middle of his back, which was one of the things I was just infatuated about. Long, blonde hair, surfer type to a

tea. And he had shaved his head, came home with a ponytail in his hand before our son was even born. And I just remember crying. I still have the ponytail. I was crying. I was crying. I was crying. I was devastated. And so after that, he literally went from one extreme to the other, long hair to bicking his head. And so that's what he did the first time he shaved it. So it wasn't out of the norm that he would, you know, shave his head or anything. I don't recall anything. I mean, he stayed and stayed with our dog while my son and I were in Hawaii for 12 days.

At the time, did you feel like you, did you want the details that you were getting from detectives or would you rather? I needed them. I didn't want them, but I needed them. I was obsessed with it. I had to know every detail. Specifically, Marissa wanted to know if her husband was on drugs at the time of the murder. Right after it, David got heavily involved with AA. Marissa actually remembers that during Thanksgiving dinner in 2008, which was at her parents' house with her whole extended family. When everyone was going around saying what they were thankful for, David said he was most thankful for his sobriety. Marissa mentioned something about him doubling down on rehab around the time of this happened,

and I would imagine that after this happened would have been a good reason in his head for him to really double down on not wanting to ever, you know, use that substance again. So, you know, a lot of things started to make sense. Once Marissa saw photos from the crime scene, how the windows were covered with blankets and sheets, and a mirror was moved to face the bed so Jody's killer could watch what he was doing to her over the course of 10 hours. That's when she was absolutely certain of two things. It was David who set up the room like that. And he had to be using meth during the murder.

And what told you that? How did you know? Because he would, um, he would, um, he would, set up the room like that, or I guess be, I guess the best word for it would be kind of narcissistic in that regard sexually. He wanted women to be subservient and obedient, very biblical in that sense. And that was something that he'd always told me that he chose me because I was very nurturing and he saw those qualities in me. I didn't know what that meant at the time. But he would, in our sex life, he would record it, you know, or he would watch a lot of pornography and record

it on his video camera when he was on meth. Those things never happened when he was sober. And so he would put blankets up on the windows so that nobody could see in. He would do that stuff when he was on meth. And the whole time, whenever he was on meth, it was all very sexually driven for hours, but it was all about him. It was never about the person he was with. Knowing that David was using drugs didn't really bring Marissa the piece she was looking for. In fact, it led to even more questions, some of them too heavy to shake. I mean, if things had played out differently, could it have been Marissa in Jody's place?

David had been violent with Marissa on occasion, but she attributed that to his drug use. When he got sober, his tune completely changed. Because he was so protective over me. And then it just made me think, like, was I ever in danger or was I the exception? Why her and why not me? Why it just never made sense.

And I had been raped when I was younger before I met him. and had gone through the whole court case and everything, and he would get so angry hearing about it being brought up that I just, to this day, can't understand how or why unless he was really in a meth-crazed, like, state of mind. In place of answers he couldn't provide, Lieutenant Covanda helped both Marissa and Dan get counseling after the solve, which they tried for several months.

But Marissa still had a hard time coping. I think the hardest thing for me is, you know, as a parent, you protect your children at all costs. And these are two costs that I could not protect my child from. Being subjected to finding his father dead and then knowing what his father did when his father was his hero and having to take that away from him. I feel 100% responsible for that because those were my choices, right? and I didn't pick a good enough partner to, and I, you can't, I know you can't say, well, it's not your fault, you didn't know, but at the same time, that's your child. I'm having to figure out that I loved this person, even after our divorce, he was my family, he's my son's dad, gave me the best thing in the world, and did the most horrific thing to somebody in the world.

I don't know how to reconcile those two. And to have to try to explain to those close to you, I would get angry because they would say something. It's like I want to defend him when someone says something bad about him, but at the same time, I'm so angry that I could spit nails. I don't know where to channel that to. And then I went down the rabbit hole of looking it up on the Internet and seeing what people are saying and saying, you know,

stuff about his obituary and how we should recall it and, you know, saying bad stuff about me, like, as if I had something to do with it, it was really hard. Marissa didn't end up recalling David's obituary. You can still find it online next to a smiling photo of him. And it still reads, quote, His love and selflessness will endure forever in the hearts of those fortunate enough to have had him in their lives.

End quote. The obituary site makes it shockingly clear just how much David was truly living a double life. There are testimonials from friends, family, co-workers at ceramic tile supply, people saying that they were blessed to have known David that his legacy would live on and that they would always love him.

And similar posts continued even after 2018. But there are testimonials of a different nature as well. One read, quote, this rose is not for you, but for the woman you raped and strangled. May you burn in eternal darkness. The people trolling the internet

and posting stuff in there, you know, the families of the people who do these horrible things, they're victims too. And I'm guaranteeing they're reading this and just have compassion. If you want the compassion for the victim, have the compassion for,

the victims of the perpetrator's family, the person responsible, because they didn't do it either and they're struggling with the conflict of how did their loved one do this and how do they fit into it, especially if there's children involved and they had kids. It's been six years now since the Solve, and Marissa still gets messages from people. People she knows, sending her links to media coverage of the case out of the blue or warning her about her son Dan, that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And in a certain sense, they're not totally wrong. Marissa says David gave all the best parts of himself to Dan.

And she still sees David in Dan's facial expressions and quirks. They have the same eyes. And Dan has wondered aloud to Marissa if there's any chance that the bad stuff got passed down to. For Marissa, that's the most difficult conversation to have. I know counselor or therapist has really been able to help her either. This is an aspect of Marissa's life that she never imagined in her wildest nightmares, but it's one that will be with her always. Every Valentine's Day, she goes to the cemetery and places flowers on Jody's grave.

And she actually still keeps in touch with the Sirens. They sent Dan a card when he graduated from high school, and they continued to exchange Christmas cards every December, even after arts passing in 2024. What sort of role does, like, you know, even thinking about this play in your life? Is it something that you are still processing today? I'll always process this, I think.

It's going to be for everything. It's not something that you can really deal with because you're always going to wonder. Like I said, how is it that it happened to her? I asked, is it possible? Did it happen to anybody else? They said that they ran his DNA in Kodas and no, it didn't.

But, I mean, did maybe something else happen to somebody else? that didn't come forward, but I guess that would be in COTUS too. It's just constant questions of wondering, and it's hard because when I see a picture of him now, I just see this. This case is one that just sticks with people. And not only Marissa and Dan. Lieutenant Covanda keeps Jody's cold case playing card

pinned up above his desk in his office. He's drawn a big X over the Un in Unsolved Homicide. An art, even after getting the closure he and his wife Lois had ached for, couldn't help but wonder if there was more he could do to make sure that no other family would ever have to suffer without answers like he did. So he reached out to Lieutenant Covanda to see if there was some sort of training that could be given to police officers about all the new techniques used to solve Jody's case. Covanda didn't have to be convinced.

Jody's case was, by all accounts, a landmark solve for the Carlsbad police department. It was their first time using IGG, and it worked. How many other cold cases were out there that could benefit from these new forensic techniques? Cobanda wanted to find someone who could really get the attention of law enforcement nationwide. My name is Aaron Tom Linson, and I'm a program administrator with the National Criminal Justice Training Center of Fox Valley Technical College. Aaron's job is essentially to spot gaps in law enforcement training, especially in emerging or unfamiliar areas of crime solving and then develop programs

to get those skills into the hands of the officers who need them. He was just the guy Lieutenant Covanda was looking for. So what's really interesting about this was it was almost a cold call on a cold case. He had attended one of our trainings, I believe, and had just sent an email saying, hey, I've got an idea for a training program.

And his passion, his experience, everything really came through. Like, yeah, this really is valuable to law enforcement. This is information they really need to know because this is going to only get bigger. There really was no one doing training or significant training related to this. And really, that's how the idea was hatched. Together, Aaron and Lieutenant Covanda created a course targeted at medical examiners, lab technicians, law enforcement officers, and prosecutors. The two-day training covers the history and evolution of IGG, case studies,

private and public labs available to investigators, and practical applications for current cases. In the first run of the course, hosted by Covanda himself as a webinar in 2020, there were over 3,000 participants. Since then, the course has continued to run every couple of months in different forms all across the country. Barbara Ray Venter, the genealogist who worked Jody's case, has been a repeat guest lecturer in the course, and Marissa has gone with Lieutenant covanda to multiple conferences to speak on her own experience with IGG. And so I get really nervous at times, but the more that I've done it, the more that I've felt good about it. I think that's just my insecurities or not knowing what people think. What are

they going to think of me? And oh gosh, she was married to that. And when they hear what he did, you know, I get a little embarrassed because of it, but it's really cathartic. And if somebody can especially an investigator, if they can have better tools to deal with the perpetrator's family and know that they're victims too, then I think the process goes so much better for everybody involved. As of December 2023, researchers calculated that IGG had assisted in clearing 1,130 individual cases. And there's no doubt that Jody Sarin solved. And those who rallied in its wake are partly responsible. Thanks to them, that number is only continuing to climb.

And though detectives need the training to know about these new techniques, the biggest limitation in investigative genetic genealogy isn't the science or even the know-how. It's the databases. You only get the solve if there is a link from the offender's DNA to some existing family line that can be made. It is you out there who can do the most to help solve a cold case if you are willing and able to share your DNA to a public database, like Jedmatch or Family Tree DNA. I've talked to lots of people who say that they've done some form of DNA testing with a company,

and they always think that they're in the system. But that's usually not the case. Once you get your DNA results back, you have to actually upload your profile to the database yourself. On Jedmatch, this only takes a couple of. of steps, and it's completely free, and you have to make sure to opt in to let law enforcement use it. There is a quick one-pager that I'm going to link to in the show notes to help you get started. These cases are solvable, so let's get them solved. And there's one more call to action

I want to give. Marissa mentioned in the episode that she doesn't feel like there is a place where she fits, a support group for the specific situation she and her son find themselves in, as the family members of an offender. This seemed a little unbelievable, but she's right, I couldn't find one either. This seems like a huge gap in the system. But before we do anything about it, we want to see if there's anyone else out there. Are there more people like Marissa and Dan who are looking for this kind of support who want to connect? Or have you been in her shoes and you know of resources, a service, a place you went, other people in the same boat who come together and can support one another. If so, we're looking to hear from you. You can email us at connect at

audiochuk.com and as much feedback as we can get, the better. The deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit the deckpodcast.com. I think Chuck would approve.