January 5, 2023 • 46 mins
Verogen CEO, Brett Williams and former District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert on how genetic technology is changing law enforcement.
(Originally aired: 0104Jan23)
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S1 (00:00):
The views and opinions expressed in this program are those
of the speaker's and do not necessarily reflect the views
or positions of any entities they represent. Including OLAS media.
You know, if we have let's say we have a
rape that happens today. Forcible rape of a child. We
(00:23):
have that child or that victim go through a sexual
assault examination. It's probably one of the most invasive, personally
intrusive types of things we can expect somebody to go through.
And that's because we have to collect the evidence. My
view is, listen, you know, that rape happened today and
they've developed a DNA profile, but they can't match it
to anybody in the felon database. We should avail ourselves
(00:45):
every single time of that tool if we're not able
to solve it through traditional means.
This is a special simulcast presentation of Inside the Crime
Files with Anne Marie Schubert. On this simulcast episode of
Inside the Crime Files, Anne Marie Schubert appeared on the Nation
State of Play podcast with Bryan Miller will join the
(01:08):
interview with them, as well as Brett Williams, of Verogen,
a California genetics firm that is taking forensic investigations further
with next generation sequencing solutions.
S2 (01:18):
All right. Well, Brett and Anne Marie, thank you both so
much for being on the show today. I'm really excited
to talk about this topic with the two of you.
S3 (01:25):
Thanks for having us.
S2 (01:26):
Appreciate it. You know, part of the reason I'm excited
to have you here is we spent a lot of
time on the show talking about the intersection of tech
and public policy. And I can't think of a better
example than variation in what you're doing in the law
enforcement space, but also in broader context as well that
I want to get into. And now that Anne-Marie is
(01:47):
out of office, we're hoping we can get her to
tell us some of the worst stories about some amazing
cases that she's worked on over the years using this
technology specifically. So we don't we don't often have to guess,
but really excited to have the both of you on
because I think it's a great a great way to
talk about this from multiple perspectives. So before we dig
(02:09):
into how it's used, Brett, could you give us a
little bit of overview of the company and at a
high level, what you focus on?
S4 (02:18):
Yes, certainly, Bryan. So probably give you a little bit
of history of the company. Verogen started out life as
the forensic business , and in August of 2017 it
was spun out by Illumina. So we're a standalone company
separate from Illumina. We're not controlled by Illumina, we're on
our own company. And since then we've been building out
(02:41):
really focused on our mission and building out our ability
to to execute on that, which is we're a biometric
based human ID company, the biometric the ultimate biometric being
DNA that's unique to every one of us you know,
forensic focus and we're using next generation sequencing from Illumina.
(03:05):
We have exclusive rights to their technology for forensics. And
just to put that in context for everyone, Illumina, 90%
of the human genome sequenced in the world today are
performed on an Illumina platform. It is the gold standard
from a sequencing platform perspective. We then leverage that technology
to to allow us to identify people. It's not about
(03:28):
generating Can I generate on your profile or can I
generate a snip profile? This is about saying who does
that profile belong to? And we do that from a
technology perspective. We generate the data from the next gen
sequencing platform we use from Illumina, but we then combine
that with our GEDMATCH database and that's how we help
(03:48):
law enforcement here is by allowing access to the database.
Combined with our technology, we can generate IDs for intractable
cases in our in the law enforcement sphere at the moment.
S2 (04:04):
Okay. So and I just want to get the multiple
applications out and then unpack these a little bit. So
so part of it is these cold cases in the
law enforcement space. There's also a role, as I understand it,
that has been used successfully for exonerating the wrongly convicted.
Is that correct?
S4 (04:24):
Yeah. It's not just a cold case technology. It can be.
It's been used for resolving cold cases and mores. You know,
we'll talk more about that. But it also is used
for an unidentified human remains. It's also been used for exonerations.
But one of the other technology the other uses where
(04:45):
particularly ex-U.S. is in conflict zones, identifying remains being from
conflict zone work is is where we've got projects going
now in Greece, Spain, the Korean and look at and
also discussions with the Vietnamese from the Vietnam War as well.
(05:05):
It's just it's it's surprising that like, for example, in
Spain there are 55,000 unidentified remains still in Greece. It's
from World War Two where they have and people are
wanting to start to put a an I.D. to these remains.
And really, you can't do that any other way other
than using the next gen sequencing platform to do that.
(05:26):
And so we're it's a very versatile, but it's also,
as we said, it's 21st century technology being applied to
the to the law enforcement sphere sphere here. So how.
S3 (05:38):
Far.
S2 (05:38):
Back historically, theoretically, could this technology be used to identify
human remains?
S4 (05:44):
So it's only going to be limited by the ability
to identify relatives. So you've got to be just like
we we identified or Anne Marie's team identified the Golden State killer.
You need you need to be able to use relatives
to identify that person. So the longer obviously, the longer
you go, the less probability you'll have for identifying someone.
(06:09):
If there's no relatives around. Right. You need some some
degree of relatives to be able to identify them. So, like,
for example, in the Korean War right now, that's 75
years ago. They're at their at second cousin level. That's
and but they have them. And so that's what they're doing.
You've lost all of your first degree relatives by that stage.
So SDR profiling doesn't work. You have to go to
(06:32):
snip profiling, and that's where you need to. You can
use more distant relatives to identify those remains. And so
that's how that's how it works.
S2 (06:42):
I think a lot of people are somewhat familiar with
this concept. All of a sudden because of a Crown
episode this season. I don't know if you guys have
seen this episode about the Romanoff's murder. Is that have
you guys have been producing this?
S4 (06:56):
No, I haven't.
S3 (06:57):
No.
S2 (06:57):
Okay. Okay. I encourage you to check it out later. Okay.
And this is this is based on true things that happened,
but there's a terrible series of murders at the outset
of World War One and World War One. The Russians
are family, and there's bad, bad blood between the Crown
(07:18):
and Russia. And ultimately, DNA technology was was used through
blood testing or Prince Philip's, I take it, to to
see if that was actually the remains that they'd identified.
And so I think they devoted a whole episode to it. So, hey,
anything that brings science to a broader population, I'm all for, okay.
(07:38):
So I think we've got a sense of the broader applications.
Who are your customers? Who is it that says, I
need this, I'm going to buy the products?
S4 (07:48):
So the actual purchasing is undertaken by the forensic laboratory, right?
So the DNA, the forensic DNA laboratory is our core
customer who's going to buy our sequencing platform. The reagents,
our actual customer for the JEDD matched database is often
the the genealogist, right. Whether it be within law enforcement
(08:09):
or if they have contracted out to a private genealogist,
they're the folks that are going to be using you
know the the Jed match database. We also sell to
the private labs, the private forensic labs, for example, Bodey
Labs or D, d, L, I or DNA Labs International
out in Florida and to overseas. It's really to the
(08:31):
same thing, very much government academic In Europe, for example,
a lot of the forensic labs sit within universities. They
call them Department of Legal Medicine. So for us it's
a variety, but mainly government, both state, local and federal
governments and private labs.
S2 (08:47):
It's a great segway to talk about how Anne Marie started
finding out about this technology. So Emery, what was your
first exposure to this concept, I think is fairly early
in your career, actually. You started getting interested in this.
S3 (09:00):
Yeah. So I got my first DNA. Case. In 1994,
I was a young cross younger prosecutor, I should say.
And it was in the days of the first kind
of introduction of DNA that the world remembers. O.J. Simpson
was kind of the big case that kind of exposed
this new tool called DNA. My my case involved a
(09:22):
serial rapist, and that was in the early days of DNA.
And so it's one of those things that I've learned that,
you know, 25, 28 years ago that DNA is the
greatest tool ever to find the truth no matter where
it leads us. And so over time, I've had the
benefit of kind of evolving with the science. You know,
(09:43):
as a prosecutor. And so then in, you know, as
time went on and DNA became more and more advanced,
we started solving more and more cold cases. But, you know,
the cold case rate of saw was probably around 30%
of cases or so. And then in the fall of 2017,
you know, while people were working feverishly to try to
(10:05):
solve the Golden State killer, a pretty smart investigator named Paul,
Holes came and asked me, hey, what do you think
about this idea? And he pitched it and he kind
of tried to explain this concept of what some people
call genetic genealogy. We call forensic investigative genetic genealogy. And
I remember sitting there when, you know, when I understood
(10:25):
DNA fairly well, but when he presented this idea of
this new tool, Brett talks about these things called snips,
my kind of my eyes kind of glossed over. And
I'm like, Oh, my God, this is a whole new world.
But I also knew that it was the greatest hope
we could have to try to solve that case. And so,
(10:46):
you know, our office in the team was willing to
move forward with it. And I'm obviously quite grateful that
they did.
S2 (10:53):
Let's give a little more context on the Golden State Killer. How
long had the investigation and failed attempts of bringing charges
been going on at the point that you got interested
in this approach?
S3 (11:06):
This is where I think it gets fascinating when you
look at the numbers, because we've we've got now the data,
like how long did it take to solve it? So
the case went on for 43 years. It had about
600 plus investigators assigned to it over the years. There
was 15 different law enforcement agencies involved in that investigation.
(11:26):
Because of the magnitude of the case, probably close to
$10 million was spent to try to solve it. Hundreds
of thousands of hours were put into solving it. 8000
people were looked at as potential people of interest. 300
people had their DNA swabbed, too, and were all eliminated.
(11:47):
And that really ultimately produced nothing. And then comes along
this new amazing tool called xxx Investigative Genetic genealogy. And.
It was a team of about six people. This is
on the Golden State Killer. It cost a few hundred
dollars at the time, and the case was solved in
(12:07):
63 days. So you go from 43 years of relentless
pursuit of justice by incredible law enforcement to 63 days.
It's really powerful.
S2 (12:21):
Okay, So. So I want to try to give listeners
as much as possible sort of the sequence then, no
pun intended, of exactly what you were doing during this
really compressed period where you're solving the case. So. So
I take it at this point you always knew you
had DNA of the murder, is that correct?
S3 (12:42):
Yes. So back in the mid nineties. And just to
remind the listeners, the goal said killer killed, as far
as we know, 13 people. He pled guilty to that.
He raped upwards of 50 different people over those 43 years.
There was direct victims of totaling of well over 80
(13:03):
victims of Golden State killer. So the magnitude was enormous.
So then when this idea was kind of hatched in
the fall of 2017 and this little small team was formed,
and just to be fair, I wasn't part of that
little team. I'm talking about the people that were actually
doing the work to people from the FBI to people
from the Sacramento DA's office, a genetic genealogist named Barbara
(13:25):
Ventnor and Paul Holes. And so, yes, we had DNA
in the mid-nineties. The cases were linked. And then over time,
more and more cases were linked by DNA. And the
Northern California rapes were linked to the Southern California murders
in 2001. And that's when everybody kind of had 21
years ago, this kind of aha moment that, oh my God,
(13:48):
we have one of the worst serial killers and rapist
of all time. So that's kind of where we were.
We knew we had DNA. Fortunately, there was more DNA
to be able to do this type of testing. And
if we hadn't had that extra sample that was collected
in one of the murders, then perhaps we wouldn't be
sitting here today talking about this great case.
S2 (14:09):
So. So what happens as a practical matter then, once
you decide to use this technology, you have the DNA.
Do you now understand the potential for the technology? What's
the next step?
S3 (14:22):
Well, I can answer that or Brett wants to. I mean,
for the purposes of the Golden State Killer or any
of the cases that have been solved since then, I mean,
you have to get your sample. You have to have
some biological fluid. You then send it out to a
private lab at this point and hopefully students and public
labs and they do this specialized kind of testing called
(14:42):
snip testing, which gives you incredible amounts of data. And
then from there, you're going to utilize a database such
as Judge Matsch to try it. You're uploading it. Then
you're going to try to build your family trees and
identify relatives of your bad guy, basically. Right. Am I
right on that, Brett? Hopefully I didn't, but I don't.
S4 (15:01):
That's that's exactly right. The way to look at the
way to think about snips or single nucleotide polymorphisms is
we share 99.7% of our DNA. That 0.3% is what
differentiates us. And we use that to determine how much
DNA you share with others. And that's the whole premise
of genetic genealogy. And just to get into the details,
(15:25):
but memories, right. You then use that information to build
a family tree and identify the bad guy.
S2 (15:32):
Anne Marie, was the murderer - was he a suspect already at
this point?
S3 (15:39):
KELLER Oh, no, He was you know, that's he was
never on any list. I mean, I trust me when
I say that. For 40 plus years, law enforcement made
every list known to man to try to identify this person.
And he was never on this list. And that, I think,
is what's somewhat fascinating. You know, post-Cold and say killer,
we've got probably close to 200, at least across the country.
(16:00):
Many of the people that have been identified in cases
across the country were never on lists. Some, you know,
some were just living right amongst us and just, you know,
they woke up one day, decided to kill and went
back to a quote unquote, normal life. And that that
is to me some some of the fascinating kind of
realities of what we're seeing with the power of this technology.
(16:23):
I mean, I, I keep saying this and it's true.
This is the perfect marriage which will never get divorced.
Of science and law enforcement.
S2 (16:32):
Justice Souter was here. Was he in custody already at
that point?
S3 (16:38):
What do you mean?
S2 (16:39):
Was he in custody for other. Oh, no crimes at
that point.
S3 (16:42):
We know he was. He was. I mean, as most
folks know, he was sadly a police officer at point
and he was ultimately fired as a police officer. And that,
at least for me, while I was the D.A., that
was the aha moment is when they were building the
family trees, when they realized he had been a former
police officer and that he'd been busted for stealing dog
(17:06):
repellent and a hammer. That was kind of the moment of, oh,
my God, we got something here. This is this sounds
like something real. Now.
S2 (17:15):
Yes. So as a prosecutor, I'm curious, you you have
now this this DNA and what what does that do
in terms of your ability to to prosecute the case
as a practical matter? Because it obviously is going to
rely on theoretically, if you get to the jury explaining
the technology in some way to a jury. Right. So
(17:36):
what was what was your.
S3 (17:37):
Actually, no, not to correct you, but I'm I am
going to please correct you. Yeah. So I think it's
important that folks understand this is an investigative tool, at
least from my perspective. And I think most folks that
understand this, it's no different than what we get when
we call a CODIS search, which is a DNA hit
to a database, a felon database. This is a lead
(17:57):
for law enforcement. This is like a tip. And so
as a prosecutor, we don't anticipate the we don't suggest
that it be brought into court. It's just simply giving
law enforcement a tip. Then they're going to go get
a sample, a direct sample from the person of the interest.
And then they're going to compare it with kind of
the old school str traditional technology. And that is what
(18:21):
goes into court. It's not the genealogy because that, you know,
remember we're dealing with with. Somewhat of privacy issues. We're
trying to maintain privacy in the work that we do
and balance that public safety. So if it's not necessarily
present in the courtroom, then we shouldn't be.
S4 (18:39):
You know, asking that, Brian, the way into the memories.
Absolutely right. It the whole process of genetic genealogy begins
and ends with an ideal profile. There's an ideal profile
from the crime scene. There's an SDR profile from your
suspect that's been identified by genealogy and those that it's
the STR profile that's compared and therefore presented in court,
because that's the accepted, you know, from a you know,
(19:02):
from a technology perspective. SDR Profiling is, is the key.
S2 (19:06):
Yeah, super helpful. I'm I'm glad I'm glad we focused
on that. So you get enough from this to get
a warrant to go get the sample in this case
from the Golden State killer. Right.
S3 (19:18):
And well, and you said it's okay to get in
the weeds, but now we don't normally, you know, when
you finally figure out somebody through a family tree and
you think that person's perhaps your suspect, then typically law enforced,
they can get a warrant. And that's possible. There's other
ways that legal ways such as a bandit DNA, when
(19:39):
basically the dude goes to the restaurant, leaves this cup behind,
or he goes to a drive through and throws his
trash out or whatever. But that's in the case of
the Golden State Killer. It's public knowledge that law enforcement
followed him and got actually twice. They followed him. One
said to a Hobby Lobby and got a sample from
(20:00):
something that was lawfully obtained. And then secondly, they did
what's called a trash run, and they got his garbage
and got his DNA from that that same.
S2 (20:10):
Okay. So that's that's one of the most famous examples
of using this for cold cases. Let's let's do an
exoneration example. The Ricky Davis case is something you've talked
a lot about. Sure. Can you tell us what happened
in that case?
S3 (20:28):
Sure. So Ricky Davis was a guy that was prosecuted
in a neighboring county in northern California called Eldorado County.
In the mid eighties. There was a woman that was
brutally stabbed to death, Jane Hilton, and the case went
unsolved for a period of time. And then the investigators
picked it up and they clued in or they I
(20:49):
should say, they focused in on Ricky Davis because he
was staying, I believe, at the home. He had some
his some of his own issues. And ultimately they had
an informant, the girlfriend at the time of Ricky Davis,
who claimed that those two committed the crimes. Ricky Davis
always confessed his innocence, always. For decades he was ultimately convicted,
(21:13):
despite his confession of innocence. And then after he was convicted,
the Northern California Innocence Project came to our office, the
Sacramento DA's office, or I should say, my former office,
and asked us to do what's called post-conviction DNA work. Meaning,
can you look at some of the evidence in the case?
(21:33):
Can you see if Ricky Davis is. On the evidence.
And basically what had happened was the victim, Jane Hilton,
had been bitten by one of the perpetrators and there
was a bite mark on her shoulder. And so our
our laboratory, the lab went meticulously and went through her
(21:54):
pajamas and ultimately found DNA on the pajamas that aligned
with the bite mark. It was basically probably saliva from
the bite mark. And that DNA was not Ricky Davises.
And that became a very big piece of evidence to
give him a new trial where he got a new
trial for that. But the question was, well, whose was it?
(22:16):
Whose DNA was on that pajamas? Because it could have
been it could have been Ricky's body. It could have
been completely somebody separately. So that's when I said to
the D.A. in our office, the DA's office, I said, well,
we should be doing genetic genealogy on this because we
need to figure out whose it is, either which Ricky
Davis is actually innocent, or Ricky Davis is still potentially guilty.
(22:39):
And so through that genetic genealogy, they identified a different
person by the name of Michael Green. And Michael Green was,
in fact, the killer. And Michael Green actually just pled
guilty to that case about a month or so ago,
maybe two months ago now. But but the important thing
is it's a tool of justice. And for me, yes,
(23:02):
as much as I am so proud of the work
that was done on the killer, I mean, it is
the most incredible case. Ricky Davis case is right up
there because this man was actually innocent and spent 15
years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
And so I look at this tool through the lens of, yeah,
it's great for cold cases. Yeah, it's it's great for,
(23:25):
you know, future cases. But we should be using this
same tool if there's an actual claim of innocence. And
that's what Ricky Davis demonstrated, is that the power of
that tool.
S2 (23:36):
Amazing example. Okay. So, Sabrina, I'd like to talk about
the identifying human remains uses that you're engaging in throughout
the world. Give us a little bit of context. You know,
whenever you can within confidentiality rules of the types of
things you're working on. Yeah.
S4 (23:55):
So it's a broad unidentified human remains covers a broad
swath of the world. But so Jed, Matt, back here
in the US, it's routinely used to identify unidentified human
remains that are that are found right using gedmatch, using
the database to ident. Just, just like you're identifying perpetrators
(24:18):
of crimes, you can also now identify up, take a
sample from that unidentified human remains and then build trees
and identify the person. The other one we. The other
topic we talked about was this conflict zone resolution resolving
the unidentified human remains from conflict zones. There it's a
little different. We're still using the platform snips, but actually,
(24:41):
because you have known references now, usually, you know, family
members will come forward and go, hey, I'm missing a
loved one. I want to give a DNA sample. So
there we use the gedmatch infrastructure and tools, but we're
actually comparing the unidentified remains to directly a reference database.
So it's a separate application, but it relies on the
(25:03):
snip profiling technology that we use for perpetrators or exonerations.
But it's just a little different in that we're not
comparing those profiles to the to the main gedmatch database.
These are specific databases generated for each of those conflict
zones because they have known references.
S2 (25:24):
So who is your customer typically for that type of work?
S4 (25:28):
So for that, for that, it's the governments of a
particular country. So for example, in Korea, there's the Korean
government is working, specifically Spain just change their laws to
be able to exhume the the Spanish Civil War remains.
So these are government level, high level activities at the
(25:48):
government that the government then funds particular labs in that
country to do the work. Mexico's similar story as well.
In Mexico, it's horrific. They've lost more people now than
the Afghanistan and then anybody in the compared to like
for example, in the Afghanistan war. They've lost more people
than the Afghans had during that period of time. They
(26:11):
have over 100,000 people reported missing. They have about 40,000
bodies in crypts. They know they've got about another 60
they haven't dug up. So there's this huge it is
an epidemic and it's a silent one. It's outside of
it's not really talked about. But for us, this is
an area where we think the technology can be used
(26:32):
to bring closure for all of these families with with
missing loved ones.
S2 (26:36):
And is the US government currently a client ambassador?
S4 (26:40):
So they are funding certain certain activities. For example, the
US State Department funded the Colombia government to particularly the
Fark insurrection down there. There's a number of missing unidentified
human remains and that is State Department funded and we
supplied the technology for that. So, yes, the government usually
(27:04):
does that. The State Department is funds in certain instances,
the other governments.
S2 (27:11):
So we've talked about cold cases, we've talked about exoneration,
We talked about some of the unidentified human remains instances.
But this very same this is also being used for
active prosecutions. Right? Right. So so, yeah. Brett, how how
do you use the tools in that context?
S4 (27:27):
It's very similar to what Anne Marie described. In fact,
it's dead the same as what Anne-Marie described for the
Golden State killers, because the first case that was solved
using the technology was a cold case. It's not. And
I think that's the point. What we've hopefully got out
of this podcast is it's not a cold case technology only.
(27:47):
It can be used for exonerations or unidentified human remains,
but also for active cases, particularly where you get a
no hit on the CODIS database, no reflexes. It's a
fee for violent crime. It should be part of the
standard operating procedure in our mind.
S2 (28:03):
Yeah, And let's let's talk a little bit more about
how how the government and crime labs can make that
more of a standard operating procedure. Tell me how law
enforcement is able to access it in that case, as
a practical matter, currently in California.
S3 (28:19):
So they so let's assume hypothetically, they send it to
their own crime lab, public laboratory. They get the DNA extracted,
meaning they take whatever the crime scene sample is, they
get the DNA out of it, and then they send
it off. I assume they did a traditional type of
what Brett's calling STR testing, and then they're going to
(28:40):
send it to a private lab, everybody. And then they
get to what's called the snip testing done. And then
from there, it's just like the GSK or any of
these other cases. It goes through the tree building process
and then they figure out from there. So it's it's
exactly the same. The one thing I would say, and
maybe this kind of gets a little bit, you know,
(29:01):
somewhat of me on my platform is, you know, if
we have let's say we have a rape that happens today,
a forcible rape of a child. Okay? And we in
law enforcement have that child or that victim go through
a sexual assault examination. It's probably one of the most invasive,
personally intrusive types of things we can expect somebody to
(29:24):
go through. And that's because we have to collect the evidence.
Law enforcement has to collect it. So my view is, listen,
you know, that rape happened today and they've developed a
DNA profile, but they can't match it to anybody in
the database. We owe it to society and we owe
it to that child, into that family and to our communities.
(29:45):
We owe it to take that next step. We have
the tools. It's here. It's right in front of us.
We should avail ourselves every single time of that tool
if we're not able to solve it through traditional means.
S2 (29:57):
Right. And what's holding us back from doing that at
bigger scale. Let's start with California, and we're asking the
same question nationally. But as a practical matter in California,
what's holding us back from doing that in every case?
S3 (30:12):
I think it's two part of it, and I'll let
Brett chime in. But I mean, maybe more than two parts.
I think the first one is raising awareness across the country,
across the state. You know, the Golden State killer happened,
you know, was solved over four and a half years ago.
And in many ways, we've come a very long way.
But in in other ways, we still have a ways
(30:32):
to go because we have to get ourselves to the
point where it is the norm. And so people understanding
it is part of that. And then the second part
is that it needs to be part of everybody's budget
just period. It just needs to be. If we think
about the power of this tool and I go back
to that San Bernardino case in recognizing that case is
(30:54):
still pending. So I'm respectful of that. But. If we
have the ability to do this in active cases. We
have the ability to eliminate the word serial from serial rapist,
serial murderers and other folks that have said that, that
it is it's true. So we're not only identifying the
guilty and exonerating the innocent, we're preventing future crime. And
(31:17):
that's what we need to be in the business of
on every single case moving forward.
S4 (31:22):
And Brian, I would agree wholeheartedly with Emery. It is
about awareness, it is about budget and it's about priority
because in these labs, for example, COVID caused a huge
backlog within these labs. They shut down over COVID and
they're digging out of that. And it's about getting the
priority of the lab to do the validation and the
(31:42):
implementation within the quality standards that they operate within. So
it is a number of things, you know, that that
sort of are slowing, you know, the adoption, this this
really the technology is available, it's proven and it really
is a matter of awareness, funding and priority prioritization within
(32:03):
the within the law enforcement community.
S2 (32:06):
And in terms of funding, I mean, some examples, you're
talking about 48 cases pending for 43 years. You know,
clearly the money that's spent is is giving you, you know,
returns and by orders of magnitude with modest amounts of
funding versus what it's costing to both have the crime itself,
but also these, you know, multi-decade prosecutions. Right. I mean,
(32:27):
how do you think how do you think about the
real costs when you make this pitch to folks?
S4 (32:31):
If you think about the cost of doing, you know,
the snip work, doing the genealogy, identifying your potential suspect,
you're talking less than less than seven and a half,
maybe $10,000, depending on what technology you use. Somewhere around there,
it could be a little bit more, but you're talking
(32:51):
about a $10,000 cost, which is going to give you
leads to solve a case. If you compare that to
a cold case that you have, no no one leads anymore.
You've exhausted all of your prohibitive leads, then suddenly you
know that it versus the, you know, the recidivism cost
of not doing anything here. It doesn't seem like a
(33:13):
large outlay in my mind from that side of it.
S3 (33:17):
I think it's also I think it's important that and again,
it kind of goes back to my little soapbox is
we we're dealing with human tragedy. We're dealing with the
human toll of crime. And there is there is a
cost to that, not just the emotional cost, financial cost.
I mean, I think about the Golden State killer and
the 83 victims, direct victims that he had. And when
(33:39):
I sat in the courtroom and listened to to their
families tell the judge the impact, I mean, people changed
their lives. They changed how they raised their children. They
changed the jobs they chose to have as a profession.
They changed how they protected themselves in their homes. And
so when we talk about this tool and yes, maybe
(34:01):
it costs 70 510,000, okay, But the human toll of
crime that cost us is immeasurable. That's a that's a
that's a cost we can never measure because it's so.
It's so long term. And so I think this to
me is the return on investment is not just about
(34:23):
solving that crime, but it's about really the future.
S4 (34:28):
In.
S3 (34:29):
All of us.
S4 (34:29):
And a statistic for you, I think in 2016, the
estimated cost of receipt of recidivism, it was about 296
million in the US alone. That's what Emory's talking about.
There is all of these ancillary costs associated with crime
that people don't look at. It's real. And and the
cost to, you know, this new technology, yes, it's more expensive,
(34:53):
but it's also been proven that it works. You know,
when you look at the US alone, the the the
problem with CODIS is it's still based and therefore, depending
on the case and the locality in the country, the
probability of getting a hit when you upload to CODIS
(35:15):
is is roughly about 40% on average, and that's if
you leave it there for a while. The profile. And
so that means 60% of the time you're getting a
no hit. And when you think about that and you
think about the number of cold cases, there's an estimated
number of about we think about 100,000 cold case homicides
in the US with DNA. There's more more cold case
(35:37):
homicides than that. But the number with DNA is around 100,000.
You have nearly 650,000 sexual assault kits with DNA that
you know that that are cold cases at this point.
And it's increasing. Right? Every year. It's increasing at about
100,000 per year. And this is where, you know, either
(35:58):
you accept that as a society or you you determine
that it's worth spending these dollars to actually drive down
that cost of crime. Right. If it's costing us about, what,
296 billion back in 2016, it's going to cost you
more today. It makes sense to be, you know, thinking
about your prioritization of where you want to spend your dollars. Yeah.
S2 (36:23):
And in in terms of those funding streams, I mean,
the US federal system is is not not totally unique,
but it's it's a little more pointed than some other countries.
So how do you all think about the the way
this really should be funded? This is something the federal
government needs to step up more. Should this be left
to the states and municipalities as it need to be
(36:44):
a combination? What do you think the right mix is there?
S4 (36:48):
Oh, I think it should be a combination. The federal
government is through the anti-gay is the biggest funder of
forensics in in the US. And it's actually the US
is very unique globally in that it's a centralized funding
body for all of the justice system out there versus
in Europe. It's very piecemeal. For example, there's no centralized
(37:12):
funding in the EU. And so the government though needs
to re readjust their grant mechanisms to allow funding for this.
You know, a year or so ago, it was you
you weren't allowed to actually put in a grant for like,
for example, a cyber grant you weren't allowed to put
in that you wanted to use it for, you know, forensic, investigative,
(37:36):
genetic genealogy. We had a number of customers that had
their grants decline. That's an example of where the government
funding bodies needs to, you know, be abreast of the technology.
Being a driver for this that will actually drive adoption
particularly takes care of the budget. We talked about awareness
and we're working on that with Anne-Marie. But there's the
(37:57):
budgeting side, which is very government that's central federal government
focused where a lot of that money comes from. That
can be a huge source of driving both the awareness
and also then the the sort of the jurisdictions to
adopt the technology, particularly these public labs, because there's no
(38:17):
reason why it should be outsourced. They should be doing
this in-house.
S2 (38:21):
And what public labs do we have in California.
S4 (38:26):
That has quite a number of public labs? I think
there's at least ten, ten public DNA labs, I believe.
Is that right?
S3 (38:37):
Yeah, there's a lot I mean, there's California Department of
Justice has I think they have 13 labs, but. But.
But then there's like, Sacramento County DA's office has its
own lab. There's several law enforcement labs, L.A., LAPD, L.A. also.
So there's a lot of public labs, Kern County, which
may well be one of the first, I can say that,
and not get chopped and cut out of the edited out.
S4 (39:00):
But Californians are smart people.
S3 (39:03):
So I just think it's you know, I think the
other thing kind of. You know, emphasize this. I've been
to a lot of conferences in the last six months
to a year on genealogy. This is the hottest topic.
It's not just conferences on genealogy. It's it's forensic science conferences.
I you know, I had the fortune of going to
internationally to talk about forensic killer. This is it. This
(39:26):
is you can tell it's finally hit people that this
is it. This is the new tool. And now we
all have to get on board and do the work
that needs to do to bring it in-house and make
it the standard.
S4 (39:39):
Yeah. I would agree. I think the awareness we've we've
reached that sort of critical point on the awareness side.
It's becoming, as Emery says, it is very much the
key focus in a lot of these forensic meetings right now.
And really what it is now is about budget and
prioritization is getting the budget and getting it prioritized in
(40:03):
there to implement it in their lab.
S2 (40:06):
And for people who are listening, who are not in
the law enforcement community or maybe don't work for government
in terms of ability to impact funding. But I take
it as something really important. Everybody can do that regardless
of regardless of where you sit in this space. Right.
And that's that's opting into these databases. So how does
that work and work and work? And people will do
(40:27):
that if they if they want to do that often.
S4 (40:30):
Yeah. The interesting thing about genetic genealogy and this is
what its real power is, you know, with with STR profiling,
it's usually 1 to 1, maybe 1 to 2. In
other words, one profile, you can be you can identify
a profile from one or two people. For example, you know,
if you've got a first degree relative, but with genetic genealogy,
(40:51):
it's it's it's power is it's a 1 to 30,
1 to 40. In other words, you can from one
unknown profile, you will have relatives of 30 or 40
different people potentially in the database in the sort of
standing maths. The way it works is if you have
about 1% of the population in the database, you can
(41:14):
actually identify 90% of the population to third cousin or
close up or 60% of the population, second cousin or closer.
The thing is, in the US we've got about 350
million people ish. So about 35, you know, you want
about three and a half million people in the database. Today,
(41:35):
about 40 million people have taken this test at a
you know, a genealogy test, whether it be an ancestry
23 and me or my heritage or the like. So
we need we need about 10% of them actually uploading
those profiles to either gedmatch or and DNA and opting
in to allow law enforcement to, you know, match against
(41:58):
that profile to help, you know, identify these perpetrators or
unidentified human remains. And so that's really what it is
that we actually have the number of people in the
US today who've taken the test to make this, you know,
it's a solve. Virtually all of these cases that we have,
we need them to upload them and then we need
(42:18):
them to opt in because we don't want people we
don't force people to allow their profile to be used
for law enforcement. It's really interesting. We see about 75%
of the people who are new to Gedmatch, for example,
will opt in to allow law enforcement to match against
their profile. It's we see a large number of the
(42:41):
people have that sort of civic mindedness to them. And
they they have no problem allowing that for law enforcement use.
S2 (42:49):
So what's the website where people can go to do that?
S4 (42:52):
So gedmatch dot com. So it's you can sign up,
you can you have to download your profile from wherever
you took your test. 23 Me ancestry, we have Interac
instructions on the website. It's uploaded, you select your private
settings and and there you don't have to do anything
else at that point.
S2 (43:14):
And I say this about you. What didn't I ask
you that you should have? I mean, I can keep
you for another hour, but I want to. I want
to be respectful of both of your times, because clearly
you're working on such important things here. But. But what?
What didn't we cover that we should have?
S3 (43:28):
I think the only thing for me is, listen, we
are in. I like to believe the greatest revolution in
forensic science. Most labs in this country and internationally are
still using, basically, as my friends would say, a 30
year old car. And we need to we need to
drive the newest car that we can to solve these problems.
(43:49):
And so, for me, you know, being part of this
effort is so rewarding because ultimately, it's not just about
crime solving and exonerations. It's about crime prevention.
S4 (44:02):
No, I think you're absolutely right. Emirates, it's the standard
technology and in forensic labs today is from actually when
Emery said 1994, it's still the same. But the world
has moved on. We make life and death decisions in
diagnostics based on next gen sequencing. And, you know, it's
(44:23):
time for us to start making those and using the
technology for the appropriate decisions in the law enforcement side
as well.
S2 (44:31):
Well, you know, it's it's such an important topic. I
was having a conversation with a policymaker in Sacramento recently,
and they were sort of saying, you know, what's what's
next in tech? What's what's really happening? Because it feels
like all we're doing right now is, you know, making
cameras better on our phones. And my question was actually changing.
And and to me, it's it's this and biotech and
(44:51):
health and, you know, just enormous advances during COVID. One
of the very few upsides of COVID is the things
that have gone on with gene editing and CRISPR and
all these technologies. And so, yeah, this this whole space
is something we want to keep talking about and to
share and help keep answering that question of, you know,
what's what's the next stage of tech where we had it?
(45:13):
And I can't think of a more important application for
society or so. So thanks, first of all, for what
you're working on. Thanks for being on the show. If
people want to find out more about the company, generally,
where should they go?
S4 (45:26):
You can go to a virgin dot com. That's VR
ogy and dot com. We can. That'll explain about the company.
It also has links there to gedmatch. Jed matches the
other part of the origin which is both for, you know,
the law enforcement and the consumer side as well.
S2 (45:43):
And Emery now that you are out of office. Where
can people find you online?
S3 (45:50):
I have my own company called Schubert Strategies, so stay tuned.
The website will be up, I'm sure soon. But. Or
you can find me just probably Google.
S2 (46:00):
Well, Brett and Amory, thank you so much for being
on the show today. Thanks for what you're working on.
This is such a hugely important topic and we hope
to have you back on to keep talking about this
issue as we move forward.
S3 (46:13):
Thanks for having us. For the listeners out there, I
hope you keep listening to these podcasts can find us
on Inside Crime Files dot com and listen to more
about the true consequences of crime and the innovation and
inspiration that comes out of these cases. So I just
thank you all.
S2 (46:38):
OLAS Media presents inside the crime files. OLAS Media .
The views and opinions expressed in this program are those
of the speaker's and do not necessarily reflect the views
or positions of any entities they represent. Including OLAS media.
You know, if we have let's say we have a
rape that happens today. Forcible rape of a child. We
(00:23):
have that child or that victim go through a sexual
assault examination. It's probably one of the most invasive, personally
intrusive types of things we can expect somebody to go through.
And that's because we have to collect the evidence. My
view is, listen, you know, that rape happened today and
they've developed a DNA profile, but they can't match it
to anybody in the felon database. We should avail ourselves
(00:45):
every single time of that tool if we're not able
to solve it through traditional means.
This is a special simulcast presentation of Inside the Crime
Files with Anne Marie Schubert. On this simulcast episode of
Inside the Crime Files, Anne Marie Schubert appeared on the Nation
State of Play podcast with Bryan Miller will join the
(01:08):
interview with them, as well as Brett Williams, of Verogen,
a California genetics firm that is taking forensic investigations further
with next generation sequencing solutions.
S2 (01:18):
All right. Well, Brett and Anne Marie, thank you both so
much for being on the show today. I'm really excited
to talk about this topic with the two of you.
S3 (01:25):
Thanks for having us.
S2 (01:26):
Appreciate it. You know, part of the reason I'm excited
to have you here is we spent a lot of
time on the show talking about the intersection of tech
and public policy. And I can't think of a better
example than variation in what you're doing in the law
enforcement space, but also in broader context as well that
I want to get into. And now that Anne-Marie is
(01:47):
out of office, we're hoping we can get her to
tell us some of the worst stories about some amazing
cases that she's worked on over the years using this
technology specifically. So we don't we don't often have to guess,
but really excited to have the both of you on
because I think it's a great a great way to
talk about this from multiple perspectives. So before we dig
(02:09):
into how it's used, Brett, could you give us a
little bit of overview of the company and at a
high level, what you focus on?
S4 (02:18):
Yes, certainly, Bryan. So probably give you a little bit
of history of the company. Verogen started out life as
the forensic business , and in August of 2017 it
was spun out by Illumina. So we're a standalone company
separate from Illumina. We're not controlled by Illumina, we're on
our own company. And since then we've been building out
(02:41):
really focused on our mission and building out our ability
to to execute on that, which is we're a biometric
based human ID company, the biometric the ultimate biometric being
DNA that's unique to every one of us you know,
forensic focus and we're using next generation sequencing from Illumina.
(03:05):
We have exclusive rights to their technology for forensics. And
just to put that in context for everyone, Illumina, 90%
of the human genome sequenced in the world today are
performed on an Illumina platform. It is the gold standard
from a sequencing platform perspective. We then leverage that technology
to to allow us to identify people. It's not about
(03:28):
generating Can I generate on your profile or can I
generate a snip profile? This is about saying who does
that profile belong to? And we do that from a
technology perspective. We generate the data from the next gen
sequencing platform we use from Illumina, but we then combine
that with our GEDMATCH database and that's how we help
(03:48):
law enforcement here is by allowing access to the database.
Combined with our technology, we can generate IDs for intractable
cases in our in the law enforcement sphere at the moment.
S2 (04:04):
Okay. So and I just want to get the multiple
applications out and then unpack these a little bit. So
so part of it is these cold cases in the
law enforcement space. There's also a role, as I understand it,
that has been used successfully for exonerating the wrongly convicted.
Is that correct?
S4 (04:24):
Yeah. It's not just a cold case technology. It can be.
It's been used for resolving cold cases and mores. You know,
we'll talk more about that. But it also is used
for an unidentified human remains. It's also been used for exonerations.
But one of the other technology the other uses where
(04:45):
particularly ex-U.S. is in conflict zones, identifying remains being from
conflict zone work is is where we've got projects going
now in Greece, Spain, the Korean and look at and
also discussions with the Vietnamese from the Vietnam War as well.
(05:05):
It's just it's it's surprising that like, for example, in
Spain there are 55,000 unidentified remains still in Greece. It's
from World War Two where they have and people are
wanting to start to put a an I.D. to these remains.
And really, you can't do that any other way other
than using the next gen sequencing platform to do that.
(05:26):
And so we're it's a very versatile, but it's also,
as we said, it's 21st century technology being applied to
the to the law enforcement sphere sphere here. So how.
S3 (05:38):
Far.
S2 (05:38):
Back historically, theoretically, could this technology be used to identify
human remains?
S4 (05:44):
So it's only going to be limited by the ability
to identify relatives. So you've got to be just like
we we identified or Anne Marie's team identified the Golden State killer.
You need you need to be able to use relatives
to identify that person. So the longer obviously, the longer
you go, the less probability you'll have for identifying someone.
(06:09):
If there's no relatives around. Right. You need some some
degree of relatives to be able to identify them. So, like,
for example, in the Korean War right now, that's 75
years ago. They're at their at second cousin level. That's
and but they have them. And so that's what they're doing.
You've lost all of your first degree relatives by that stage.
So SDR profiling doesn't work. You have to go to
(06:32):
snip profiling, and that's where you need to. You can
use more distant relatives to identify those remains. And so
that's how that's how it works.
S2 (06:42):
I think a lot of people are somewhat familiar with
this concept. All of a sudden because of a Crown
episode this season. I don't know if you guys have
seen this episode about the Romanoff's murder. Is that have
you guys have been producing this?
S4 (06:56):
No, I haven't.
S3 (06:57):
No.
S2 (06:57):
Okay. Okay. I encourage you to check it out later. Okay.
And this is this is based on true things that happened,
but there's a terrible series of murders at the outset
of World War One and World War One. The Russians
are family, and there's bad, bad blood between the Crown
(07:18):
and Russia. And ultimately, DNA technology was was used through
blood testing or Prince Philip's, I take it, to to
see if that was actually the remains that they'd identified.
And so I think they devoted a whole episode to it. So, hey,
anything that brings science to a broader population, I'm all for, okay.
(07:38):
So I think we've got a sense of the broader applications.
Who are your customers? Who is it that says, I
need this, I'm going to buy the products?
S4 (07:48):
So the actual purchasing is undertaken by the forensic laboratory, right?
So the DNA, the forensic DNA laboratory is our core
customer who's going to buy our sequencing platform. The reagents,
our actual customer for the JEDD matched database is often
the the genealogist, right. Whether it be within law enforcement
(08:09):
or if they have contracted out to a private genealogist,
they're the folks that are going to be using you
know the the Jed match database. We also sell to
the private labs, the private forensic labs, for example, Bodey
Labs or D, d, L, I or DNA Labs International
out in Florida and to overseas. It's really to the
(08:31):
same thing, very much government academic In Europe, for example,
a lot of the forensic labs sit within universities. They
call them Department of Legal Medicine. So for us it's
a variety, but mainly government, both state, local and federal
governments and private labs.
S2 (08:47):
It's a great segway to talk about how Anne Marie started
finding out about this technology. So Emery, what was your
first exposure to this concept, I think is fairly early
in your career, actually. You started getting interested in this.
S3 (09:00):
Yeah. So I got my first DNA. Case. In 1994,
I was a young cross younger prosecutor, I should say.
And it was in the days of the first kind
of introduction of DNA that the world remembers. O.J. Simpson
was kind of the big case that kind of exposed
this new tool called DNA. My my case involved a
(09:22):
serial rapist, and that was in the early days of DNA.
And so it's one of those things that I've learned that,
you know, 25, 28 years ago that DNA is the
greatest tool ever to find the truth no matter where
it leads us. And so over time, I've had the
benefit of kind of evolving with the science. You know,
(09:43):
as a prosecutor. And so then in, you know, as
time went on and DNA became more and more advanced,
we started solving more and more cold cases. But, you know,
the cold case rate of saw was probably around 30%
of cases or so. And then in the fall of 2017,
you know, while people were working feverishly to try to
(10:05):
solve the Golden State killer, a pretty smart investigator named Paul,
Holes came and asked me, hey, what do you think
about this idea? And he pitched it and he kind
of tried to explain this concept of what some people
call genetic genealogy. We call forensic investigative genetic genealogy. And
I remember sitting there when, you know, when I understood
(10:25):
DNA fairly well, but when he presented this idea of
this new tool, Brett talks about these things called snips,
my kind of my eyes kind of glossed over. And
I'm like, Oh, my God, this is a whole new world.
But I also knew that it was the greatest hope
we could have to try to solve that case. And so,
(10:46):
you know, our office in the team was willing to
move forward with it. And I'm obviously quite grateful that
they did.
S2 (10:53):
Let's give a little more context on the Golden State Killer. How
long had the investigation and failed attempts of bringing charges
been going on at the point that you got interested
in this approach?
S3 (11:06):
This is where I think it gets fascinating when you
look at the numbers, because we've we've got now the data,
like how long did it take to solve it? So
the case went on for 43 years. It had about
600 plus investigators assigned to it over the years. There
was 15 different law enforcement agencies involved in that investigation.
(11:26):
Because of the magnitude of the case, probably close to
$10 million was spent to try to solve it. Hundreds
of thousands of hours were put into solving it. 8000
people were looked at as potential people of interest. 300
people had their DNA swabbed, too, and were all eliminated.
(11:47):
And that really ultimately produced nothing. And then comes along
this new amazing tool called xxx Investigative Genetic genealogy. And.
It was a team of about six people. This is
on the Golden State Killer. It cost a few hundred
dollars at the time, and the case was solved in
(12:07):
63 days. So you go from 43 years of relentless
pursuit of justice by incredible law enforcement to 63 days.
It's really powerful.
S2 (12:21):
Okay, So. So I want to try to give listeners
as much as possible sort of the sequence then, no
pun intended, of exactly what you were doing during this
really compressed period where you're solving the case. So. So
I take it at this point you always knew you
had DNA of the murder, is that correct?
S3 (12:42):
Yes. So back in the mid nineties. And just to
remind the listeners, the goal said killer killed, as far
as we know, 13 people. He pled guilty to that.
He raped upwards of 50 different people over those 43 years.
There was direct victims of totaling of well over 80
(13:03):
victims of Golden State killer. So the magnitude was enormous.
So then when this idea was kind of hatched in
the fall of 2017 and this little small team was formed,
and just to be fair, I wasn't part of that
little team. I'm talking about the people that were actually
doing the work to people from the FBI to people
from the Sacramento DA's office, a genetic genealogist named Barbara
(13:25):
Ventnor and Paul Holes. And so, yes, we had DNA
in the mid-nineties. The cases were linked. And then over time,
more and more cases were linked by DNA. And the
Northern California rapes were linked to the Southern California murders
in 2001. And that's when everybody kind of had 21
years ago, this kind of aha moment that, oh my God,
(13:48):
we have one of the worst serial killers and rapist
of all time. So that's kind of where we were.
We knew we had DNA. Fortunately, there was more DNA
to be able to do this type of testing. And
if we hadn't had that extra sample that was collected
in one of the murders, then perhaps we wouldn't be
sitting here today talking about this great case.
S2 (14:09):
So. So what happens as a practical matter then, once
you decide to use this technology, you have the DNA.
Do you now understand the potential for the technology? What's
the next step?
S3 (14:22):
Well, I can answer that or Brett wants to. I mean,
for the purposes of the Golden State Killer or any
of the cases that have been solved since then, I mean,
you have to get your sample. You have to have
some biological fluid. You then send it out to a
private lab at this point and hopefully students and public
labs and they do this specialized kind of testing called
(14:42):
snip testing, which gives you incredible amounts of data. And
then from there, you're going to utilize a database such
as Judge Matsch to try it. You're uploading it. Then
you're going to try to build your family trees and
identify relatives of your bad guy, basically. Right. Am I
right on that, Brett? Hopefully I didn't, but I don't.
S4 (15:01):
That's that's exactly right. The way to look at the
way to think about snips or single nucleotide polymorphisms is
we share 99.7% of our DNA. That 0.3% is what
differentiates us. And we use that to determine how much
DNA you share with others. And that's the whole premise
of genetic genealogy. And just to get into the details,
(15:25):
but memories, right. You then use that information to build
a family tree and identify the bad guy.
S2 (15:32):
Anne Marie, was the murderer - was he a suspect already at
this point?
S3 (15:39):
KELLER Oh, no, He was you know, that's he was
never on any list. I mean, I trust me when
I say that. For 40 plus years, law enforcement made
every list known to man to try to identify this person.
And he was never on this list. And that, I think,
is what's somewhat fascinating. You know, post-Cold and say killer,
we've got probably close to 200, at least across the country.
(16:00):
Many of the people that have been identified in cases
across the country were never on lists. Some, you know,
some were just living right amongst us and just, you know,
they woke up one day, decided to kill and went
back to a quote unquote, normal life. And that that
is to me some some of the fascinating kind of
realities of what we're seeing with the power of this technology.
(16:23):
I mean, I, I keep saying this and it's true.
This is the perfect marriage which will never get divorced.
Of science and law enforcement.
S2 (16:32):
Justice Souter was here. Was he in custody already at
that point?
S3 (16:38):
What do you mean?
S2 (16:39):
Was he in custody for other. Oh, no crimes at
that point.
S3 (16:42):
We know he was. He was. I mean, as most
folks know, he was sadly a police officer at point
and he was ultimately fired as a police officer. And that,
at least for me, while I was the D.A., that
was the aha moment is when they were building the
family trees, when they realized he had been a former
police officer and that he'd been busted for stealing dog
(17:06):
repellent and a hammer. That was kind of the moment of, oh,
my God, we got something here. This is this sounds
like something real. Now.
S2 (17:15):
Yes. So as a prosecutor, I'm curious, you you have
now this this DNA and what what does that do
in terms of your ability to to prosecute the case
as a practical matter? Because it obviously is going to
rely on theoretically, if you get to the jury explaining
the technology in some way to a jury. Right. So
(17:36):
what was what was your.
S3 (17:37):
Actually, no, not to correct you, but I'm I am
going to please correct you. Yeah. So I think it's
important that folks understand this is an investigative tool, at
least from my perspective. And I think most folks that
understand this, it's no different than what we get when
we call a CODIS search, which is a DNA hit
to a database, a felon database. This is a lead
(17:57):
for law enforcement. This is like a tip. And so
as a prosecutor, we don't anticipate the we don't suggest
that it be brought into court. It's just simply giving
law enforcement a tip. Then they're going to go get
a sample, a direct sample from the person of the interest.
And then they're going to compare it with kind of
the old school str traditional technology. And that is what
(18:21):
goes into court. It's not the genealogy because that, you know,
remember we're dealing with with. Somewhat of privacy issues. We're
trying to maintain privacy in the work that we do
and balance that public safety. So if it's not necessarily
present in the courtroom, then we shouldn't be.
S4 (18:39):
You know, asking that, Brian, the way into the memories.
Absolutely right. It the whole process of genetic genealogy begins
and ends with an ideal profile. There's an ideal profile
from the crime scene. There's an SDR profile from your
suspect that's been identified by genealogy and those that it's
the STR profile that's compared and therefore presented in court,
because that's the accepted, you know, from a you know,
(19:02):
from a technology perspective. SDR Profiling is, is the key.
S2 (19:06):
Yeah, super helpful. I'm I'm glad I'm glad we focused
on that. So you get enough from this to get
a warrant to go get the sample in this case
from the Golden State killer. Right.
S3 (19:18):
And well, and you said it's okay to get in
the weeds, but now we don't normally, you know, when
you finally figure out somebody through a family tree and
you think that person's perhaps your suspect, then typically law enforced,
they can get a warrant. And that's possible. There's other
ways that legal ways such as a bandit DNA, when
(19:39):
basically the dude goes to the restaurant, leaves this cup behind,
or he goes to a drive through and throws his
trash out or whatever. But that's in the case of
the Golden State Killer. It's public knowledge that law enforcement
followed him and got actually twice. They followed him. One
said to a Hobby Lobby and got a sample from
(20:00):
something that was lawfully obtained. And then secondly, they did
what's called a trash run, and they got his garbage
and got his DNA from that that same.
S2 (20:10):
Okay. So that's that's one of the most famous examples
of using this for cold cases. Let's let's do an
exoneration example. The Ricky Davis case is something you've talked
a lot about. Sure. Can you tell us what happened
in that case?
S3 (20:28):
Sure. So Ricky Davis was a guy that was prosecuted
in a neighboring county in northern California called Eldorado County.
In the mid eighties. There was a woman that was
brutally stabbed to death, Jane Hilton, and the case went
unsolved for a period of time. And then the investigators
picked it up and they clued in or they I
(20:49):
should say, they focused in on Ricky Davis because he
was staying, I believe, at the home. He had some
his some of his own issues. And ultimately they had
an informant, the girlfriend at the time of Ricky Davis,
who claimed that those two committed the crimes. Ricky Davis
always confessed his innocence, always. For decades he was ultimately convicted,
(21:13):
despite his confession of innocence. And then after he was convicted,
the Northern California Innocence Project came to our office, the
Sacramento DA's office, or I should say, my former office,
and asked us to do what's called post-conviction DNA work. Meaning,
can you look at some of the evidence in the case?
(21:33):
Can you see if Ricky Davis is. On the evidence.
And basically what had happened was the victim, Jane Hilton,
had been bitten by one of the perpetrators and there
was a bite mark on her shoulder. And so our
our laboratory, the lab went meticulously and went through her
(21:54):
pajamas and ultimately found DNA on the pajamas that aligned
with the bite mark. It was basically probably saliva from
the bite mark. And that DNA was not Ricky Davises.
And that became a very big piece of evidence to
give him a new trial where he got a new
trial for that. But the question was, well, whose was it?
(22:16):
Whose DNA was on that pajamas? Because it could have
been it could have been Ricky's body. It could have
been completely somebody separately. So that's when I said to
the D.A. in our office, the DA's office, I said, well,
we should be doing genetic genealogy on this because we
need to figure out whose it is, either which Ricky
Davis is actually innocent, or Ricky Davis is still potentially guilty.
(22:39):
And so through that genetic genealogy, they identified a different
person by the name of Michael Green. And Michael Green was,
in fact, the killer. And Michael Green actually just pled
guilty to that case about a month or so ago,
maybe two months ago now. But but the important thing
is it's a tool of justice. And for me, yes,
(23:02):
as much as I am so proud of the work
that was done on the killer, I mean, it is
the most incredible case. Ricky Davis case is right up
there because this man was actually innocent and spent 15
years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
And so I look at this tool through the lens of, yeah,
it's great for cold cases. Yeah, it's it's great for,
(23:25):
you know, future cases. But we should be using this
same tool if there's an actual claim of innocence. And
that's what Ricky Davis demonstrated, is that the power of
that tool.
S2 (23:36):
Amazing example. Okay. So, Sabrina, I'd like to talk about
the identifying human remains uses that you're engaging in throughout
the world. Give us a little bit of context. You know,
whenever you can within confidentiality rules of the types of
things you're working on. Yeah.
S4 (23:55):
So it's a broad unidentified human remains covers a broad
swath of the world. But so Jed, Matt, back here
in the US, it's routinely used to identify unidentified human
remains that are that are found right using gedmatch, using
the database to ident. Just, just like you're identifying perpetrators
(24:18):
of crimes, you can also now identify up, take a
sample from that unidentified human remains and then build trees
and identify the person. The other one we. The other
topic we talked about was this conflict zone resolution resolving
the unidentified human remains from conflict zones. There it's a
little different. We're still using the platform snips, but actually,
(24:41):
because you have known references now, usually, you know, family
members will come forward and go, hey, I'm missing a
loved one. I want to give a DNA sample. So
there we use the gedmatch infrastructure and tools, but we're
actually comparing the unidentified remains to directly a reference database.
So it's a separate application, but it relies on the
(25:03):
snip profiling technology that we use for perpetrators or exonerations.
But it's just a little different in that we're not
comparing those profiles to the to the main gedmatch database.
These are specific databases generated for each of those conflict
zones because they have known references.
S2 (25:24):
So who is your customer typically for that type of work?
S4 (25:28):
So for that, for that, it's the governments of a
particular country. So for example, in Korea, there's the Korean
government is working, specifically Spain just change their laws to
be able to exhume the the Spanish Civil War remains.
So these are government level, high level activities at the
(25:48):
government that the government then funds particular labs in that
country to do the work. Mexico's similar story as well.
In Mexico, it's horrific. They've lost more people now than
the Afghanistan and then anybody in the compared to like
for example, in the Afghanistan war. They've lost more people
than the Afghans had during that period of time. They
(26:11):
have over 100,000 people reported missing. They have about 40,000
bodies in crypts. They know they've got about another 60
they haven't dug up. So there's this huge it is
an epidemic and it's a silent one. It's outside of
it's not really talked about. But for us, this is
an area where we think the technology can be used
(26:32):
to bring closure for all of these families with with
missing loved ones.
S2 (26:36):
And is the US government currently a client ambassador?
S4 (26:40):
So they are funding certain certain activities. For example, the
US State Department funded the Colombia government to particularly the
Fark insurrection down there. There's a number of missing unidentified
human remains and that is State Department funded and we
supplied the technology for that. So, yes, the government usually
(27:04):
does that. The State Department is funds in certain instances,
the other governments.
S2 (27:11):
So we've talked about cold cases, we've talked about exoneration,
We talked about some of the unidentified human remains instances.
But this very same this is also being used for
active prosecutions. Right? Right. So so, yeah. Brett, how how
do you use the tools in that context?
S4 (27:27):
It's very similar to what Anne Marie described. In fact,
it's dead the same as what Anne-Marie described for the
Golden State killers, because the first case that was solved
using the technology was a cold case. It's not. And
I think that's the point. What we've hopefully got out
of this podcast is it's not a cold case technology only.
(27:47):
It can be used for exonerations or unidentified human remains,
but also for active cases, particularly where you get a
no hit on the CODIS database, no reflexes. It's a
fee for violent crime. It should be part of the
standard operating procedure in our mind.
S2 (28:03):
Yeah, And let's let's talk a little bit more about
how how the government and crime labs can make that
more of a standard operating procedure. Tell me how law
enforcement is able to access it in that case, as
a practical matter, currently in California.
S3 (28:19):
So they so let's assume hypothetically, they send it to
their own crime lab, public laboratory. They get the DNA extracted,
meaning they take whatever the crime scene sample is, they
get the DNA out of it, and then they send
it off. I assume they did a traditional type of
what Brett's calling STR testing, and then they're going to
(28:40):
send it to a private lab, everybody. And then they
get to what's called the snip testing done. And then
from there, it's just like the GSK or any of
these other cases. It goes through the tree building process
and then they figure out from there. So it's it's
exactly the same. The one thing I would say, and
maybe this kind of gets a little bit, you know,
(29:01):
somewhat of me on my platform is, you know, if
we have let's say we have a rape that happens today,
a forcible rape of a child. Okay? And we in
law enforcement have that child or that victim go through
a sexual assault examination. It's probably one of the most invasive,
personally intrusive types of things we can expect somebody to
(29:24):
go through. And that's because we have to collect the evidence.
Law enforcement has to collect it. So my view is, listen,
you know, that rape happened today and they've developed a
DNA profile, but they can't match it to anybody in
the database. We owe it to society and we owe
it to that child, into that family and to our communities.
(29:45):
We owe it to take that next step. We have
the tools. It's here. It's right in front of us.
We should avail ourselves every single time of that tool
if we're not able to solve it through traditional means.
S2 (29:57):
Right. And what's holding us back from doing that at
bigger scale. Let's start with California, and we're asking the
same question nationally. But as a practical matter in California,
what's holding us back from doing that in every case?
S3 (30:12):
I think it's two part of it, and I'll let
Brett chime in. But I mean, maybe more than two parts.
I think the first one is raising awareness across the country,
across the state. You know, the Golden State killer happened,
you know, was solved over four and a half years ago.
And in many ways, we've come a very long way.
But in in other ways, we still have a ways
(30:32):
to go because we have to get ourselves to the
point where it is the norm. And so people understanding
it is part of that. And then the second part
is that it needs to be part of everybody's budget
just period. It just needs to be. If we think
about the power of this tool and I go back
to that San Bernardino case in recognizing that case is
(30:54):
still pending. So I'm respectful of that. But. If we
have the ability to do this in active cases. We
have the ability to eliminate the word serial from serial rapist,
serial murderers and other folks that have said that, that
it is it's true. So we're not only identifying the
guilty and exonerating the innocent, we're preventing future crime. And
(31:17):
that's what we need to be in the business of
on every single case moving forward.
S4 (31:22):
And Brian, I would agree wholeheartedly with Emery. It is
about awareness, it is about budget and it's about priority
because in these labs, for example, COVID caused a huge
backlog within these labs. They shut down over COVID and
they're digging out of that. And it's about getting the
priority of the lab to do the validation and the
(31:42):
implementation within the quality standards that they operate within. So
it is a number of things, you know, that that
sort of are slowing, you know, the adoption, this this
really the technology is available, it's proven and it really
is a matter of awareness, funding and priority prioritization within
(32:03):
the within the law enforcement community.
S2 (32:06):
And in terms of funding, I mean, some examples, you're
talking about 48 cases pending for 43 years. You know,
clearly the money that's spent is is giving you, you know,
returns and by orders of magnitude with modest amounts of
funding versus what it's costing to both have the crime itself,
but also these, you know, multi-decade prosecutions. Right. I mean,
(32:27):
how do you think how do you think about the
real costs when you make this pitch to folks?
S4 (32:31):
If you think about the cost of doing, you know,
the snip work, doing the genealogy, identifying your potential suspect,
you're talking less than less than seven and a half,
maybe $10,000, depending on what technology you use. Somewhere around there,
it could be a little bit more, but you're talking
(32:51):
about a $10,000 cost, which is going to give you
leads to solve a case. If you compare that to
a cold case that you have, no no one leads anymore.
You've exhausted all of your prohibitive leads, then suddenly you
know that it versus the, you know, the recidivism cost
of not doing anything here. It doesn't seem like a
(33:13):
large outlay in my mind from that side of it.
S3 (33:17):
I think it's also I think it's important that and again,
it kind of goes back to my little soapbox is
we we're dealing with human tragedy. We're dealing with the
human toll of crime. And there is there is a
cost to that, not just the emotional cost, financial cost.
I mean, I think about the Golden State killer and
the 83 victims, direct victims that he had. And when
(33:39):
I sat in the courtroom and listened to to their
families tell the judge the impact, I mean, people changed
their lives. They changed how they raised their children. They
changed the jobs they chose to have as a profession.
They changed how they protected themselves in their homes. And
so when we talk about this tool and yes, maybe
(34:01):
it costs 70 510,000, okay, But the human toll of
crime that cost us is immeasurable. That's a that's a
that's a cost we can never measure because it's so.
It's so long term. And so I think this to
me is the return on investment is not just about
(34:23):
solving that crime, but it's about really the future.
S4 (34:28):
In.
S3 (34:29):
All of us.
S4 (34:29):
And a statistic for you, I think in 2016, the
estimated cost of receipt of recidivism, it was about 296
million in the US alone. That's what Emory's talking about.
There is all of these ancillary costs associated with crime
that people don't look at. It's real. And and the
cost to, you know, this new technology, yes, it's more expensive,
(34:53):
but it's also been proven that it works. You know,
when you look at the US alone, the the the
problem with CODIS is it's still based and therefore, depending
on the case and the locality in the country, the
probability of getting a hit when you upload to CODIS
(35:15):
is is roughly about 40% on average, and that's if
you leave it there for a while. The profile. And
so that means 60% of the time you're getting a
no hit. And when you think about that and you
think about the number of cold cases, there's an estimated
number of about we think about 100,000 cold case homicides
in the US with DNA. There's more more cold case
(35:37):
homicides than that. But the number with DNA is around 100,000.
You have nearly 650,000 sexual assault kits with DNA that
you know that that are cold cases at this point.
And it's increasing. Right? Every year. It's increasing at about
100,000 per year. And this is where, you know, either
(35:58):
you accept that as a society or you you determine
that it's worth spending these dollars to actually drive down
that cost of crime. Right. If it's costing us about, what,
296 billion back in 2016, it's going to cost you
more today. It makes sense to be, you know, thinking
about your prioritization of where you want to spend your dollars. Yeah.
S2 (36:23):
And in in terms of those funding streams, I mean,
the US federal system is is not not totally unique,
but it's it's a little more pointed than some other countries.
So how do you all think about the the way
this really should be funded? This is something the federal
government needs to step up more. Should this be left
to the states and municipalities as it need to be
(36:44):
a combination? What do you think the right mix is there?
S4 (36:48):
Oh, I think it should be a combination. The federal
government is through the anti-gay is the biggest funder of
forensics in in the US. And it's actually the US
is very unique globally in that it's a centralized funding
body for all of the justice system out there versus
in Europe. It's very piecemeal. For example, there's no centralized
(37:12):
funding in the EU. And so the government though needs
to re readjust their grant mechanisms to allow funding for this.
You know, a year or so ago, it was you
you weren't allowed to actually put in a grant for like,
for example, a cyber grant you weren't allowed to put
in that you wanted to use it for, you know, forensic, investigative,
(37:36):
genetic genealogy. We had a number of customers that had
their grants decline. That's an example of where the government
funding bodies needs to, you know, be abreast of the technology.
Being a driver for this that will actually drive adoption
particularly takes care of the budget. We talked about awareness
and we're working on that with Anne-Marie. But there's the
(37:57):
budgeting side, which is very government that's central federal government
focused where a lot of that money comes from. That
can be a huge source of driving both the awareness
and also then the the sort of the jurisdictions to
adopt the technology, particularly these public labs, because there's no
(38:17):
reason why it should be outsourced. They should be doing
this in-house.
S2 (38:21):
And what public labs do we have in California.
S4 (38:26):
That has quite a number of public labs? I think
there's at least ten, ten public DNA labs, I believe.
Is that right?
S3 (38:37):
Yeah, there's a lot I mean, there's California Department of
Justice has I think they have 13 labs, but. But.
But then there's like, Sacramento County DA's office has its
own lab. There's several law enforcement labs, L.A., LAPD, L.A. also.
So there's a lot of public labs, Kern County, which
may well be one of the first, I can say that,
and not get chopped and cut out of the edited out.
S4 (39:00):
But Californians are smart people.
S3 (39:03):
So I just think it's you know, I think the
other thing kind of. You know, emphasize this. I've been
to a lot of conferences in the last six months
to a year on genealogy. This is the hottest topic.
It's not just conferences on genealogy. It's it's forensic science conferences.
I you know, I had the fortune of going to
internationally to talk about forensic killer. This is it. This
(39:26):
is you can tell it's finally hit people that this
is it. This is the new tool. And now we
all have to get on board and do the work
that needs to do to bring it in-house and make
it the standard.
S4 (39:39):
Yeah. I would agree. I think the awareness we've we've
reached that sort of critical point on the awareness side.
It's becoming, as Emery says, it is very much the
key focus in a lot of these forensic meetings right now.
And really what it is now is about budget and
prioritization is getting the budget and getting it prioritized in
(40:03):
there to implement it in their lab.
S2 (40:06):
And for people who are listening, who are not in
the law enforcement community or maybe don't work for government
in terms of ability to impact funding. But I take
it as something really important. Everybody can do that regardless
of regardless of where you sit in this space. Right.
And that's that's opting into these databases. So how does
that work and work and work? And people will do
(40:27):
that if they if they want to do that often.
S4 (40:30):
Yeah. The interesting thing about genetic genealogy and this is
what its real power is, you know, with with STR profiling,
it's usually 1 to 1, maybe 1 to 2. In
other words, one profile, you can be you can identify
a profile from one or two people. For example, you know,
if you've got a first degree relative, but with genetic genealogy,
(40:51):
it's it's it's power is it's a 1 to 30,
1 to 40. In other words, you can from one
unknown profile, you will have relatives of 30 or 40
different people potentially in the database in the sort of
standing maths. The way it works is if you have
about 1% of the population in the database, you can
(41:14):
actually identify 90% of the population to third cousin or
close up or 60% of the population, second cousin or closer.
The thing is, in the US we've got about 350
million people ish. So about 35, you know, you want
about three and a half million people in the database. Today,
(41:35):
about 40 million people have taken this test at a
you know, a genealogy test, whether it be an ancestry
23 and me or my heritage or the like. So
we need we need about 10% of them actually uploading
those profiles to either gedmatch or and DNA and opting
in to allow law enforcement to, you know, match against
(41:58):
that profile to help, you know, identify these perpetrators or
unidentified human remains. And so that's really what it is
that we actually have the number of people in the
US today who've taken the test to make this, you know,
it's a solve. Virtually all of these cases that we have,
we need them to upload them and then we need
(42:18):
them to opt in because we don't want people we
don't force people to allow their profile to be used
for law enforcement. It's really interesting. We see about 75%
of the people who are new to Gedmatch, for example,
will opt in to allow law enforcement to match against
their profile. It's we see a large number of the
(42:41):
people have that sort of civic mindedness to them. And
they they have no problem allowing that for law enforcement use.
S2 (42:49):
So what's the website where people can go to do that?
S4 (42:52):
So gedmatch dot com. So it's you can sign up,
you can you have to download your profile from wherever
you took your test. 23 Me ancestry, we have Interac
instructions on the website. It's uploaded, you select your private
settings and and there you don't have to do anything
else at that point.
S2 (43:14):
And I say this about you. What didn't I ask
you that you should have? I mean, I can keep
you for another hour, but I want to. I want
to be respectful of both of your times, because clearly
you're working on such important things here. But. But what?
What didn't we cover that we should have?
S3 (43:28):
I think the only thing for me is, listen, we
are in. I like to believe the greatest revolution in
forensic science. Most labs in this country and internationally are
still using, basically, as my friends would say, a 30
year old car. And we need to we need to
drive the newest car that we can to solve these problems.
(43:49):
And so, for me, you know, being part of this
effort is so rewarding because ultimately, it's not just about
crime solving and exonerations. It's about crime prevention.
S4 (44:02):
No, I think you're absolutely right. Emirates, it's the standard
technology and in forensic labs today is from actually when
Emery said 1994, it's still the same. But the world
has moved on. We make life and death decisions in
diagnostics based on next gen sequencing. And, you know, it's
(44:23):
time for us to start making those and using the
technology for the appropriate decisions in the law enforcement side
as well.
S2 (44:31):
Well, you know, it's it's such an important topic. I
was having a conversation with a policymaker in Sacramento recently,
and they were sort of saying, you know, what's what's
next in tech? What's what's really happening? Because it feels
like all we're doing right now is, you know, making
cameras better on our phones. And my question was actually changing.
And and to me, it's it's this and biotech and
(44:51):
health and, you know, just enormous advances during COVID. One
of the very few upsides of COVID is the things
that have gone on with gene editing and CRISPR and
all these technologies. And so, yeah, this this whole space
is something we want to keep talking about and to
share and help keep answering that question of, you know,
what's what's the next stage of tech where we had it?
(45:13):
And I can't think of a more important application for
society or so. So thanks, first of all, for what
you're working on. Thanks for being on the show. If
people want to find out more about the company, generally,
where should they go?
S4 (45:26):
You can go to a virgin dot com. That's VR
ogy and dot com. We can. That'll explain about the company.
It also has links there to gedmatch. Jed matches the
other part of the origin which is both for, you know,
the law enforcement and the consumer side as well.
S2 (45:43):
And Emery now that you are out of office. Where
can people find you online?
S3 (45:50):
I have my own company called Schubert Strategies, so stay tuned.
The website will be up, I'm sure soon. But. Or
you can find me just probably Google.
S2 (46:00):
Well, Brett and Amory, thank you so much for being
on the show today. Thanks for what you're working on.
This is such a hugely important topic and we hope
to have you back on to keep talking about this
issue as we move forward.
S3 (46:13):
Thanks for having us. For the listeners out there, I
hope you keep listening to these podcasts can find us
on Inside Crime Files dot com and listen to more
about the true consequences of crime and the innovation and
inspiration that comes out of these cases. So I just
thank you all.
S2 (46:38):
OLAS Media presents inside the crime files. OLAS Media .
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