The Power of Investigative Genetic Genealogy

Unlock the secrets of Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) as we welcome former FBI trailblazers Steve Busch and Steve Kramer. Discover how this innovative method is revolutionizing law enforcement by solving cold cases and active investigations alike. Learn about the compelling case of actress Eva LaRue, who endured years of torment from a stalker, and how IGG finally brought him to justice. Our guests take you inside the high-profile pursuit and capture of the Golden State Killer, showcasing the power of IGG to solve one of the longest serial killer mysteries of our time and bring closure to families and victims.

We also explore the fascinating intersection of DNA technology and law enforcement with our experts as they reveal the creative strategies behind using public genealogy databases. From the historic Golden State Killer case to the recent breakthrough in the Idaho student murders, hear how IGG is becoming a standard tool for invesitgations and ultimately, justice. Our conversation also delves into the founding of Indago Solutions (indago is latin for "to hunt"), where AI is harnessed to propel investigative methods into the future, accelerating the hunt for answers through machine learning. In doing so, solving cold cases and apprehending serial offenders can happen in less than half the time as using traditional methods. 

Steve Busch and Steve Kramer also help us navigate the complexities of privacy and DNA collection as we delve into the delicate balance between solving crimes and respecting individual rights. Through captivating anecdotes, we discuss the legalities of DNA collection and the unique case prioritization process in law enforcement. With over 1.3 million profiles waiting for resolution in CODIS, our discussion underscores the urgency of embracing faster methods like IGG. We also break down the nuances between genealogy and law enforcement DNA profiles, highlighting the potential of genetic genealogy to illuminate even the darkest of cases.

Episode Transcript

Maria MacMullin (00:00):
The subject matter of this podcast will
address difficult topicsmultiple forms of violence, and
identity-based discriminationand harassment.
We acknowledge that thiscontent may be difficult and
have listed specific contentwarnings in each episode
description to help create apositive, safe experience for
all listeners.

(00:22):
In this country, 31 millioncrimes 31 million crimes are
reported every year.
That is one every second.
Out of that, every 24 minutesthere is a murder.
Every five minutes there is arape.
Every two to five minutes thereis a sexual assault.
Every nine seconds in thiscountry, a woman is assaulted by
someone who told her that heloved her, by someone who told

(00:43):
her it was her fault, by someonewho tries to tell the rest of
us it's none of our business andI am proud to stand here today
with each of you to call thatperpetrator a liar.
Welcome to the podcast on crimesagainst women.
I'm Maria MacMullin.
Last time on the podcast, wediscussed the case of
Christopher Michael Green as onethat was successfully

(01:03):
prosecuted through the findingsof Investigative Genetic
Genealogy, or IgG.
Today, we take an even deeperdive into IgG with two of its
earliest adopters former FBISteve Bush and Steve Kramer.
In doing so, we will discussthe case of Eva LaRue, a
Hollywood actress who portrayedDetective Natalia Boavista, a

(01:25):
DNA analyst, in the hit show CSIMiami from 2005 to 2012.
In her personal life, eva andher daughter, kaya were
subjected for over 12 years todozens of menacing letters and
packages, with the senderthreatening to rape, torture and
kill them.
The sender identified himselfas Freddy Krueger, the fictional
psychotic killer from a 1980sand 90s horror movie series.

(01:49):
Although she reported theletters to the FBI and DNA was
obtained from the envelopes, theFBI's traditional forensic
efforts failed to identify herstalker.
In 2019, the letter writercalled Kaya's school and
impersonated Kaya's father, anddirected the school to bring
Kaya outside so he could takeher home.

(02:09):
This attempt to kidnap was asignificant escalation.
In order to prevent any harm toLaRue and her daughter, the FBI
employed a new forensictechnique investigative genetic
genealogy.
Investigative genetic genealogy, which, according to the
International Society of GeneticGenealogy, is the science of

(02:32):
using genetic and genealogicalmethods to generate leads for
law enforcement entitiesinvestigating crimes and
identifying human remains.
By using DNA profiles from acrime scene or from unidentified
human remains, investigatorsare able to identify close
genetic DNA profiles or matches,comparing the known genealogy
of those close familial matches,thereby constraining the number

(02:53):
of possible close relatives ofthe perpetrator or victim.
Fbi agents uploaded thestalker's DNA to a genetic
genealogy database, the samemethod utilized to identify the
Golden State Killer.
This episode will be adiscussion with those two
veteran FBI agents who willhighlight the power of forensic,

(03:13):
investigative genetic genealogyin the hands of law enforcement
.
Steve Bush is a former FBIspecial agent and currently the
founder of Indago Solutions, anorganization he established with
his former FBI partner, steveKramer.
Special Agent Bush spent 19years as an FBI special agent

(03:33):
and was the co-founder of theFBI's Forensic Genetic Genealogy
Team and architector of theFBI's National FGG, now the IG
Program.
Previously, special Agent Bushworked investigative assignments
, including counterterrorism andcomplex financial crimes.
He also honed his leadershipskills as a SWAT sniper team

(03:55):
leader, routinely solvingmultifaceted problems in a
high-threat environment.
Steve Kramer is the co-founderand president of Indago.
With 25 years of experience inlaw enforcement as an FBI
attorney, federal prosecutor anddeputy district attorney, mr
Kramer has prosecuted homicidecases, corporate fraud cases and

(04:16):
national security cases At theFBI.
He was responsible for legalmatters in many of the FBI's
largest and most sensitivecriminal and national security
investigations.
Due to his interest inDNA-related investigations, in
2013, mr Kramer became involvedin the FBI's investigation of
the Golden State Killer, one ofthe most prolific uncaught

(04:39):
serial killers in the UnitedStates history, responsible for
13 murders, 50 sexual assaultsand hundreds of burglaries.
Mr Kramer led the team ofinvestigators on a forensic
genetic genealogy investigationwhich resulted in the arrest of
the Golden State Killer, josephJames DeAngelo, in April 2018.
Steve Bush, Steve Kramer,welcome to the podcast.

(05:02):
Thanks for having us.
We appreciate it.

Steve Kramer (05:03):
Yeah, thank to the podcast.
Thanks for having us.
We appreciate it.
Thank you very much.

Maria MacMullin (05:06):
Both of you have retired from the FBI and
since then you've been workingon an investigative genetic
genealogy program.
But the FBI gave you thebackground in IgG and it is the
leading law enforcement agencyto embrace the use of
investigative genetic genealogy.
Can you tell us how thesescientific methods were first

(05:26):
introduced by the FBI?

Steve Busch (05:29):
Well, here's the thing, maria.
It all started with a caseGenetic genealogy.
You're going to hear us referto it as a couple different
things throughout the podcast.
Some people call itinvestigative genetic genealogy,
some call it forensic geneticgenealogy, some just call it
genetic genealogy.
You'll probably hear us referto it as all three.
The FBI now calls it justinvestigative genetic genealogy.

(05:52):
But that program it all startedwith one case, a case that's
pretty well known in thecommunity, a case called the
Golden State Killer case, andthat was a case that went
unsolved for over four decades.
And Steve Kramer, when we wereworking at the FBI, had the idea
.
He and Paul Holes were workingtogether on it.
He had the idea that theyshould take this mystery man's

(06:13):
DNA.
Keep in mind, this was a personwho always wore a mask, never
left a fingerprint and the onlything we had, the only piece of
evidence we had on him, was hisDNA.
And so Kramer had the idea.
He said well, what do you thinkwould happen if we took this
mystery man's DNA and we put itinto one of these genealogy
sites?
Maybe we could figure out whohis relatives were, and maybe
from there we could figure outwho he was and a lot of people

(06:35):
thought he was nuts with thatidea.
But Steve persisted and he madeit happen.
So, steve, maybe you could tellthe story from your perspective
how that happened.

Steve Kramer (06:45):
Yeah, I mean, it was essentially like Steve said.
It was an unsolvable case, youknow, over four decades old, and
all we had was DNA.
So you know, Paul Holes andmost of us thought the only way
we're going to really solve thiscase is through the DNA of the
Golden State Killer had been inthe FBI's National DNA Index

(07:05):
System, which people know asCODIS.
It had been there since 1998,and it was never going to hit.
By that point we figured theGolden State Killer, that
individual, was probably in his60s, 70s of age, so it was
unlikely he was going to getarrested and have his DNA put
into CODA.
So that was never going tosolve it.

(07:26):
So we had to look for othermeans, other ways we could use
the DNA.
And then you hear about peoplefinding adoptees, finding their
biological parents.
Well, it was kind of the sameidea.
Maybe we can take bad guy's DNAand put it into one of these
databases and find the relativesof the suspect and then from
those relatives triangulate backto who that individual was.

(07:50):
So that was really the essenceof the idea.
The biggest thing I think aboutit was from the FBI's
perspective.
The FBI didn't provide anytechnical expertise in this
whatsoever.
The FBI doesn't have anytechnical expertise in genetic
genealogy, at least up until2018.
And so, you know, myself andPaul, you know, we had to figure

(08:15):
out this technique.
You know how did people do this?
How do these geneticgenealogists, you know, find,
you know, birth parents, thingslike that.
So we learned how to do it and,being investigators, it wasn't
terribly difficult to learn,essentially the tricks of the
trade on how to do geneticgenealogy.
The FBI, I didn't ask forpermissions, I basically made

(08:37):
sure it was legal.
Nobody could give me anyobjection that it was illegal.
So we essentially had freereign to explore this technique
and, you know, fortunately so wewere able to upload the DNA of
the Golden State Killer to a fewdatabases and we were able to,
in the term of 63 days, identifyJoe D'Angelo as the Golden

(08:58):
State Killer, and he wasarrested, obviously, and that
was April of 2018.
And then, since then, you know,multiple law enforcement
agencies, not only in the UnitedStates but also worldwide, have
started using this technique tofind not just the suspects in
cold cases, but we've done it ina dozen active cases as well,

(09:19):
including, I think, the latestone that you heard was the
arrest of Koberger and themurder of the four Idaho
students in Moscow, Idaho, backin 2022.

Maria MacMullin (09:31):
Yeah, I mean, it's genius, right?
This was a genius what-ifquestion in a haystack and just
you start exploring all thedifferent options of what's
possible in order to to identifysomeone by uploading it into.
I think you said 23andme isthat right?

Steve Kramer (09:52):
no, we uploaded it .
We 23andme and ancestrycom aretwo of the biggest genealogy
databases but we could notupload manually to those
databases.
Those databases you need asaliva sample to actually you
know.

Maria MacMullin (10:08):
So how did you put his DNA in that kind of a
database?

Steve Kramer (10:13):
So the database that we initially used was
Family Tree DNA, and this iswhere being with the FBI was
really helpful.
I was able to pick up the phoneas an FBI attorney and call
these companies Ancestry FamilyTree DNA and say, hey, I'm an
attorney with the FBI.
Can I speak to your CEO?
Can I speak to your privacyofficer?

(10:35):
This is what we want to do.
One of those CEOs, in this caseBennett Greenspan at Family Tree
DNA I got a hold of him and Itold him we're looking at this
terrible guy that murdered 13people, raped 50 women,
committed over 100 burglaries,and he's like I got to help.
You guys, give me the DNA.
I will get you the profile youneed because it's a different

(10:58):
type of DNA profile forgenealogy than CODIS and then
I'll put it in my database andwe can find the relatives and
you guys can identify who theGolden State Killer is.
So that's exactly what we did.
We went to one of the crimescene.
Evidence in this case was froma 1981 sexual assault and
homicide in Ventura, california,ventura County.

(11:19):
They still had a sample fromthe sexual assault kit that was
taken from the female victim andwe were able to take the DNA
from that sexual assault kit,send it off to Family Tree DNA
in Houston Texas.
They were able to get a DNAprofile suitable for genealogy,
upload it to their database andthen from there we were able to
do genetic genealogy.

Maria MacMullin (11:40):
To triangulate back to Joe D'Angelo, Without
any ethical considerations, ofusing the information in the
database that you consulted with.

Steve Kramer (11:52):
Right.
So everybody in the databasehas agreed to match with
everybody.
So when you upload your DNA andyou say I want to match with
everybody, you agree to matchwith everybody in the database
and so, legally speaking, thepolice can do police can, you
know, do whatever the generalpublic is doing essentially.
And so we put the DNA of oursuspect, which we had legal
control of, into the databaseand to match with everybody else

(12:15):
that had consented to matchwith everybody in the database.

Maria MacMullin (12:19):
And why this case?
Why the Golden State Killercase?
Why was that the case that youdecided to use this technology
on Well, I mean it was just afascinating case.

Steve Kramer (12:29):
I mean it's a case that's been cold for 40 plus
years and it was all over thestate of California, from
Sacramento all the way down toSouth Orange County, dana Point,
orange County and plenty ofspaces in between.
Law enforcement was never ableto catch them.

(12:50):
I mean, they'd spent not only40 plus years, but they'd spent
hundreds of thousands of manhours on it.
They'd spent tens of millionsof dollars, they had thousands
of potential suspects but nobodyever panned out, and so it was
one of the most prolific.
I think the Golden State Killerwas considered one of the most
prolific uncaught serial killersin US history up until that

(13:12):
time.
And so what did we have on him?
We had DNA.
The only reason I got involvedis I knew we had DNA all over
the state of California, sothat's the reason we looked at
it.
I never looked at it for anyother reason than to see if we
could use the dna to solve it.
I wasn't looking at rereadingthe police.
I I barely read a police reportin that entire case, because

(13:35):
all I cared about was the dna,and that was why this was the
focal point of thatinvestigation gotcha.

Steve Busch (13:41):
Well, and maria, not to interrupt you real quick,
the steve kind of glossed overit, but I want to hit this again
.
The numbers in this case areabsolutely compelling because
you think about the fact Stevementioned this case was cold for
43 years.
It's estimated that 650 plusdetectives tried to solve this
case from 15 different lawenforcement agencies and, like

(14:02):
Steve said, they spent thebetter part of 200,000 man hours
and $10 million trying tofigure out who this guy was.
They had a suspect list thatwas 8,000 people long.
There were 8,000 men's names ona suspect list.
Wow, 300 of those men gotswabbed for DNA and we compared
their DNA to the crime scene.
None of it matched right.

(14:23):
And so then Steve Kramer andPaul Holes put together a team
of six people Monica Sykowski,kurt Campbell from the
Sacramento DA's office, barbaraRay Ventura, a well-known
genealogist, and MelissaPariseau, a brilliant analyst
from the FBI.
Those six people in 63 days.
They spent $217 and they figureout who Joe D'Angelo is.
I mean that's remarkable.
It's the most efficient use ofgovernment resources and time

(14:46):
that I can think of.
So when you look at the numbersthat way, I think it's a
remarkable success story.

Maria MacMullin (14:52):
Yeah, for sure, I can't argue with that.
Now, the IGG work you startedwith the FBI is now the
foundation of your company,indago Solutions.
First, let's talk about thatname.
We had a fun conversationoffline about this.
Where does the name Indago comefrom?

Steve Busch (15:07):
So Indago is a Latin word that means to hunt or
to seek out, to investigate,which is effectively what the
software does.
I had mentioned to you beforethat my wife teaches classical
Latin to our kids, and when wewere trying to form the name of
our company, we wanted it to besomething meaningful, and so we
chose Indago, because it wasindicative of what the software

(15:28):
does and how it helpsinvestigators get to the answer.

Maria MacMullin (15:32):
That's so interesting.
And now, how did the two of youkind of come together and then
tell us what you actually do atIndago?

Steve Busch (15:40):
I mean, it's such a long story we could probably
waste your entire podcasttalking about it.
But Steve and I I mean we'veworked together at the FBI for
years.
We were both at the FBI, for Iwas there for 19 years, steve
was there for 23 years, and wehad overlap.
In my previous job at the FBI,prior to doing genetic genealogy
, I was actually a tactical guy.
I was a SWAT guy at the FBI, aSWAT team leader, a sniper team

(16:03):
leader guy at the FBI, a SWATteam leader, a sniper team
leader.
I was in a horrible accidentback in June of 2015.
And God had different plans forme at the FBI and after I was
off duty for 21 months, I did 21months of physical therapy to
come back to the job.
And when I came back, it was inlate 2017, when Steve was in
the middle of dabbling with theGolden State Killer case.

(16:23):
It fascinated me.
Steve was in the middle ofdabbling with the Golden State
Killer case.
It fascinated me.
I did some pretty heavy work onthe Golden State Killer case,
maria, like bringing coffee toSteve while he was solving the
case.
I didn't have really anythingto do with that Someone has to
bring the coffee.
That's right.
Coffee's important.
You're not solving caseswithout it.
We all agree with that.
But it was what happened afterthat, though, because you can

(16:44):
imagine, the Golden State killercase gets solved at the bureau,
and it's.
It's a huge success because ofthe case itself, but the bigger
success we didn't realize it atthe time the bigger success was
the development of thistechnique, right, the technique
that is now on blast for the lawenforcement world to see, and
you can imagine, everyone startscalling you.
You're old enough to rememberdialing 411 information.

(17:07):
You know I need the FBI officein Orange County and they called
us and said how can I use thison my case?
How can I help solve my cases?
And so Steve and I and Melissaand a small team of folks at the
Bureau without real, you knowpermission just kind of said hey
, we're going to start solvingthese cases, we're going to
start helping agencies solvethese cases, and in the next 12

(17:28):
months from April of 18 to Aprilof 2019, we solved a dozen more
cases with this technique.
Wow.
And these were all.
These were all cases, Maria,that people said would never be
solved, Similar to the GoldenState Killer case.
You know, 20, 30, 40 plus yearsunsolved.
And we go through the processand each time we do it we're
getting a little bit better.

(17:48):
Each time we do it, we do it,we're figuring out a little bit
more, we're learning a littlebit more and we're getting to
success.
We're getting to end statesthat are identifying suspects
that couldn't be identifiedthrough other means, and that
success is what ultimately ledinto Indago.

Maria MacMullin (18:04):
So I see your website is indagoai.
How does AI factor into thiswork?

Steve Busch (18:10):
I mean what Steve and I learned and this is
through, you know, certainlythrough the initial 12 cases and
that team, you know, when wewere still at the Bureau, we
went on to solve an additional50 plus cases with this method.
But what we learned veryquickly, maria, is that genetic
genealogy is about inferringgenetic relationships between

(18:30):
people based on their publicrecords.
It's about pattern recognition.
A simple example would be mywife and I are about the same
age and we live at the sameaddress.
We have some type ofrelationship.
It's not hard to look at ourpublic record and say those two
people are related in some way.
Maybe they're husband and wife,maybe they're brother, sister,
I don't know.
You can infer a relationshipbased on the public record.
That's all of what genealogydoes.
And so when Steve and I startedlooking at this and this was,

(18:51):
you know, when AI was just kindof starting to come into the
picture, we said, hey, you knowwhat?
There's going to be anartificial intelligence
component, a machine learningcomponent to recognizing these
patterns faster and better andat a broader scale than a human
can do.
Machines are going to be ableto do this better than humans
can do it.
And that's where, you know, wereached out to experts in the

(19:12):
industry and said, hey, is thissomething that's possible?
Is this something that we can,you know, apply coding and
programming to, to make asoftware that would assist law
enforcement?
And the answer was clearly yes.

Maria MacMullin (19:23):
It's just hard, it takes a lot of time and a
lot of money, and so you knowthat's the journey that we're on
right now.
So how does it inform lawenforcement and like healthcare
organizations?

Steve Kramer (19:35):
What our software does is it's simplifying this
process.
When Paul Holes and the rest ofour team were doing the Golden
State Killer case, we were goingthrough thousands of names and
you're looking for common namesa lot of times between different
family trees.
If you built your family treeup and I built my family tree up
and we could find a common name, a common ancestor, we'd

(19:56):
realize, hey, we might bedistant cousins.
And when you're going throughthousands and thousands of names
, trying to remember you knowwhich names are in common with
which trees.
Obviously very difficult.
But, that's in essence how youknow manual genetic genealogy
works and you know I rememberlooking at it going.
A computer could just rememberall of this instantly and make

(20:21):
this, you know, find all theconnections between all the
people, like Steve was saying.
And so what our software isdoing is it's taking this
process, which right now takeson average about 12 months.
12.1 months was one of thestudies a couple of years ago,
12.1 months for law enforcementto solve each case.
So it's a long time.

Maria MacMullin (20:41):
So is this applied on a case by case basis?

Steve Kramer (20:44):
Correct, correct.

Maria MacMullin (20:45):
And how do you have cases referred to you?

Steve Kramer (20:49):
We do lots of presentations with law
enforcement at law enforcementconferences.
Obviously we worked in lawenforcement, you know, for
several decades so we have a lotof contacts in law enforcement.
So we're constantly contactedby different agencies, both
foreign and domestic.
You know that want help solvingthese type of cases.

Maria MacMullin (21:11):
And so do you have to prioritize them.

Steve Kramer (21:13):
Oh, absolutely.
I mean years in some cases,just because certain populations
don't test at these genealogycompanies.
So if you have somebody fromGuatemala or Venezuela, they

(21:36):
came into this country, theycommitted a crime and we had
their DNA.
It's not going to match a lotof people that are in these
databases.
80% of the people that are inthese databases are from the
United States Now in Europe.
That's okay because we'vesolved cases in Europe as well.
We've solved cases in Australiabecause we Generally,

(21:59):
particularly Western EuropeanCaucasians, immigrated from
Europe to the United States,canada, australia, so you can
even Asia, where we have a lotof people in these databases in
the United States.
That can basically be a closeenough relative where we could

(22:30):
do genetic genealogy.

Maria MacMullin (22:31):
So if it takes 12 months, or maybe a little bit
more, to solve a case, how manycan you actually handle at one
time?

Steve Kramer (22:38):
That's a good question.
I mean any individual likeSteve and I.
Just when I was Steve and I, heand I started the FBI genetic
genealogy team shortly after thearrest of the Golden State
Killer.
Like he and I alone.
It took us about a year.
We solved 12 cases and that wasworking more or less full time
on it.
But I mean, some cases arecases you can solve in a day.

(23:02):
Other cases will take two yearsto solve.
So there's kind of a bell curveof the different types of cases
out there.
The whole idea with software isto make it fast and the easiest
analogy is like I'm sure youremember from fourth grade when
your teacher gave you thathomework assignment and gave you
30 long division problems.

(23:24):
Remember that Like when youhave 30 long division problems
and you're like oh my God, thisis going to take me all night I
repressed those memories.
Right, exactly, but you remember.

Maria MacMullin (23:32):
Those, along with my Latin exams.
They're all.

Steve Kramer (23:35):
Yeah, like just, oh, my God, right, I got 10 of
them done and you know it's been45 minutes and I got another 20
to go, right, right, you know,like we call that, that's called
long division.
Well, that's how geneticgenealogy, you know, is doing it
manually like that, as I toldyou earlier.
Now, imagine if you had acalculator when you did your
long division, so you had 30long division problems.

(23:57):
You could be done in twominutes, right?

Steve Busch (23:59):
Hey Maria, your question your question is so
spot on, though, because theseare the exact same questions
that Steve and I started askingourselves at the FBI, because,
as my caseload went from fivecases to 10 cases to 20 cases to
200 cases, at some point, yougo well, how many cases can we
actually do?
Can we train people in order todo what we're doing?

(24:20):
And so Steve and I put togethera 40-hour training course and
started training other FBIagents, other FBI analysts, to
try to build capacity within theFBI to do what we were doing.
That team now has about 250people that are doing this, but
here's the problem.
When you take that, the nextlogical question then comes well
, how?
Many cases are there.

Maria MacMullin (24:40):
I was going there, I was like I can't even
count them.
There are so many.
Correct.

Steve Busch (24:43):
So if you were to go and any of your listeners
could go to FBIgov right now andthey could search the CODIS
statistics and what it will tellyou is that from 1994, when
Congress authorized CODIS to beestablished, until today, there
are about 23 million totalprofiles DNA profiles that are
in CODIS 1.3 million.

(25:06):
Almost 1.3 million of themremain unidentified.
They're what they call anunknown forensic profile,
meaning that profile was putinto CODIS by an investigator
because somebody was raped,somebody was murdered, there was
some other aggravated felonythat happened that required
police to collect that DNA froma crime scene and they put it

(25:27):
into code, is hoping to get ananswer, but they didn't get it.
So that's kind of the.
That's the debt, if you will,that's the backlog of unsolved
cases.
But that number every year.
If you look at 2018 until nowand say year over year, what is
that number doing?
It's increasing by an averageof 80,000 profiles.
Okay.

(25:48):
So here's the analogy I alwaysuse.
And maybe you have a teenager,like I do, and maybe he's got a
credit card, like mine does.
It would be like your teenagercoming to you and saying hey,
dad, I ran up a $1.3 milliondebt on my credit card.
Okay, I'm making minimumpayments, I'm still spending
$80,000 a year on my credit card.
When do you think I'm going topay this debt off?

(26:08):
Okay, the answer is you know,somewhere North of never.
You're never going to pay thatdebt off.
Hence the reason why 12.1 monthsis not acceptable.
Even when Steve and I gotreally good at this and our team
was, like you know, reallyreally doing well, it was still
about four months.
I think it was 3.9 months,steve, that we estimated back
then that we were on average fora case from start to finish.

(26:29):
And that might seem like asuccess because you go, hey,
this case was unsolved for 40years and you guys did it in
four months Like great job.
Well, no, it's not a great job.
When there's 1.3 millionunsolved cases and it goes up by
80,000 a year.
You're just never going to get,you're never going to bring
justice to those families andthose victims without software.

Maria MacMullin (26:48):
Yeah, I mean there's got to be a lot more
that can be done to solve cases,more cases, faster using all of
this AI.
We just haven't caught up withit yet.
Right, I want to talk about aspecific case today, though.
Now, on the last show thataired for a podcast on crimes

(27:09):
against women, we discussed theChristopher Michael Green case,
which was here in Dallas County.
That was solved with some helpfrom investigative genetic
genealogy.
But I'd like to talk with youabout a case that you both
worked on, and that is the caseof Eva LaRue and her daughter
and the stalker who pursued them.
Tell us about that case, whathappened?

Steve Busch (27:31):
That case started Maria with.
So after Steve and I, we toldyou the story about doing the
initial 12 cases and the FBIstarted to take notice of that,
of the technique at that point,and they decided to assign me
full-time as actually the firstFBI agent to do this full-time
work in genetic genealogy cases.
Only that required me totransfer offices up to Los

(27:52):
Angeles.
I was down in Orange County andwhen I went up to Los Angeles
to my new desk, I sat down at mynew desk and there was a binder
that was sitting on that deskthat was titled Eva LaRue Threat
Letters and it had a casenumber on the front of it and
it's one of these big, thick,white government binders and I'm
a curious guy.
I'm going to open the binder.

(28:13):
I don't want to see what'sgoing on.
So I opened this binder and Istarted reading these
handwritten letters that werewritten by somebody and sent to
Evil LaRue, who, as we know, isan actress.
Eva LaRue starred on severaldifferent shows CSI Miami is one
of the more recent ones that wetalk about and so I started
reading these letters and theywere horrible letters.
I mean, this person, whoeverwas writing them, was claiming

(28:35):
you know he wanted to, amongother things, rape and murder
Eva.
He wanted to do horrible sexualthings to her young daughter,
and I read through these lettersand just thought this is insane
.
And then I looked up the casenumber.
I figured this case has got tobe solved because the dates on
these letters was old.
Five years ago, six, seven yearsago, the case was not solved,

(28:57):
and so we dug into it a littlebit more and realized that this
was a case where we had onepiece of evidence that was
common amongst all of theseletters.
There were, I think, up toalmost 50 different letters that
were written to her over thecourse of a decade or so.
We had DNA on all these letters, the suspect, whoever had
written these.
They had already donehandwriting analysis,
fingerprint analysis.

(29:17):
They'd done everything theycould to try to figure this out.
But the one thing they and theyhad taken DNA they put it into
CODIS.
Remember we talked about the 1.3million it was one of those 1.3
million sitting in CODIS,churning in CODIS, not finding
anything.
And so Steve and I had thethought hey, why, why don't we
use this technique, this newtechnique that we have to take

(29:44):
this suspect DNA that's on everyreally, really bad?
Now, about the same time wewere doing that, this suspect,
this unknown suspect, upped hisgame Because, remember, he was
not just writing these lettersto Eva, he was writing them to
her young daughter, kaya.
Kaya was five at the time theseletters started coming.
By the time we looked at thecase, kaya was in high school.
So Kaya's in high school, andwhat the suspect decides to do
is he decides to start callingKaya's high school.
Kaya attended Notre Dame HighSchool in Sherman Oaks, a very

(30:07):
prestigious private school herein the Los Angeles area.
He started calling the highschool and he was pretending to
be Kaya's father.
Could just, you know, let Kayaknow I'll be there to pick her
up today.
Have her meet me out front.
You know I'll be there and Ican get her.
Just let her know I'll be there, thank you.

(30:28):
And the office doesn't know anybetter.
They thought, oh, kaya's dadcalled and he's going to come
pick her up.
And so they gave that messageto Kaya and said hey, kaya, your
dad's going to come pick you up, but Kaya supposed to be here.
That can't be right.
And that's when she called hermom and realized this guy has
found me again, right, rightOver all these years of sending
letters, he's now found me andhe's now trying to lure me into

(30:50):
something worse.
And so Steve and I decided hey,let's take this DNA and let's
go through the process.
We're going to send it off to aprivate laboratory, we're going
to get this profile, thisgenealogy profile that we need.
We're going to get this profile, this genealogy profile that we
need.
We're going to put it into agenealogy database and then
we're going to reverse, engineera family tree and figure out
who this guy is.
And that's exactly what we did.

Maria MacMullin (31:08):
And about how long did that take, once you got
involved?

Steve Busch (31:11):
I mean the actual genealogy part of that case did
not take very long at all.
I mean, steve, we did that atyour house right.

Steve Kramer (31:18):
Yeah, I think we did the whole thing in like
three or four hours.
So, yeah, we sat down.
We had to get out of the officebecause to do manual genetic
genealogy you have to sit andconcentrate for long periods of
time.
So he and I got a bag of chipsand salsa, sat down at my
kitchen counter and it was aboutthree or four hours, I think,

(31:39):
and we more or less identifiedwho the guy was.

Maria MacMullin (31:41):
Okay, and then what happened?
Tell us, tell us how you knowyou were able to apprehend this
person and and how was heprosecuted?

Steve Busch (31:50):
Well before, steve, I'll let you take that in a
second.
But before we get to that, whenyou, when you're doing this
process, maria, you know you're,you're building family trees
backward, like, typically, whenpeople put their DNA into a
genealogy site, they, of course,they know who they are and
typically they know how to buildtheir tree up and out from them
.
We do it the opposite.
We start with all of thesedistant relatives and then we
reverse, engineer the tree tocome back down to say, well, how

(32:12):
could all of these distantrelatives produce a person who
might be the person that couldproduce all of these
relationships?
And so, when this case, when wewere doing this case and I
remember this vividly, steve,because it was so interesting,
you know you start getting backdown and you're connecting
people and you're getting intothe nitty gritty of where the
guy's going to be, and weidentified a potential suspect,
his name, the suspect's name isJames David Rogers.

(32:33):
When we identified Rogers, wethought, well, could this be the
guy?
We knew that the letters wereall mailed from the Ohio area
and this guy lived in Ohio.
And then we went to Eva'ssocial media page.
We went to her Instagram pageand her Twitter page to see what
are the odds.
What are the odds, maria, thatwe just reverse engineered a
family tree?
We picked a guy out of themiddle of Ohio.

(32:55):
You think he follows Eva.
Yeah, and he did, and he did,and he had written her a bunch
of like little love notes onTwitter, and so then we thought,
oh well, what do you think ofthe odds that he also follows
her daughter, kaya?
Wow and he did, and so at thatpoint we're like OK.

Steve Kramer (33:12):
I'm always a skeptic, and Kaya not being a
celebrity of any sort, just ahigh school student.

Steve Busch (33:16):
Right, right, correct.
And so this guy was followingEva LaRue and he was also
following Kai, and so we thought, you know what?
He's got the geographicalconnection, he's in the right
age range and he's followingboth of them.
Now you would think and a lotof people think this, maria, you
think we would just run rightout and arrest this guy, but we
don't.
The end of this processrequires us to collect DNA from

(33:37):
that unknown suspect and compareit to the crime scene DNA,
which, in this case, was the DNAfrom all of these letters.
And so one of the one of thegreat things about the FBI is
you can call, you know, somebodyin Ohio and say I need you to
go find this guy right now, andI need you to get his DNA right
now.
And then we got a guy.
I got a guy right.

Maria MacMullin (33:53):
I can go do that.

Steve Busch (33:53):
And so we we put.
In this case we did a a trashcollection, so a task force
officer with the FBI went outand followed this potential
suspect around, and the suspecthad just eaten at Arby's
restaurant and so he had a bagof trash from Arby's that the
task force officer watched himput into.

(34:15):
It was one of these dumpstersthat has like a locked lid on it
and it's got a chute that kindof comes up the top.
You know that you can put thestuff in and it goes down.
You open the lid and it goesdown the chute and it's got a
chute that kind of comes up thetop you know that you can put
the stuff in and it goes down.
You open the lid and it goesdown the chute.
And so the task force officerwatched the suspect put the
trash into the chute and hethought, oh my gosh, we all know
what that means.
That means you're going to haveto call the trash company.

(34:36):
You got to get the key andyou're going to get to crawl
through people's trash.
But the TFO task force officerthought you know what?
I'm just going to check.
I'm just going to check to makesure the bag went down and get
this.
He comes up and he opens up theflap and he looks into the
chute and someone had thrownaway a set of mini blinds that
was obstructing the chute andthe bag was just kind of hanging
there the way it was told to mewas hanging there by one of the

(34:59):
mini blinds and he was able totake the bag out and inside that
bag was a cup and straw fromArby's that the suspect you know
had drank from the straw.
So his mouth, his saliva, hadtouched the straw.
We were able to get DNA.
We sent that right to the FBIlab and said get DNA from that
straw, compare that DNA to theletters and tell us does it
match?
And if you've ever seen thesematches, maria, it's actually

(35:21):
fascinating because the numbersare astronomically impossible.
I always use winning thelottery as kind of a baseline.
If you look on a lottery ticketthe lotto this is the one where
you got to pick six numbersIt'll tell you it's about one in
292 million that you're goingto win and I don't know if
you've ever won.
I've never won.
I don't suspect I ever will winthe lotto but the the odds for

(35:43):
the like, for example, the oddsin the golden state killer.
When we looked at those, it wasone in 47.5 septillion, wow,
okay, which is, which ismillions of times larger.
Uh, you know worse odds thanwinning the lottery.

Maria MacMullin (35:56):
and the odds in the in the uh you're talking
about the odds that you wouldfind a match.
Is that it?

Steve Busch (36:02):
That's right, the odds that you would that DNA
that we pulled off of the cupand straw, the odds that it
would match a random person.
You say the odds are one in 50septillion that you're going to
match a random person, which ismore than that's.
More than the number of humansthat have ever been on the
planet.
Right, it's more than thenumber of humans that have lived
.

(36:27):
It's a lot, yeah, yeah, it'shuge.
And so it tells you like, hey,we got, we got the right guy, we
got the right.
And at that point, at thatpoint, we're now going to write
a probable cause statement,right, an affidavit, that says
that, hey, we collected thisguy's dna and matched the dna
from the letters.

Maria MacMullin (36:34):
We now know that he's the guy, and we're
going to go out and puthandcuffs on this guy so you did
that, and I mean I'm sure hewas just flabbergasted, right
that you were able to find himand put all this together.

Steve Busch (36:44):
Yeah, he, I, I flew , me and another agent named Amy
Whitman, a fantastic FBI agentwho actually currently runs the
the program, the geneticgenealogy program at the Bureau.
Amy and I flew out to Ohio andput together an arrest team of
FBI folks and task forceofficers out there in Ohio.
We went to his house andknocked on his door and we
arrested him and he and you knowhe does, like a lot of suspects

(37:06):
do oh, I don't understand.
Like, what are you here for?
Why, why me?
Like I don't, I don't get it.
But one of the things I rememberfrom that day, which was so
funny, was when we served, youknow, we had a search warrant,
of course, for his house as well, in addition to an arrest
warrant for him.
Sitting on his nightstand,right next to his bed, was a
flip phone.
Okay, and we opened up the flipphone and there were two phone

(37:28):
numbers programmed in this flipphone too.
Okay, one of them was his mom'sphone number, who he lived with
.
And take a guess, what was thesecond number?
Maria, it was Notre Dame highschool.

Maria MacMullin (37:40):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that would have
been his Dame.
That was the only two numbershe had in his phone.

Steve Busch (37:43):
And so it's like, wow, that's, that's.
How random.
Would it be that I would picksome guy's house, you know, out
of Ohio, and you're going tohave two on your nightstand.
You're going to have two phonenumbers in there.
What are the odds on that?
One, correct that and you go.
It's like at that point, incase there was any ambiguity,
that we got the right guy ofcourse we knew we had the right

(38:07):
guy.

Steve Kramer (38:07):
Yeah, that kind of nailed it Right.
So what kind of sentencing didthis person get?
Yeah, so he ended up getting Ithink it was about three and a
half years, steve, is thatcorrect?
Or just right around threeyears approximately, plus that
sentence is to be followed bythree years of supervised
release, which is kind of likeparole in state court, basically
you have a probation officer,you get restricted, you know

(38:28):
movement, other restrictions onyou, but yeah, it was only three
years, which was prettyinteresting because when some of
the press came out on that case, a lot of people you know,
particularly women, but just ingeneral people were like I can't
believe a guy would be able toessentially torture, scare,
torment, stalk two women for 12years, say and do these terrible

(38:51):
things which are horrific, andonly get about three years in
prison.
But fortunately, orunfortunately, there was a
federal statute on the books youknow, for this type of offense.
So we were able to get a felonyconviction on him and you know
he's put away for several yearsto give some peace to Eva and

(39:15):
her daughter and, like I said,he'll be on restriction once he
gets out, I think, which islater next year, I think it is.
So we consider it a win all inall.
I mean, granted, yeah, it'd begreat to see guys like this, you
know, put away for a longerperiod where they couldn't do
something, but just the way thatthe laws work, that was
basically the most you could get.

Maria MacMullin (39:33):
What were the actual offenses that he was
charged with?

Steve Kramer (39:37):
I believe, steve, one of them.
There were a couple of counts,but the main account was using
the US Postal Service, usingmail to send threatening letters
essentially, and I don't know,do you recall the other charge?

Steve Busch (39:56):
Steve offhand, I don't, You're right though
Mailing threateningcommunications was one of them,
and it made it interestingbecause most of these cases,
maria, most of them are chargedat the state level, and most
either you know, rape and murderis usually charged at the state
level, but this was the firstcase, the first case in history,
that federal charges were filedagainst a suspect where genetic
genealogy was used to identifyhim.

Maria MacMullin (40:17):
So how was that a federal case?

Steve Busch (40:19):
Well, because because of the use of the, of
the US mail is what the nexuswas that we used.

Maria MacMullin (40:23):
Okay, okay, gotcha.

Steve Busch (40:24):
And it was I mean for the record it was taken.
I mean, and no disrespect toLAPD, they're an awesome
organization, but LAPD had thiscase as well, but they had the
same set of evidence that we had.
You know, the LAPD had a bunchof letters and they had DNA and
they had all the fingerprintstuff, but there just wasn't
anything to go off of based onthat.
Now, you may remember too,there was an actress in Los

(40:47):
Angeles.
Her name was Rebecca Schaefer.
Rebecca Schaefer was stalked bya guy and that guy ended up
traveling.
He got on a Greyhound bus andtraveled from Arizona I think it
was out here to Hollywood, outhere to LA where she lived.
And he knocked on her door andhe shot her in the chest.
Yeah, I do remember that case.
And that changed California.

(41:07):
It changed the laws inCalifornia and they put laws in
place to say like, hey, and thiswas a guy who had written her
letters, a guy who had admiredher and told her how much he
loved her, which was a littlebit different than what James
David Rogers did with Eva.
Because he didn't I mean, hedidn't just say he loved her, he
said he wanted to kill her anddismember her and I mean all
kinds of horrible things, notjust her but her and her

(41:28):
daughter.
So it changed laws in Californiato make things, to make a law
that LAPD could have used, butthey just couldn't.
They couldn't identify the guy.

Steve Kramer (41:36):
Yeah, there was a.
I remember and this was longbefore Eva Littler's case when I
was a federal prosecutor for awhile as well, in Los Angeles,
and we had a case that camebefore us another type of
stalking case and involved anactress too.
It was Gwyneth Paltrow and welooked at it and this was a guy
that was calling, sendingletters, going to her house.

(41:57):
And we looked at it and we youknow a federal offense that fit
it eventually went to LAPD andthey ended up charging the
individual.
He ended up getting acquittedbecause they couldn't show that
he was going to do any harm toher.
He wasn't making threateningcommunications, which is part of
the key.

(42:17):
So it's difficult in some ofthese stalking cases, you know
where somebody's like what's thedifference when they're just
trying to, you know, be a fan,versus when they're going to be
a threat.
In this case, you know, I justlooked it up on Yves LeRoux's
case the Rogers in this case hewas actually he ended up getting
40 months, so 40 months prisonand he was, like we said, one

(42:39):
count of threat by interstatecommerce communications using
the mails and the telephone, aswell as two counts of stalking.
So that's what he was chargedand convicted of.
And then you said you had askedearlier how this makes it a
federal offense.
Anytime there's, you know,interstate commerce, like
crossing state lines, right Mostof the time that will invoke

(43:00):
federal jurisdiction on certaincrimes, and one of them being
threatening, communications,stalking, even kidnapping.
Kidnapping becomes a federaloffense when you cross state
lines to commit the kidnappingor, you know, in the process of
it.

Maria MacMullin (43:14):
Yeah, thank you for clarifying all of that.
Let's talk about access to DNA.
Do law enforcement have theability to obtain it from
everyone they arrest or everyonethey convict, or how do they
access that?

Steve Kramer (43:26):
Okay, so you're talking.
There's a couple of differentthings.
So the DNA that law enforcementtraditionally has is something
called an STR, short tandem.
Repeat, it's just a DNA profilethat's used by the CODIS
software.
So, as Steve mentioned earlier,there's 20 million profiles in
CODIS, that's the FBI's nationalDNA index system and that has

(43:49):
this STR profile.
Those profiles are obtainedgenerally either from a crime
scene so it's an unknown profilefrom missing persons, sometimes
like from their family members,but the majority of it comes
from convicted felony offendersand I believe all 50 states.
If you get convicted of a felony, you have to put your DNA into

(44:11):
the state DNA index system,which can be shared with the
national DNA index system, andthere's many, many, many states
I don't have the exact numberthat also take DNA and you get
arrested for a felony as well.
So that's generally how the FBIand the state database DNA
databases get their DNA.
Again, that's a different typeof DNA profile from what's used

(44:35):
in genealogy databases, but ingeneral I will tell you that.
You know the Supreme Court saidany type of abandoned items.
If you abandon you know an itemlike, you've given up your
expectation of privacy, and thatalso applies to biological
materials, including DNA.
So if you take a sip of yourArby's cup, you know, and then
you throw it in the trash canand it becomes public property.

Maria MacMullin (44:58):
Is that what you're saying?

Steve Kramer (44:59):
It does, you've abandoned your expectation of
privacy Interesting.
So that's how they can take theDNA from a straw in the garbage
and identify you with it.

Steve Busch (45:10):
That's typically.
That's typically how thesegenealogy cases conclude is that
trash pulls are about theeasiest way.
So if I know where our suspectlives and we know that he's the
only man that lives at thatresidence, it's not hard for us
to just figure out.
Thursday is trash day, and oncehe takes his trash out and he
puts it beyond the curtilage ofhis home, ie in the street in a

(45:35):
trash can.
He's abandoned it and this isnot a genealogy technique.
This is just a DNA collectiontechnique that law enforcement
has used for decades to go.
We call it a trash pull or atrash run.
You go, pull trash from asuspect's house and then you can
look and see I mean there mightbe other things that you want
to get there for other cases.
Maybe it's a, it's a creditcard fraud case and you want to

(45:57):
see is this guy you know puttingstolen identities in the trash?
Or maybe it's a you know someother case?
So it's not just trash pulls arenot just to find DNA but, like
Steve correctly pointed out,what's in that trash is
abandoned and once you've put itthere, it's your way of saying
look, I don't have ownership ofthat anymore and legally, the
Supreme Court has said that lawenforcement can do that.

(46:17):
There are some states thatstill don't allow it.
I think Oregon is one of them,and there are a couple others
that say you can't do a trashpull without a warrant, but most
states allow you to pick thatup as abandoned property.

Maria MacMullin (46:29):
So would it make sense at this point for the
DNA profile that lawenforcement collect and the IgG
type of profile to be similar?
Okay, Steve Kramer's laughing.

Steve Kramer (46:44):
No, I mean it's a great point.
Myself, steve and plenty of lawenforcement have talked about
that.
I mean the genealogy databases,the way the profiles work.
These databases are goodforever, like I mean.
In fact, sometimes the olderthe DNA is in it the better,
because, like you have agreat-great-grandparent and

(47:05):
their DNA is in it, they'regoing to have 1,500 relatives
that you could touch with them.
Whereas the CODIS database youknow that DNA profile, the STR
profile is only good aboutfinding one person and the CODIS
database tends to age out aboutevery 15, 20 years Because most

(47:25):
people in general arecommitting crimes between 18 and
35 years of age for the mostpart, and then if you're 60
years old, you're probably notas a man, you're probably not
out there raping women, so it'sunlikely that you know your DNA
is ever you're ever going to getarrested and put your DNA into
CODIS to identify a crime from25 years ago.

(47:47):
So the DNA in CODIS is only goodessentially for the time and
when.
We're talking about the DNAfrom unknown crime scenes like
who's this DNA belong to?
Who committed the time, andwe're talking about the DNA from
unknown crime scenes like who'sthis DNA belong to?
Who committed the murder whocommitted the rape.
The only time you're going toget caught with your DNA is if
you get arrested or convicted ofa felony.
And again, if you start to ageout, you get in your 40s and 50s

(48:10):
, you're no longer going outcommitting homicides, committing
burglaries, committing rapes.
It's very unlikely that your DNAis going to, you know, be
matched with the unknown profilethat's in CODIS.
So my point is is CODIS, is itages out and so it's only as
good as it's the offenders thatare going into it currently.
So you hope, like there'sunknown DNA, right, a woman is

(48:31):
raped she doesn't know.
You hope, like there's unknownDNA, right, a woman is raped she
doesn't know, you know whoraped her, but we have the DNA.
It's in CODIS.
It doesn't match anybody.
You hope, like in the next fewyears, that that rapist gets
arrested and has to donate hisDNA.
You know, compelled DNA intoCODIS and it matches and you
know that's what they call likea case to case match match and

(48:53):
then they can say, hey, this guywe just arrested, he's good for
that.
You know that sexual assaultfrom five years ago yeah, I
guess I'm just.

Maria MacMullin (49:01):
My question is like couldn't those two profiles
be like the same then?

Steve Busch (49:07):
so it's, it's funny here.
Let me take a shot at it.
So the part of the reason whysteve laughed is because the
question or smiled is becausethe question you asked, maria,
we get asked that question everytime we train, every time we
sit down with police or anybody.
It's a great question and it'sa logical starting point.
But think about this theprofiles, so the genealogy
profile and the law enforcementprofile, it's like an apple and

(49:29):
an orange.
I mean they are two completelyseparate pieces of information.
The STR, the current profilethat Leish uses, it's just like.
It's like a bunch of numbers,it's a series of numbers.
It's kind of like a lotteryticket, like, think of it like a
lottery ticket.
And then when you look at thegenealogy profile, it is 700,000
lines of chromosomes and RSIDsand positions and alleles right,

(49:53):
a, t, c or G.
It's a much bigger, moreinformative piece of information
than the STR profile is.
So I use this as an example.
We all know what a phone numberis and we can all identify
somebody from a phone number.
It would kind of be like sayinglet's take a license plate and
let's send it to VerizonWireless, the phone company, and
say Verizon, can you tell mewho this license plate belongs

(50:14):
to, and Verizon would say well,we don't have a database of
license plates, we have adatabase of phone numbers, and I
get it.
You can identify someone from alicense plate, but not in our
database.
That's the same as if you tooka law enforcement profile and
tried to put it into a genealogydatabase.
They would say we don't computethat type of profile.
It's completely different.
And there's no way to get applejuice from an orange or orange

(50:37):
juice from an apple.

Maria MacMullin (50:38):
But can't you make the orange an apple?

Steve Kramer (50:40):
You can't, Are you saying when somebody gets
arrested or convicted and wetake their DNA?

Maria MacMullin (50:50):
why would we not create the profile that
would be used for genealogy?
I'm saying why wouldn't you dothe same DNA test that you do
for IgG when someone getsarrested, why wouldn't you just
give them that test?

Steve Kramer (50:59):
Trust me, I mean that would be, you know, I think
, a great idea.
The way the laws are writtenright now, the DNA profile
that's taken for law enforcementis a separate profile, and part
of it was they didn't want.
The CODIS profile is what theycall junk DNA, like it doesn't
tell you anything about theperson.
It doesn't tell you their eyecolor, their ethnicity or

(51:23):
anything.
It's just junk DNA, it'snon-coding DNA, but it's really
good at identifying you to theexclusion of everybody on the
planet, and that's why theypicked it, whereas the genealogy
profile can tell you a lotabout somebody.
It can tell you their ethnicity, their eye color, hair color,
things like that.
In addition to you know whotheir first cousin, second

(51:44):
cousin, third cousin, fourthcousins might be, and that is
like kind of the privacy crutchon that, and that's why I think
people get very concerned aboutlike do do?
I don't want to?
You know I hear people say thisall the time.
I don't want to.
You know, do a genealogy testbecause you know I don't want
the police looking at it, or Idon't want some people say I
don't, I don't want to be, youknow, part of a police

(52:04):
investigation.
I mean, there could be a lot ofreasons.
You know, some people say theopposite.
They want to help, they want toput their DNA into these
databases because, hey, if Ihave a second cousin and he or
she's a murderer, I want to makesure they get caught.
I don't want them around myfamily.
So I think it would be great ifwe could figure out a way to use

(52:25):
the genealogy profile and getmore of them.
I think it would be awesomebecause I mean, ultimately, you
know, steve, and I look at it,this is a way to solve crime and
you know, since the GoldenState Killer, like, I haven't
seen any type of like abuse ofit.
I haven't heard of anybodybeing wrongfully arrested.
You know, using the techniquesthat you know the FBI and other

(52:48):
law enforcement agencies use.
You know, but I was getting aconfirmatory sample from the
person it's been.
It's an amazing technique and Ican tell you from plenty of the
victims, like Eva LaRue, butplenty of the victims we've
spoken with, they're like thankGod we've had this technique.
Thank God, who knows what wouldhave happened otherwise?
And I can give you cases wherethis technique stopped.

(53:13):
What we believe are serialkillers in the making.
So it's an amazing techniqueand that's one of the things
that we talk about is, like youknow, our goal is to take the
serial out of serial rapist, theserial out of serial killer.

Maria MacMullin (53:26):
Yeah, I think that's a great goal.
What is your advice to peoplewho are considering submitting
their DNA to a database for thepurpose of helping to find a
loved one who is missing or, youknow, it might be a cold case?

Steve Kramer (53:41):
They want to submit their DNA to a genealogy
database to help a cold case orjust to find a loved one.

Maria MacMullin (53:46):
Can it be both?

Steve Kramer (53:48):
Sure, yeah, like a missing person.
You mean yes, yes, no, I mean Iwould encourage you know
anybody in that situation to youknow, do that.
You know, not only take justone test, but I would take many.
I would take an ancestry test,I'd take a 23andMe test and then
I'd take both those profilesand I'd put them into GEDmatch,
I'd put them in the family treeDNA and so you're in the biggest
databases and that's going togive you the greatest shot of

(54:18):
finding, say, you're missing aloved one.
That's going to be the bestshot for finding your loved one
by getting into as manydatabases as possible.
Also, for law enforcement.
Even though law enforcement isjust using GEDmatch and FTDNA,
we do talk with people that havetheir DNA in the other
databases and many times theirmatches can be very helpful,
like if you're an ancestry andwe talk to you like your matches

(54:39):
can be very helpful to lawenforcement.
So I would encourage anybody todo as many of those tests as
possible.
It's very, very, very helpful.
And remember, the police aren'tout there, you know, looking at
your actual DNA.
They're not looking at yourgenome.
They're not like, ah, you know,this person looks like they're
susceptible to cancer or heartdisease.
We're not looking at that, it'sjust shared DNA.

(55:01):
It's just telling the police,hey, you and I share a half a
percent of DNA, so we're, youknow, a distant cousin?
Like they're not, thesedatabases are not sharing, like
I don't think you'd have youknow, 25 million people on
Ancestry all comparing theiractual genomes.
They're actually just lookingat how much they share with each
other to determine if they're afirst cousin, second cousin,
third cousin, that type.

Maria MacMullin (55:21):
Well at this moment in time, yes, who knows,
as solutions grow in analyzingthis information and doing IgG,
who knows?

Steve Kramer (55:33):
Well, I mean the way the databases are set up
right now.
They're set up to protect, youknow, the individual privacy you
know of their users.
Again, like you have to consent.
Do you want other people tomatch with you?
Like you can say no to that.
You just want to know your ownancestry, your own ethnicity,
your own you know, healthconditions, like at 23andMe.
You don't have to match withanybody in the database but you

(55:55):
can choose to.
You can, you know, sign, checkthe box that says hey, I want to
match with everybody in thedatabase and it's going to tell
you we're not giving away yourgenome to anybody, we're just
going to compare your genome,you know, with somebody else's.
Like using Steve's license plateexample, like, okay, we share
two digits on our license plate,you and I out of 10.
So we share 20% of the samedigits, just like you would say

(56:18):
I share 20% of the same DNA.
So maybe we are, you know,nephews and uncles, or maybe
we're, you know, 20%, maybewe're grandparent, grandchild
relationships.
It's just how much DNA youshare with somebody determines
your relationship.
I don't need to know what yourDNA is, no more than I need to
know what your license platenumber is.

(56:39):
To use that analogy.

Steve Busch (56:40):
Yeah, I think that's an important distinction,
though, maria, because even ifI want to kind of go down the
route of your question.
even if the companies, thegenealogy companies, were to say
, hey, we're going to put thewhole genome on display for law
enforcement to use, lawenforcement doesn't need it,
they don't need anything beyondthat percentage, because it's
the percentage that gives usthat relative distance between

(57:03):
this relative, this distantrelative, and our unknown person
.
And you do that enough timesover.
You're able to reverse,engineer a tree.
So the details beyond thataren't needed, even if they were
available.
You just need the percentage ofshared DNA in order to
reconstruct and re-engineer thatfamily tree and find your guide
I think that's a reallyimportant distinction, right?

Maria MacMullin (57:24):
you know honestly the most important?

Steve Kramer (57:26):
I'll ask steve this, because I know the answer
is after the genetics team.
What's the most important thingthat we look for, when you know
we look at subjects?

Steve Busch (57:34):
Oh, here's it.
And this is.
This is almost comical.
We look at geography and time.
I want to see, like, did this,was this person?
Because here's the thing youhave to physically be present to
rape somebody, right?
You can't rape somebodyvirtually, well, not literally.
So you have to be physicallypresent.
And so when we have a crimethat occurred on May 1st 1997 in

(57:54):
Los Angeles, california, onthis particular intersection or
this address, I got to findsomebody that has a time
connection and a geographyconnection to that place, right,
somebody.
Because victims tend to live inclose proximity, suspects tend
to live in close proximity tothe victims that they commit
crimes on.
And so that's after we get pastthe DNA and we're starting to

(58:16):
look at, you know, who isgenetically in the right spot,
who's genealogically in theright spot.
We have to say, well, whogeographically is in the right
spot.
And it's kind of like I like tothink of it as like a Venn
diagram.
You know, you've got the threedifferent circles and you're
trying to look at where all ofthose circles overlap and we say
, well, these two circlesoverlap genetically and
genealogically.
And then, when you putgeography on there as well, now

(58:37):
you know you've got a goodpotential suspect.

Maria MacMullin (58:43):
That makes sense.
Thanks so much for talking withme today.
I think we really learned a lotabout IgG and the case and the
work at the FBI.
Thanks for all you do.

Steve Busch (58:50):
No, thanks for having us.
We're always honored to talkand you guys keep doing the
great work that you guys aredoing.
We appreciate the opportunity.

Maria MacMullin (58:56):
Thanks so much for listening.
Until next time, stay safe.
The 2025 Conference on CrimesAgainst Women will take place in
Dallas, Texas, May 19th throughthe 22nd at the Sheraton Dallas
.
Learn more and register atconferencecaworg and follow us
on social media at National CCAW.