January 3, 2023 • 47 mins
Verogen CEO, Brett Williams and former District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert on how genetic technology is changing law enforcement.
(Originally aired: 03January22)
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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.
S2 (00:21):
OLAS Media presents Nation state of play. Welcome to the Nation
State of Play podcast. I'm your host, Brian Miller. And
each episode we explore the political stories that are driving
(00:43):
public policy in California. We explore these stories with political insiders,
business leaders, journalists and policymakers themselves to get below the
surface of the headlines and show you the true forces
shaping our nation's state. Thanks for listening. Today we actually
had two great guest. Brett Williams is the CEO of
a company called Verogen. And and Anne-Marie Schubert, who just
(01:04):
a few weeks ago left from being the Sacramento County
district attorney. We have them on the show to discuss
the latest in genetic genealogy, which is an amazing technique
that is used to solve cold cases, to exonerate the innocent,
and also to identify human remains in places like war
zones or conflict areas or natural disaster recovery. So this
(01:28):
is really the perfect intersection of tech and policy, something
we talk a lot about on this show. And Bret
has a really great description of how the technology works
and the different ways it can be used. And then Anne Marie
is able to get some more stories from two really
famous cases that she's worked on. So we're really excited
and grateful to have them on the show. I hope
(01:49):
you enjoy it. Stay with us. Bret Williams and Anne Marie
Schubert coming up right after this.
S3 (01:58):
Listen to our weekly podcast. How to Win Friends and
Save the Republic. To hear the latest updates from the
Democracy reform space, subscribe and learn more about us at
nonpartisan Reformers dot org.
S2 (02:11):
Welcome back to the Nation State of Play podcast. 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.
S4 (02:21):
Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.
S2 (02:23):
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 out of office,
(02:44):
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 we're
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 into how
(03:08):
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?
S5 (03:14):
Yes, certainly, Brian. So probably give you a little bit
of history of the company. Verogen started out life as
the forensic business of Illumina. 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
(03:36):
out 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 at
our core, where I, you know, forensic focus and we're
(03:58):
using next generation sequencing from Illumina, 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 a Illumina platform.
It is the gold standard from a sequencing platform perspective.
We then leverage that technology to to allow us to
(04:22):
identify people. It's not about generating can I generate an
STR 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
(04:44):
that's how we help 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 (05:00):
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?
S5 (05:21):
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 unidentified human remains. It's also been used for exonerations.
But one of the other and the other uses where
(05:41):
particularly U.S. is in conflict zones, identifying remains being from
conflict zone work is where we've got projects going now
in Greece, Spain, the Korean and look at and also
in discussions with the Vietnamese from the Vietnam War as well.
(06:02):
It's just surprising, 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. And so it's
(06:24):
a very versatile, but it's also, as we said, it's
21st century technology being applied to the to the law
enforcement sphere here. So far back, historically, theoretically, could this technology
be used to identify human remains?
So it's only going to be limited by the ability
(06:44):
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
(07:06):
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
(07:28):
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 (07:38):
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?
S5 (07:52):
No, I haven't.
S4 (07:53):
No.
S2 (07:54):
Okay. I'll here to check it out later. Okay. And
this is this is based on true things that happened
to these terrible series of murders at the outset of
World War One. World War One. The Russians are as family,
and there's bad, bad blood between the Crown and Russia.
(08:15):
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
they devoted a whole episode to it. So, hey, anything
that brings science to a broader population I'm all for. Okay.
(08:35):
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?
S5 (08:44):
So the actual purchasing is 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 Jed matched database is often
the the genealogist, right. Whether it be within law enforcement
(09:06):
or if they have contracted out to a private genealogist,
they are 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
(09:27):
the 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 (09:43):
It's a great segway to talk about how Emery started,
find out about this technology. So, Emory, what was your
first exposure to this concept, I think is fairly early
in your career, actually. You started getting interested in this.
S4 (09:57):
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 a big case that kind of exposed
this new tool called DNA. My my case involved a
(10:19):
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,
(10:39):
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
(11:01):
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, and I understood
(11:21):
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,
(11:42):
you know, our office in the team was willing to
move forward with it. And I'm obviously quite grateful that
they did.
S2 (11:49):
Let's give a little more context on the call and see.
KEILAR How long had the investigation and failed attempts of
bringing charges been going on at the point that you
got interested in this approach?
S4 (12:02):
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.
(12:23):
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.
(12:44):
And that really ultimately produced nothing. And then comes along
this new amazing tool called finger Investigative Genetic genealogy. And.
It was a team of about six people. This is
on the go and said killer. It cost a few
hundred dollars at the time and the case was solved
in 63 days. So you go from 43 years of
(13:08):
relentless pursuit of justice by incredible law enforcement to 63 days.
It's really powerful.
S2 (13:18):
Okay, So so I want to try to give listeners
as much as possible sort of the sequence that, no
pun intended, of exactly what you were doing during this
really compressed period where you're solving the case. So. So
you I take it at this point you always knew
you had DNA of the murder, is that correct?
S4 (13:39):
Yes. So back in the mid nineties, and just to
remind the listeners, the Golden State 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 well over 80 victims
(14:00):
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
(14:21):
Venter 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,
(14:44):
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 (15:05):
So. So what happens as a practical matter then, once
you decide to use those technology, you have the DNA.
Do you now understand the potential for the technology? What's
the next step?
S4 (15:18):
Me. 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 the specialized kind of testing called
(15:39):
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 to you're uploading it. Then
you're going to try to build your family trees and
identify relatives of your bad guys. Guy Basically. My am
I right on that Brett. Hopefully I you I don't.
S5 (15:58):
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.
(16:19):
And just to get into the details, but memories, right.
You then use that information to build a family tree
and identify the bad guy.
S2 (16:28):
And was it the murder? Was he a suspect already
at this point.
S4 (16:35):
Going to killer or. 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,
cold and say killer. We've got probably close to 200,
(16:55):
at least across the country. 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 of
the fascinating kind of realities of what we're seeing with
(17:18):
the power of this technology. 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 (17:29):
Just so was here. Was he in custody already at
that point?
S4 (17:34):
What do you mean?
S2 (17:35):
Was he in custody for another? Oh, no crimes at
that point. Okay.
S4 (17:40):
No, he was. He was. I mean, as most folks know,
he was sadly a police officer at that point. And
he was ultimately fired as a police officer. And 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 repellent and
(18:03):
a hammer. That was kind of a moment of, oh,
my God, we got something here. This is this sounds
like something real. Now.
S2 (18:12):
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
(18:32):
what was what was your.
S4 (18:33):
Actually, no, not to correct you, but I'm I am
going to.
S2 (18:36):
Please correct you. Yeah.
S4 (18:37):
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 leap for law enforcement. This is like
a tip. And so as a prosecutor, we don't anticipate
(18:59):
the we don't suggest that any 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 old school str traditional technology.
And that is what goes into court. It's not the
genealogy because that, you know, remember we're dealing with with.
(19:25):
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 a courtroom, then
we shouldn't be.
S5 (19:35):
You know just that, Brian, the way into memory is
absolutely right. It the whole process of genetic genealogy begins
and ends with an STR profile. There's an SDR 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,
(19:58):
from a technology perspective. SDR Profiling is, is the key.
S2 (20:02):
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.
S4 (20:15):
Well, you're and you said it's okay to get in
the weeds, but yeah, 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
(20:36):
basically the dude goes to the restaurant and leaves this
cup behind and or he goes to, you know, 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 once that to a Hobby Lobby and
got a sample from something that was lawfully obtained. And
(21:00):
then secondly, they did what's called a trash run, and
they got his garbage and got his DNA from that same.
S2 (21:07):
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?
S4 (21:24):
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 in 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
(21:45):
I 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,
(22:09):
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?
(22:30):
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
(22:50):
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?
(23:12):
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, you know, 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
(23:34):
is still potentially guilty. 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.
(23:57):
And for me, yes, as much as I am so
proud of the work that was done on the Golden
State 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
(24:18):
for cold cases. Yeah, it's it's great for, 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 (24:32):
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 wherever
you can within confidentiality rules of the types of things
you're working on. Yeah.
S5 (24:52):
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
(25:14):
of crimes, you can also now identify 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, because you
(25:38):
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 Z match 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 snip
(26:00):
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 (26:20):
So who is your customer typically for that type of work?
S5 (26:24):
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
(26:45):
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 there compared to, like
for example, in the Afghanistan war, they've lost more people
than the Afghans had during that period of time. They
(27:07):
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
(27:28):
to bring closure for all of these families with with
missing loved ones.
S2 (27:32):
And is the US government currently a client ambassador?
S5 (27:37):
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
(28:01):
does that. The State Department is funds in certain instances,
the other governments.
S2 (28:07):
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, how how do
you use the tools in that context?
S5 (28:23):
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.
(28:43):
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 reflecting it's a field
for violent crime. It should be part of the standard
operating procedure in our mind.
S2 (29:00):
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.
S4 (29:16):
So they so let's assume hypothetically, they send it to
their own crime lab, public laboratory. They get the DNA extracted,
meaning that 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 S.T.A.R. testing, and then they're going
(29:37):
to send it to a private lab, everybody. And then
they get 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 in 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,
(29:57):
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
(30:21):
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
this felon database. We owe it to society and we
owe it to that child and to that family and
to our communities. We owe it to take that next step.
(30:43):
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 (30:53):
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?
S4 (31:08):
I think it's two part of it, and I would
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, it 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 to go because we have
(31:30):
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 still pending. So I'm respectful of that. But.
(31:55):
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 exonerating the innocent, we're preventing future crime. And
that's what we need to be in the business of
(32:15):
on every single case moving forward.
S5 (32:18):
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
the digging out of that, and it's about getting the
priority of the lab to do the validation and the
(32:39):
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 technologies available, it's proven and it really is
a matter of awareness, funding and priority prioritization within the
(33:00):
within the law enforcement community.
S2 (33:02):
And in terms of funding, I mean, some examples are
talking about 48 cases pending for 43 years. Clearly, the
money that's spent is is giving you, you know, returns
that 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,
(33:23):
how do you think how do you think about the
real costs when you make this pitch to folks?
S5 (33:27):
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
(33:48):
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 and versus the, you know, the recidivism cost
of not doing anything here. It doesn't seem like a
(34:09):
large outlay in my mind for that side of it.
S4 (34:14):
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
(34:35):
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 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 it
(34:57):
costs 7500 to 10000, okay. But the human toll of
crime that cost is 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
(35:20):
solving that crime, but it's about really the future.
S5 (35:25):
In.
S4 (35:25):
All of us.
S5 (35:26):
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,
(35:50):
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 STR based and therefore, depending
on the case and the locality in the country, the
probability of getting a hit when you upload to CODIS
(36:11):
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
(36:34):
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
(36:54):
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
(37:18):
dollars here.
S2 (37:20):
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 in need to be
(37:40):
a combination that what do you think the right mix
is there?
S5 (37:45):
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
(38:08):
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
a like, for example, receive a grant you weren't allowed
to put in that you wanted to use it for,
(38:31):
you know, forensic, investigative, 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 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.
(38:53):
But there's the 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 the sort
of the jurisdictions to adopt the technology, particularly these public labs,
(39:13):
because there's no reason why it should be outsourced. They
should be doing this in-house.
S2 (39:18):
And what public labs do we have in California.
S5 (39:22):
That has quite a number of public labs? I think
there's at least ten, ten public DNA labs, I believe.
Is that right?
S4 (39:33):
Yeah, there's a lot I mean, there's California Department of
Justice has I think they have 13 labs, but. But
then there's like, Sacramento County DA's office has its own lab.
There's several law enforcement labs, L.A., LAPD, 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.
S5 (39:56):
But Californians are not smart people.
S4 (40:00):
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
(40:23):
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.
S5 (40:36):
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 and really what it is now is about budget
and prioritization is getting the budget and getting it prioritized
(40:59):
in there to implement it in their lab.
S2 (41:03):
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 working people will do that
(41:24):
if they if they want to do that often.
S5 (41:26):
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,
(41:48):
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
(42:10):
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,
(42:31):
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 FTD and I and
opting in to allow law enforcement to, you know, match
(42:54):
against 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, to solve virtually all of these cases that
we have. We need them to upload them and then
(43:15):
we need 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
(43:37):
of the people have that sort of civic mindedness to them,
and they have no problem allowing that for law enforcement use.
S2 (43:45):
So what's the website where people can go to do that?
S5 (43:48):
So gedmatch dot com. So it's you can sign up,
you can you will have to download your profile from
wherever you took your test. 23 May ancestry we have
in 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 (44:10):
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?
S4 (44:24):
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.
(44:45):
And so, for me, you know, being part of this,
this effort is so rewarding because ultimately, it's not just
about crime solving and exonerations. It's about crime prevention.
S5 (44:59):
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 it's time for
(45:20):
us to start making those and using the technology for
the appropriate decisions in the law enforcement side as well.
S2 (45:27):
Well, you know, it's it's such an important topic. I
was having a conversation with a policymaker in Sacramento recently,
and they are 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 is, what's
actually changing? And and to me, it's it's this and
biotech and health and, you know, just enormous advances during COVID.
(45:52):
One of the very few upsides of COVID is, is
this 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 on the show and help keep answering that question of,
you know, what's what's the next stage of tech where
we had it? And I can't think of a more
important application for society or so. So thanks, first of all,
(46:14):
for what you're working on. Thanks for being on the show.
If people want to find out more about the company generally, Brent,
where should they go?
S5 (46:22):
You can go to verogen dot com. That's V-e-r-o-g-e-n dot com.
That'll explain about the company and 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 (46:40):
And Anne-Marie, now that you are out of office. Where
can people find you online?
S4 (46:46):
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 (46:56):
Well, Brett and Anne Marie, thank you so much for being
on the show and 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.
S4 (47:08):
Appreciate. Thank you for having us.
S2 (47:15):
We invite you to share ideas for guests, ask questions
in the comments. You can find us at Neptune Ops dot com . Follow
us and subscribe to your podcasts. As we continue to
explore the insight stories driving California politics. This is the
Nation State of Play podcast. I'm your host, Bryan Miller,
and thank you for listening. 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.
S2 (00:21):
OLAS Media presents Nation state of play. Welcome to the Nation
State of Play podcast. I'm your host, Brian Miller. And
each episode we explore the political stories that are driving
(00:43):
public policy in California. We explore these stories with political insiders,
business leaders, journalists and policymakers themselves to get below the
surface of the headlines and show you the true forces
shaping our nation's state. Thanks for listening. Today we actually
had two great guest. Brett Williams is the CEO of
a company called Verogen. And and Anne-Marie Schubert, who just
(01:04):
a few weeks ago left from being the Sacramento County
district attorney. We have them on the show to discuss
the latest in genetic genealogy, which is an amazing technique
that is used to solve cold cases, to exonerate the innocent,
and also to identify human remains in places like war
zones or conflict areas or natural disaster recovery. So this
(01:28):
is really the perfect intersection of tech and policy, something
we talk a lot about on this show. And Bret
has a really great description of how the technology works
and the different ways it can be used. And then Anne Marie
is able to get some more stories from two really
famous cases that she's worked on. So we're really excited
and grateful to have them on the show. I hope
(01:49):
you enjoy it. Stay with us. Bret Williams and Anne Marie
Schubert coming up right after this.
S3 (01:58):
Listen to our weekly podcast. How to Win Friends and
Save the Republic. To hear the latest updates from the
Democracy reform space, subscribe and learn more about us at
nonpartisan Reformers dot org.
S2 (02:11):
Welcome back to the Nation State of Play podcast. 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.
S4 (02:21):
Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.
S2 (02:23):
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 out of office,
(02:44):
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 we're
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 into how
(03:08):
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?
S5 (03:14):
Yes, certainly, Brian. So probably give you a little bit
of history of the company. Verogen started out life as
the forensic business of Illumina. 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
(03:36):
out 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 at
our core, where I, you know, forensic focus and we're
(03:58):
using next generation sequencing from Illumina, 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 a Illumina platform.
It is the gold standard from a sequencing platform perspective.
We then leverage that technology to to allow us to
(04:22):
identify people. It's not about generating can I generate an
STR 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
(04:44):
that's how we help 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 (05:00):
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?
S5 (05:21):
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 unidentified human remains. It's also been used for exonerations.
But one of the other and the other uses where
(05:41):
particularly U.S. is in conflict zones, identifying remains being from
conflict zone work is where we've got projects going now
in Greece, Spain, the Korean and look at and also
in discussions with the Vietnamese from the Vietnam War as well.
(06:02):
It's just surprising, 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. And so it's
(06:24):
a very versatile, but it's also, as we said, it's
21st century technology being applied to the to the law
enforcement sphere here. So far back, historically, theoretically, could this technology
be used to identify human remains?
So it's only going to be limited by the ability
(06:44):
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
(07:06):
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
(07:28):
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 (07:38):
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?
S5 (07:52):
No, I haven't.
S4 (07:53):
No.
S2 (07:54):
Okay. I'll here to check it out later. Okay. And
this is this is based on true things that happened
to these terrible series of murders at the outset of
World War One. World War One. The Russians are as family,
and there's bad, bad blood between the Crown and Russia.
(08:15):
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
they devoted a whole episode to it. So, hey, anything
that brings science to a broader population I'm all for. Okay.
(08:35):
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?
S5 (08:44):
So the actual purchasing is 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 Jed matched database is often
the the genealogist, right. Whether it be within law enforcement
(09:06):
or if they have contracted out to a private genealogist,
they are 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
(09:27):
the 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 (09:43):
It's a great segway to talk about how Emery started,
find out about this technology. So, Emory, what was your
first exposure to this concept, I think is fairly early
in your career, actually. You started getting interested in this.
S4 (09:57):
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 a big case that kind of exposed
this new tool called DNA. My my case involved a
(10:19):
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,
(10:39):
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
(11:01):
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, and I understood
(11:21):
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,
(11:42):
you know, our office in the team was willing to
move forward with it. And I'm obviously quite grateful that
they did.
S2 (11:49):
Let's give a little more context on the call and see.
KEILAR How long had the investigation and failed attempts of
bringing charges been going on at the point that you
got interested in this approach?
S4 (12:02):
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.
(12:23):
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.
(12:44):
And that really ultimately produced nothing. And then comes along
this new amazing tool called finger Investigative Genetic genealogy. And.
It was a team of about six people. This is
on the go and said killer. It cost a few
hundred dollars at the time and the case was solved
in 63 days. So you go from 43 years of
(13:08):
relentless pursuit of justice by incredible law enforcement to 63 days.
It's really powerful.
S2 (13:18):
Okay, So so I want to try to give listeners
as much as possible sort of the sequence that, no
pun intended, of exactly what you were doing during this
really compressed period where you're solving the case. So. So
you I take it at this point you always knew
you had DNA of the murder, is that correct?
S4 (13:39):
Yes. So back in the mid nineties, and just to
remind the listeners, the Golden State 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 well over 80 victims
(14:00):
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
(14:21):
Venter 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,
(14:44):
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 (15:05):
So. So what happens as a practical matter then, once
you decide to use those technology, you have the DNA.
Do you now understand the potential for the technology? What's
the next step?
S4 (15:18):
Me. 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 the specialized kind of testing called
(15:39):
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 to you're uploading it. Then
you're going to try to build your family trees and
identify relatives of your bad guys. Guy Basically. My am
I right on that Brett. Hopefully I you I don't.
S5 (15:58):
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.
(16:19):
And just to get into the details, but memories, right.
You then use that information to build a family tree
and identify the bad guy.
S2 (16:28):
And was it the murder? Was he a suspect already
at this point.
S4 (16:35):
Going to killer or. 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,
cold and say killer. We've got probably close to 200,
(16:55):
at least across the country. 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 of
the fascinating kind of realities of what we're seeing with
(17:18):
the power of this technology. 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 (17:29):
Just so was here. Was he in custody already at
that point?
S4 (17:34):
What do you mean?
S2 (17:35):
Was he in custody for another? Oh, no crimes at
that point. Okay.
S4 (17:40):
No, he was. He was. I mean, as most folks know,
he was sadly a police officer at that point. And
he was ultimately fired as a police officer. And 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 repellent and
(18:03):
a hammer. That was kind of a moment of, oh,
my God, we got something here. This is this sounds
like something real. Now.
S2 (18:12):
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
(18:32):
what was what was your.
S4 (18:33):
Actually, no, not to correct you, but I'm I am
going to.
S2 (18:36):
Please correct you. Yeah.
S4 (18:37):
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 leap for law enforcement. This is like
a tip. And so as a prosecutor, we don't anticipate
(18:59):
the we don't suggest that any 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 old school str traditional technology.
And that is what goes into court. It's not the
genealogy because that, you know, remember we're dealing with with.
(19:25):
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 a courtroom, then
we shouldn't be.
S5 (19:35):
You know just that, Brian, the way into memory is
absolutely right. It the whole process of genetic genealogy begins
and ends with an STR profile. There's an SDR 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,
(19:58):
from a technology perspective. SDR Profiling is, is the key.
S2 (20:02):
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.
S4 (20:15):
Well, you're and you said it's okay to get in
the weeds, but yeah, 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
(20:36):
basically the dude goes to the restaurant and leaves this
cup behind and or he goes to, you know, 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 once that to a Hobby Lobby and
got a sample from something that was lawfully obtained. And
(21:00):
then secondly, they did what's called a trash run, and
they got his garbage and got his DNA from that same.
S2 (21:07):
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?
S4 (21:24):
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 in 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
(21:45):
I 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,
(22:09):
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?
(22:30):
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
(22:50):
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?
(23:12):
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, you know, 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
(23:34):
is still potentially guilty. 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.
(23:57):
And for me, yes, as much as I am so
proud of the work that was done on the Golden
State 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
(24:18):
for cold cases. Yeah, it's it's great for, 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 (24:32):
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 wherever
you can within confidentiality rules of the types of things
you're working on. Yeah.
S5 (24:52):
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
(25:14):
of crimes, you can also now identify 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, because you
(25:38):
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 Z match 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 snip
(26:00):
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 (26:20):
So who is your customer typically for that type of work?
S5 (26:24):
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
(26:45):
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 there compared to, like
for example, in the Afghanistan war, they've lost more people
than the Afghans had during that period of time. They
(27:07):
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
(27:28):
to bring closure for all of these families with with
missing loved ones.
S2 (27:32):
And is the US government currently a client ambassador?
S5 (27:37):
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
(28:01):
does that. The State Department is funds in certain instances,
the other governments.
S2 (28:07):
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, how how do
you use the tools in that context?
S5 (28:23):
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.
(28:43):
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 reflecting it's a field
for violent crime. It should be part of the standard
operating procedure in our mind.
S2 (29:00):
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.
S4 (29:16):
So they so let's assume hypothetically, they send it to
their own crime lab, public laboratory. They get the DNA extracted,
meaning that 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 S.T.A.R. testing, and then they're going
(29:37):
to send it to a private lab, everybody. And then
they get 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 in 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,
(29:57):
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
(30:21):
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
this felon database. We owe it to society and we
owe it to that child and to that family and
to our communities. We owe it to take that next step.
(30:43):
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 (30:53):
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?
S4 (31:08):
I think it's two part of it, and I would
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, it 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 to go because we have
(31:30):
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 still pending. So I'm respectful of that. But.
(31:55):
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 exonerating the innocent, we're preventing future crime. And
that's what we need to be in the business of
(32:15):
on every single case moving forward.
S5 (32:18):
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
the digging out of that, and it's about getting the
priority of the lab to do the validation and the
(32:39):
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 technologies available, it's proven and it really is
a matter of awareness, funding and priority prioritization within the
(33:00):
within the law enforcement community.
S2 (33:02):
And in terms of funding, I mean, some examples are
talking about 48 cases pending for 43 years. Clearly, the
money that's spent is is giving you, you know, returns
that 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,
(33:23):
how do you think how do you think about the
real costs when you make this pitch to folks?
S5 (33:27):
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
(33:48):
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 and versus the, you know, the recidivism cost
of not doing anything here. It doesn't seem like a
(34:09):
large outlay in my mind for that side of it.
S4 (34:14):
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
(34:35):
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 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 it
(34:57):
costs 7500 to 10000, okay. But the human toll of
crime that cost is 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
(35:20):
solving that crime, but it's about really the future.
S5 (35:25):
In.
S4 (35:25):
All of us.
S5 (35:26):
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,
(35:50):
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 STR based and therefore, depending
on the case and the locality in the country, the
probability of getting a hit when you upload to CODIS
(36:11):
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
(36:34):
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
(36:54):
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
(37:18):
dollars here.
S2 (37:20):
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 in need to be
(37:40):
a combination that what do you think the right mix
is there?
S5 (37:45):
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
(38:08):
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
a like, for example, receive a grant you weren't allowed
to put in that you wanted to use it for,
(38:31):
you know, forensic, investigative, 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 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.
(38:53):
But there's the 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 the sort
of the jurisdictions to adopt the technology, particularly these public labs,
(39:13):
because there's no reason why it should be outsourced. They
should be doing this in-house.
S2 (39:18):
And what public labs do we have in California.
S5 (39:22):
That has quite a number of public labs? I think
there's at least ten, ten public DNA labs, I believe.
Is that right?
S4 (39:33):
Yeah, there's a lot I mean, there's California Department of
Justice has I think they have 13 labs, but. But
then there's like, Sacramento County DA's office has its own lab.
There's several law enforcement labs, L.A., LAPD, 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.
S5 (39:56):
But Californians are not smart people.
S4 (40:00):
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
(40:23):
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.
S5 (40:36):
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 and really what it is now is about budget
and prioritization is getting the budget and getting it prioritized
(40:59):
in there to implement it in their lab.
S2 (41:03):
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 working people will do that
(41:24):
if they if they want to do that often.
S5 (41:26):
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,
(41:48):
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
(42:10):
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,
(42:31):
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 FTD and I and
opting in to allow law enforcement to, you know, match
(42:54):
against 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, to solve virtually all of these cases that
we have. We need them to upload them and then
(43:15):
we need 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
(43:37):
of the people have that sort of civic mindedness to them,
and they have no problem allowing that for law enforcement use.
S2 (43:45):
So what's the website where people can go to do that?
S5 (43:48):
So gedmatch dot com. So it's you can sign up,
you can you will have to download your profile from
wherever you took your test. 23 May ancestry we have
in 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 (44:10):
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?
S4 (44:24):
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.
(44:45):
And so, for me, you know, being part of this,
this effort is so rewarding because ultimately, it's not just
about crime solving and exonerations. It's about crime prevention.
S5 (44:59):
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 it's time for
(45:20):
us to start making those and using the technology for
the appropriate decisions in the law enforcement side as well.
S2 (45:27):
Well, you know, it's it's such an important topic. I
was having a conversation with a policymaker in Sacramento recently,
and they are 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 is, what's
actually changing? And and to me, it's it's this and
biotech and health and, you know, just enormous advances during COVID.
(45:52):
One of the very few upsides of COVID is, is
this 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 on the show and help keep answering that question of,
you know, what's what's the next stage of tech where
we had it? And I can't think of a more
important application for society or so. So thanks, first of all,
(46:14):
for what you're working on. Thanks for being on the show.
If people want to find out more about the company generally, Brent,
where should they go?
S5 (46:22):
You can go to verogen dot com. That's V-e-r-o-g-e-n dot com.
That'll explain about the company and 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 (46:40):
And Anne-Marie, now that you are out of office. Where
can people find you online?
S4 (46:46):
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 (46:56):
Well, Brett and Anne Marie, thank you so much for being
on the show and 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.
S4 (47:08):
Appreciate. Thank you for having us.
S2 (47:15):
We invite you to share ideas for guests, ask questions
in the comments. You can find us at Neptune Ops dot com . Follow
us and subscribe to your podcasts. As we continue to
explore the insight stories driving California politics. This is the
Nation State of Play podcast. I'm your host, Bryan Miller,
and thank you for listening. OLAS media.
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