April 17, 2024 • 38 mins
For years she was labeled “Bones 20” the unidentified victim of the Green River Killer. But now, thanks to police work and Othram Labs, the victim has been named as Tammy Liles. She was from Everett, Washington, and vanished in the summer of 1983. She was only 16 years old when she became a victim of serial killer Gary Ridgeway. On this episode of Body Bags, Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack will take you behind the headlines and into the lab that helped give a name to a young lady who spent decades being called “bones 20”.
Transcript Highlights
00:0:16 Introduction – The Green River Killer last victim identified
00:02:28 Talk about age reference
00:06:32 Discussion of high-profile murders
00:10:48 Talk about the Green River Killer 16-year-old victim
00:15:56 Discussion of identifying remains
00:20:54 Discussion of the Green River Killer evidence
00:25:58 Talk about starting with incomplete skeleton
00:29:41 Discussion of Genetic Genealogy
00:34:51 Talking about Othram labs
00:37:39 Conclusion; might be the most noble of pursuits
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan years ago, when I
was working as an investigator, every death that occurred, you know,
I'd like to say that each death is unique, and
they are. But when you're in the middle of conducting
(00:34):
an investigation into an obvious homicide and a pattern begins
to appear in other cases, there's this little thing that
occurs in your brain. And I used to think that
I would get distracted from other cases that did not
(00:59):
have the same patterns because you get I don't know,
it's it's almost like a in a hyper state of awareness,
I think, because you know, you see, you know, investigators
are no different than anybody else. You know, you begin
to see the Boogeyman everywhere you go. But the hardcold
reality is is that the boogeyman does exist. And today
(01:28):
I want to speak to a particular case of a teenager,
a teen girl who died many, many years ago, but
yet her death was shrouded in mystery for a long time,
(01:51):
and I think that it's important that we discuss it
because she fell victim to a boogeyman. She fell victim
to Gary Ridgeway, otherwise known as a Green River killer.
(02:12):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Bags. I
think that Dave, you and I kind of came to
maturity as young adults.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Okay, Joe, stop before you guys get worried that this
is going to be some kind of summer of forty
two boys becoming men show.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
This show today is about Tammy Lyles directly and indirectly.
Tammy Lyles was only sixteen years old when she was
murdered by Gary Ridgway, known to many as the Green
River serial killer. Gary Ridgway killed forty nine women and girls.
Tammy Lyles was just sixteen when she met Gary Ridgeway
and he killed her. It took years for her for
(02:57):
her to be identified, for her family to know for
sure this was our Tammy. As a matter of fact,
for a year she was called bones twenty. But it
took the people at Authorm Labs and the work they
do that goes beyond the veil. It's just as fascinating,
incredible work. And I think about every time they solve
a case genetically using genetic genealogy, it's another family that
(03:21):
now has peace and comfort. Joe and I both don't
like to say closure, but peace and comfort. Knowing knowing
that's the key. So I wanted to make sure y'all
know that's what we're talking about today. Green River, Sarah
Killer Authoram Labs, and sixteen year old Tammy Lyles. Now, Joe,
let's go back to the summer of forty two.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I'm speaking to myself. I can't speak to you.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
We're the same, We heard the same agent of parallel
existences in our private lives before we ever met one another.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, you're right, it's weird how people get connected that way.
But we came of age. I think at at an
interesting time, particularly from a crime history perspective, because it
seems as though that the world that we that we
inhabited back then, serial killers were talked about. They seemed
(04:15):
to be. I know that they talk about him now
in true crime world, but back then, you know, I
can reflect back and think about all these serial perpetrators
that were out there when I was a young guy,
and they were it seems like that they were everywhere.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Because of Ted Bundy more than anything else. Ted Bundy
because he was that, he was attractive, he had been big,
and you know, they they talked about him being very
big in Washington State politics. He really wasn't, but because
his story was so remarkable and and rule writing the
book The Stranger Beside Me actually illuminated this whole world
(04:53):
of the good looking guy that you would be happy
for your daughter to date is actually killing women who
looked like his first real love. But then we had
in the seventies, we had his escape from jail twice
if you remember, oh yeah, that was the two you know,
run Ted run kind of stuff, a run Bundy run,
(05:14):
whatever it was. We had that all over the press.
And then in the eighties we had all of the
other things. We had the Green River killer in the
news because they labeled.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
It that way.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
But in the meantime, we had Ted Bundy reaching out
to the press because he was on death row and
they kept trying to kill him and he kept trying
to fight it off. And so every time a serial
killer started being covered in the press, Ted Bundy got
his wheels in motion to get the press back on him.
It was amazing. Yeah, it really was in a bad way.
Amazing Yeah yeah, no, no, really in a reality in
(05:47):
a realistic way, because I think that you know, it
goes to people throw around the term of narcissism all
the time nowadays, and it's certainly I think that it
is very uh it's it is symptomatic of narcissism relative
(06:08):
to him and he you know, he uh he he
would draw the spotlight back to him. And I think
back we had Richard Maris. Wow, we had the hillside
strang GluRs. It's not stranged GluR.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Uh. For a while it was singular, but then you've
got this team of guys. And then going back even
further than that, you know, you you had uh yeah,
Tate lot Bianca. But I was thinking about uh uh
he refused to be called Otis but ottis Tool and
(06:42):
uh that wascas and they worked in tandem. And actually
I had I didn't have direct contact with with Ottis
O t I s. He preferred to be called by that,
but Otis uh otis tool. They worked into hand them.
If you've ever seen Henry Portrait of serial Killer, very
(07:05):
disturbing film, but that you know, those two worked in
Interestingly enough, when I was with a corner in New Orleans,
they brought Oddis Tool to my jurisdiction. And one of
the little traps that a lot of investigators would fall
into back then was the fact that these guys would
be cool on their heels in jail. I think Ottis
(07:27):
was in Florida Penitentiary at that point in time, and
they brought him to New Orleans because he claimed that
he could tell tell authorities where bodies were, and you know,
he kind of made the rounds relative to that. And
with Ridgeway, there's an element of that with Ridgeway, Gary
(07:47):
Ridgeway the Green River Killer, because he took he took
the authorities out to a variety of sites and he
had a huge body count. I think that some people,
you know, believe that that he was really responsible for
far more than he had claimed. And I don't know
(08:09):
if that if that goes to his he's trying to,
you know, bait the authorities with with that, or if
it's if it's reality. You never can tell because it's
such a deceptive game that they play, you know. But
for me, what's really cool, Dave, is that I had
(08:32):
I'm not going to say it was life changing, but
I had a real peak behind the curtain a couple
of weeks ago, and I got to go to Authrom
Labs down in the woodlands outside of Houston, Houston, Texas,
and they have a direct bearing on the case we're
going to talk talk about today and the work that
they're doing in forensic genetic genealogy, and so I think
(08:53):
that it's important that we try to understand our victim
today that we're gonna talk about Lawles, and she's what
they believe is the youngest victim of the Green rip
killer and AUTHORM played a big role in this day.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
You know, it's amazing that for those of us who
watched the trial of the century, maybe one of the
last trials of the century for the nineteen hundreds, was
the O. J. Simpson trial, where we heard a lot
about DNA for the first time for many of us
as observers of crime related stuff, that story was all
about DNA, it seemed at the end, and I think
(09:30):
there's a whole lot more that could be told. But
the bottom line here is that because of so many
of us knowing about DNA because of the OJ trial
and what has happened since then, I think it's important
for people to understand to know that AUTHORM they're not
some heavily funded government entity that's got a staff of
(09:53):
you know, with billions of dollars pouring in. They it's
amazing to me, and we'll cover this more to what
they but they actually have to crowd for to do
stories like if you have a loved one that was
murdered and you're trying to solve it has been years
and years and years, and you know, there's no statute
of limitations on murder and the only evidence you have
is this sample of DNA and you've they've been able
(10:15):
to do nothing with it, and it's twenty years later.
Authorn can do something with it.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
They can try, Yeah, they can, and it kind of
bifurcates in the sense of how it's utilized. I got
to meet and spend time with David Mettleman, who is
the director and CEO, and his brilliant wife, Kristin Mittleman,
and they've run this thing and created something essentially from
(10:41):
the ground up.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
And wow, I didn't know that. Actually, yeah, there's going
to have to be a movie on this, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
I think that it would be perfect and they're fantastic.
And David, if you ever enter, and I know that
a lot of people may be in can state this,
if you've never been a around a true savant somebody
that if you're around them, their intellect seems to be
off the scale. I'd say that David fits within that category.
(11:12):
He is brilliant. But you know, the thing about it
is is that his brilliance doesn't stifle his compassion. And
it's one thing, you know, it's one thing to say
we can sit around all day long and say how
compassionate we are, but you know you and I believe
that you're You know that your abilities are proven through
(11:36):
your actions, and you know, put the words into motion,
put those you know what, otherwise would just be worthless platitudes.
His goal, which is fascinating to me, is not only
to help solve crimes, which is part of it. That's
(11:56):
why this is a bifurcated discussion. Is to solve help
solve crimes, to bring people, to hold people responsible for
these horrible things that they've done. But also the other
part that he's engaged in is trying to get the
thousands and thousands and thousands of bodies that are out
(12:19):
there identified and to help families know that have been
missing loved ones, that there is always an empty chair
at Christmas time or Thanksgiving or whatever holiday they celebrate,
and you never know what had happened to those individuals.
And you know, Dave, I got to tell you. I
(12:40):
was having a conversation with David Meddleman and we were
standing out on this sun drenched porch in the Texas heat,
and he looked at me and he said, you know,
my goal is to get the database for name US,
(13:03):
which is the database for all of the unidentified bodies
that we have that are out there. My goal and
should be the goal of everyone, to clear that database
out and get everybody known to the world once again,
(13:34):
sixteen years old. No, you're not an adult in it,
but you know, sometimes dependent upon the circumstances that a
sixteen year old is in, they have to face horrors
that you would think would otherwise only be reserved for adults.
And of course, in the case that we're speaking of
today with Tammy Lyles, she faced that horror. She faced
(13:58):
this devil, this book man and Gary Ridgeway, and it's
still amazing that first off, that they were ever even
able to get her identified.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
David, the entire spectrum of the Green River Killer covers
so many years, so much investigation, so much press. This
was not something that was just discovered one day and
they researched it back as a history lesson. This was
ongoing in the moment coverage of what was happening with
(14:33):
these women who were being killed. And Gary Ridgeway, he
was actually on the police radar early on, but just
kept on truck and they never had enough to really
do anything with him, but he was somebody they considered
up there as we look at Tammy Lyles when her
(14:54):
bones were I apologize if you're if you are one
of tam these relatives or somebody that knew her as
a living individual. This is no disrespect, it's but to
be truthful, we have to describe what was found, when
it was found, where it was found, how it was
And I'm so sorry. If this was my love, no,
I don't know how I would feel about this. But
(15:17):
in this case, she was finally identified. She was not
identified for a long time. And that's why I have
a question for you about that, Joe, because they had
labeled her as the Green River serial killer's final victim
identified sixteen year old Tammy Lyles at the age of sixteen.
(15:38):
She was murdered. Her remains were known as bones twenty.
Didn't they have an identity. Didn't they know who she
was before they used DNA to confirm what they thought?
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, they had gotten an ID on her years after
she had gone missing, and her remains had been recovered. Okay,
there was kind of a partial skeletal remain that was
found of her, which is not uncommon. You know, when,
particularly when you have what referred to as surface remains,
(16:14):
those remains that are not buried, you're very fortunate, You're
very fortunate to find anything at all. In her case,
they did, and I think that that task was achieved
through dental examination.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Okay, because Tammy Lyles's body was found bones called Bones twenty.
She had been last seen in downtown Seattle, Washington, June
of eighty three, at the age of sixteen. She was
one of two unidentified women whose remains were found near Tiggard, Oregon,
(16:46):
nineteen eighty five, two years after she went After she
vanished from downtown Seattle, her remains found near Tiggered, Oregon.
She had been considered one of Bridgeway's potential victims since
way back, I like ninety eight or eighty eight. Rather, so,
she goes missing in eighty three, her bones are recovered
(17:08):
in eighty five, and by eighty eight they did consider
her part of the Green River killer victims. And that's
why I was curious about the identification. It was an
incomplete set of bones and teeth that were just and
if I get some of these confused too, and I
(17:28):
am so sorry, but you know, there was one of
the stories that I remember, Joe where they were at
a ball field and a dog came running up to
the coach who was working on the field and had
a leg bone in his mouth. And can you imagine
what that.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Would be like? Yeah, And for our listeners.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Oh, that's not Tammy, by the way, Polo.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
No, no, no, no, that's not that's not Tammy. But
when you have when you have canones that are running, uh,
running a field if you will. Uh, there are a
number of cases. Uh. And for some reason, dogs are
attracted to skulls as well. It's almost like they're you know,
(18:16):
commonly you think about dogs having long bones. They're laying
in shade, maybe they're chewing on a long bone of
some kind. Generally you don't expect that to be a
human bone. But uh, I can think of two cases
right off the top of my head where I had
dogs that walked up in the yard of some unsuspecting
(18:39):
person's home with a skull, uh, And they treat them
almost like balls many times, and they'll have them poised
between their paws like this, and they'll you know, they'll
they'll be chewing uh and working on those bones the
entire time. And they, you know, canines seem to find
find this, find great joy in doing this, and so
(19:02):
it's not unusual for an animal to come walking up
with a bone.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
If I could have answered a question for a million dollars,
I never would have guessed that a dog would be
fascinated with the head. I never would all about that.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah, it's it's like that. I think that it's if
anyone has ever seen a dog with a ball between
their paws kind of playing in the backyard with it,
it's you know, it's kind of like that, only they
see it as a source of protein. You know. That's
you know, just like we're no different, you know, our
bodies are no different after death like that. That. Wow,
(19:34):
that's one of the things that attracts and so you
never know. And here's the other thing is that if
you if you have a skeletal remain and the dog
grabs a skelter remain brings in one element of it,
you don't know where that originated from. And so with Ridgeway,
Gary Ridgeway and all of these victims, including Tammy Lyles,
(19:57):
he perpetrated these crimes so that he had the remained
spread out in let's see how the distribution of the
remains was all over King County, and so you didn't
always know. He didn't have like a specific location he
would go to, but he would do particular things with
the bodies, some of them that they could still appreciate.
(20:19):
Sometimes he'd lined bodies up, he'd go to these particular
areas where he was just kind of keeping them. And
so they've got these almost like commingaled remains. They even
put forth the idea that he's posing some of these
bodies after death and the fact that he would do this,
And the other thing about Ridgeway is that he's not
(20:41):
one of these brilliant guys. He doesn't have like an
IQ that's off the chart. He was just singularly focused
on what he was doing and he you know, he
worked for years and years and this plays into the
story as well. He worked for years and years as
a not just a car painter or an automotive painter,
(21:02):
but a painter of trucks specifically, like you know, big
Peter Bilts and Mac trucks. That's what he did, and
he maintained that job all of these years while still
going out and perpetrating these crops, which is fascinating as
far as I'm concerned. He was just singularly focused on
this obsession that he had with killing prostitutes and then
(21:26):
disregarding their remains.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
It's still amazing to me that he was. Gary Ridgeway
was a suspect early on, from at least eighty seven,
and that's when we publicly knew about him in terms
of the investigation, but they suspected him. As you mentioned,
he was not as clever or as intelligent as some
others that we have dealt with, but still he got
(21:48):
away with it for a whole lot longer than many
of them ever did. And the damage he did to families.
I think of the how one person can effect. One
person's death affects so many people. Now you're talking fifty
you know, you're talking a lot of extended people directly
and indirectly affected by what this one person did and
(22:14):
That's what I think is the most shocking to talk
about people in bones and things like that. When you
had a girl as sixteen years old, his youngest victim
was fourteen, or the youngest one we know about was fourteen,
but you know still Tammy Lyles was sixteen years old.
Her bones helped identify who she was with the as
you mentioned, the teeth, using those as identity, but they
(22:37):
weren't actually able to get the whole picture pulled together
on on Tammy Lyles until they were able to get
the DNA tested. And when you start with so little evidence, Joe,
and you don't have soft tissue, you don't have anything
except the bones, what do you do as an investigator
(22:59):
to try to find out who this person is and
how they ended up where they are when they are discovered.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Yeah, well that's a lot of that is going to
rest heavily upon. First off, your first stop along the
continuum here is anthropology. I would imagine that many of
our friends have all heard of the body Farm. That's
one of the reasons the body Farm does the research
that they do, because you're dealing with decomposing skeletal remains
(23:29):
and you have to be able to these people that
go out and practice as anthropologists, they can't put most
of the time a real fine point on identification. So
they're looking in very broad ways at the bones that
they have. You know, they'll try to categorize the bones
by virtue of race and that you really need a
(23:51):
skull for that, and of course in many of these
cases you're not going to have skull. And then you
try to do stature, and there's a metric that you
can apply relative to like bone link, Like if you're
going to measure, say the length of the thigh bone,
it's going to fit into a particular category as to
what the height, the approximating height of this individual will be.
(24:13):
But then you have to determine if the thigh bone
that you're looking at is either male or female or
is it from a racial grouping that would have more
what it referred to And this is a weird word
grassile bones, which grass ale means fine kind of fine featured,
where if you had, say an Asian person that you
(24:40):
found and it could be an adult male, their bones
might not be as big and robust as some big
European origin guy like me, and so you can't Sometimes
you'll get the sexing of the bones. As I say,
you'll get those confused. You'll get racial characteristics confused with
(25:02):
skulls because the facial characteristics. You know, sometimes we're commingled,
our genetics are commingled. Now it's not. You don't have
these clear lines of delineation. So what are you left
with at that point? Toime? Well, fortunately the world that
we live in today has brought about the idea of
(25:24):
who are we? Who are we at our molecular core?
And to our benefit, you have groups of people like
authorm that are answering some of these long, long unanswered questions.
(25:58):
The big question is what are you left with? You know,
you start off, I think with an incomplete skeleton, and
as horrible as it is, the only name that you
have is bones twenty and you suspect that it could
be one individual in particular based upon dental ID but
(26:24):
you need to confirm that. You need to confirm that
for the sake of the family. And you, like you said, Dave,
you don't have soft tissue. So where are you going
to go? Well, you're going to take bone sample. And
in Tammy Lyles case, that bone sample actually made it
to Texas. But the first stop in Texas was not
(26:45):
Authorm Labs. It's another great lab that's housed at the
University of North Texas. And as a matter of fact,
I've got a real good buddy of mine that just
retired from there and they do some of the most
marvelous work in DNA identification. But when they played that
out to the end, they were left scratching their head thinking,
(27:09):
we can't take this any further. We need to see
who else we can source this to. And of course
that's when Authram appears, appears on the radar and they
come in to kind of complete this job.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Now when we're talking about Authorm and beyond, because there
is breaking down the DNA and having that map, but
to find out who this person is and who they
are tied to is a totally different It's an extension
(27:40):
of the DNA exercise because now you've got to do
the genetic genealogy. You have to build a family tree.
So here is our victim, and we've got that victim. Boy,
we got everything right here, but we have to find
out other things. Who's related to this victim. There's other
people at least too.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, this is a fascinating thing in my recent visit
to Athram that I was shocked by. You go into
one one section of this of their facility, which is amazing,
and you've got this very clinical environment where everything is
sealed off. People are on the literally on the other
side of the glass and wearing protective clothing, right, and
(28:24):
they can only work for about forty five minutes at
a time when they have to step out because it's
such labor intensive work and you don't want your people
to be distracted because of fatigue, so they have to
take a break like every forty five minutes.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So there's such a powerful thing on the brain. It
is taxing your brain so much that they know after
forty five minutes you're no longer at the top of
your game. It has eaten that much. Take a break.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
That's remarkable, Yeah, it is, and it's the facility itself
is really something to see from that perspective, but also
that awareness. So if you have a case like Tammy's
case that comes in and you're trying to adjust yourself
to be so laser focused in your assessments of what
you have before you, here's the really sad thing is
(29:16):
that if this is a criminal case, defense attorneys will
pick at that, pick at, well, how many other cases
if they're talking to the technician, how many other cases
have you been working? How much time? Where do you
think you were too tired to be doing this? And
that sort of thing. They understand that concept. But here's
the other part. They don't just have a scientific section,
(29:39):
the genetics section. They've also got a genealogical section, which
is when you begin to think about this in the
world that I come from, which is, you know, morgues
and crime labs and all that stuff you don't think about. Well,
we've got a whole staff a genealogist here that they
can confer with begin to kind of work out this
(30:02):
big puzzle about who is this individual? And right you were,
you know, when you were discussing how do you tie
this back to a particular particular familial group, if you will,
and that is you look for these peripheral individuals that
are out there within the family tree. So you're talking
(30:25):
about cousins most of the time and several times removed.
And then they begin to kind of bring that in
and tighten the focus on all of these cases. And Tammy,
of course, is representative of that, and you want to
be sure. You want to be sure about these cases.
And so for Tammy Lyles, which please keep in mind
(30:50):
if people are thinking, well, how did she die, there's
no way to determine how many of these people die
because when you get to the state where you're in
a skelton On state, any of the soft tissue that
you would be looking for for focal areas of hemorrhage
(31:10):
in the neck, or you're looking for, you know, the
fractured hyoid as they always talk about, or you're looking
for trauma to the skull. Meantime, you're not going to
have that. And so it's it's an idea of of
essentially a presumptive event where you're you're presuming that this
(31:31):
individual died at the hands of someone like Gary Ridgeway
because it fit the mo of what he had done
in the past and she fits into a particular grouping.
But Authorm's role in this is I think that it's
it is first off, it's the ultimate and compassion, but
(31:52):
also it's it is from this particular case in the
series of homicides that Gary Ridgeway was involved in. It
is the ultimate act of compassion as well, because finally,
the family can move on from that point. I never
use the word closure because I think that that's it's
(32:14):
a horrible term to use because families. You're diminishing the
grief of families by saying that families never get closure
from homicides. You can forget that. Please don't say that
to people. I guess you have closure now, No, they don't.
People don't get closure. It's such a weird term. And
for those of us that work as death investigators, families
(32:36):
don't get closure, they might achieve certain levels of peace.
I don't know. I can't speak to anybody's individual experiences,
but the one piece to this is that from a
confirmatory stint, Authorm offers that and it's a little slice
of peace perhaps for them, and that's what they've done
(32:57):
in Tammy Law's case. Dave, Well, you.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Know with AUM and you have like math on one
side and the theater arts to people on the other.
Because to pull all this together to actually get answers
to questions and solving crimes, this is really an amazing
world of technology because it does require some out of
the box thinking. Besides the math. We have the math,
(33:20):
but we've got to find the rest and that's why
authoram is so important to what's being done. And I
want to go back to this idea that they are
crowd funded when police send. You know, oftentimes our law
enforcement agencies are underfunded, especially when it comes to investigations
in what are considered cold cases. Now, because of the
strides that have been made, many departments have a cold
(33:43):
case unit and they're breaking crimes. They're actually solving crimes
that have been dormant for many, many years, but now
have the ability to take the technology and the skills
and just the experience of investment gators and actually solve
these crimes. But to get to that next level, you
(34:05):
need an author them, you need a law Yeah, they
don't have funding like well I would think, you know,
I I just assumed until you told me. I really
did assume that there was federal funding, that it came
in from many different sources and they just had because
of the work they are doing that I really did
think that it was super funded. Not a problem. Send it.
(34:26):
We got you. You know, we're lined up from here
to the moon. But it's not like that at all.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
That's not the way it works, you know. Uh, And
it's curious to me where certain government agencies push moneies
towards UH and I think that you know, for me,
of course, I'm partial in this area because of the
death investigation. I think that one of the most noble
things that you can do is provide a service like
this to families. Authorm fills that gap, uh you know,
(34:54):
regarding this, regarding that that big unknown, because there's the
ultimate key it's uh know, at a molecular level that
they're offering. Look, there's been cold case squads for years
and years, and it's frustrating being on a cold case.
There's a reason they're cold cases, and you can in
cold case cases that are part of a cold case packet.
(35:18):
See if I can explain this correctly. They are generational,
So you can have an old group of investigators that
will be on a cold case, one of many that
might exist in a certain jurisdiction, and from a generational standpoint,
and I'm talking generational in a very narrow spectrum here,
it's passed on to the next generation of investigators that
(35:41):
have achieved the level of skill. Because the skills that
a cold case investigator has are a bit different than
your regular investigator that's out on the street. They're dealing
with things that are a bit finer in detail, and
so you have to raise up another generation of police
officers to be at that level or investigators to be
at that left. And sometimes these cases just get handed off.
(36:03):
That's what that and I really want people to grab
hold of this. That's why this is such a fantastic
time to be alive and forensics to witness this because
all of these cases dave that for years and years
and years that have gone gone unanswered. You know, the
big questions that arise from these cases that have gone
(36:26):
unanswered for years and years and years. We're finally getting
to see a few beams of sunlight that are exposed
in this darkness, and there will finally be answers. And
sometimes those answers will come about as an unidentified DNA
sample that could be blood or semen or any number
(36:48):
of body fluids that are found has seen that can
tie back to a perpetrator, or it can be one
of the best gifts that anybody could give to one
of these families that have wanted to know for so
long what happened to those that I love and striking
them off of that master list that they have at names.
I urge you to check out dnasolves dot com and
(37:13):
just visit the website. I don't get a nickel off
of this. I don't you know. I'm not here to
necessarily sell what authorm is doing. However, I've spent more
time than I can possibly express to any of you
guys standing over unidentified human remains for years and years
(37:35):
and years with no answers. Again, this might be one
of the most noble things that's being done in the
area of forensic sciences right now, and I urge each
and every one of you to go and visit the
website and see what these people are doing, because it
will it will knock your socks off. I'm just Scott
(38:01):
Morgan and this is body bugs. H
Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan years ago, when I
was working as an investigator, every death that occurred, you know,
I'd like to say that each death is unique, and
they are. But when you're in the middle of conducting
(00:34):
an investigation into an obvious homicide and a pattern begins
to appear in other cases, there's this little thing that
occurs in your brain. And I used to think that
I would get distracted from other cases that did not
(00:59):
have the same patterns because you get I don't know,
it's it's almost like a in a hyper state of awareness,
I think, because you know, you see, you know, investigators
are no different than anybody else. You know, you begin
to see the Boogeyman everywhere you go. But the hardcold
reality is is that the boogeyman does exist. And today
(01:28):
I want to speak to a particular case of a teenager,
a teen girl who died many, many years ago, but
yet her death was shrouded in mystery for a long time,
(01:51):
and I think that it's important that we discuss it
because she fell victim to a boogeyman. She fell victim
to Gary Ridgeway, otherwise known as a Green River killer.
(02:12):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Bags. I
think that Dave, you and I kind of came to
maturity as young adults.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Okay, Joe, stop before you guys get worried that this
is going to be some kind of summer of forty
two boys becoming men show.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
This show today is about Tammy Lyles directly and indirectly.
Tammy Lyles was only sixteen years old when she was
murdered by Gary Ridgway, known to many as the Green
River serial killer. Gary Ridgway killed forty nine women and girls.
Tammy Lyles was just sixteen when she met Gary Ridgeway
and he killed her. It took years for her for
(02:57):
her to be identified, for her family to know for
sure this was our Tammy. As a matter of fact,
for a year she was called bones twenty. But it
took the people at Authorm Labs and the work they
do that goes beyond the veil. It's just as fascinating,
incredible work. And I think about every time they solve
a case genetically using genetic genealogy, it's another family that
(03:21):
now has peace and comfort. Joe and I both don't
like to say closure, but peace and comfort. Knowing knowing
that's the key. So I wanted to make sure y'all
know that's what we're talking about today. Green River, Sarah
Killer Authoram Labs, and sixteen year old Tammy Lyles. Now, Joe,
let's go back to the summer of forty two.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I'm speaking to myself. I can't speak to you.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
We're the same, We heard the same agent of parallel
existences in our private lives before we ever met one another.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, you're right, it's weird how people get connected that way.
But we came of age. I think at at an
interesting time, particularly from a crime history perspective, because it
seems as though that the world that we that we
inhabited back then, serial killers were talked about. They seemed
(04:15):
to be. I know that they talk about him now
in true crime world, but back then, you know, I
can reflect back and think about all these serial perpetrators
that were out there when I was a young guy,
and they were it seems like that they were everywhere.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Because of Ted Bundy more than anything else. Ted Bundy
because he was that, he was attractive, he had been big,
and you know, they they talked about him being very
big in Washington State politics. He really wasn't, but because
his story was so remarkable and and rule writing the
book The Stranger Beside Me actually illuminated this whole world
(04:53):
of the good looking guy that you would be happy
for your daughter to date is actually killing women who
looked like his first real love. But then we had
in the seventies, we had his escape from jail twice
if you remember, oh yeah, that was the two you know,
run Ted run kind of stuff, a run Bundy run,
(05:14):
whatever it was. We had that all over the press.
And then in the eighties we had all of the
other things. We had the Green River killer in the
news because they labeled.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
It that way.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
But in the meantime, we had Ted Bundy reaching out
to the press because he was on death row and
they kept trying to kill him and he kept trying
to fight it off. And so every time a serial
killer started being covered in the press, Ted Bundy got
his wheels in motion to get the press back on him.
It was amazing. Yeah, it really was in a bad way.
Amazing Yeah yeah, no, no, really in a reality in
(05:47):
a realistic way, because I think that you know, it
goes to people throw around the term of narcissism all
the time nowadays, and it's certainly I think that it
is very uh it's it is symptomatic of narcissism relative
(06:08):
to him and he you know, he uh he he
would draw the spotlight back to him. And I think
back we had Richard Maris. Wow, we had the hillside
strang GluRs. It's not stranged GluR.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Uh. For a while it was singular, but then you've
got this team of guys. And then going back even
further than that, you know, you you had uh yeah,
Tate lot Bianca. But I was thinking about uh uh
he refused to be called Otis but ottis Tool and
(06:42):
uh that wascas and they worked in tandem. And actually
I had I didn't have direct contact with with Ottis
O t I s. He preferred to be called by that,
but Otis uh otis tool. They worked into hand them.
If you've ever seen Henry Portrait of serial Killer, very
(07:05):
disturbing film, but that you know, those two worked in
Interestingly enough, when I was with a corner in New Orleans,
they brought Oddis Tool to my jurisdiction. And one of
the little traps that a lot of investigators would fall
into back then was the fact that these guys would
be cool on their heels in jail. I think Ottis
(07:27):
was in Florida Penitentiary at that point in time, and
they brought him to New Orleans because he claimed that
he could tell tell authorities where bodies were, and you know,
he kind of made the rounds relative to that. And
with Ridgeway, there's an element of that with Ridgeway, Gary
(07:47):
Ridgeway the Green River Killer, because he took he took
the authorities out to a variety of sites and he
had a huge body count. I think that some people,
you know, believe that that he was really responsible for
far more than he had claimed. And I don't know
(08:09):
if that if that goes to his he's trying to,
you know, bait the authorities with with that, or if
it's if it's reality. You never can tell because it's
such a deceptive game that they play, you know. But
for me, what's really cool, Dave, is that I had
(08:32):
I'm not going to say it was life changing, but
I had a real peak behind the curtain a couple
of weeks ago, and I got to go to Authrom
Labs down in the woodlands outside of Houston, Houston, Texas,
and they have a direct bearing on the case we're
going to talk talk about today and the work that
they're doing in forensic genetic genealogy, and so I think
(08:53):
that it's important that we try to understand our victim
today that we're gonna talk about Lawles, and she's what
they believe is the youngest victim of the Green rip
killer and AUTHORM played a big role in this day.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
You know, it's amazing that for those of us who
watched the trial of the century, maybe one of the
last trials of the century for the nineteen hundreds, was
the O. J. Simpson trial, where we heard a lot
about DNA for the first time for many of us
as observers of crime related stuff, that story was all
about DNA, it seemed at the end, and I think
(09:30):
there's a whole lot more that could be told. But
the bottom line here is that because of so many
of us knowing about DNA because of the OJ trial
and what has happened since then, I think it's important
for people to understand to know that AUTHORM they're not
some heavily funded government entity that's got a staff of
(09:53):
you know, with billions of dollars pouring in. They it's
amazing to me, and we'll cover this more to what
they but they actually have to crowd for to do
stories like if you have a loved one that was
murdered and you're trying to solve it has been years
and years and years, and you know, there's no statute
of limitations on murder and the only evidence you have
is this sample of DNA and you've they've been able
(10:15):
to do nothing with it, and it's twenty years later.
Authorn can do something with it.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
They can try, Yeah, they can, and it kind of
bifurcates in the sense of how it's utilized. I got
to meet and spend time with David Mettleman, who is
the director and CEO, and his brilliant wife, Kristin Mittleman,
and they've run this thing and created something essentially from
(10:41):
the ground up.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
And wow, I didn't know that. Actually, yeah, there's going
to have to be a movie on this, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
I think that it would be perfect and they're fantastic.
And David, if you ever enter, and I know that
a lot of people may be in can state this,
if you've never been a around a true savant somebody
that if you're around them, their intellect seems to be
off the scale. I'd say that David fits within that category.
(11:12):
He is brilliant. But you know, the thing about it
is is that his brilliance doesn't stifle his compassion. And
it's one thing, you know, it's one thing to say
we can sit around all day long and say how
compassionate we are, but you know you and I believe
that you're You know that your abilities are proven through
(11:36):
your actions, and you know, put the words into motion,
put those you know what, otherwise would just be worthless platitudes.
His goal, which is fascinating to me, is not only
to help solve crimes, which is part of it. That's
(11:56):
why this is a bifurcated discussion. Is to solve help
solve crimes, to bring people, to hold people responsible for
these horrible things that they've done. But also the other
part that he's engaged in is trying to get the
thousands and thousands and thousands of bodies that are out
(12:19):
there identified and to help families know that have been
missing loved ones, that there is always an empty chair
at Christmas time or Thanksgiving or whatever holiday they celebrate,
and you never know what had happened to those individuals.
And you know, Dave, I got to tell you. I
(12:40):
was having a conversation with David Meddleman and we were
standing out on this sun drenched porch in the Texas heat,
and he looked at me and he said, you know,
my goal is to get the database for name US,
(13:03):
which is the database for all of the unidentified bodies
that we have that are out there. My goal and
should be the goal of everyone, to clear that database
out and get everybody known to the world once again,
(13:34):
sixteen years old. No, you're not an adult in it,
but you know, sometimes dependent upon the circumstances that a
sixteen year old is in, they have to face horrors
that you would think would otherwise only be reserved for adults.
And of course, in the case that we're speaking of
today with Tammy Lyles, she faced that horror. She faced
(13:58):
this devil, this book man and Gary Ridgeway, and it's
still amazing that first off, that they were ever even
able to get her identified.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
David, the entire spectrum of the Green River Killer covers
so many years, so much investigation, so much press. This
was not something that was just discovered one day and
they researched it back as a history lesson. This was
ongoing in the moment coverage of what was happening with
(14:33):
these women who were being killed. And Gary Ridgeway, he
was actually on the police radar early on, but just
kept on truck and they never had enough to really
do anything with him, but he was somebody they considered
up there as we look at Tammy Lyles when her
(14:54):
bones were I apologize if you're if you are one
of tam these relatives or somebody that knew her as
a living individual. This is no disrespect, it's but to
be truthful, we have to describe what was found, when
it was found, where it was found, how it was
And I'm so sorry. If this was my love, no,
I don't know how I would feel about this. But
(15:17):
in this case, she was finally identified. She was not
identified for a long time. And that's why I have
a question for you about that, Joe, because they had
labeled her as the Green River serial killer's final victim
identified sixteen year old Tammy Lyles at the age of sixteen.
(15:38):
She was murdered. Her remains were known as bones twenty.
Didn't they have an identity. Didn't they know who she
was before they used DNA to confirm what they thought?
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, they had gotten an ID on her years after
she had gone missing, and her remains had been recovered. Okay,
there was kind of a partial skeletal remain that was
found of her, which is not uncommon. You know, when,
particularly when you have what referred to as surface remains,
(16:14):
those remains that are not buried, you're very fortunate, You're
very fortunate to find anything at all. In her case,
they did, and I think that that task was achieved
through dental examination.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Okay, because Tammy Lyles's body was found bones called Bones twenty.
She had been last seen in downtown Seattle, Washington, June
of eighty three, at the age of sixteen. She was
one of two unidentified women whose remains were found near Tiggard, Oregon,
(16:46):
nineteen eighty five, two years after she went After she
vanished from downtown Seattle, her remains found near Tiggered, Oregon.
She had been considered one of Bridgeway's potential victims since
way back, I like ninety eight or eighty eight. Rather, so,
she goes missing in eighty three, her bones are recovered
(17:08):
in eighty five, and by eighty eight they did consider
her part of the Green River killer victims. And that's
why I was curious about the identification. It was an
incomplete set of bones and teeth that were just and
if I get some of these confused too, and I
(17:28):
am so sorry, but you know, there was one of
the stories that I remember, Joe where they were at
a ball field and a dog came running up to
the coach who was working on the field and had
a leg bone in his mouth. And can you imagine
what that.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Would be like? Yeah, And for our listeners.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Oh, that's not Tammy, by the way, Polo.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
No, no, no, no, that's not that's not Tammy. But
when you have when you have canones that are running, uh,
running a field if you will. Uh, there are a
number of cases. Uh. And for some reason, dogs are
attracted to skulls as well. It's almost like they're you know,
(18:16):
commonly you think about dogs having long bones. They're laying
in shade, maybe they're chewing on a long bone of
some kind. Generally you don't expect that to be a
human bone. But uh, I can think of two cases
right off the top of my head where I had
dogs that walked up in the yard of some unsuspecting
(18:39):
person's home with a skull, uh, And they treat them
almost like balls many times, and they'll have them poised
between their paws like this, and they'll you know, they'll
they'll be chewing uh and working on those bones the
entire time. And they, you know, canines seem to find
find this, find great joy in doing this, and so
(19:02):
it's not unusual for an animal to come walking up
with a bone.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
If I could have answered a question for a million dollars,
I never would have guessed that a dog would be
fascinated with the head. I never would all about that.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah, it's it's like that. I think that it's if
anyone has ever seen a dog with a ball between
their paws kind of playing in the backyard with it,
it's you know, it's kind of like that, only they
see it as a source of protein. You know. That's
you know, just like we're no different, you know, our
bodies are no different after death like that. That. Wow,
(19:34):
that's one of the things that attracts and so you
never know. And here's the other thing is that if
you if you have a skeletal remain and the dog
grabs a skelter remain brings in one element of it,
you don't know where that originated from. And so with Ridgeway,
Gary Ridgeway and all of these victims, including Tammy Lyles,
(19:57):
he perpetrated these crimes so that he had the remained
spread out in let's see how the distribution of the
remains was all over King County, and so you didn't
always know. He didn't have like a specific location he
would go to, but he would do particular things with
the bodies, some of them that they could still appreciate.
(20:19):
Sometimes he'd lined bodies up, he'd go to these particular
areas where he was just kind of keeping them. And
so they've got these almost like commingaled remains. They even
put forth the idea that he's posing some of these
bodies after death and the fact that he would do this,
And the other thing about Ridgeway is that he's not
(20:41):
one of these brilliant guys. He doesn't have like an
IQ that's off the chart. He was just singularly focused
on what he was doing and he you know, he
worked for years and years and this plays into the
story as well. He worked for years and years as
a not just a car painter or an automotive painter,
(21:02):
but a painter of trucks specifically, like you know, big
Peter Bilts and Mac trucks. That's what he did, and
he maintained that job all of these years while still
going out and perpetrating these crops, which is fascinating as
far as I'm concerned. He was just singularly focused on
this obsession that he had with killing prostitutes and then
(21:26):
disregarding their remains.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
It's still amazing to me that he was. Gary Ridgeway
was a suspect early on, from at least eighty seven,
and that's when we publicly knew about him in terms
of the investigation, but they suspected him. As you mentioned,
he was not as clever or as intelligent as some
others that we have dealt with, but still he got
(21:48):
away with it for a whole lot longer than many
of them ever did. And the damage he did to families.
I think of the how one person can effect. One
person's death affects so many people. Now you're talking fifty
you know, you're talking a lot of extended people directly
and indirectly affected by what this one person did and
(22:14):
That's what I think is the most shocking to talk
about people in bones and things like that. When you
had a girl as sixteen years old, his youngest victim
was fourteen, or the youngest one we know about was fourteen,
but you know still Tammy Lyles was sixteen years old.
Her bones helped identify who she was with the as
you mentioned, the teeth, using those as identity, but they
(22:37):
weren't actually able to get the whole picture pulled together
on on Tammy Lyles until they were able to get
the DNA tested. And when you start with so little evidence, Joe,
and you don't have soft tissue, you don't have anything
except the bones, what do you do as an investigator
(22:59):
to try to find out who this person is and
how they ended up where they are when they are discovered.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Yeah, well that's a lot of that is going to
rest heavily upon. First off, your first stop along the
continuum here is anthropology. I would imagine that many of
our friends have all heard of the body Farm. That's
one of the reasons the body Farm does the research
that they do, because you're dealing with decomposing skeletal remains
(23:29):
and you have to be able to these people that
go out and practice as anthropologists, they can't put most
of the time a real fine point on identification. So
they're looking in very broad ways at the bones that
they have. You know, they'll try to categorize the bones
by virtue of race and that you really need a
(23:51):
skull for that, and of course in many of these
cases you're not going to have skull. And then you
try to do stature, and there's a metric that you
can apply relative to like bone link, Like if you're
going to measure, say the length of the thigh bone,
it's going to fit into a particular category as to
what the height, the approximating height of this individual will be.
(24:13):
But then you have to determine if the thigh bone
that you're looking at is either male or female or
is it from a racial grouping that would have more
what it referred to And this is a weird word
grassile bones, which grass ale means fine kind of fine featured,
where if you had, say an Asian person that you
(24:40):
found and it could be an adult male, their bones
might not be as big and robust as some big
European origin guy like me, and so you can't Sometimes
you'll get the sexing of the bones. As I say,
you'll get those confused. You'll get racial characteristics confused with
(25:02):
skulls because the facial characteristics. You know, sometimes we're commingled,
our genetics are commingled. Now it's not. You don't have
these clear lines of delineation. So what are you left
with at that point? Toime? Well, fortunately the world that
we live in today has brought about the idea of
(25:24):
who are we? Who are we at our molecular core?
And to our benefit, you have groups of people like
authorm that are answering some of these long, long unanswered questions.
(25:58):
The big question is what are you left with? You know,
you start off, I think with an incomplete skeleton, and
as horrible as it is, the only name that you
have is bones twenty and you suspect that it could
be one individual in particular based upon dental ID but
(26:24):
you need to confirm that. You need to confirm that
for the sake of the family. And you, like you said, Dave,
you don't have soft tissue. So where are you going
to go? Well, you're going to take bone sample. And
in Tammy Lyles case, that bone sample actually made it
to Texas. But the first stop in Texas was not
(26:45):
Authorm Labs. It's another great lab that's housed at the
University of North Texas. And as a matter of fact,
I've got a real good buddy of mine that just
retired from there and they do some of the most
marvelous work in DNA identification. But when they played that
out to the end, they were left scratching their head thinking,
(27:09):
we can't take this any further. We need to see
who else we can source this to. And of course
that's when Authram appears, appears on the radar and they
come in to kind of complete this job.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Now when we're talking about Authorm and beyond, because there
is breaking down the DNA and having that map, but
to find out who this person is and who they
are tied to is a totally different It's an extension
(27:40):
of the DNA exercise because now you've got to do
the genetic genealogy. You have to build a family tree.
So here is our victim, and we've got that victim. Boy,
we got everything right here, but we have to find
out other things. Who's related to this victim. There's other
people at least too.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, this is a fascinating thing in my recent visit
to Athram that I was shocked by. You go into
one one section of this of their facility, which is amazing,
and you've got this very clinical environment where everything is
sealed off. People are on the literally on the other
side of the glass and wearing protective clothing, right, and
(28:24):
they can only work for about forty five minutes at
a time when they have to step out because it's
such labor intensive work and you don't want your people
to be distracted because of fatigue, so they have to
take a break like every forty five minutes.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So there's such a powerful thing on the brain. It
is taxing your brain so much that they know after
forty five minutes you're no longer at the top of
your game. It has eaten that much. Take a break.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
That's remarkable, Yeah, it is, and it's the facility itself
is really something to see from that perspective, but also
that awareness. So if you have a case like Tammy's
case that comes in and you're trying to adjust yourself
to be so laser focused in your assessments of what
you have before you, here's the really sad thing is
(29:16):
that if this is a criminal case, defense attorneys will
pick at that, pick at, well, how many other cases
if they're talking to the technician, how many other cases
have you been working? How much time? Where do you
think you were too tired to be doing this? And
that sort of thing. They understand that concept. But here's
the other part. They don't just have a scientific section,
(29:39):
the genetics section. They've also got a genealogical section, which
is when you begin to think about this in the
world that I come from, which is, you know, morgues
and crime labs and all that stuff you don't think about. Well,
we've got a whole staff a genealogist here that they
can confer with begin to kind of work out this
(30:02):
big puzzle about who is this individual? And right you were,
you know, when you were discussing how do you tie
this back to a particular particular familial group, if you will,
and that is you look for these peripheral individuals that
are out there within the family tree. So you're talking
(30:25):
about cousins most of the time and several times removed.
And then they begin to kind of bring that in
and tighten the focus on all of these cases. And Tammy,
of course, is representative of that, and you want to
be sure. You want to be sure about these cases.
And so for Tammy Lyles, which please keep in mind
(30:50):
if people are thinking, well, how did she die, there's
no way to determine how many of these people die
because when you get to the state where you're in
a skelton On state, any of the soft tissue that
you would be looking for for focal areas of hemorrhage
(31:10):
in the neck, or you're looking for, you know, the
fractured hyoid as they always talk about, or you're looking
for trauma to the skull. Meantime, you're not going to
have that. And so it's it's an idea of of
essentially a presumptive event where you're you're presuming that this
(31:31):
individual died at the hands of someone like Gary Ridgeway
because it fit the mo of what he had done
in the past and she fits into a particular grouping.
But Authorm's role in this is I think that it's
it is first off, it's the ultimate and compassion, but
(31:52):
also it's it is from this particular case in the
series of homicides that Gary Ridgeway was involved in. It
is the ultimate act of compassion as well, because finally,
the family can move on from that point. I never
use the word closure because I think that that's it's
(32:14):
a horrible term to use because families. You're diminishing the
grief of families by saying that families never get closure
from homicides. You can forget that. Please don't say that
to people. I guess you have closure now, No, they don't.
People don't get closure. It's such a weird term. And
for those of us that work as death investigators, families
(32:36):
don't get closure, they might achieve certain levels of peace.
I don't know. I can't speak to anybody's individual experiences,
but the one piece to this is that from a
confirmatory stint, Authorm offers that and it's a little slice
of peace perhaps for them, and that's what they've done
(32:57):
in Tammy Law's case. Dave, Well, you.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Know with AUM and you have like math on one
side and the theater arts to people on the other.
Because to pull all this together to actually get answers
to questions and solving crimes, this is really an amazing
world of technology because it does require some out of
the box thinking. Besides the math. We have the math,
(33:20):
but we've got to find the rest and that's why
authoram is so important to what's being done. And I
want to go back to this idea that they are
crowd funded when police send. You know, oftentimes our law
enforcement agencies are underfunded, especially when it comes to investigations
in what are considered cold cases. Now, because of the
strides that have been made, many departments have a cold
(33:43):
case unit and they're breaking crimes. They're actually solving crimes
that have been dormant for many, many years, but now
have the ability to take the technology and the skills
and just the experience of investment gators and actually solve
these crimes. But to get to that next level, you
(34:05):
need an author them, you need a law Yeah, they
don't have funding like well I would think, you know,
I I just assumed until you told me. I really
did assume that there was federal funding, that it came
in from many different sources and they just had because
of the work they are doing that I really did
think that it was super funded. Not a problem. Send it.
(34:26):
We got you. You know, we're lined up from here
to the moon. But it's not like that at all.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
That's not the way it works, you know. Uh, And
it's curious to me where certain government agencies push moneies
towards UH and I think that you know, for me,
of course, I'm partial in this area because of the
death investigation. I think that one of the most noble
things that you can do is provide a service like
this to families. Authorm fills that gap, uh you know,
(34:54):
regarding this, regarding that that big unknown, because there's the
ultimate key it's uh know, at a molecular level that
they're offering. Look, there's been cold case squads for years
and years, and it's frustrating being on a cold case.
There's a reason they're cold cases, and you can in
cold case cases that are part of a cold case packet.
(35:18):
See if I can explain this correctly. They are generational,
So you can have an old group of investigators that
will be on a cold case, one of many that
might exist in a certain jurisdiction, and from a generational standpoint,
and I'm talking generational in a very narrow spectrum here,
it's passed on to the next generation of investigators that
(35:41):
have achieved the level of skill. Because the skills that
a cold case investigator has are a bit different than
your regular investigator that's out on the street. They're dealing
with things that are a bit finer in detail, and
so you have to raise up another generation of police
officers to be at that level or investigators to be
at that left. And sometimes these cases just get handed off.
(36:03):
That's what that and I really want people to grab
hold of this. That's why this is such a fantastic
time to be alive and forensics to witness this because
all of these cases dave that for years and years
and years that have gone gone unanswered. You know, the
big questions that arise from these cases that have gone
(36:26):
unanswered for years and years and years. We're finally getting
to see a few beams of sunlight that are exposed
in this darkness, and there will finally be answers. And
sometimes those answers will come about as an unidentified DNA
sample that could be blood or semen or any number
(36:48):
of body fluids that are found has seen that can
tie back to a perpetrator, or it can be one
of the best gifts that anybody could give to one
of these families that have wanted to know for so
long what happened to those that I love and striking
them off of that master list that they have at names.
I urge you to check out dnasolves dot com and
(37:13):
just visit the website. I don't get a nickel off
of this. I don't you know. I'm not here to
necessarily sell what authorm is doing. However, I've spent more
time than I can possibly express to any of you
guys standing over unidentified human remains for years and years
(37:35):
and years with no answers. Again, this might be one
of the most noble things that's being done in the
area of forensic sciences right now, and I urge each
and every one of you to go and visit the
website and see what these people are doing, because it
will it will knock your socks off. I'm just Scott
(38:01):
Morgan and this is body bugs. H
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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