February 27, 2025 • 62 mins
Season 1 Episode 101 of Criminology Chats delves into the resolution of a 40-year-old cold case associated with serial killer Joseph Irvin. This episode highlights the significance of collaboration among law enforcement agencies, advancements in forensic genetic genealogy, and the dedication of investigators to achieving justice for the victims. J. R. Rainbolt leads this enlightening conversation for The Chicago School.
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Episode Transcript
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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome to the Criminology Chats, the podcast where we dive
deep into the world of crime, justice, and everything in
between.
I'm JR, an adjunct instructor in the Criminal Justice and
Forensic Psychology departments at the Chicago School.
I have years of experience and understanding of the complexities
of criminal behavior.
(00:23):
And I am Emma, a criminology student at the Chicago
School, eager to explore the fascinating field of criminology alongside
you.
The criminology program at the Chicago School is for students
who are enthusiastic about true crime and helping others.
In this program, students learn about criminal motivations and victimization
from instructors with real-world experience working in criminal justice
(00:45):
and behavioral health as federal criminal investigators, profilers, police
officers, probation and parole officers, victim advocates, and behavioral
health clinicians.
The Chicago School emphasizes an immersive approach to learning focused
on developing professionals who can address the present challenges and
anticipate future needs.
You can find out more about our school by going
(01:06):
to thechicagoschool.edu. In each episode of this podcast, we
will unpack case studies, discuss the latest research, and interview
experts to shed light on the ever-evolving landscape of
crime and justice.
Whether you're a student, a professional in the field, or
just someone intrigued by the mysteries of crime, we have
something for you.
So grab your headphones, get comfortable, and join us as
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we explore the intricate world of criminology.
This is Criminology Chats, where we bring the classroom to
your ears.
Today we are chatting about an interesting case, that of
Joseph or Joe Michael Ervin.
A couple years ago, police in Denver, Colorado announced they
solved a four 40-year murder cold case and determined
that each victim died at the hands of Ervin.
(01:50):
Ervin took the lives of four women between 1979 and
1981 in Denver, Colorado.
At this time, the cases had no link because they
seemed to have nothing in common.
They did not know each other and differed in age,
race, and appearance.
Ervin was never a suspect in any of them.
Shortly after the fourth murder, Ervin shot and killed a
(02:11):
police officer during a traffic stop.
He later took his own life while in jail.
How was the truth uncovered?
It took years of old school police work and a
cutting-edge investigative technique called Forensic Genetic Genealogy, or FGG.
It took the combined efforts of law enforcement in Colorado
and Texas, along with the support from the Bureau of
(02:34):
Justice Assistance, that's BJA, which provided grants to help crack
the case.
And it took the efforts of Detective Kerry Johnson of
the Denver Police Department and Tracy Carlson, a forensic scientist
too, with the Denver Crime Lab.
They are here today to talk about the case.
I'm Detective Kerry Johnson.
(02:54):
I have been with the Denver Police Department since September
of 1997, was when I was hired.
And I did, you know, I required stint in patrol
for about eight years, taught at the academy, did part
of our transitioning from paper reporting into computerized reporting.
And then I was promoted to detective in 2014.
(03:17):
I was on our night shift investigations unit for a
couple of years, and then came to cold case, which
since 2002, all of my evaluations, you know, they always
ask the question, what do you want to be when
you grow up in your evaluations?
And I always just said cold case was my ultimate
goal.
I didn't come into this job wanting to be a
homicide detective or a sex assault detective.
(03:38):
And then I became a cold case detective.
And so now I do both.
So that was in 2016.
And I've been in the cold case unit ever since.
Yeah, and I'm Tracy Carlson.
I'm a forensic scientist too at the Denver Crime Lab.
I mean, I've been in Denver at the lab about
six years.
I'm a Colorado native.
But prior to that, I was down in New Mexico
with their state lab system doing the same stuff in
(04:00):
their their DNA and serology unit.
And then prior to that, I had actually been out
in Virginia, I was doing a visiting scientist program with
the FBI lab, so doing research more.
And prior to that, I was in California.
That's where I went to grad school at UC Davis
and then was working in private industry out there.
But yeah, so I've been back in Denver six years
at the lab, we don't have kind of specified in
(04:22):
DNA, we don't have like specializations as far as specifically
what you work on.
So I work on all types of cases.
But cold cases, I also just like because I feel
like it's kind of a last shot for a lot
of them.
And we get to do as techniques update, we get
to kind of go back to things and relook at
them.
So I like like being able to help on those.
And we're, I would I would say on that note,
(04:44):
we're super lucky in Denver that we do have our
own crime lab.
And so we don't outsource the majority of our testing
we get to keep in house.
And then there are very, like, it's a big crime
lab.
And there's a lot of employees, but we're very lucky
in cold case that they seem to have almost a
cold case team in the crime lab as well.
So all of these cases that we work, really, we
(05:04):
work together.
And so it's not, you know, when people say, Oh,
you solved, well, no, I didn't, or she didn't, or
Texas didn't, it's just, it's a huge team effort.
And we, like, we just consider them part of our
team, and the district attorneys as well.
And so we all work together all the time, which
I think we're super lucky to have that advantage.
(05:24):
Yeah, I think that's good.
I think that it's important that everybody worked together, you
know, so yeah, we're lucky for sure.
Emma, you can pipe in anytime.
Yeah.
Yeah, I guess we can lead into what exactly how
did you guys get involved with this case in particular?
Sure.
So I, I think it's important to talk a little
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bit about the history of the victims.
So we know Joe Irvin had multiple victims, but how
I came about really is like on the tail end
of a lot.
I know that one of your questions was like, what
traditional police work did I do?
And I think it's important to recognize that a lot
of traditional police work was done before, which really led
us to this place.
So Madeline Levidae was killed in December of 1978.
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And all of the cases that Joe Irvin, we know
for a fact Joe Irvin is guilty of committing were
DNA cases.
And they've all been reviewed over the years by a
multitude of different detectives.
And so along those lines, DNA samples would be submitted
and profiles would be developed.
And in 2010, an unknown male DNA profile was developed
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on Madeline Levidae's case, and that was entered into CODIS.
And then Dolores Barajas is his second known victim.
She was killed in August of 1980.
And same thing, reviewed multiple times, a DNA profiles developed
and submitted to CODIS.
And it was in, I believe, 2013 that we got
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our first case to case match in CODIS.
So the profile from Madeline's case or Dolores' case matched
Madeline's case.
And then Gwendolyn Harris is our third known victim.
She died in December of 1980.
And it was in December of 2015 that a profile
that was obtained from a used condom that was lying
next to her hand at the crime scene, that was
(07:13):
entered into CODIS.
And in 2015, we got our third case to case
match.
So now we know we have these three cases.
In 2018, I was assigned to the cases after we
got a fourth CODIS match.
And that was from Adams County has, is a jurisdiction
that is just a little bit north of us.
And they had a 17 year old female victim from
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February of 1981.
And that's Antoinette Parks.
And in 2018, we got that fourth case to case
match.
And then that's when I was assigned to those cases.
Yeah.
And I guess just to add to similarly at the
lab in 2012 was kind of when we really started
our cold case project and we became grant funded.
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So unfortunately, like any, any government job, funding is always
tight.
So a lot of these cold cases have been specifically
worked under federal grants.
And in 2012, we did a really large review of
the cold cases that existed in our, in our jurisdiction
and identified about 1000, about 70, 750 were cold case
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homicides and about 250 were those cold case sex assaults.
And so the lab started kind of doing rework because
again, technology has improved so much and changed back when
a lot of these cases happened, DNA typing wasn't a
thing yet.
So it was like looking at blood typing or antibody
testing, which was never, it was only ever exclusionary that
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could never fully include someone.
So our people at the lab did reviews of those
cases.
And then in conjunction, like working with detectives over here
at BPD, we were able to kind of revisit these
cases for me specifically, since I was only hired in
2018, my colleagues had already kind of kicked off this
genealogy route, because we knew we had these four cases
(09:01):
connected.
And you know, it had been almost 40 years at
that point, and there were no CODIS leads generated.
So Stacey actually brought to our upper management the idea
to pursue genealogy on this.
And she initially did genealogy on an unknown homicide victim
who she was able to successfully identify to kind of
(09:21):
show that, yes, like we can do this, even though
we're not genealogists.
And it was kind of after she did that, I
was just, you know, sent her an email, sent my
supervisor an email.
I was like, Hey, I want to help with this.
So, and I, yeah, got assigned it.
And can you explain a little bit in, I guess,
in layman terms, you know, what that forensic genetic genealogy
(09:41):
is?
Yeah, definitely.
So all it is, is it's a hybrid technique, taking
DNA testing and combining it with kind of the traditional
research methods that all genealogists use.
So your typical genealogist that is doing their own family
history, or people that are helping adoptees identify their birth
(10:05):
parents, they're using the same technique.
So we're just adopting those.
So it's using public records to identify births, deaths, marriages,
where people might have lived, and then building back those
family relationships.
It's kind of doing, again, it's very similar to someone
that's trying to identify an adoptee, but almost in reverse.
(10:26):
So you have your unknown DNA sequence that's either attributed
to like an unknown homicide victim or a possible suspect
in these cold cases.
And you have that sequenced, which is a different type
of DNA testing than we can do at the lab.
And you upload it to databases that allow for law
enforcement searches, and you get lists of people that are
(10:48):
potential family members to that unknown person.
So then with those potential family members, you're doing the
genealogy for those people to find your connection.
Got it.
So obviously, based on what you explained there, that does
take a little bit of time.
Yes.
It doesn't happen like you see on TV.
No.
And I think that's really important to note is that
(11:10):
Tracey in particular, and with a lot, you know, a
lot of patients and a lot of disappointments really worked,
what was it, three years, two and a half years?
A year and a half building the trees and then
the follow-up, I think.
Yeah.
So a year and a half of just, you know,
combining, combining all of our other tasks at the lab,
(11:31):
you know, that this isn't something I don't think she
got to work on full time.
They don't happen fast.
You're right.
It's if we could solve crimes in the 50 minutes,
they're allotted on TV, like we would solve, we wouldn't
have any unsolved murders.
Exactly.
And this one of my other questions, sorry, go ahead.
One of my other questions was along the same lines
of what are some of the common misconceptions that people
(11:51):
have surrounding cold cases and the investigations that go behind
them?
Yeah, I think the biggest one that we probably all
would testify as one of the biggest misconceptions is the
idea that every single cold case can be solved with
DNA.
And while we might have DNA in some of those
cases, it may or may not be sufficient.
Genealogy is very specific in that it requires unique amount
(12:14):
of DNA in order to be sent to that sequencing
that Tracy was just talking about.
And so while we might have a profile in CODIS,
that requirement is a different level, if I understand it
correctly, is a different level than it is to sequence
a profile in order to conduct genetic genealogy on.
And so I think it's hard for these families when
(12:35):
they see the news stories over and over again about
cases being solved using genealogy, DNA, and then they call
and we take a look at the case and we
just say, that's not applicable to your case.
So that's, I think, one of the biggest misconceptions.
And then I think the other one is just what
Jerry just hit on.
They take a lot of time.
We don't have the advantage as a cold case detective
(12:55):
of learning this information in real time.
So we are going back and studying everything that not
only the original detectives did, but also any detective that
has reviewed the case and done some work on it.
Then we're meeting with the lab.
Then we're talking to the district attorneys.
Then we're trying to take all of these new techniques
that we have available to us today and seeing if
(13:17):
they can be applied to the case.
And so it's a long process.
I would say that all of the cases that I've
ever worked as a cold case detective, easily a minimum
of a year before we're in a place where we're
moving that ball forward on some of these cases.
Yeah.
I think also just, I think maybe sometimes people think
these cases are forgotten and, you know, just because it's
(13:40):
not headline news anymore.
Like there are people in all aspects of the process.
So again, even our DAs too, that care about these
cases and remember cases that haven't been able to be
prosecuted yet or haven't closed yet.
So they're always like on everyone's mind, even if it
maybe doesn't seem like it seems like you're only pursuing
(14:01):
current cases.
That's great.
That's a good point.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of the
cold case and people that are working on the cold
cases, they aren't doing this full time.
Is that correct?
This isn't their sole focus of their position.
So in Denver, we're lucky that we have a full
time case, cold case unit.
And that's all I get to do.
(14:21):
That's an advantage, I think, to a larger agency, but
you are, you would be correct in saying that with
a lot of smaller agencies, they just don't have the
time or the resources in, in large part CBI.
So like the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, they have their
own cold case unit because other jurisdictions don't have, you
know, your smaller police departments don't have the homicide experience
(14:43):
because they don't get them.
You know, unfortunately, like as we all know, in big
cities, there's just more people, which just equates to more
homicides, which equates to more experience for detectives.
So there are agencies out there that offer assistance to
smaller jurisdictions that otherwise probably don't even have full time
homicide detectives.
So again, we're lucky, but we you see declines and
(15:06):
increases in that, you know, I think at one point
in Denver, there were eight cold case detectives full time,
we have three and a sergeant grants.
When it comes to some of this, the federal government
is that is that that Bureau of Justice BJA and
of course, you have to get grants from them probably
because it takes a lot of money probably to do
some of this testing and sequencing, I'm assuming, and things
(15:29):
of that nature.
So if you don't have that in your in your
city budget or crime lab budget to do that, and
it takes up a lot of that money on the
cold cases, you need to find other revenue sources to,
to help with that.
And those grants can make that happen, then correct?
Yeah, 100%.
Yeah, we're very lucky that we have been very successful
at getting those grants, because yeah, with how we have
(15:52):
to spend money to sequence these profiles, that would not
be in a city budget.
Or actually, we with these first five genealogy cases, we
actually got funding from the Crime Stoppers, the local Crime
Stoppers.
So they provided our money initially, for the funding for
this sequencing.
So just, I mean, you don't have to be exact,
but just in a ballpark figure of to do a
(16:14):
sequencing, say, like those five cases Crime Stoppers paid for,
I mean, just know just a general idea, you know,
what are we looking at there?
I think people don't understand the first the the, you
know, that it does take money to do that.
It's not something you just do for free.
Yeah.
And of course, prices have changed.
I believe initially, we were given I want to say
(16:36):
$5,000 from Crime Stoppers.
And that was just specifically for the sequencing of five
different cases.
And at the time to upload to the certain law
enforcement, like genealogy databases that were allowed to use, right,
one of them was was free at the time.
Now nothing is free.
So it's probably at least 2000 for sequencing and upload
to the various databases we need.
(16:58):
And then yeah, and then that's not counting that the
work that we'll need to go into.
Right, right.
Yeah.
But I think I would follow up and I don't
know if you be able to talk to Dr. Williamson
or not.
But another sort of misunderstanding in the cold case world
is families might call an agency and say, Hey, I
don't, you know, what about my loved one's case, and
(17:19):
they might hear we don't have the money to work
cold cases.
I think it's really important to emphasize that funding is
available out there, the DOJ, BJA, they're very focused on
helping people try to fund to solve cold case investigations.
And but outside of that, they are like Crime Stoppers
is a phenomenal example of people who are willing to
(17:39):
provide money.
There's smaller private companies out there.
I think there's a I can't remember the gentleman's name,
or the company name, but there's a man who was
had a family member who was killed.
And he started a company specifically designed for smaller agencies
to submit requests for funding.
And like you can you know how on like Amazon,
(18:00):
you can say, I want to contribute a certain amount
of money to a certain organization, or they get a
kickback from that, like he's on that he's on Amazon,
like you can put kickbacks into his company.
So, you know, researching funding is probably the first step
I think if any agency is questioning or any district
attorney's office or crime lab is questioning, like how can
we do these things, just doing that research and especially
(18:22):
reaching out to the BJ eggs, they're constantly offering different
types of funding.
And I would, I would say that, you know, while
we got the grant to solve cases using genetic genealogy,
we also tapped into a sake grant, because our grant
did not allow for us to pay to exhume a
body.
And because Joe Irvin was deceased, we had to exhume
(18:44):
him.
Texas had a sex assault kit initiative grant that because
our cases are sexually motivated homicides, Dr. Williamson was able
to say, well, those two grants can be combined.
And Texas actually paid to exhume, they covered all the
costs for the exhumation on Joe Irvin.
Yeah.
Can you talk just a little bit about the kind
of how that happened, if you don't mind?
(19:06):
Sure.
So nothing was nothing was easy.
But you know, when you look back on it, you
just think that makes talking about these cases seem, you
know, the hard work that gets put into it by
a lot of different people.
So as Tracy said, a year and a half building
this family tree, some of the more traditional stuff that
I did was she would give me some names of
people to try to go interview, get DNA from to
(19:29):
see if we could sort of in her words, like,
can we cut this branch of the tree off?
Or do we include this branch of the tree?
And unfortunately, all of those just took us nowhere.
And so they collectively had a conversation at the crime
lab and decided they would reach out to what what
Tracy was able to determine was literally 90% of
this family line came out of Texas.
(19:50):
And so they came up with the idea of reaching
out to Texas and asking the Texas their crime lab
to their state DNA index system, asking them to do
a familial search, which we send them all the things
we had done to say, like, this is sort of
our last shot.
They agreed to it.
And that resulted in them calling us with a match
(20:12):
to a gentleman, a familial match to a gentleman who
is in prison down there for homicide who we had
in the tree.
Yeah, you tell the story, you tell the story.
But I think first, I'll just give a brief overview
on what the familial search is.
So one of our requirements under our grant was, so
we had to basically have exhausted the traditional methods that
(20:35):
DNA labs try to use to identify suspects, meaning our
sample had to be searched in CODIS.
And then certain states allow for what's called familial searches
in CODIS based on the idea that crime kind of
runs in families.
So people like if their parents committed crimes, there's a
(20:55):
decent chance they might go down that path.
So certain I think only 11 states allow for it.
But actually, the Denver lab, we kind of designed a
software to do this searching.
So we had to have done a familial search in
our Colorado database already to say, hey, does this unidentified
person possibly have a family member already in CODIS that
(21:16):
we could use to identify them?
And that answer was no for Colorado.
Texas, thankfully, is another state that allows for familial searching.
So yes, like Terry said, we got to the point
where like all of our matches were really in such
a specific area of Texas.
And we just like we weren't getting anywhere more farther
(21:36):
with the tree.
So we reached out to the Texas DNA lab, their
state system to see, explain like, look, this, these are
our cases.
This is all the work we've done.
We have everyone we have matches to is in Texas,
would you be willing to familial search our sample?
And they said yes, but they had backordered supplies.
(21:56):
So they're like, it's gonna be a while.
And so in the meantime, I kept kind of working
and I had gotten down to this family in the
tree again, that we had five brothers, the Irvins, and
I was like, it's gotta be we're missing something.
It's got to be somewhere in here.
And then I think it was like the week after
I had kind of arrived back at this family, we
got the call from Texas, and they scheduled a zoom
(22:19):
meeting.
And there were 11 of us on the call.
So it was Detective Johnson, our sergeant, our cold case
sergeant at the time, me and my lab supervisor, and
another lab colleague, and then all of the Texas State
DNA people.
And then yeah, Tramp is getting a, yeah, Texas Ranger.
So all of these people, so when that happened, we
(22:40):
knew we're like, okay, this has to be good news.
And in the family of the five sons I had,
we knew one of them had was in prison in
Texas, because he had been convicted of murdering his wife.
He the murder happened in the mid 80s.
Because we actually thought maybe he would be a good
suspect for our case at the time.
But he I think in 2014, finally got convicted of
(23:03):
that crime.
But so we know he's in their Texas state system.
So we were so hoping they'd they'd tell us his
name.
And they did.
And so we were like, Oh, this is amazing.
It's got to be one of his brothers.
Two of them had had Colorado connections, one that only
fit kind of the timeline.
But then apparently in Texas, when you enter prison, you
kind of fill out a little comment card on on
(23:25):
your family history, dead or alive.
Yeah, dead or alive.
And so he listed out his parents who we knew,
I'm like, yep, got those people in the tree.
He listed his sisters who we knew had those people
in the family tree.
He listed these four brothers.
I'm like, yep, check, check, we have those in the
family tree.
And then he listed a another brother that we did
not have in our family tree.
(23:48):
And it was Gary, we'll say more about this.
But my gosh, he had aliases.
He had died in 1981.
And his information had been scrubbed from various police databases.
So there there were many reasons that we weren't going
to identify him through what we were trying to do.
So it was because of his brother, self reporting this
(24:09):
this unknown person to us that we then once you
have a name, you're able to, you know, find information
on them.
So obviously, that brother being Joe Irvin.
Yeah, yeah.
So once we found that information out, and he's still
in that zoom meeting, literally in my and all of
this is during COVID.
So you know, we're all doing this from my phone
just starts dinging.
And it's Tracy and she's like, I found I found
(24:29):
a residential address for Joe Irvin.
It's in Denver.
And that happened to be literally like as the crow
flies five minute walk from where we found one of
our victims were Gwendolyn Harris was found deceased.
She found a marriage record here in Colorado.
And then where I mean, it just was like this
explosion of information.
But that's, you know, the thing about genetic genealogy is
(24:52):
it's, it's just another tool in law enforcement's toolbox.
And so you have to go back and do more
of your traditional criminal history.
What do we know about this guy was even Colorado
at the time because he was so connected to Denver.
And what she also found was a death index record
indicating only the I think it was just a month
in the year that he had died.
(25:13):
It didn't have the county.
It just had the month that we didn't even know
what state he died in.
And then she couldn't find anything else.
No obituaries, nothing.
So I took a guess because his I think his
marriage certificate was 1978 in Colorado.
So I just took a gander and reached out to
our vital statistics and said, Hey, can you tell me
if there's a death record for this individual?
(25:34):
And they came back with yes.
And it was actually under one of his alias names,
Joe Irving, I N G instead of Irvin.
And then he, that told us that he died in
Arapahoe County, Colorado.
No.
Yeah.
Adams, Adams County, Adams County.
I was like, where was he?
And that he, that the manner of death was suicide.
(25:57):
And so because we had Antoinette parks case out of
Adams County, and I had a connection with a detective
up there.
I called him and I said, listen, you're probably not
going to have a suicide report from 1981, but will
you look, and he's like, we're not going to have
it, but I'll try.
And he called me back an hour later.
And he's like, I hope you're sitting down because not
only do we have it, it's 20 pages long.
(26:17):
And the reason he was incarcerated.
And this was when we first heard this news.
The reason he was in the Adams County jail to
begin with was because he had a shot and killed
Aurora police officer, Deborah Sue core in the line of
duty.
And that was on June 27th of 1981.
And then I think his, I think he committed suicide
suicide, like July 1st, like four days later.
(26:37):
So reached out to Aurora police department.
We got those records from her homicide.
That's when we found out he had a 1969 homicide
warrant out of Texas.
That's when we found out that so then I'm like,
well, why is he not in NCIC?
Why am I getting no criminal records?
We also found out from Aurora's records, he had been
arrested in 1970 in Denver for a series of burglary
(27:01):
sex assaults in March of 1970.
He subsequently goes to the color, he pleads not guilty
by reason of insanity.
He goes to the Colorado State Mental Hospital for seven
years.
And still nothing like there's no criminal history.
There's no criminal records.
Well, what we learned was that it was a practice
of both like state and federal agencies that if someone's
(27:21):
10 print card is sent to them from a medical
examiner's office, they wipe those records.
I don't think that's the practice anymore.
They realized that that's important information for us to have.
But that's why we couldn't find anything on Joe urban.
So and he and then from my side of things,
because he had died in 1981.
When I was using things like obituaries to try to
(27:43):
shore up family relationships, both his parents died after him.
But neither of their obituaries had a proceeded in death
section.
So he was not listed.
And then another resource is called find a grave where
people just go and they kind of document grave grave
markers for family lineages and people can associate family lines
(28:04):
on those.
Joe was not listed on any find the grave sites,
there were his parents and then two brothers that had
actually preceded him in death.
But so Joe was nowhere to be found there.
And that was because his grave was unmarked.
So back to the information and part of the complications.
So we we figure out obviously from his death certificate
where he's buried.
So then we reach back out to Texas and ask
(28:26):
for their help.
Ultimately, it's a long story.
But ultimately, I author the search warrant.
Well, let me backtrack.
So that's when we realized that our grant doesn't allow
for the exclamation cost.
And we looked, right, we looked at all of these
brothers.
And we were like, well, we had Yes, it could
be any of these other brothers except for the one
that's in prison.
But everything tells us like he's the best one to
(28:47):
start with.
So we know he's in Denver in that time, we
know where he's living at that time.
So ultimately, we combine those grants, Texas Rangers, I can't
speak highly enough of them.
They're phenomenal.
Tramp was good and connects us to he's now Captain
Jason Bobo.
He was a lieutenant back then, who then connects us
to Ranger Travis Denby, I write a search warrant up
(29:09):
here, we send it down to Texas.
Ultimately, that's signed by a judge, my sergeant and I
fly down, the Rangers handled everything getting the exclamation put
together.
We also took our we're lucky enough in Denver to
have an ATF agent embedded in the Denver Homicide Unit.
And he flew down with us just to be there
to assist us with whatever we needed.
He actually brought, like we're going for an exclamation, right?
(29:30):
He's been buried since 1981.
We're bringing back bone samples.
So Ryan actually brought a empty carry on thinking that
we're going to bring back bone samples.
We go down there, the exclamation just goes smoothly.
First, we think we've like, then Lieutenant Bobo was like,
okay, we've identified where he is.
He like spoke to the people at the cemetery, we
get we get out there, we start digging, and we're
(29:52):
just digging and we're digging.
We're digging.
We're still digging.
And then they're like, he's not here.
And you know, your heart
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome to the Criminology Chats, the podcast where we dive
deep into the world of crime, justice, and everything in
between.
I'm JR, an adjunct instructor in the Criminal Justice and
Forensic Psychology departments at the Chicago School.
I have years of experience and understanding of the complexities
of criminal behavior.
(00:23):
And I am Emma, a criminology student at the Chicago
School, eager to explore the fascinating field of criminology alongside
you.
The criminology program at the Chicago School is for students
who are enthusiastic about true crime and helping others.
In this program, students learn about criminal motivations and victimization
from instructors with real-world experience working in criminal justice
(00:45):
and behavioral health as federal criminal investigators, profilers, police
officers, probation and parole officers, victim advocates, and behavioral
health clinicians.
The Chicago School emphasizes an immersive approach to learning focused
on developing professionals who can address the present challenges and
anticipate future needs.
You can find out more about our school by going
(01:06):
to thechicagoschool.edu. In each episode of this podcast, we
will unpack case studies, discuss the latest research, and interview
experts to shed light on the ever-evolving landscape of
crime and justice.
Whether you're a student, a professional in the field, or
just someone intrigued by the mysteries of crime, we have
something for you.
So grab your headphones, get comfortable, and join us as
(01:28):
we explore the intricate world of criminology.
This is Criminology Chats, where we bring the classroom to
your ears.
Today we are chatting about an interesting case, that of
Joseph or Joe Michael Ervin.
A couple years ago, police in Denver, Colorado announced they
solved a four 40-year murder cold case and determined
that each victim died at the hands of Ervin.
(01:50):
Ervin took the lives of four women between 1979 and
1981 in Denver, Colorado.
At this time, the cases had no link because they
seemed to have nothing in common.
They did not know each other and differed in age,
race, and appearance.
Ervin was never a suspect in any of them.
Shortly after the fourth murder, Ervin shot and killed a
(02:11):
police officer during a traffic stop.
He later took his own life while in jail.
How was the truth uncovered?
It took years of old school police work and a
cutting-edge investigative technique called Forensic Genetic Genealogy, or FGG.
It took the combined efforts of law enforcement in Colorado
and Texas, along with the support from the Bureau of
(02:34):
Justice Assistance, that's BJA, which provided grants to help crack
the case.
And it took the efforts of Detective Kerry Johnson of
the Denver Police Department and Tracy Carlson, a forensic scientist
too, with the Denver Crime Lab.
They are here today to talk about the case.
I'm Detective Kerry Johnson.
(02:54):
I have been with the Denver Police Department since September
of 1997, was when I was hired.
And I did, you know, I required stint in patrol
for about eight years, taught at the academy, did part
of our transitioning from paper reporting into computerized reporting.
And then I was promoted to detective in 2014.
(03:17):
I was on our night shift investigations unit for a
couple of years, and then came to cold case, which
since 2002, all of my evaluations, you know, they always
ask the question, what do you want to be when
you grow up in your evaluations?
And I always just said cold case was my ultimate
goal.
I didn't come into this job wanting to be a
homicide detective or a sex assault detective.
(03:38):
And then I became a cold case detective.
And so now I do both.
So that was in 2016.
And I've been in the cold case unit ever since.
Yeah, and I'm Tracy Carlson.
I'm a forensic scientist too at the Denver Crime Lab.
I mean, I've been in Denver at the lab about
six years.
I'm a Colorado native.
But prior to that, I was down in New Mexico
with their state lab system doing the same stuff in
(04:00):
their their DNA and serology unit.
And then prior to that, I had actually been out
in Virginia, I was doing a visiting scientist program with
the FBI lab, so doing research more.
And prior to that, I was in California.
That's where I went to grad school at UC Davis
and then was working in private industry out there.
But yeah, so I've been back in Denver six years
at the lab, we don't have kind of specified in
(04:22):
DNA, we don't have like specializations as far as specifically
what you work on.
So I work on all types of cases.
But cold cases, I also just like because I feel
like it's kind of a last shot for a lot
of them.
And we get to do as techniques update, we get
to kind of go back to things and relook at
them.
So I like like being able to help on those.
And we're, I would I would say on that note,
(04:44):
we're super lucky in Denver that we do have our
own crime lab.
And so we don't outsource the majority of our testing
we get to keep in house.
And then there are very, like, it's a big crime
lab.
And there's a lot of employees, but we're very lucky
in cold case that they seem to have almost a
cold case team in the crime lab as well.
So all of these cases that we work, really, we
(05:04):
work together.
And so it's not, you know, when people say, Oh,
you solved, well, no, I didn't, or she didn't, or
Texas didn't, it's just, it's a huge team effort.
And we, like, we just consider them part of our
team, and the district attorneys as well.
And so we all work together all the time, which
I think we're super lucky to have that advantage.
(05:24):
Yeah, I think that's good.
I think that it's important that everybody worked together, you
know, so yeah, we're lucky for sure.
Emma, you can pipe in anytime.
Yeah.
Yeah, I guess we can lead into what exactly how
did you guys get involved with this case in particular?
Sure.
So I, I think it's important to talk a little
(05:45):
bit about the history of the victims.
So we know Joe Irvin had multiple victims, but how
I came about really is like on the tail end
of a lot.
I know that one of your questions was like, what
traditional police work did I do?
And I think it's important to recognize that a lot
of traditional police work was done before, which really led
us to this place.
So Madeline Levidae was killed in December of 1978.
(06:08):
And all of the cases that Joe Irvin, we know
for a fact Joe Irvin is guilty of committing were
DNA cases.
And they've all been reviewed over the years by a
multitude of different detectives.
And so along those lines, DNA samples would be submitted
and profiles would be developed.
And in 2010, an unknown male DNA profile was developed
(06:31):
on Madeline Levidae's case, and that was entered into CODIS.
And then Dolores Barajas is his second known victim.
She was killed in August of 1980.
And same thing, reviewed multiple times, a DNA profiles developed
and submitted to CODIS.
And it was in, I believe, 2013 that we got
(06:52):
our first case to case match in CODIS.
So the profile from Madeline's case or Dolores' case matched
Madeline's case.
And then Gwendolyn Harris is our third known victim.
She died in December of 1980.
And it was in December of 2015 that a profile
that was obtained from a used condom that was lying
next to her hand at the crime scene, that was
(07:13):
entered into CODIS.
And in 2015, we got our third case to case
match.
So now we know we have these three cases.
In 2018, I was assigned to the cases after we
got a fourth CODIS match.
And that was from Adams County has, is a jurisdiction
that is just a little bit north of us.
And they had a 17 year old female victim from
(07:34):
February of 1981.
And that's Antoinette Parks.
And in 2018, we got that fourth case to case
match.
And then that's when I was assigned to those cases.
Yeah.
And I guess just to add to similarly at the
lab in 2012 was kind of when we really started
our cold case project and we became grant funded.
(07:56):
So unfortunately, like any, any government job, funding is always
tight.
So a lot of these cold cases have been specifically
worked under federal grants.
And in 2012, we did a really large review of
the cold cases that existed in our, in our jurisdiction
and identified about 1000, about 70, 750 were cold case
(08:16):
homicides and about 250 were those cold case sex assaults.
And so the lab started kind of doing rework because
again, technology has improved so much and changed back when
a lot of these cases happened, DNA typing wasn't a
thing yet.
So it was like looking at blood typing or antibody
testing, which was never, it was only ever exclusionary that
(08:38):
could never fully include someone.
So our people at the lab did reviews of those
cases.
And then in conjunction, like working with detectives over here
at BPD, we were able to kind of revisit these
cases for me specifically, since I was only hired in
2018, my colleagues had already kind of kicked off this
genealogy route, because we knew we had these four cases
(09:01):
connected.
And you know, it had been almost 40 years at
that point, and there were no CODIS leads generated.
So Stacey actually brought to our upper management the idea
to pursue genealogy on this.
And she initially did genealogy on an unknown homicide victim
who she was able to successfully identify to kind of
(09:21):
show that, yes, like we can do this, even though
we're not genealogists.
And it was kind of after she did that, I
was just, you know, sent her an email, sent my
supervisor an email.
I was like, Hey, I want to help with this.
So, and I, yeah, got assigned it.
And can you explain a little bit in, I guess,
in layman terms, you know, what that forensic genetic genealogy
(09:41):
is?
Yeah, definitely.
So all it is, is it's a hybrid technique, taking
DNA testing and combining it with kind of the traditional
research methods that all genealogists use.
So your typical genealogist that is doing their own family
history, or people that are helping adoptees identify their birth
(10:05):
parents, they're using the same technique.
So we're just adopting those.
So it's using public records to identify births, deaths, marriages,
where people might have lived, and then building back those
family relationships.
It's kind of doing, again, it's very similar to someone
that's trying to identify an adoptee, but almost in reverse.
(10:26):
So you have your unknown DNA sequence that's either attributed
to like an unknown homicide victim or a possible suspect
in these cold cases.
And you have that sequenced, which is a different type
of DNA testing than we can do at the lab.
And you upload it to databases that allow for law
enforcement searches, and you get lists of people that are
(10:48):
potential family members to that unknown person.
So then with those potential family members, you're doing the
genealogy for those people to find your connection.
Got it.
So obviously, based on what you explained there, that does
take a little bit of time.
Yes.
It doesn't happen like you see on TV.
No.
And I think that's really important to note is that
(11:10):
Tracey in particular, and with a lot, you know, a
lot of patients and a lot of disappointments really worked,
what was it, three years, two and a half years?
A year and a half building the trees and then
the follow-up, I think.
Yeah.
So a year and a half of just, you know,
combining, combining all of our other tasks at the lab,
(11:31):
you know, that this isn't something I don't think she
got to work on full time.
They don't happen fast.
You're right.
It's if we could solve crimes in the 50 minutes,
they're allotted on TV, like we would solve, we wouldn't
have any unsolved murders.
Exactly.
And this one of my other questions, sorry, go ahead.
One of my other questions was along the same lines
of what are some of the common misconceptions that people
(11:51):
have surrounding cold cases and the investigations that go behind
them?
Yeah, I think the biggest one that we probably all
would testify as one of the biggest misconceptions is the
idea that every single cold case can be solved with
DNA.
And while we might have DNA in some of those
cases, it may or may not be sufficient.
Genealogy is very specific in that it requires unique amount
(12:14):
of DNA in order to be sent to that sequencing
that Tracy was just talking about.
And so while we might have a profile in CODIS,
that requirement is a different level, if I understand it
correctly, is a different level than it is to sequence
a profile in order to conduct genetic genealogy on.
And so I think it's hard for these families when
(12:35):
they see the news stories over and over again about
cases being solved using genealogy, DNA, and then they call
and we take a look at the case and we
just say, that's not applicable to your case.
So that's, I think, one of the biggest misconceptions.
And then I think the other one is just what
Jerry just hit on.
They take a lot of time.
We don't have the advantage as a cold case detective
(12:55):
of learning this information in real time.
So we are going back and studying everything that not
only the original detectives did, but also any detective that
has reviewed the case and done some work on it.
Then we're meeting with the lab.
Then we're talking to the district attorneys.
Then we're trying to take all of these new techniques
that we have available to us today and seeing if
(13:17):
they can be applied to the case.
And so it's a long process.
I would say that all of the cases that I've
ever worked as a cold case detective, easily a minimum
of a year before we're in a place where we're
moving that ball forward on some of these cases.
Yeah.
I think also just, I think maybe sometimes people think
these cases are forgotten and, you know, just because it's
(13:40):
not headline news anymore.
Like there are people in all aspects of the process.
So again, even our DAs too, that care about these
cases and remember cases that haven't been able to be
prosecuted yet or haven't closed yet.
So they're always like on everyone's mind, even if it
maybe doesn't seem like it seems like you're only pursuing
(14:01):
current cases.
That's great.
That's a good point.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of the
cold case and people that are working on the cold
cases, they aren't doing this full time.
Is that correct?
This isn't their sole focus of their position.
So in Denver, we're lucky that we have a full
time case, cold case unit.
And that's all I get to do.
(14:21):
That's an advantage, I think, to a larger agency, but
you are, you would be correct in saying that with
a lot of smaller agencies, they just don't have the
time or the resources in, in large part CBI.
So like the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, they have their
own cold case unit because other jurisdictions don't have, you
know, your smaller police departments don't have the homicide experience
(14:43):
because they don't get them.
You know, unfortunately, like as we all know, in big
cities, there's just more people, which just equates to more
homicides, which equates to more experience for detectives.
So there are agencies out there that offer assistance to
smaller jurisdictions that otherwise probably don't even have full time
homicide detectives.
So again, we're lucky, but we you see declines and
(15:06):
increases in that, you know, I think at one point
in Denver, there were eight cold case detectives full time,
we have three and a sergeant grants.
When it comes to some of this, the federal government
is that is that that Bureau of Justice BJA and
of course, you have to get grants from them probably
because it takes a lot of money probably to do
some of this testing and sequencing, I'm assuming, and things
(15:29):
of that nature.
So if you don't have that in your in your
city budget or crime lab budget to do that, and
it takes up a lot of that money on the
cold cases, you need to find other revenue sources to,
to help with that.
And those grants can make that happen, then correct?
Yeah, 100%.
Yeah, we're very lucky that we have been very successful
at getting those grants, because yeah, with how we have
(15:52):
to spend money to sequence these profiles, that would not
be in a city budget.
Or actually, we with these first five genealogy cases, we
actually got funding from the Crime Stoppers, the local Crime
Stoppers.
So they provided our money initially, for the funding for
this sequencing.
So just, I mean, you don't have to be exact,
but just in a ballpark figure of to do a
(16:14):
sequencing, say, like those five cases Crime Stoppers paid for,
I mean, just know just a general idea, you know,
what are we looking at there?
I think people don't understand the first the the, you
know, that it does take money to do that.
It's not something you just do for free.
Yeah.
And of course, prices have changed.
I believe initially, we were given I want to say
(16:36):
$5,000 from Crime Stoppers.
And that was just specifically for the sequencing of five
different cases.
And at the time to upload to the certain law
enforcement, like genealogy databases that were allowed to use, right,
one of them was was free at the time.
Now nothing is free.
So it's probably at least 2000 for sequencing and upload
to the various databases we need.
(16:58):
And then yeah, and then that's not counting that the
work that we'll need to go into.
Right, right.
Yeah.
But I think I would follow up and I don't
know if you be able to talk to Dr. Williamson
or not.
But another sort of misunderstanding in the cold case world
is families might call an agency and say, Hey, I
don't, you know, what about my loved one's case, and
(17:19):
they might hear we don't have the money to work
cold cases.
I think it's really important to emphasize that funding is
available out there, the DOJ, BJA, they're very focused on
helping people try to fund to solve cold case investigations.
And but outside of that, they are like Crime Stoppers
is a phenomenal example of people who are willing to
(17:39):
provide money.
There's smaller private companies out there.
I think there's a I can't remember the gentleman's name,
or the company name, but there's a man who was
had a family member who was killed.
And he started a company specifically designed for smaller agencies
to submit requests for funding.
And like you can you know how on like Amazon,
(18:00):
you can say, I want to contribute a certain amount
of money to a certain organization, or they get a
kickback from that, like he's on that he's on Amazon,
like you can put kickbacks into his company.
So, you know, researching funding is probably the first step
I think if any agency is questioning or any district
attorney's office or crime lab is questioning, like how can
we do these things, just doing that research and especially
(18:22):
reaching out to the BJ eggs, they're constantly offering different
types of funding.
And I would, I would say that, you know, while
we got the grant to solve cases using genetic genealogy,
we also tapped into a sake grant, because our grant
did not allow for us to pay to exhume a
body.
And because Joe Irvin was deceased, we had to exhume
(18:44):
him.
Texas had a sex assault kit initiative grant that because
our cases are sexually motivated homicides, Dr. Williamson was able
to say, well, those two grants can be combined.
And Texas actually paid to exhume, they covered all the
costs for the exhumation on Joe Irvin.
Yeah.
Can you talk just a little bit about the kind
of how that happened, if you don't mind?
(19:06):
Sure.
So nothing was nothing was easy.
But you know, when you look back on it, you
just think that makes talking about these cases seem, you
know, the hard work that gets put into it by
a lot of different people.
So as Tracy said, a year and a half building
this family tree, some of the more traditional stuff that
I did was she would give me some names of
people to try to go interview, get DNA from to
(19:29):
see if we could sort of in her words, like,
can we cut this branch of the tree off?
Or do we include this branch of the tree?
And unfortunately, all of those just took us nowhere.
And so they collectively had a conversation at the crime
lab and decided they would reach out to what what
Tracy was able to determine was literally 90% of
this family line came out of Texas.
(19:50):
And so they came up with the idea of reaching
out to Texas and asking the Texas their crime lab
to their state DNA index system, asking them to do
a familial search, which we send them all the things
we had done to say, like, this is sort of
our last shot.
They agreed to it.
And that resulted in them calling us with a match
(20:12):
to a gentleman, a familial match to a gentleman who
is in prison down there for homicide who we had
in the tree.
Yeah, you tell the story, you tell the story.
But I think first, I'll just give a brief overview
on what the familial search is.
So one of our requirements under our grant was, so
we had to basically have exhausted the traditional methods that
(20:35):
DNA labs try to use to identify suspects, meaning our
sample had to be searched in CODIS.
And then certain states allow for what's called familial searches
in CODIS based on the idea that crime kind of
runs in families.
So people like if their parents committed crimes, there's a
(20:55):
decent chance they might go down that path.
So certain I think only 11 states allow for it.
But actually, the Denver lab, we kind of designed a
software to do this searching.
So we had to have done a familial search in
our Colorado database already to say, hey, does this unidentified
person possibly have a family member already in CODIS that
(21:16):
we could use to identify them?
And that answer was no for Colorado.
Texas, thankfully, is another state that allows for familial searching.
So yes, like Terry said, we got to the point
where like all of our matches were really in such
a specific area of Texas.
And we just like we weren't getting anywhere more farther
(21:36):
with the tree.
So we reached out to the Texas DNA lab, their
state system to see, explain like, look, this, these are
our cases.
This is all the work we've done.
We have everyone we have matches to is in Texas,
would you be willing to familial search our sample?
And they said yes, but they had backordered supplies.
(21:56):
So they're like, it's gonna be a while.
And so in the meantime, I kept kind of working
and I had gotten down to this family in the
tree again, that we had five brothers, the Irvins, and
I was like, it's gotta be we're missing something.
It's got to be somewhere in here.
And then I think it was like the week after
I had kind of arrived back at this family, we
got the call from Texas, and they scheduled a zoom
(22:19):
meeting.
And there were 11 of us on the call.
So it was Detective Johnson, our sergeant, our cold case
sergeant at the time, me and my lab supervisor, and
another lab colleague, and then all of the Texas State
DNA people.
And then yeah, Tramp is getting a, yeah, Texas Ranger.
So all of these people, so when that happened, we
(22:40):
knew we're like, okay, this has to be good news.
And in the family of the five sons I had,
we knew one of them had was in prison in
Texas, because he had been convicted of murdering his wife.
He the murder happened in the mid 80s.
Because we actually thought maybe he would be a good
suspect for our case at the time.
But he I think in 2014, finally got convicted of
(23:03):
that crime.
But so we know he's in their Texas state system.
So we were so hoping they'd they'd tell us his
name.
And they did.
And so we were like, Oh, this is amazing.
It's got to be one of his brothers.
Two of them had had Colorado connections, one that only
fit kind of the timeline.
But then apparently in Texas, when you enter prison, you
kind of fill out a little comment card on on
(23:25):
your family history, dead or alive.
Yeah, dead or alive.
And so he listed out his parents who we knew,
I'm like, yep, got those people in the tree.
He listed his sisters who we knew had those people
in the family tree.
He listed these four brothers.
I'm like, yep, check, check, we have those in the
family tree.
And then he listed a another brother that we did
not have in our family tree.
(23:48):
And it was Gary, we'll say more about this.
But my gosh, he had aliases.
He had died in 1981.
And his information had been scrubbed from various police databases.
So there there were many reasons that we weren't going
to identify him through what we were trying to do.
So it was because of his brother, self reporting this
(24:09):
this unknown person to us that we then once you
have a name, you're able to, you know, find information
on them.
So obviously, that brother being Joe Irvin.
Yeah, yeah.
So once we found that information out, and he's still
in that zoom meeting, literally in my and all of
this is during COVID.
So you know, we're all doing this from my phone
just starts dinging.
And it's Tracy and she's like, I found I found
(24:29):
a residential address for Joe Irvin.
It's in Denver.
And that happened to be literally like as the crow
flies five minute walk from where we found one of
our victims were Gwendolyn Harris was found deceased.
She found a marriage record here in Colorado.
And then where I mean, it just was like this
explosion of information.
But that's, you know, the thing about genetic genealogy is
(24:52):
it's, it's just another tool in law enforcement's toolbox.
And so you have to go back and do more
of your traditional criminal history.
What do we know about this guy was even Colorado
at the time because he was so connected to Denver.
And what she also found was a death index record
indicating only the I think it was just a month
in the year that he had died.
(25:13):
It didn't have the county.
It just had the month that we didn't even know
what state he died in.
And then she couldn't find anything else.
No obituaries, nothing.
So I took a guess because his I think his
marriage certificate was 1978 in Colorado.
So I just took a gander and reached out to
our vital statistics and said, Hey, can you tell me
if there's a death record for this individual?
(25:34):
And they came back with yes.
And it was actually under one of his alias names,
Joe Irving, I N G instead of Irvin.
And then he, that told us that he died in
Arapahoe County, Colorado.
No.
Yeah.
Adams, Adams County, Adams County.
I was like, where was he?
And that he, that the manner of death was suicide.
(25:57):
And so because we had Antoinette parks case out of
Adams County, and I had a connection with a detective
up there.
I called him and I said, listen, you're probably not
going to have a suicide report from 1981, but will
you look, and he's like, we're not going to have
it, but I'll try.
And he called me back an hour later.
And he's like, I hope you're sitting down because not
only do we have it, it's 20 pages long.
(26:17):
And the reason he was incarcerated.
And this was when we first heard this news.
The reason he was in the Adams County jail to
begin with was because he had a shot and killed
Aurora police officer, Deborah Sue core in the line of
duty.
And that was on June 27th of 1981.
And then I think his, I think he committed suicide
suicide, like July 1st, like four days later.
(26:37):
So reached out to Aurora police department.
We got those records from her homicide.
That's when we found out he had a 1969 homicide
warrant out of Texas.
That's when we found out that so then I'm like,
well, why is he not in NCIC?
Why am I getting no criminal records?
We also found out from Aurora's records, he had been
arrested in 1970 in Denver for a series of burglary
(27:01):
sex assaults in March of 1970.
He subsequently goes to the color, he pleads not guilty
by reason of insanity.
He goes to the Colorado State Mental Hospital for seven
years.
And still nothing like there's no criminal history.
There's no criminal records.
Well, what we learned was that it was a practice
of both like state and federal agencies that if someone's
(27:21):
10 print card is sent to them from a medical
examiner's office, they wipe those records.
I don't think that's the practice anymore.
They realized that that's important information for us to have.
But that's why we couldn't find anything on Joe urban.
So and he and then from my side of things,
because he had died in 1981.
When I was using things like obituaries to try to
(27:43):
shore up family relationships, both his parents died after him.
But neither of their obituaries had a proceeded in death
section.
So he was not listed.
And then another resource is called find a grave where
people just go and they kind of document grave grave
markers for family lineages and people can associate family lines
(28:04):
on those.
Joe was not listed on any find the grave sites,
there were his parents and then two brothers that had
actually preceded him in death.
But so Joe was nowhere to be found there.
And that was because his grave was unmarked.
So back to the information and part of the complications.
So we we figure out obviously from his death certificate
where he's buried.
So then we reach back out to Texas and ask
(28:26):
for their help.
Ultimately, it's a long story.
But ultimately, I author the search warrant.
Well, let me backtrack.
So that's when we realized that our grant doesn't allow
for the exclamation cost.
And we looked, right, we looked at all of these
brothers.
And we were like, well, we had Yes, it could
be any of these other brothers except for the one
that's in prison.
But everything tells us like he's the best one to
(28:47):
start with.
So we know he's in Denver in that time, we
know where he's living at that time.
So ultimately, we combine those grants, Texas Rangers, I can't
speak highly enough of them.
They're phenomenal.
Tramp was good and connects us to he's now Captain
Jason Bobo.
He was a lieutenant back then, who then connects us
to Ranger Travis Denby, I write a search warrant up
(29:09):
here, we send it down to Texas.
Ultimately, that's signed by a judge, my sergeant and I
fly down, the Rangers handled everything getting the exclamation put
together.
We also took our we're lucky enough in Denver to
have an ATF agent embedded in the Denver Homicide Unit.
And he flew down with us just to be there
to assist us with whatever we needed.
He actually brought, like we're going for an exclamation, right?
(29:30):
He's been buried since 1981.
We're bringing back bone samples.
So Ryan actually brought a empty carry on thinking that
we're going to bring back bone samples.
We go down there, the exclamation just goes smoothly.
First, we think we've like, then Lieutenant Bobo was like,
okay, we've identified where he is.
He like spoke to the people at the cemetery, we
get we get out there, we start digging, and we're
(29:52):
just digging and we're digging.
We're digging.
We're still digging.
And then they're like, he's not here.
And you know, your heart
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