August 8, 2024 • 17 mins
In the second part of our conversation with forensic DNA expert Prof. Jodie Ward, we delve into the disappearance of Narooma's Renee Aitken and touch on the murders of Bega teenagers Lauren Barry and Nicohle Collins. Dr Ward ponders how much today's science might have assisted the investigative process for those two cases.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A warning. This episode mentions violence against children and won't
be suitable for all listeners. Why why are Fast South Coast?
It was the abduction of a five year old that
shocked Australia, and forty years later, Naruma girl Renee Aitken's
disappearance still hasn't been solved in the coastal town of Naruma,
(00:23):
about three hundred and fifty kilometers south of Sydney. After
putting her two children to bed on the evening of
Thursday February fifteenth, nineteen eighty four, Far South Coast mother
of two Mourner Aiken was awoken by her eight year
old son Brad around four forty five The following morning,
Brad woke after hearing a noise and noticing his sister, Renee,
(00:46):
was not in her bed in their shared bedroom. To
Mourner's shock, Renee was gone without a trace and the
back door of the house wide open, flapping in the wind.
Despite an extensive search involving police, es, volunteers and the
local community, Renee was never found. The case remains one
(01:06):
of the most baffling unsolved crimes in the country, leaving
a lasting impact on the Far South Coast community and
obviously Rene's family. While Renee's case is particularly harrowing, it's
important to remember there are many other families in our
region and beyond who are still searching for their loved ones.
Each missing person represents a family living with uncertainty and pain,
(01:31):
hoping for answers. Our guest Professor Jody Ward, is a
forensic human identification specialist who's dedicated her career to providing
those answers. In our last episode, we learned about Jody's
background growing up in Beager and her award winning work
in forensic genetics. In this episode, doctor Ward discusses the
(01:51):
broader implications for families of missing persons and shares her
thoughts on Rene's case, but also touches on another case
that shocked her community to eat the South Coast and
the nation, as she attended the same school in Biga
as fourteen year old Lauren Barry and sixteen year old
Nicole Collins, who in October of nineteen ninety seven had
(02:12):
their young lives tragically cut short after being held captive
for twelve horrendous hours.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So Renee is actually of a similar age to me.
So I was growing up in the Bigger Valley in
Biger at the same time as Renee went missing in Naruma,
so bigger and is only an hour away from Naruma,
so quite close to home, you know. Growing up, unfortunately,
we were touched by a number of missing children and
(02:41):
friends and family. You know. When I was in high school,
we had two bigger school girls, Lauren and Nicole, that
went missing why we were at high school. So I
think for many of us growing up in the valley,
we were aware of In Lauren Nicole's case, it was
only for a relatively short time. But you know, for
a childlike Renee who has never been seen since, you know,
(03:04):
it has obviously endured for decades. And I think Renee's
case exemplifies many missing children's cases that we now know
about in terms on a national scale, where there's tens
of these cases where children have disappeared one day and
have never been seen since. And I guess I have
(03:25):
the job of trying to identify the remains of deceased
children when they are located, but in many cases we
aren't finding a lot of children or subadult remains. So
I do think there's a lot of cases where we
are yet to find the remains of some of our
(03:45):
missing children in Australia.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
And you mentioned you were growing up in the Bigger
Valley when you heard about a lot of these missing
children's cases. How did that make you and your family
feel at the time. Was there a sense of fear
in the community.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I can't really remember when I was very young when
Renee went missing, but you know, at high school when
Lauren and Nicole went missing, I remember it changed. Like
you know, that was one of the beauties of living
in the Beiger Valley. It was you know, writing to
your mate's house after school. It was walking to the
corner shop. It was your mum telling you that you
(04:22):
just needed to come home before the street lights come on.
So you never really feared anything as a child in
the valley, and I think that just shifted people's thinking
a little bit. I think parents became a lot more cautious.
I can't necessarily recall how I felt as a teenager
at that point in terms of my own personal safety,
(04:44):
but it probably made me rethink some of my actions.
You know, these were two girls walking from a party
to another destination and you probably wouldn't have thought twice
about that previously, So I do think it yeah, shift
did people's mindsets probably altered people's behaviors, which I think
(05:05):
that's sad for a community like Biger Valley. Who you know,
some people deliberately choose to live in the valley to
raise their children in a way where there isn't that
kind of you know, fear and anxiety. So yeah, I
think that was a sad time for our community.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
And what about now, knowing everything you know, with your
forensic background and all of your experiences and knowledge and
being a mother of two in twenty twenty four, how
are you feeling about things now?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah? I think with a job like mine, you get
to see the worst of humanity. I also think I
have the privilege of seeing the best of humanity when
you have a group of really dedicated, passionate forensic scientists
working collaboratively on a case trying to restore the names
(05:55):
and face of an unknown Australian individual, you know, whether
it is a long term missing person or one of
our fallen Australian servicemen. I think that demonstrates, I guess,
the doggedness of Australians to try and identify one of
their own and reunite them with a family. That's missed
them for years. But simultaneously, many of these people have died,
(06:20):
you know, under really horrible circumstances, and so you kind
of can't unlearn those type of things either. So as
a mum, you you probably to overanalyze situations or think
the worst before it happens. But yeah, I think it
is a privilege to do the job that I do do,
but I probably do know a lot about the bad
(06:41):
bits of society as well. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Stay with us more of our conversations soon with Professor
Jodi Ward, including a closer look at the long term
missing persons across the country. I art Fast South Coast
Fast South Coast. Welcome back to our chat with Professor
Jodi Ward, who grew up in Beager and is now
(07:05):
a recognized world leader in forensic human identification. In Australia,
more than thirty eight thousand missing persons reports are received
by police every year, and while most people are found
within a short period of time, there are about twenty
six hundred long term missing persons, that's those who've been
missing for more than three months. Doctor Ward's dedication to
(07:28):
helping families of missing persons find closure is evident in
her work She emphasizes the importance of collecting DNA samples
from relatives, a practice that wasn't common in the nineteen
eighties but is now a crucial part of solving long
term missing persons cases.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
In terms of the practices that are now in place,
when someone goes missing, they look very different to what
they would have looked when Renee was reported missing. Things
like DNA technology didn't really become mainstream to the nineties
and the two thousands, so DNA wasn't even really a
consideration when Renee was reported missing, So no one would
(08:09):
have been out there collecting Renee's toothbrush to get DNA
that represents Renee, all thinking about collecting DNA from the
mother who reported per missing child. So nowadays, if someone
is reported missing, best practices suggest that you should be
collecting reference material for that missing person immediately, So whether
(08:31):
that's a reference sample from the missing person themselves, so
something like a toothbrush or a hair brush, or if
they've previously had a blood test or a biopsy sample
and that's stored in medical archives somewhere. All of those
types of biological material can be used to compare to
DNA profiles. We recover from the remains. You know, they
(08:52):
would be collecting DNA from the mother or the father,
any biological children or the siblings of that missing person,
and all of that information should be being collated and
stored on our national DNA databases or our national Missing
Persons and Victim System database. That database houses pretty much
(09:12):
everything but DNA information, so it'll house what that person
look like, their hair and eye color, their age, what
they were last scene wearing. It also houses dental records,
so that's the only national platform we have in Australia
which compares the dental records of a missing person that
you can obtain from the missing person's dentist to the
(09:34):
charted dental records. We can chart when a set of
remains are located and teeth are present. So the idea
is that a set of remains are located, they're brought
into a mortuary, a sample is taken for DNA, a
forensic dentist comes and charts the teeth if they're present.
This information should be uploaded to these databases very soon after,
(09:59):
and autopsies and matching should almost be instantaneously. If there
is a DNA reference sample from that person's relative sitting
on the database, or if their own dental records are
sitting on one of these national DNA databases.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
You received almost one hundred unidentified human remains cases. You
were able to resolve about half of those for the
AFP National DNA Program for Unidentified Missing Persons. That program
is no longer running due to the funding drying up.
Is that something that you think needs to continue on
(10:34):
in order to help cases like Renees?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
I think the National DNA Program for an identified a
missing Person's demonstrated the power of having a nationally coordinated
and centralized forensic human identification capability. Not only were we
able to identify cases which were decades old, but you
now have these suite in some cases of brand new
(10:58):
forensic techniques there that could be applied to remains, whether
they're of a child or an adult which are found
tomorrow or the next day or in ten years time.
Having these national law enforcement databases is amazing, but the
database is only as good as the data that's sitting
in it, So we still need to be out there
(11:20):
collecting DNA from relatives of missing people once they're reported missing.
We need to try and back capture DNA from the
relatives of those people which were missing decades ago. In
Rene's case, we would hope that Renees mother's DNA is
now sitting on a national DNA database to be compared
to DNA from the remains of any future remains which
(11:43):
are located and DNA able to be recovered. So I
think it's about putting in place the right processes, so
going forward, we never find ourselves in this situation where
we do have hundreds of backlogged remains which haven't been tested,
or we don't have the right techniques in Australia to
be able to apply to them now, like forensic investigative
(12:05):
genetic genealogy. So I think we're in a very different
place now, but if we still don't have the resources
and experts centralized and being able to apply to these remains,
we might see ourselves back in the situation we were
before the National DNA program was established.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Closure is often one of the things you hear that
families want, even if they know that you know there's
a good chance the family member has died that they'd
just like to bury their remains or bring them home.
Forty years is a long time not to know what's
happened to your little girl? How do you reflect on that?
In Renee's case and with some of the other long
(12:44):
term missing persons cases from across the country, we have.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Two and a half thousand long term missing persons in Australia,
so that's a lot of families. That's a lot of
extended families and friends of those missing individuals which have
spent years not knowing the fatal whereabouts of a missing
loved one, and that affects people in many different ways, psychologically, financially.
(13:11):
So there's a term used in this community known as
ambiguous loss, and it's deemed to be one of the
most traumatic forms of grief that there is, because it's
the not knowing when your loved one dies, you know
what happened to them, you're able to have a funeral
(13:32):
or some other commemorative process to celebrate their life. A
family of a missing person doesn't know whether they loved
one is still alive and living happily somewhere. They don't
know if they're deceased and lying somewhere and no one's
ever found them. They don't know if they're sitting on
a shelf in a mortuary somewhere and it isn't their
(13:53):
turn yet to be forensically identified. So it's that not knowing,
it's kind of you're in lim and so it's really
hard for a family to be able to go through
this normal, in inverted comma's grieving process that you associate
with a loved one dying. So for many they've kind
(14:14):
of traversed this period of limbo for decades. And I'm
in as a mother, I couldn't imagine living in that
state for decades not knowing what happened to my child
and whether they are still alive or whether they died
and how did they die? You know, we did this
survey research. I collaborated with a missing person's expert in Australia,
(14:36):
doctor Sarah Whaland, and we surveyed families of missing people
about what their experience was donating a DNA reference sample
for their missing loved ones case and how just that
process alone can be traumatizing or retraumatizing in many cases.
And for them it's about well, it's about the authorities
(14:59):
being cognizant of the trauma that they are enduring. When
is the best time to be knocking on a family's
door asking to take a DNA reference sample. Ideally, it's
when they report their missing loved one, so that's sitting
there on a database ready to go. It's not when
remains are found in a suburb yesterday close to where
(15:23):
they loved one went missing thirty years ago, and then
knocking on their door asking them for a DNA reference sample,
because straight away they're obviously thinking the worst, reliving a
lot of the trauma. So I think there's lots that
we can do in law enforcement and as forensic practitioners
to try and minimize that retraumatization process that families have
(15:47):
to go through. So yeah, I can't imagine being a
family of a missing loved one that hasn't seen their
loved one for forty odd years.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Renee's case is just one example of some of the
long term missing persons of varying ages we have here
on the far South Coast. Jodie, what message do you
want to leave us with regarding missing persons and the
importance of DNA.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Again or just encourage if the family hasn't reported that
loved one missing, that they contact their local police station
to do so, they consider donating a DNA reference sample
so their DNA is sitting on a national DNA database,
and it's about not giving up hope. As a forensic scientist.
There are forensic techniques out there now that weren't available,
(16:31):
you know, even five years ago. And I know techniques
like forensic investigative genique genealogy, which I'm a huge advocate for,
is giving families renewed hope that their loved one might
be identified in the near future. So and I just
want to ensure families on the far South Coast that
I'm not giving up either. You know. I'm on a
(16:51):
mission to ensure that we are giving equitable treatment to
every unidentified Australian in this country. So I'm still holding
out hope that we can get to those other six
hundred and fifty that we weren't able to resolve as
part of the national DNA program.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
The fascinating work of Professor Jody Ward highlights the intersection
of science and compassion in the field of forensic human identification.
To learn more about our missing persons, visit Missingpersons dot
gov dot au, or if you want to find out
how you can donate your DNA for genetic genealogy purposes,
go to GEDMatch dot com. That's Iheartfassouth Coast for now
(17:32):
proudly supported by the new South Wales Government. I'm James Fantasy.
Catch you next time. Iheartfast South Coast
A warning. This episode mentions violence against children and won't
be suitable for all listeners. Why why are Fast South Coast?
It was the abduction of a five year old that
shocked Australia, and forty years later, Naruma girl Renee Aitken's
disappearance still hasn't been solved in the coastal town of Naruma,
(00:23):
about three hundred and fifty kilometers south of Sydney. After
putting her two children to bed on the evening of
Thursday February fifteenth, nineteen eighty four, Far South Coast mother
of two Mourner Aiken was awoken by her eight year
old son Brad around four forty five The following morning,
Brad woke after hearing a noise and noticing his sister, Renee,
(00:46):
was not in her bed in their shared bedroom. To
Mourner's shock, Renee was gone without a trace and the
back door of the house wide open, flapping in the wind.
Despite an extensive search involving police, es, volunteers and the
local community, Renee was never found. The case remains one
(01:06):
of the most baffling unsolved crimes in the country, leaving
a lasting impact on the Far South Coast community and
obviously Rene's family. While Renee's case is particularly harrowing, it's
important to remember there are many other families in our
region and beyond who are still searching for their loved ones.
Each missing person represents a family living with uncertainty and pain,
(01:31):
hoping for answers. Our guest Professor Jody Ward, is a
forensic human identification specialist who's dedicated her career to providing
those answers. In our last episode, we learned about Jody's
background growing up in Beager and her award winning work
in forensic genetics. In this episode, doctor Ward discusses the
(01:51):
broader implications for families of missing persons and shares her
thoughts on Rene's case, but also touches on another case
that shocked her community to eat the South Coast and
the nation, as she attended the same school in Biga
as fourteen year old Lauren Barry and sixteen year old
Nicole Collins, who in October of nineteen ninety seven had
(02:12):
their young lives tragically cut short after being held captive
for twelve horrendous hours.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So Renee is actually of a similar age to me.
So I was growing up in the Bigger Valley in
Biger at the same time as Renee went missing in Naruma,
so bigger and is only an hour away from Naruma,
so quite close to home, you know. Growing up, unfortunately,
we were touched by a number of missing children and
(02:41):
friends and family. You know. When I was in high school,
we had two bigger school girls, Lauren and Nicole, that
went missing why we were at high school. So I
think for many of us growing up in the valley,
we were aware of In Lauren Nicole's case, it was
only for a relatively short time. But you know, for
a childlike Renee who has never been seen since, you know,
(03:04):
it has obviously endured for decades. And I think Renee's
case exemplifies many missing children's cases that we now know
about in terms on a national scale, where there's tens
of these cases where children have disappeared one day and
have never been seen since. And I guess I have
(03:25):
the job of trying to identify the remains of deceased
children when they are located, but in many cases we
aren't finding a lot of children or subadult remains. So
I do think there's a lot of cases where we
are yet to find the remains of some of our
(03:45):
missing children in Australia.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
And you mentioned you were growing up in the Bigger
Valley when you heard about a lot of these missing
children's cases. How did that make you and your family
feel at the time. Was there a sense of fear
in the community.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I can't really remember when I was very young when
Renee went missing, but you know, at high school when
Lauren and Nicole went missing, I remember it changed. Like
you know, that was one of the beauties of living
in the Beiger Valley. It was you know, writing to
your mate's house after school. It was walking to the
corner shop. It was your mum telling you that you
(04:22):
just needed to come home before the street lights come on.
So you never really feared anything as a child in
the valley, and I think that just shifted people's thinking
a little bit. I think parents became a lot more cautious.
I can't necessarily recall how I felt as a teenager
at that point in terms of my own personal safety,
(04:44):
but it probably made me rethink some of my actions.
You know, these were two girls walking from a party
to another destination and you probably wouldn't have thought twice
about that previously, So I do think it yeah, shift
did people's mindsets probably altered people's behaviors, which I think
(05:05):
that's sad for a community like Biger Valley. Who you know,
some people deliberately choose to live in the valley to
raise their children in a way where there isn't that
kind of you know, fear and anxiety. So yeah, I
think that was a sad time for our community.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
And what about now, knowing everything you know, with your
forensic background and all of your experiences and knowledge and
being a mother of two in twenty twenty four, how
are you feeling about things now?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah? I think with a job like mine, you get
to see the worst of humanity. I also think I
have the privilege of seeing the best of humanity when
you have a group of really dedicated, passionate forensic scientists
working collaboratively on a case trying to restore the names
(05:55):
and face of an unknown Australian individual, you know, whether
it is a long term missing person or one of
our fallen Australian servicemen. I think that demonstrates, I guess,
the doggedness of Australians to try and identify one of
their own and reunite them with a family. That's missed
them for years. But simultaneously, many of these people have died,
(06:20):
you know, under really horrible circumstances, and so you kind
of can't unlearn those type of things either. So as
a mum, you you probably to overanalyze situations or think
the worst before it happens. But yeah, I think it
is a privilege to do the job that I do do,
but I probably do know a lot about the bad
(06:41):
bits of society as well. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Stay with us more of our conversations soon with Professor
Jodi Ward, including a closer look at the long term
missing persons across the country. I art Fast South Coast
Fast South Coast. Welcome back to our chat with Professor
Jodi Ward, who grew up in Beager and is now
(07:05):
a recognized world leader in forensic human identification. In Australia,
more than thirty eight thousand missing persons reports are received
by police every year, and while most people are found
within a short period of time, there are about twenty
six hundred long term missing persons, that's those who've been
missing for more than three months. Doctor Ward's dedication to
(07:28):
helping families of missing persons find closure is evident in
her work She emphasizes the importance of collecting DNA samples
from relatives, a practice that wasn't common in the nineteen
eighties but is now a crucial part of solving long
term missing persons cases.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
In terms of the practices that are now in place,
when someone goes missing, they look very different to what
they would have looked when Renee was reported missing. Things
like DNA technology didn't really become mainstream to the nineties
and the two thousands, so DNA wasn't even really a
consideration when Renee was reported missing, So no one would
(08:09):
have been out there collecting Renee's toothbrush to get DNA
that represents Renee, all thinking about collecting DNA from the
mother who reported per missing child. So nowadays, if someone
is reported missing, best practices suggest that you should be
collecting reference material for that missing person immediately, So whether
(08:31):
that's a reference sample from the missing person themselves, so
something like a toothbrush or a hair brush, or if
they've previously had a blood test or a biopsy sample
and that's stored in medical archives somewhere. All of those
types of biological material can be used to compare to
DNA profiles. We recover from the remains. You know, they
(08:52):
would be collecting DNA from the mother or the father,
any biological children or the siblings of that missing person,
and all of that information should be being collated and
stored on our national DNA databases or our national Missing
Persons and Victim System database. That database houses pretty much
(09:12):
everything but DNA information, so it'll house what that person
look like, their hair and eye color, their age, what
they were last scene wearing. It also houses dental records,
so that's the only national platform we have in Australia
which compares the dental records of a missing person that
you can obtain from the missing person's dentist to the
(09:34):
charted dental records. We can chart when a set of
remains are located and teeth are present. So the idea
is that a set of remains are located, they're brought
into a mortuary, a sample is taken for DNA, a
forensic dentist comes and charts the teeth if they're present.
This information should be uploaded to these databases very soon after,
(09:59):
and autopsies and matching should almost be instantaneously. If there
is a DNA reference sample from that person's relative sitting
on the database, or if their own dental records are
sitting on one of these national DNA databases.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
You received almost one hundred unidentified human remains cases. You
were able to resolve about half of those for the
AFP National DNA Program for Unidentified Missing Persons. That program
is no longer running due to the funding drying up.
Is that something that you think needs to continue on
(10:34):
in order to help cases like Renees?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
I think the National DNA Program for an identified a
missing Person's demonstrated the power of having a nationally coordinated
and centralized forensic human identification capability. Not only were we
able to identify cases which were decades old, but you
now have these suite in some cases of brand new
(10:58):
forensic techniques there that could be applied to remains, whether
they're of a child or an adult which are found
tomorrow or the next day or in ten years time.
Having these national law enforcement databases is amazing, but the
database is only as good as the data that's sitting
in it, So we still need to be out there
(11:20):
collecting DNA from relatives of missing people once they're reported missing.
We need to try and back capture DNA from the
relatives of those people which were missing decades ago. In
Rene's case, we would hope that Renees mother's DNA is
now sitting on a national DNA database to be compared
to DNA from the remains of any future remains which
(11:43):
are located and DNA able to be recovered. So I
think it's about putting in place the right processes, so
going forward, we never find ourselves in this situation where
we do have hundreds of backlogged remains which haven't been tested,
or we don't have the right techniques in Australia to
be able to apply to them now, like forensic investigative
(12:05):
genetic genealogy. So I think we're in a very different
place now, but if we still don't have the resources
and experts centralized and being able to apply to these remains,
we might see ourselves back in the situation we were
before the National DNA program was established.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Closure is often one of the things you hear that
families want, even if they know that you know there's
a good chance the family member has died that they'd
just like to bury their remains or bring them home.
Forty years is a long time not to know what's
happened to your little girl? How do you reflect on that?
In Renee's case and with some of the other long
(12:44):
term missing persons cases from across the country, we have.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Two and a half thousand long term missing persons in Australia,
so that's a lot of families. That's a lot of
extended families and friends of those missing individuals which have
spent years not knowing the fatal whereabouts of a missing
loved one, and that affects people in many different ways, psychologically, financially.
(13:11):
So there's a term used in this community known as
ambiguous loss, and it's deemed to be one of the
most traumatic forms of grief that there is, because it's
the not knowing when your loved one dies, you know
what happened to them, you're able to have a funeral
(13:32):
or some other commemorative process to celebrate their life. A
family of a missing person doesn't know whether they loved
one is still alive and living happily somewhere. They don't
know if they're deceased and lying somewhere and no one's
ever found them. They don't know if they're sitting on
a shelf in a mortuary somewhere and it isn't their
(13:53):
turn yet to be forensically identified. So it's that not knowing,
it's kind of you're in lim and so it's really
hard for a family to be able to go through
this normal, in inverted comma's grieving process that you associate
with a loved one dying. So for many they've kind
(14:14):
of traversed this period of limbo for decades. And I'm
in as a mother, I couldn't imagine living in that
state for decades not knowing what happened to my child
and whether they are still alive or whether they died
and how did they die? You know, we did this
survey research. I collaborated with a missing person's expert in Australia,
(14:36):
doctor Sarah Whaland, and we surveyed families of missing people
about what their experience was donating a DNA reference sample
for their missing loved ones case and how just that
process alone can be traumatizing or retraumatizing in many cases.
And for them it's about well, it's about the authorities
(14:59):
being cognizant of the trauma that they are enduring. When
is the best time to be knocking on a family's
door asking to take a DNA reference sample. Ideally, it's
when they report their missing loved one, so that's sitting
there on a database ready to go. It's not when
remains are found in a suburb yesterday close to where
(15:23):
they loved one went missing thirty years ago, and then
knocking on their door asking them for a DNA reference sample,
because straight away they're obviously thinking the worst, reliving a
lot of the trauma. So I think there's lots that
we can do in law enforcement and as forensic practitioners
to try and minimize that retraumatization process that families have
(15:47):
to go through. So yeah, I can't imagine being a
family of a missing loved one that hasn't seen their
loved one for forty odd years.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Renee's case is just one example of some of the
long term missing persons of varying ages we have here
on the far South Coast. Jodie, what message do you
want to leave us with regarding missing persons and the
importance of DNA.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Again or just encourage if the family hasn't reported that
loved one missing, that they contact their local police station
to do so, they consider donating a DNA reference sample
so their DNA is sitting on a national DNA database,
and it's about not giving up hope. As a forensic scientist.
There are forensic techniques out there now that weren't available,
(16:31):
you know, even five years ago. And I know techniques
like forensic investigative genique genealogy, which I'm a huge advocate for,
is giving families renewed hope that their loved one might
be identified in the near future. So and I just
want to ensure families on the far South Coast that
I'm not giving up either. You know. I'm on a
(16:51):
mission to ensure that we are giving equitable treatment to
every unidentified Australian in this country. So I'm still holding
out hope that we can get to those other six
hundred and fifty that we weren't able to resolve as
part of the national DNA program.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
The fascinating work of Professor Jody Ward highlights the intersection
of science and compassion in the field of forensic human identification.
To learn more about our missing persons, visit Missingpersons dot
gov dot au, or if you want to find out
how you can donate your DNA for genetic genealogy purposes,
go to GEDMatch dot com. That's Iheartfassouth Coast for now
(17:32):
proudly supported by the new South Wales Government. I'm James Fantasy.
Catch you next time. Iheartfast South Coast
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