October 30, 2023 • 51 mins
This is a cross-over episode from my other show Crimelines and Consequences. We interviewed Laurah Norton from the Fall Line Podcast to discuss her new book that is out now wherever you get your favorite books. Checkout https://www.laythemtorestbook.com/ and https://www.thefalllinepodcast.com/
If you haven't checked out Crimelines and Consequences I strongly encourage you do to so!
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-consequences-true-crime--4347262/support.
If you haven't checked out Crimelines and Consequences I strongly encourage you do to so!
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-consequences-true-crime--4347262/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Walking the Line is a new truecrime podcast dedicated to exploring the unsolved cases
of the missing and murdered. Myname is Lexi Cacus and I'm your host.
I'm a victim advocate with a passionfor justice. Every week, I'll
be walking the line of investigative journalismand empathy. Sharing these stories is a
balancing act, but with over twohundred thousand unsolved cases, these stories must
(00:23):
be told. If you're passionate abouttrue crime stories that respect the human element,
Walking the Line is for you.Available on all platforms. In October
of twenty twenty three, podcaster LauraNorton is releasing a new book on investigative
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genetic genealogy, bringing the listener onthe journey of solving a case. Today,
she's here to talk to us aboutthe case and her work. I'm
Charlie Worrel and I'm Mark Carter Londineand this is Crime Lines and Consequences.
(01:06):
Hello and welcome Charlie here with myco host Eric, and we are joined
by a special guest, a friendof ours, Laura. So thank you
very much for coming on our show. Would you like to tell us we're
going to talk about your book?So this is the time to get the
podcast part of the conversation out ofthe way. Absolutely, it's funny to
(01:29):
talk to y'all because of course Iknow you both very well, but I'll
pretend that I don't and I willsay that I have two podcasts. One
is The fall Line, which isa true crime podcast It's been on for
over six years now, which isa little wild that covers cold cases that
have gotten little to no media attention, and especially cold cases that really need
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some help in terms of maybe diggingup archival research, families and law enforcement
that are specifically looking for deep divecoverage, working with experts, cases that
have a forensic angle that perhaps seedsa little more coverage. So that's what
we do there. And then Ihave a podcast called One Strange Thing,
which looks at archival news and thestrange, little unexplained events that are buried
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there that perhaps people have forgotten about. We will occasionally pull in you know,
Jersey Devil or something fun, butusually something smaller, like a really
contained mass hysteria that maybe happened inSeattle, or you know, blobs that
appeared in Texas in the nineteen sixties. So that's what I do. So
you spend a lot of time inthe newspaper archives, that's what you're saying.
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Yeah, yeah, in person andonline. I have not gone into
the newspaper archives in person yet.I am pretty restricted to what's been digitized
because I don't cover anything that's necessarilylocal to me, so it would be
hard to travel to like multiple,you know, state archives. I've been
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to once in Connecticut while I wasdoing genealogy research, but never anything for
the podcast. It's really fascinating becauseof course the librarian there is going to
be an expert, right, sothey always get involved and we'll find the
most fascinating stuff for you. Ionce got the single piece of paper I
was looking for and she was like, I'm so sorry, but someone has
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vandalized it. And when I gotit, it was about a UFO case.
And when I got it, itwas vandalized in the absolute best way,
and that someone had come in andput a giant UFO stamp across it
about eight to ten inches. Hadjust come in and put a giant stamp
across that one page. I couldread through it, so that became kind
of a piece of personal memorabilia aswell. So I guess. The long
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short story there is go to thearchives if you can. I think I'm
definitely missing out on that opportunity.I rely almost exclusively on police reports and
family and the interviews, So Ithink that there's definitely some opportunity for me
to explore covering those local cases foryour paranormal show, Eric, for sure,
yeah, oh for oh yeah,for those Buchanios. Absolutely would be
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a great opportunity there. But Idon't want to be rude, but enough
with a small talk. We've gotsome business to talk about here, so
let's get into what we're here for. And that's your new book, Lay
Them to Rest, as you cansee behind me here, and that's a
good place to start. The titleis compelling. Why did you choose that
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title? The title came to meimmediately as soon as it began to work
on the book. It just wasright there. And I think it's because
the idea of laying someone to rest. I mean, that's the goal,
right, and it's the goal tome on a couple of different layers and
levels, because the idea of layingsomeone to rest, we talk about that
a lot, right, like welaid them to rest. It's the idea
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of resolving a story for someone,for their family. You know, in
true crime we talk a lot aboutavoiding the word closure. One thing we
don't talk about a lot is allowingpeople to ren and to rest easy.
So finding someone's identity is a kindof rest, you know, Solving a
crime is a kind of rest.Connecting someone back with their family is a
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kind of rest because it's not justthe unidentified person who's resting. It's the
family who's resting. It's the lawenforcement who's been trying to solve a case
for twenty years who's resting. It'sthe mystery that's resting. So there's all
these different layers of resting. Ithink that we're trying to achieve. So
one of the things I learned throughyour book is that there are a lot
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of cases out there of John andJane does a lot of cases. Some
are as small as a bone fragment, some are full remains where we have
pictures of them. The El DoradoJane Doe was one where we had pictures
from her life to use. So, as you're looking at all of the
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Doe cases out there, why didyou choose this one to pursue? So
Amy and I don't have just onecase that we're looking at. I know
we talk about in the book.We have a Google doc of thirty forty
fifty cases that we're looking at andshe and I and that's doctor Amy Michael
for people who haven't read the book. She's my close collaborator, good friend
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of mine. She's a forensic anthropologist. I met her working on the Fall
Line and that's when I really gotinvolved working on unidentified persons cases outside of
the show. So she and Ihave worked together privately for a long time.
And what I bring to the tableis my ability to do archival research,
field research, and also I doa lot of interviews, which is
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not something that scientists do a lotof, So I bring that to the
table. She and I had alarge working document of cases we were interested
in, and we had a coupleof criteria for those cases, cases that
we thought needed reanalysis because they hadn'tbeen looked at since the nineties, cases
where departments might not have the fundingto do testing. And this is not
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just DNA testing. There's a worldof testing out there. You know,
radiocarbon blasting, you know isotopic testing, and even just skeletal reanalysis because anthropology
is not a static field, soso much has been learned since the nineteen
eighties or nineteen nineties that simply comingin and re examining a victim can teach
us so much more a case wherenew forensic art might help. So we
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had a list of a lot ofcases that we were actively working on at
the time and want to say activelyworking, researching, communicating with law enforcement,
et cetera. And the case thatwe end up pursuing in the book
was one where everything just aligned atthat perfect time for us to cover it
at the time I was writing andfor Amy, she is actually from rural
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Illinois. She grew up in thatarea. She has a lot of family
connections there, and her family hadworked in that area, you know,
her whole life. So it justkind of naturally worked out for us that
that was the case. But itwas a case that stood out to us
as well because there had been forensicart out for a long time, and
it was forensic art that had beenshared widely, and we felt that if
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that art was precise, someone wouldhave recognized the victim by this point.
So we said, this is acase that hasn't been re examined since the
nineties. Let's see if there's somethingthat we can contribute. I think you
do a really amazing job of tellingthe story of how you're going through this
whole process and really illustrating what's goingon in the moment. As you're describing
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what happened, what was the mostsurprising or what is the most surprising part
of that process of solving a Doecase. That's a big question. Eric.
You know, my job, Ithink in terms of the book,
is to be in the reader's seat, you know, because I'm lucky enough
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to learn from scientists. You know, my background. My background is in
English, you know, I'm awriter and researcher, and I decided I
have to had to learn science andnot become a scientist, but learn to
understand what they were doing in orderto be a better writer and reporter and
steward of this information. So I'msurprised, like on the daily by various
things that are happening. I'm surprisedwhen an odentologist tells me that he identifies
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someone based on a single tooth.I'm surprised when a skeletal reanalysis tells us
that, oh, actually, perhapsan ancestry estimate was wrong. I'm surprised
when we find out that someone's ageestimate was off. I'm surprised all of
the time. But one thing thatI think surprised me the most was that
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we don't have a really truly goodnumber of how many unidentified deccedents there are
in this country. We toss aroundthe number of forty thousand a lot,
but as I said in the book, that number was counted somewhere in the
early two thousands, and boy didI try to find a better estimate,
but I still haven't found one,and I think it's just difficult to say
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how many people there truly are.So I mean, that was a really
surprising thing for me. How manycases are not solved by DNA, though,
I think is the number one surprisingthing for me that I learned.
That was surprising for me when Iwas reading through and just thinking about that
process. Like, DNA is important, and we do put a lot of
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stock in it, especially in truecrime and as we're talking through cases and
things like that, but it's interestingthat they're to see all the different ways
that scientists and other investigators use toidentify these people. It's incredible and really
inspiring as well. Most of themdon't make the news. That's a big
thing too. That was something Ilearned as well when I talked to Amy
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or some of my other friends whodo identification. They'll identify several people a
year, and you just don't hearabout it. And I think that's a
good thing that those identifications are happening, you know, based on a medical
implant or a skull id or adental id, and simply we just don't
hear about that. It doesn't hitthe news. And that's because, you
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know, investigative genetic genealogy is soexciting and new, which again I'm glad
about because I do want dough casesto get in the news, so that
more dough cases get in the news. But for sure, that has been
the most surprising. While we're talkingkind of about the role of DNA,
I have to say that I havenever in my life thought about the shape
of my teeth as much as Ihave while reading your book, I'm like
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running my tongue over the ridges,and I'm like, do I have shovel
teeth? Like? What do Ihave? I had a whole conversation over
dinner with my friends, and wedecided which one of us would be the
easiest to identify based on extensive dentalwork and unique dental characteristics. Like this
invaded my brain for like a month. And I know that dental records have
always played a large role in identifyingremains, But I'm curious how has DNA
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testing changed either the use of dentalrid records or the importance of dental records
and identifying remains. I don't knowthat it's changed it. I think it's
made the lack of dental records notsuch a horrific dead end, if that
makes sense, because we always goto dental records first and hope and pray
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there are dental records, right becauseif there aren't dental records for a missing
person available, and for those listeningout there, there are so many assumptions
I think we make about what's availablefor a missing person that just aren't true.
Dentists do not have to keep yourrecords. They don't have to keep
your children's records. The rough estimate, you know, good rule of thumb
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is hold on to stuff for sevenyears. But that's not any kind of
federal or state law. And TennesseeTodd Matthews from the Dough Network has done
a lot of work to get somelaws in place about you know, there
should be regulations for police must comeget dental records on a missing person by
this amount of time, they mustbe uploaded to nam US, right,
that's but generally they just don't havethose rules. So we assume we have
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these great dental records. I mean, my mouth's a mess, you know,
so I have you know, Ithink I have like six crowns.
You know, they'd be like,there's that lady with a disintegrating teeth.
So I have these great dental records, but it only works if someone goes
and gets them and gets them uploaded. Otherwise they're gone. So I think
that having those dental records is amazingand important because the comparison of dental records
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is basically free, you know,and that's what we're looking for because DNA
testing is expensive now. Certainly thestr testing, which is that classic testing,
the testing when people say let's getit and codeius and run a check.
Not the expense it used to bevery you know, pretty basic.
Law enforcement does that out of hand. But IgG, which is that investigative
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genetic genealogy. That testing is pricey, so having those dental records there,
we never want to skip that.So having an awareness of who is your
dentist, who are your loved onesdentists, who are your children's dentists,
that's so important keeping track of likewhere your dental records are, especially college
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kids they move so much, youknow, keeping track of those things.
I don't think that's lessened in importanceany I think simply we now say if
we don't have dentals on a decedentfrom the nineteen eighties, we're not at
a dead end. I think that'sthe big difference. One of the things
I love that kept kind of goingthrough the book was this Isn't Bones,
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which is one of my favorite showsof all times. So I just really
every time I read that, Iimagined you saying that, and I just
loved it. So that's off topic, it's not a question. I just
had to say that because it mademy day. I think it was funny
reading a book that a friend ofmine wrote, because I read the entire
thing in your voice and I couldhear like the inflection like I don't need
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your audio book, which I knowyou have your setup behind you. Other
people can have your audiobook, butlike, I know exactly how you said
every sentence, like in my head, Well, I was talking to you
while I was writing it, Soyou remember me going on. You remember
me going on some of these tripsand stuff. That was a funny part
when I got to you, goingto Saint Louis and seeing tornado shelters at
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the airport. I remember when thathappened, and I was like, oh,
this is giving me a time contextfor when this book was written because
I remember when that happened. Iremember asking you is this normal, and
you were like yes, unfortunately yes, And be glad you didn't have to
use them. Be glad they're there. Yeah, to what Eric said about
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it not being bones, and ofcourse the TV show Bones, Doctor Temperance
Brennan, you know that show iswhat drives people into forensic anthropology courses.
And you might assume that forensic anthropologistsare like, oh god no, but
I mean they're happy because it getspeople interested in wanting to learn more about
bones. Right. And so whatAmy has told me is she spends the
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next couple of weeks really teaching peoplethat they're dealing with humans, right,
not a piece of bone that's separatedfrom a person and has become an object.
And then once you do that andyou get them to really care about
their remains that they're entrusted with,then they start to really make the connection,
I think, between the kind ofexciting world of mystery and what they're
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actually doing, which is caring forthe remains of someone who's been separated from
their identity. Whether that's a historicremain, you know, that's been stolen
in some way from its proper ancestralplace, or whether we're looking at a
discedent who may have died of naturalcauses or been murdered, or a grave
that's been disturbed in some way.I mean that happens all the time from
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you know, you might look atwhat they called poor farms, you know,
and this is especially sort of endemicin New England, where people were
buried in the grave, markers removed. All of these people that need to
be cared for in different ways.So she's able to connect that excitement of
you know, learning about forensic anthropologyand that let's solve the crime with the
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truth of let's serve this person that'sreally awesome and so noble, such a
noble thing. And I love thateven beyond the glitz and glam of the
television show, like there's this greaterpurpose to it. It's really beautiful.
Was there ever a point when youconsidered what would happen if you couldn't solve
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this case? No? Well,okay, tiny bit, but no.
I knew that if we could geta decent sample, we would solve the
case. And I thought that therewas a possibility that we could solve it
even before DNA. There's a coupleof different times, and I'll explain why,
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because I knew that we needed newforensic art, because I already had
my sissions that the forensic art didnot match even perhaps the first anthropologists' notes,
right, And that's not to thefault of an artist. I do
want to stress that because forensic artis an approximation, someone has to approximate.
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You do an approximation, and ifit doesn't work, then you need
to do another approximation. My friends, who were some of the best forensic
artists in the world, update theirapproximations because if no one comes in,
that means you need to make adjustments. Right. But it became really clear
that the decedent. In this case, the homicide victim did not have the
skeletal asymmetry that was suggested in thefirst forensic art. They suggested pretty extreme
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skeletal asymmetry, so extreme that someonewould have one hundred percent recognized her.
So one that I had immediately wasif we get new art out, someone
may immediately recognize her. And whenwe didn't get an immediate hit on that,
I was like, Okay, there'ssome else. Maybe it's age right,
maybe it's something else. When wediscussed her unique dentition and I spoke
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more extensively with the odentologist, Iknew that her family probably didn't know about
the extensive issue she had with herteeth, because if they had, that
would have qued them in because whenthe press release came out about her new
art, they released new information abouther teeth. And for listeners who don't
know about this, not only didthis victim have a really unique crown that
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was worth noting with a root canal, but she also had really extensive cavities.
But she also had pretty extensive decaythat would have been painful, and
it seemed pretty recent. So ourthought was that her if her family knew
about that they would recognize that immediatelyas well, So we knew that that
was also something that people would haverecognized. And was there the possibility that
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she did not have family that couldrecognize it, certainly, but we knew
that as long as there was goingto be a decent sample. I knew
Australia Forensic Labs was going to beable to get a good sample, and
I knew the genealogist in question weregoing to be able to solve the case.
And there's an underlying message there alsothat I think we need to touch
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on, which is that a whiteEuropean in America is going to have their
case solved by genetic genealogy as longas their family did not recently come over
from Eastern Europe, with the exceptionof someone who's Jewish, because they are
going to have more likely submitted theirDNA to the database. And this has
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mostly to do with health testing,and that's because more white people in America
have submitted their DNA, so it'seasier to solve their cases. And if
you're white, you're more likely tobe identified. And that's just kind of
a fact of life, right,And that gets into a lot of inequities
that I think are interesting to talkabout. And also if we look at
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cases and how they get funded,that's a whole different kettle of fish too,
But I knew that she would probablybe identified. One of the things
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I thought was interesting when we're talkingkind of about what gets funded and not,
is that the book mentions that theyfound that people who have DOE cases
that have forensic art where people cansee what the person may have looked like
in life and maybe connect with that, do get funded more often than you
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know when the dough network doesn't havesome forensic art. But the process of
becoming a forensic artist isn't really astraight line for any of these people.
It's like, you talked about oneperson who could draw pretty good, so
they got kind of moving into forensicart with law enforcement. But then Carl
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Koppelman, who I feel is verywell known just because I think his pictures
hold a lot of humanity in them, he was an accountant like that surprised
me. So when it comes tothe forensic art, how is this done?
Do the police have to reach outto people? Are their forensic artists
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just floating around America drawing pictures forpeople? I don't understand entirely that process
of getting a forensic artist involved.Well, it widely depends. So most
state bureaus have an artist. Sowe're just lucky here in Georgia to have,
in my opinion, the best forensicartist in the United States, right,
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and that's Kelly Lawson. If you'veever seen any of her art and
said, oh my god, that'sbeautiful forensic art, it's Kelly Lawson.
We share it a lot on thefall line. It's beautiful, and that's
because she's a classically chained artist whobecame a forensic artist. But most state
bureaus, so you know, theTBI in Tennessee is going to have an
artist. Of course, the FBAhas artists. Nick Meck has artists,
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you know, Parabond has artists.So there are artists. But a smaller
area may not have easy access evento their own state artist. So in
that case, what they can dois they can reach out to a volunteer,
right, someone like Carl or theycan request, for instance, so
Kelly might get a request from astate where there's not perhaps a state artist
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in residence for that bureau. SoI worked on an Oklahoma case for instance,
where they needed age progression and therewas not an age progression artist available.
So Kelly Lawson worked for them inthat case to do that. And
so there's a lot of those kindsof connections. You know, artists want
to be careful not to step oneach other feet. There's amateur artists out
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there who are training who will offerto do art for cases that are kind
of piled up because you know,all the artists in the United States who
do work for a federal agency astate agency could work all year long and
not cover all the cases. Sothere are folks who offer to do this
reach out. They might go toa smaller police station and say, hey,
can I help out, and they'llsay yes. And of course,
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you know, there's the photo compositeart. You know, there's people who
are doing line drawing. But evenat the end of the day, a
lot of these cases don't have anythingto work with because if you don't have
a mandible and a cranium, orat least a cranium to work with,
you're not going to be able tocome up with a piece of art.
And that's running into a major problemwe have with dollcases, which is lack
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of narrative, because narrative story iswhat people connect with. That's why I
started writing about DOE cases, isto get people to try and connect with
the narrative. With a missing personor murdered person, there's a narrative of
someone's life there for people to connectwith, them to care about. But
for a dough that string has beenforcibly cut in some way, So how
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do you get people to emotionally connectwith that story and get them to share
it? Carl talked about that,Kelly talked about that in my book,
which is you get them to connectwith the art. But if you've ever
looked at DNA dough projects work,sometimes they have to just put up a
basically like a relief shadow to takethe place of the person because there are
not remains available in that case.So then you have to figure out how
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do I get someone to connect witha fragment of bone because that is still
representative of the human being that waslost, right, and that becomes kind
of the tough part. I knowit's Parabon Labs is does these composite sketches
through DNA? Are they the onlyDNA lab doing that work? To my
knowledge, yes, I think it'sbased on their specific technology. And I
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was actually us looking today because mymom had just finished reading the book and
she wanted to see pictures. Sothey have a big page of them where
you can see both their perpetrator casesand their unidentified person's cases and kind of
get a sense of and you canactually see matched ones as well, so
you can see people who've been matchedand see how closely they came up.
And some of them are very justamazingly close matches. Some are less close,
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kind of in the same way thatforensic approximations are. They'll use DNA
to figure out, you know,this person is very likely to have blue
eyes, this person is very likelyto have blonde hair, this person is
very likely to be this or that. But they are still faced with some
of the same problems that every artistis, which is do we show this
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person as midweight? Do we showthis person as you know? And if
they don't have height information, etc. They're even going to have some DNA
information about, like, you know, things we don't think about, like
freckles, you know, which canreally add a lot to the approximation.
And maybe just maybe you know,ring a bell for someone and make them
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make that call, which is prettyamazing. It's incredible. It's amazing work
that's being done out there. Andagain I keep saying this, but it's
just so inspiring because you think aboutsome of these families that are sitting there
wondering with no answers, or youknow, people who cared about these individuals,
not knowing who they are. It'sjust it's amazing the amount of work
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that gets done. And you know, I know that it's a huge part
of all of these labs missions totry to identify these doughs. And it's
just super incredible. But that's justme commenting that doesn't really mean anything.
Well, I do have another questionthough, So knowing that you are an
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archival researcher and it's something that you'revery skilled at, you do get access
to things that not everybody has accessto. What's it like for you watching
the internet speculation that goes wild withcases and how people react to things.
How does that feel from your perspective? Well, first, it's totally natural,
(28:17):
right because I started out just beingan English professor, you know,
just good at looking stuff up,and somehow I've ended up today I sit
here with you know, literally twentytwo full doughcases on my desk. They
were on the computer, but Ihad to print some stuff out. You
know, they didn't send me allthat paper. That would have been a
(28:38):
waste. But I'm sitting here withthese files, going through things, and
I just realize everything that I wouldhave missed if I didn't have the contextual
detail that I have, And that'sjust because I would be working off what
was available and what's available. Often. We both know this, and we
both we all three know this becauseof being researchers, and you know,
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we do the best digging that wecan. And there are people working on
Reddit and working on other sites thatare just as skilled as we are at
using all of the Internet sources diggingthings up, saying oh, you know
there was a river, you knowone mile away, there was this,
there was this, we can findthe temperature. People are very good at
these things, but ultimately there aredetails that are not available to the public
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that change the entire context. I'vebeen in labs and seeing their lab boards
and seeing what was up for testingand gone, oh. I have been
on the inside of a case wherepeople were discussing it on the outside,
and I saw they had four orfive or six facts wrong. And Charlie
and I have talked about this beforeand you kind of go, you know,
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but of course that is never somethingyou should share. And you understand
how people are building that house wrongand all those bricks are in the wrong
place. And the house looks good, but the bricks are in the wrong
place. And I know that becauseI have that house wrong myself many times
before. And so what I dois I understand, you know. But
the biggest thing that working directly withexperts in law enforcement and having the access
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that I'm granted has done has taughtme when to stop. And where I
stop is where my access to directfacts that I know for sure ends.
I can present here's a road,here's a road, here's a road.
But I don't even go down thetheory anymore. I just say, here
are the things that we know.Here are the things we don't know.
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And I can't do anything beyond thatbecause there are too many unknowns. And
my book, the victim who isultimately identified goes on a walk at night.
Maybe you know, as far aswe know, we can't say for
sure where she walked. People thinkshe walked one place she could have walked
(30:55):
somewhere else, and there's all ofthese other things. Some people say that,
you know, she did one thing, some people say she did another
thing. And there is no wayfor me to prove precisely what happened because
you know, my main witnesses toowere on a phone out of state.
The other one was four years old. So how am I supposed to,
you know, precisely say what happened. I can't, so it would be
(31:19):
irresponsible for me to try and buildany kind of real theory based on that,
because what I don't have access toare the files from a different state
where her case was closed. SoI think that I see it, I
recognize it. I appreciate the needto want to understand and close it because
I have that same need. ButI say, yeah, that's where I
(31:42):
stop. That's what I say.So I find that interesting because the reason
I don't have special access to lawenforcement details is i'd like make a fake
Reddit account and just start correcting people, so I will never get access to
literally anything. I'm probably i'd bebanned, like on site, from every
police department. But I know Ericknows your side of things a little bit
(32:07):
because with his brother's case. Youknow, when he's working with not necessarily
law enforcement, but with you know, a private investigator or someone else helping
out, they might find something thathe can't talk about. And I just
yeah, I mean, fake Redditaccount is my solution. But I feel
like you two have a little bitmore self restraint than I do. You
(32:28):
have to protect the case. Imean, there's a lot I left out
of my book because it was necessary, and I think I mean Eric,
of course, I mean that's hisbrother, so you know that case is
paramount. Yeah, protecting the caseis the most important thing. And I
think that's something that people don't understandwhen they are websle thing because they do
(32:49):
want the answers, And there areanswers that I have that people don't have.
And it's it's that way for areason, not not because I'm worried
about getting sued by you know,the purpose trait or anything, but it
is the most important thing. Andso I definitely, I definitely relate with
that, Laura. And even whenyou think you do have the answers,
let me tell you, Like Iwas wandering through a state park on several
(33:12):
different roads trying to figure out whichwas the exact right road with like formats,
do you know what I mean?So even when you think you're right,
you might be wrong. That's sotrue. So kind of speaking a
little bit to the case, afteryou identify the person, you still don't
know necessarily what happened to her.And when the identity was established, you
(33:36):
did contact her surviving family and youmet with them, with her sisters.
And first, can I say,I cannot picture you in a cracker barrel,
And so that part of the bookdidn't really ring true to me.
However, I'll trust that you werein fact at a cracker barrel. But
like, on a more serious note, what was you knew their sister in
(33:58):
a very different context and they did, So what was that meeting? Like,
Well, first, Charlie, Ididn't even know y'all had those in
the Midwest, So I was justsurprised. I'd like, it opened up
a whole new world for me.Like I thought cracker barrel was southern,
so but apparently they're up up inthe Midwest too. Who could say we
(34:20):
have them in New Mexico? Really? Wow, I thought this was a
whole southern thing. I mean,I hadn't been to one since I was
my accent comes out as soon asI start on this. Let me let
me, let me go back toAmerican standard. Yes, so I had
not been to one since I wasfive. So I had spoken to her
(34:42):
sisters several times on the phone,like you know, as we've gone through
the process of you know, theinvestigative genetic genealogy team working with them on
confirmation of identification, I'd spoken tothem as well. We're still in contact
today, like I literally spoke toher daughter this morning, so we're in
regular contact. But it was reallyinteresting because on the Fall line, we
(35:05):
have worked with families for years andyears and years and years. Right Brooke,
who is my co creator, asour main family contact, as she
does the family interviews, but Iwork with families a lot on the back
end, making sure scripts are approved, doing some pickup interviews, making sure
everyone is comfortable and feels good aboutthe situation they're in. So I do
a fair amount of family contact myself, but it's a very different kind of
(35:29):
family contact because we're working with familieswho are in that period of limbo,
who are waiting, and this isa family who has been absolutely shell shocked
by answers and this was the nightbefore the press conference to announce that she
had been identified, and I askedif I could take them to dinner,
and we happened to be at thesame hotel, on the same floor,
(35:51):
two doors down, and I wasby myself because the student assistant who worked
with me and Amy was coming tostay with me. She was lost at
the airport. It was the wholething, but I was really glad to
have that time alone with them.Like I didn't take a voice recorder,
I didn't take any notes. Wejust sat and talked, and they had
all of these pictures of their sisterthat they had rescued from a fire and
(36:12):
a flood. It was such asurreal experience because I had been waiting to
know this woman for years, andthey had been waiting to know what had
happened to her for years. Somy job in that situation, and I
didn't think of it in any kindof formal terms. I was just there
(36:32):
to be with them. But Ithink that my role in that situation was
to listen and to answer the questionsthat I could, and to make sure
that later on I got them theanswers to the questions that I couldn't answer.
And you know, just just tobe there and spend time with them,
and that has sort of been myrole since then. We didn't do
formal interviews until much later, youknow, after there was time to process
(36:57):
and to get answers and to speak. But it was one of the most
affecting experiences of my life. AndI've spoken to dozens and dozens and dozens
of families who have survived crime atthis point, but I think that is
a fairly unusual experience, I think, even for those of us who work
in this field, to meet witha family who's loved one has been identified
(37:22):
after almost thirty years, especially theirloved one whose case was closed because her
case was closed for nearly thirty years, so they were unable to look for
her in a formal way all thattime. She wasn't ennameous, she wasn't
listed anywhere. So a what anawesome thing, What an awesome gift for
(37:42):
that family to be able to hopefullyrest and find some peace in all of
this and some information that they wererelacking. It's a really really beautiful,
touching moment, and I hope thatthat they do find that rest in that
piece. Aside from the Aina Countydough case. Other cases overlapped in this
(38:20):
book, including mummified remains that werefound at a school. I would have
thought the times that human remains werefound in the school would be like nonexistent,
but it turns out that it's notthat uncommon. How do modern human
remains end up in a school,attict? How did that happen? Well,
you know, we have a lotof old schools here, nothing like
you know, say Europe, butthese will be human remains. I mean
(38:44):
there were two mummified human remains,separate sets of human remains that were mentioned
in the book that were found inolder schools. And right now I have
a friend who's dealing with a museum, a private museum, you know,
owned by singular individual, that hada bunch of human remains that were sort
of ill gotten, you know,because until that nineteen sixty eight act about
(39:07):
you know, the ethical donation ofhuman remains, people could pretty much do
what they wanted. So when wetalk about a mummy, I think a
lot of people think about Egypt,right although certainly there are other cultures that
practice mummification as well. But justfor listeners to understand this mummy that we
(39:28):
talk about in the book. Thiswas an amateur mummy, so someone who
was likely my best guess, wouldhave been an amateur scientist, so probably
somewhat wealthy, sort of the youknow gentlemen, you know diletant type had
practiced mummification. Someone may have donethat because they were some sort of you
know, educator, or they hadlearned about ancient Egypt and they wanted to
(39:52):
give it a try. And howthey got those human remains to practice on
we have no idea, but myassumption would be it would not be good.
It could have been someone who wasimpoverished. It could have been someone
who was an indentured servant. Itcould have been someone who was enslaved.
We just don't know. It couldhave been the remains of an indigenous person,
(40:15):
which of course means that those remainswould be under nagpra legally right required
to be returned to the proper peoples. And what was so upsetting about this
was this school really wants to dothe right thing. You know. This
is a private school. At onepoint was a seminary, you know,
(40:36):
so it has a very long background. It's a little confusing for them to
even figure out precisely where these remainscame from, and in the very far
back of their attic, And ifI could explain to you how big and
old the school is, it waslike entering Narnia to go up into this
attic, this huge attic that isbigger than my house. And in the
far back corner they'd found this wickerbasket that contained a mummified person. But
(40:59):
it was a that at first Ithink they didn't even quite recognize as a
mummy, because this decesion had beencoded in Lacker. So I think that
even perhaps they thought at first thiswas some kind of artificial sort of representation
of a human being. And youcan kind of imagine the horror they felt
when they realized this was a personin their remains. And then they have
(41:23):
to figure out what is the kindestand most ethical and the most right thing
to do. How do you possiblyget someone back to their people when the
scientists who us experimented on them hasdestroyed the best ways we know how now
to get that person back. Andso that was what we were left with
(41:43):
when Amy came in to work onthat project for them. I imagine the
care that the school has in makingthat right, even if they don't know
how it ended up on their schoolproperty. They're taking ownership, accountability of
making or it's right. It makesme wonder because, like Eric, I
would have thought zero is the numberof mummified remains in random schools, but
(42:09):
how many are there? And theschools are not making those efforts. And
so I'm glad you included that becauseit does speak a lot to the importance
and I felt like you you spenda lot of care going into the details
of that situation, which really humanizedthe Again, like we said, it's
(42:32):
not bones, it's a person.Humanized that situation where it's like, this
is somebody, and this is somebodywho is separated not just from their identity,
but possibly from their people and theirancestors and their descendants, and it's
time to return that. I hopeother schools are people reading this book who
(42:52):
know about situations like these in schoolswill will get them to do the right
thing. I think they will,because this school acted with a swiftness and
has really made this an ethical andcomplex learning project for their students as well
(43:14):
to research everything they can in thearchives, to learn about, you know,
ethical treatment of people and bodies,to research you know, who could
this woman have been? She alsomay have been a teenager or you know,
a very small woman. You know, how could this have happened?
Why did people mishandle human remains?And the students and staff still check in
(43:37):
to see if testing has you know, come any farther because they really do
care, you know, And soI think it was not only kind of
I wouldn't even say a wake upcall because I think gen Z are so
involved morally and ethically in the propertreatment of humans. I think it was
more of a call to action forthem than a wake up call. They
(43:57):
don't need a wake up call exactly. So before we let you go,
I just to leave us with someof your wisdom. I know that,
like you said, a lot oftimes, we have all the bricks to
the house and we put it togetherand we think there it is, everything
fits. And maybe we don't thinkthat we could fit all those bricks together
(44:20):
into different solutions to a case,and we get kind of some tunnel vision
as armchair sleuths, you know,as I'm sitting there on Reddit, not
on a fake account, FYI,I am on my regular account reading about
cases and reading people's theories and seeingwhat people can dig up, especially what
people can find out about the areasand things. It's amazing. But if
(44:43):
I want to contribute positively to acase, what would your advice be.
I mean, the number one thingyou can do is sharecases first, right,
sharing a case, learning everything youcan about a case, going and
clipping old news articles for people thatdon't have access to them, and sharing
them, especially with family members whohave made pages Facebook, who have set
(45:07):
things up. A lot of familymembers don't necessarily have like archival news account
access, like not just newspapers dotcom, Like I have a Lexus account
that costs me like two hundred bucksa month, Like it's horrific. Whenever
I build a file of archival newsarticles, I share them with the people
whose family member they are about.So that's one thing, you know,
(45:30):
building repositories of information. And whenI say that, I don't mean theories,
right, you know, like mapsof people's houses, intrusive information,
but background archival media information that youcan share, things that you can make
publicly available, but most especially publiclyavailable to the people who are involved.
(45:51):
Right. If you want to goto pages where people are sharing information about
does if there is already let's say, a page about that dough or a
post about that dough. Perhaps youwant to say, hey, I found
this article and you want to postit, right, So any of that
kind of information there if someone issearching, because I know in the case
in my book, the family wasconstantly searching for dough pages, and if
(46:15):
someone had seen a few of thearticles because they missed them because of the
way they were titled, By theway Eric and I talked about this when
we spoke like a year ago,titling something in a more human way could
have changed this case. You know, decapitated head found is not going to
tell you anything. Eric and Isat and talked about this, but if
(46:37):
you'd said, you know, remainsof redheaded woman found, things might have
looked a little different thirty years ago. So, you know, finding an
article, writing a summary, evenarticle, you know, providing that.
I know on Unresolved Mysteries on Redditthey do a really good job of writing
up really detailed objective case descriptions,you know, and sharing those, and
(47:00):
I think those are really valuable.People do that as well, So there's
a lot of ways to do that. Offering if you have graphic design skills,
and you are you know, friendlywith a family who would invite this.
Making missing persons posters. I dothat like all the time. Make
missing persons posters for people to shareif they would like to. If you
(47:22):
want to volunteer at your local MissingPerson's Day in missing person's events, you
can do that. If you don'thave one, why don't you send a
message over to local law enforcement orthe DA and ask why you don't have
one, because you should, right, every area should have one. So
these are all the things I thinkpeople can do, because the thing about
solving a mystery, this is somethingI've really realized. Nothing is a puzzle
(47:46):
with one missing piece, which isreally what I used to think before I
really started working on this stuff,that if I could just obsessively in the
dark find that one piece and stickit and everything would be fine. That's
not going to happen. That's nothow it works. Because a year plus
after this case was solved quote unquote, or at least part of it was
(48:08):
solved, her family is still processingthe trauma. You know. There we're
dealing with a woman whose body partswere separated. Her family is still haunted
by that. They wish they hadall of her to later rest. They
still don't know for sure what happenedto her, and they're still wondering when
(48:28):
they're going to be fully at peace. So is that puzzle solved? No,
I think if her killer was identified, the puzzle would still not feel
complete to them because there's going tobe lost there, right, So I
think we have to look for differentgoals there, and I think those goals
have to be about serving not onlythe case and the people involved in the
(48:51):
case, but looking at building bettersupport systems, better ways of communicating,
better ways of adding detail to howwe share cases with other people. So
not just throwing up, you know, missing woman, but the details we
add there. Eric and I havetalked about this before, that can actually
maybe get them to the right people. If you have archival research skills,
(49:13):
why don't you think about saying,hey, I can cover this case that's
hard to cover. Maybe you're nota podcaster, Can you write a blog?
Can you make a TikTok? Maybeyou can do that too. I'm
not the only person on earth thatcan do that. You know. I
wasn't more and special, you know, I am just stubborn. So you
know, so those of us wholike to do that, and you are
(49:34):
two people like that too. Otherfolks can do that too. Let's get
the cases out there that are lesspopular and maybe they will have a chance
of getting some leads in. Thismay not be the question you asked me,
but it's what I felt like talkingabout. It was the answer we
needed. It was the exact exactquestion I asked. Yeah, at some
point, at some point, youknow, my eyes glazed over and then
(49:59):
my my heart just began to talk. So, you know, I wanted
to know how armchair sleuths could contributepositively to a case, and your answer
is to actually contribute. Well.I want to thank you for joining us
and remind everyone that the podcasts arethe fall line and one strange thing.
(50:20):
But the book is called Lay Themto Rest. As people are listening and
or viewing this on YouTube, thebook will be out so you can get
it wherever you get your books.I mean, I don't know where people
get books, but I'll leave somelinks there. Eric has been representing with
the Green screen back there for you, and we really appreciate you taking time
(50:43):
out of your very very busy scheduleto give us so much time to talk
about this case and the process behindit. I am so thankful that you
had me on. I really appreciateit all my wonderful friends letting me talk
about my book. We loved yourbook. It was incredible and put it
down, so thank you for allowingus to read it and to talk with
(51:04):
you about it. And anytime weget to spend time with you is a
good time for us. So ifour audience wants to join the conversation,
find us on social media. Alllinks are in the description below. We'd
love to hear what you think aboutthe solvability of doe cases as well as
your thoughts on Laura's book, andwith that, we'll see you in a
few weeks.
Walking the Line is a new truecrime podcast dedicated to exploring the unsolved cases
of the missing and murdered. Myname is Lexi Cacus and I'm your host.
I'm a victim advocate with a passionfor justice. Every week, I'll
be walking the line of investigative journalismand empathy. Sharing these stories is a
balancing act, but with over twohundred thousand unsolved cases, these stories must
(00:23):
be told. If you're passionate abouttrue crime stories that respect the human element,
Walking the Line is for you.Available on all platforms. In October
of twenty twenty three, podcaster LauraNorton is releasing a new book on investigative
(00:44):
genetic genealogy, bringing the listener onthe journey of solving a case. Today,
she's here to talk to us aboutthe case and her work. I'm
Charlie Worrel and I'm Mark Carter Londineand this is Crime Lines and Consequences.
(01:06):
Hello and welcome Charlie here with myco host Eric, and we are joined
by a special guest, a friendof ours, Laura. So thank you
very much for coming on our show. Would you like to tell us we're
going to talk about your book?So this is the time to get the
podcast part of the conversation out ofthe way. Absolutely, it's funny to
(01:29):
talk to y'all because of course Iknow you both very well, but I'll
pretend that I don't and I willsay that I have two podcasts. One
is The fall Line, which isa true crime podcast It's been on for
over six years now, which isa little wild that covers cold cases that
have gotten little to no media attention, and especially cold cases that really need
(01:49):
some help in terms of maybe diggingup archival research, families and law enforcement
that are specifically looking for deep divecoverage, working with experts, cases that
have a forensic angle that perhaps seedsa little more coverage. So that's what
we do there. And then Ihave a podcast called One Strange Thing,
which looks at archival news and thestrange, little unexplained events that are buried
(02:15):
there that perhaps people have forgotten about. We will occasionally pull in you know,
Jersey Devil or something fun, butusually something smaller, like a really
contained mass hysteria that maybe happened inSeattle, or you know, blobs that
appeared in Texas in the nineteen sixties. So that's what I do. So
you spend a lot of time inthe newspaper archives, that's what you're saying.
(02:38):
Yeah, yeah, in person andonline. I have not gone into
the newspaper archives in person yet.I am pretty restricted to what's been digitized
because I don't cover anything that's necessarilylocal to me, so it would be
hard to travel to like multiple,you know, state archives. I've been
(03:00):
to once in Connecticut while I wasdoing genealogy research, but never anything for
the podcast. It's really fascinating becauseof course the librarian there is going to
be an expert, right, sothey always get involved and we'll find the
most fascinating stuff for you. Ionce got the single piece of paper I
was looking for and she was like, I'm so sorry, but someone has
(03:23):
vandalized it. And when I gotit, it was about a UFO case.
And when I got it, itwas vandalized in the absolute best way,
and that someone had come in andput a giant UFO stamp across it
about eight to ten inches. Hadjust come in and put a giant stamp
across that one page. I couldread through it, so that became kind
of a piece of personal memorabilia aswell. So I guess. The long
(03:46):
short story there is go to thearchives if you can. I think I'm
definitely missing out on that opportunity.I rely almost exclusively on police reports and
family and the interviews, So Ithink that there's definitely some opportunity for me
to explore covering those local cases foryour paranormal show, Eric, for sure,
yeah, oh for oh yeah,for those Buchanios. Absolutely would be
(04:06):
a great opportunity there. But Idon't want to be rude, but enough
with a small talk. We've gotsome business to talk about here, so
let's get into what we're here for. And that's your new book, Lay
Them to Rest, as you cansee behind me here, and that's a
good place to start. The titleis compelling. Why did you choose that
(04:27):
title? The title came to meimmediately as soon as it began to work
on the book. It just wasright there. And I think it's because
the idea of laying someone to rest. I mean, that's the goal,
right, and it's the goal tome on a couple of different layers and
levels, because the idea of layingsomeone to rest, we talk about that
a lot, right, like welaid them to rest. It's the idea
(04:48):
of resolving a story for someone,for their family. You know, in
true crime we talk a lot aboutavoiding the word closure. One thing we
don't talk about a lot is allowingpeople to ren and to rest easy.
So finding someone's identity is a kindof rest, you know, Solving a
crime is a kind of rest.Connecting someone back with their family is a
(05:11):
kind of rest because it's not justthe unidentified person who's resting. It's the
family who's resting. It's the lawenforcement who's been trying to solve a case
for twenty years who's resting. It'sthe mystery that's resting. So there's all
these different layers of resting. Ithink that we're trying to achieve. So
one of the things I learned throughyour book is that there are a lot
(05:34):
of cases out there of John andJane does a lot of cases. Some
are as small as a bone fragment, some are full remains where we have
pictures of them. The El DoradoJane Doe was one where we had pictures
from her life to use. So, as you're looking at all of the
(05:57):
Doe cases out there, why didyou choose this one to pursue? So
Amy and I don't have just onecase that we're looking at. I know
we talk about in the book.We have a Google doc of thirty forty
fifty cases that we're looking at andshe and I and that's doctor Amy Michael
for people who haven't read the book. She's my close collaborator, good friend
(06:18):
of mine. She's a forensic anthropologist. I met her working on the Fall
Line and that's when I really gotinvolved working on unidentified persons cases outside of
the show. So she and Ihave worked together privately for a long time.
And what I bring to the tableis my ability to do archival research,
field research, and also I doa lot of interviews, which is
(06:40):
not something that scientists do a lotof, So I bring that to the
table. She and I had alarge working document of cases we were interested
in, and we had a coupleof criteria for those cases, cases that
we thought needed reanalysis because they hadn'tbeen looked at since the nineties, cases
where departments might not have the fundingto do testing. And this is not
(07:00):
just DNA testing. There's a worldof testing out there. You know,
radiocarbon blasting, you know isotopic testing, and even just skeletal reanalysis because anthropology
is not a static field, soso much has been learned since the nineteen
eighties or nineteen nineties that simply comingin and re examining a victim can teach
us so much more a case wherenew forensic art might help. So we
(07:25):
had a list of a lot ofcases that we were actively working on at
the time and want to say activelyworking, researching, communicating with law enforcement,
et cetera. And the case thatwe end up pursuing in the book
was one where everything just aligned atthat perfect time for us to cover it
at the time I was writing andfor Amy, she is actually from rural
(07:46):
Illinois. She grew up in thatarea. She has a lot of family
connections there, and her family hadworked in that area, you know,
her whole life. So it justkind of naturally worked out for us that
that was the case. But itwas a case that stood out to us
as well because there had been forensicart out for a long time, and
it was forensic art that had beenshared widely, and we felt that if
(08:09):
that art was precise, someone wouldhave recognized the victim by this point.
So we said, this is acase that hasn't been re examined since the
nineties. Let's see if there's somethingthat we can contribute. I think you
do a really amazing job of tellingthe story of how you're going through this
whole process and really illustrating what's goingon in the moment. As you're describing
(08:33):
what happened, what was the mostsurprising or what is the most surprising part
of that process of solving a Doecase. That's a big question. Eric.
You know, my job, Ithink in terms of the book,
is to be in the reader's seat, you know, because I'm lucky enough
(08:54):
to learn from scientists. You know, my background. My background is in
English, you know, I'm awriter and researcher, and I decided I
have to had to learn science andnot become a scientist, but learn to
understand what they were doing in orderto be a better writer and reporter and
steward of this information. So I'msurprised, like on the daily by various
things that are happening. I'm surprisedwhen an odentologist tells me that he identifies
(09:18):
someone based on a single tooth.I'm surprised when a skeletal reanalysis tells us
that, oh, actually, perhapsan ancestry estimate was wrong. I'm surprised
when we find out that someone's ageestimate was off. I'm surprised all of
the time. But one thing thatI think surprised me the most was that
(09:39):
we don't have a really truly goodnumber of how many unidentified deccedents there are
in this country. We toss aroundthe number of forty thousand a lot,
but as I said in the book, that number was counted somewhere in the
early two thousands, and boy didI try to find a better estimate,
but I still haven't found one,and I think it's just difficult to say
(10:01):
how many people there truly are.So I mean, that was a really
surprising thing for me. How manycases are not solved by DNA, though,
I think is the number one surprisingthing for me that I learned.
That was surprising for me when Iwas reading through and just thinking about that
process. Like, DNA is important, and we do put a lot of
(10:22):
stock in it, especially in truecrime and as we're talking through cases and
things like that, but it's interestingthat they're to see all the different ways
that scientists and other investigators use toidentify these people. It's incredible and really
inspiring as well. Most of themdon't make the news. That's a big
thing too. That was something Ilearned as well when I talked to Amy
(10:45):
or some of my other friends whodo identification. They'll identify several people a
year, and you just don't hearabout it. And I think that's a
good thing that those identifications are happening, you know, based on a medical
implant or a skull id or adental id, and simply we just don't
hear about that. It doesn't hitthe news. And that's because, you
(11:07):
know, investigative genetic genealogy is soexciting and new, which again I'm glad
about because I do want dough casesto get in the news, so that
more dough cases get in the news. But for sure, that has been
the most surprising. While we're talkingkind of about the role of DNA,
I have to say that I havenever in my life thought about the shape
of my teeth as much as Ihave while reading your book, I'm like
(11:31):
running my tongue over the ridges,and I'm like, do I have shovel
teeth? Like? What do Ihave? I had a whole conversation over
dinner with my friends, and wedecided which one of us would be the
easiest to identify based on extensive dentalwork and unique dental characteristics. Like this
invaded my brain for like a month. And I know that dental records have
always played a large role in identifyingremains, But I'm curious how has DNA
(11:56):
testing changed either the use of dentalrid records or the importance of dental records
and identifying remains. I don't knowthat it's changed it. I think it's
made the lack of dental records notsuch a horrific dead end, if that
makes sense, because we always goto dental records first and hope and pray
(12:18):
there are dental records, right becauseif there aren't dental records for a missing
person available, and for those listeningout there, there are so many assumptions
I think we make about what's availablefor a missing person that just aren't true.
Dentists do not have to keep yourrecords. They don't have to keep
your children's records. The rough estimate, you know, good rule of thumb
(12:41):
is hold on to stuff for sevenyears. But that's not any kind of
federal or state law. And TennesseeTodd Matthews from the Dough Network has done
a lot of work to get somelaws in place about you know, there
should be regulations for police must comeget dental records on a missing person by
this amount of time, they mustbe uploaded to nam US, right,
that's but generally they just don't havethose rules. So we assume we have
(13:03):
these great dental records. I mean, my mouth's a mess, you know,
so I have you know, Ithink I have like six crowns.
You know, they'd be like,there's that lady with a disintegrating teeth.
So I have these great dental records, but it only works if someone goes
and gets them and gets them uploaded. Otherwise they're gone. So I think
that having those dental records is amazingand important because the comparison of dental records
(13:28):
is basically free, you know,and that's what we're looking for because DNA
testing is expensive now. Certainly thestr testing, which is that classic testing,
the testing when people say let's getit and codeius and run a check.
Not the expense it used to bevery you know, pretty basic.
Law enforcement does that out of hand. But IgG, which is that investigative
(13:50):
genetic genealogy. That testing is pricey, so having those dental records there,
we never want to skip that.So having an awareness of who is your
dentist, who are your loved onesdentists, who are your children's dentists,
that's so important keeping track of likewhere your dental records are, especially college
(14:11):
kids they move so much, youknow, keeping track of those things.
I don't think that's lessened in importanceany I think simply we now say if
we don't have dentals on a decedentfrom the nineteen eighties, we're not at
a dead end. I think that'sthe big difference. One of the things
I love that kept kind of goingthrough the book was this Isn't Bones,
(14:33):
which is one of my favorite showsof all times. So I just really
every time I read that, Iimagined you saying that, and I just
loved it. So that's off topic, it's not a question. I just
had to say that because it mademy day. I think it was funny
reading a book that a friend ofmine wrote, because I read the entire
thing in your voice and I couldhear like the inflection like I don't need
(14:56):
your audio book, which I knowyou have your setup behind you. Other
people can have your audiobook, butlike, I know exactly how you said
every sentence, like in my head, Well, I was talking to you
while I was writing it, Soyou remember me going on. You remember
me going on some of these tripsand stuff. That was a funny part
when I got to you, goingto Saint Louis and seeing tornado shelters at
(15:18):
the airport. I remember when thathappened, and I was like, oh,
this is giving me a time contextfor when this book was written because
I remember when that happened. Iremember asking you is this normal, and
you were like yes, unfortunately yes, And be glad you didn't have to
use them. Be glad they're there. Yeah, to what Eric said about
(15:39):
it not being bones, and ofcourse the TV show Bones, Doctor Temperance
Brennan, you know that show iswhat drives people into forensic anthropology courses.
And you might assume that forensic anthropologistsare like, oh god no, but
I mean they're happy because it getspeople interested in wanting to learn more about
bones. Right. And so whatAmy has told me is she spends the
(16:03):
next couple of weeks really teaching peoplethat they're dealing with humans, right,
not a piece of bone that's separatedfrom a person and has become an object.
And then once you do that andyou get them to really care about
their remains that they're entrusted with,then they start to really make the connection,
I think, between the kind ofexciting world of mystery and what they're
(16:26):
actually doing, which is caring forthe remains of someone who's been separated from
their identity. Whether that's a historicremain, you know, that's been stolen
in some way from its proper ancestralplace, or whether we're looking at a
discedent who may have died of naturalcauses or been murdered, or a grave
that's been disturbed in some way.I mean that happens all the time from
(16:49):
you know, you might look atwhat they called poor farms, you know,
and this is especially sort of endemicin New England, where people were
buried in the grave, markers removed. All of these people that need to
be cared for in different ways.So she's able to connect that excitement of
you know, learning about forensic anthropologyand that let's solve the crime with the
(17:11):
truth of let's serve this person that'sreally awesome and so noble, such a
noble thing. And I love thateven beyond the glitz and glam of the
television show, like there's this greaterpurpose to it. It's really beautiful.
Was there ever a point when youconsidered what would happen if you couldn't solve
(17:33):
this case? No? Well,okay, tiny bit, but no.
I knew that if we could geta decent sample, we would solve the
case. And I thought that therewas a possibility that we could solve it
even before DNA. There's a coupleof different times, and I'll explain why,
(17:55):
because I knew that we needed newforensic art, because I already had
my sissions that the forensic art didnot match even perhaps the first anthropologists' notes,
right, And that's not to thefault of an artist. I do
want to stress that because forensic artis an approximation, someone has to approximate.
(18:18):
You do an approximation, and ifit doesn't work, then you need
to do another approximation. My friends, who were some of the best forensic
artists in the world, update theirapproximations because if no one comes in,
that means you need to make adjustments. Right. But it became really clear
that the decedent. In this case, the homicide victim did not have the
skeletal asymmetry that was suggested in thefirst forensic art. They suggested pretty extreme
(18:45):
skeletal asymmetry, so extreme that someonewould have one hundred percent recognized her.
So one that I had immediately wasif we get new art out, someone
may immediately recognize her. And whenwe didn't get an immediate hit on that,
I was like, Okay, there'ssome else. Maybe it's age right,
maybe it's something else. When wediscussed her unique dentition and I spoke
(19:07):
more extensively with the odentologist, Iknew that her family probably didn't know about
the extensive issue she had with herteeth, because if they had, that
would have qued them in because whenthe press release came out about her new
art, they released new information abouther teeth. And for listeners who don't
know about this, not only didthis victim have a really unique crown that
(19:33):
was worth noting with a root canal, but she also had really extensive cavities.
But she also had pretty extensive decaythat would have been painful, and
it seemed pretty recent. So ourthought was that her if her family knew
about that they would recognize that immediatelyas well, So we knew that that
was also something that people would haverecognized. And was there the possibility that
(19:55):
she did not have family that couldrecognize it, certainly, but we knew
that as long as there was goingto be a decent sample. I knew
Australia Forensic Labs was going to beable to get a good sample, and
I knew the genealogist in question weregoing to be able to solve the case.
And there's an underlying message there alsothat I think we need to touch
(20:17):
on, which is that a whiteEuropean in America is going to have their
case solved by genetic genealogy as longas their family did not recently come over
from Eastern Europe, with the exceptionof someone who's Jewish, because they are
going to have more likely submitted theirDNA to the database. And this has
(20:38):
mostly to do with health testing,and that's because more white people in America
have submitted their DNA, so it'seasier to solve their cases. And if
you're white, you're more likely tobe identified. And that's just kind of
a fact of life, right,And that gets into a lot of inequities
that I think are interesting to talkabout. And also if we look at
(21:00):
cases and how they get funded,that's a whole different kettle of fish too,
But I knew that she would probablybe identified. One of the things
(21:22):
I thought was interesting when we're talkingkind of about what gets funded and not,
is that the book mentions that theyfound that people who have DOE cases
that have forensic art where people cansee what the person may have looked like
in life and maybe connect with that, do get funded more often than you
(21:45):
know when the dough network doesn't havesome forensic art. But the process of
becoming a forensic artist isn't really astraight line for any of these people.
It's like, you talked about oneperson who could draw pretty good, so
they got kind of moving into forensicart with law enforcement. But then Carl
(22:08):
Koppelman, who I feel is verywell known just because I think his pictures
hold a lot of humanity in them, he was an accountant like that surprised
me. So when it comes tothe forensic art, how is this done?
Do the police have to reach outto people? Are their forensic artists
(22:30):
just floating around America drawing pictures forpeople? I don't understand entirely that process
of getting a forensic artist involved.Well, it widely depends. So most
state bureaus have an artist. Sowe're just lucky here in Georgia to have,
in my opinion, the best forensicartist in the United States, right,
(22:51):
and that's Kelly Lawson. If you'veever seen any of her art and
said, oh my god, that'sbeautiful forensic art, it's Kelly Lawson.
We share it a lot on thefall line. It's beautiful, and that's
because she's a classically chained artist whobecame a forensic artist. But most state
bureaus, so you know, theTBI in Tennessee is going to have an
artist. Of course, the FBAhas artists. Nick Meck has artists,
(23:15):
you know, Parabond has artists.So there are artists. But a smaller
area may not have easy access evento their own state artist. So in
that case, what they can dois they can reach out to a volunteer,
right, someone like Carl or theycan request, for instance, so
Kelly might get a request from astate where there's not perhaps a state artist
(23:40):
in residence for that bureau. SoI worked on an Oklahoma case for instance,
where they needed age progression and therewas not an age progression artist available.
So Kelly Lawson worked for them inthat case to do that. And
so there's a lot of those kindsof connections. You know, artists want
to be careful not to step oneach other feet. There's amateur artists out
(24:02):
there who are training who will offerto do art for cases that are kind
of piled up because you know,all the artists in the United States who
do work for a federal agency astate agency could work all year long and
not cover all the cases. Sothere are folks who offer to do this
reach out. They might go toa smaller police station and say, hey,
can I help out, and they'llsay yes. And of course,
(24:26):
you know, there's the photo compositeart. You know, there's people who
are doing line drawing. But evenat the end of the day, a
lot of these cases don't have anythingto work with because if you don't have
a mandible and a cranium, orat least a cranium to work with,
you're not going to be able tocome up with a piece of art.
And that's running into a major problemwe have with dollcases, which is lack
(24:48):
of narrative, because narrative story iswhat people connect with. That's why I
started writing about DOE cases, isto get people to try and connect with
the narrative. With a missing personor murdered person, there's a narrative of
someone's life there for people to connectwith, them to care about. But
for a dough that string has beenforcibly cut in some way, So how
(25:11):
do you get people to emotionally connectwith that story and get them to share
it? Carl talked about that,Kelly talked about that in my book,
which is you get them to connectwith the art. But if you've ever
looked at DNA dough projects work,sometimes they have to just put up a
basically like a relief shadow to takethe place of the person because there are
not remains available in that case.So then you have to figure out how
(25:33):
do I get someone to connect witha fragment of bone because that is still
representative of the human being that waslost, right, and that becomes kind
of the tough part. I knowit's Parabon Labs is does these composite sketches
through DNA? Are they the onlyDNA lab doing that work? To my
knowledge, yes, I think it'sbased on their specific technology. And I
(25:59):
was actually us looking today because mymom had just finished reading the book and
she wanted to see pictures. Sothey have a big page of them where
you can see both their perpetrator casesand their unidentified person's cases and kind of
get a sense of and you canactually see matched ones as well, so
you can see people who've been matchedand see how closely they came up.
And some of them are very justamazingly close matches. Some are less close,
(26:22):
kind of in the same way thatforensic approximations are. They'll use DNA
to figure out, you know,this person is very likely to have blue
eyes, this person is very likelyto have blonde hair, this person is
very likely to be this or that. But they are still faced with some
of the same problems that every artistis, which is do we show this
(26:44):
person as midweight? Do we showthis person as you know? And if
they don't have height information, etc. They're even going to have some DNA
information about, like, you know, things we don't think about, like
freckles, you know, which canreally add a lot to the approximation.
And maybe just maybe you know,ring a bell for someone and make them
(27:06):
make that call, which is prettyamazing. It's incredible. It's amazing work
that's being done out there. Andagain I keep saying this, but it's
just so inspiring because you think aboutsome of these families that are sitting there
wondering with no answers, or youknow, people who cared about these individuals,
not knowing who they are. It'sjust it's amazing the amount of work
(27:30):
that gets done. And you know, I know that it's a huge part
of all of these labs missions totry to identify these doughs. And it's
just super incredible. But that's justme commenting that doesn't really mean anything.
Well, I do have another questionthough, So knowing that you are an
(27:53):
archival researcher and it's something that you'revery skilled at, you do get access
to things that not everybody has accessto. What's it like for you watching
the internet speculation that goes wild withcases and how people react to things.
How does that feel from your perspective? Well, first, it's totally natural,
(28:17):
right because I started out just beingan English professor, you know,
just good at looking stuff up,and somehow I've ended up today I sit
here with you know, literally twentytwo full doughcases on my desk. They
were on the computer, but Ihad to print some stuff out. You
know, they didn't send me allthat paper. That would have been a
(28:38):
waste. But I'm sitting here withthese files, going through things, and
I just realize everything that I wouldhave missed if I didn't have the contextual
detail that I have, And that'sjust because I would be working off what
was available and what's available. Often. We both know this, and we
both we all three know this becauseof being researchers, and you know,
(29:02):
we do the best digging that wecan. And there are people working on
Reddit and working on other sites thatare just as skilled as we are at
using all of the Internet sources diggingthings up, saying oh, you know
there was a river, you knowone mile away, there was this,
there was this, we can findthe temperature. People are very good at
these things, but ultimately there aredetails that are not available to the public
(29:25):
that change the entire context. I'vebeen in labs and seeing their lab boards
and seeing what was up for testingand gone, oh. I have been
on the inside of a case wherepeople were discussing it on the outside,
and I saw they had four orfive or six facts wrong. And Charlie
and I have talked about this beforeand you kind of go, you know,
(29:47):
but of course that is never somethingyou should share. And you understand
how people are building that house wrongand all those bricks are in the wrong
place. And the house looks good, but the bricks are in the wrong
place. And I know that becauseI have that house wrong myself many times
before. And so what I dois I understand, you know. But
the biggest thing that working directly withexperts in law enforcement and having the access
(30:14):
that I'm granted has done has taughtme when to stop. And where I
stop is where my access to directfacts that I know for sure ends.
I can present here's a road,here's a road, here's a road.
But I don't even go down thetheory anymore. I just say, here
are the things that we know.Here are the things we don't know.
(30:34):
And I can't do anything beyond thatbecause there are too many unknowns. And
my book, the victim who isultimately identified goes on a walk at night.
Maybe you know, as far aswe know, we can't say for
sure where she walked. People thinkshe walked one place she could have walked
(30:55):
somewhere else, and there's all ofthese other things. Some people say that,
you know, she did one thing, some people say she did another
thing. And there is no wayfor me to prove precisely what happened because
you know, my main witnesses toowere on a phone out of state.
The other one was four years old. So how am I supposed to,
you know, precisely say what happened. I can't, so it would be
(31:19):
irresponsible for me to try and buildany kind of real theory based on that,
because what I don't have access toare the files from a different state
where her case was closed. SoI think that I see it, I
recognize it. I appreciate the needto want to understand and close it because
I have that same need. ButI say, yeah, that's where I
(31:42):
stop. That's what I say.So I find that interesting because the reason
I don't have special access to lawenforcement details is i'd like make a fake
Reddit account and just start correcting people, so I will never get access to
literally anything. I'm probably i'd bebanned, like on site, from every
police department. But I know Ericknows your side of things a little bit
(32:07):
because with his brother's case. Youknow, when he's working with not necessarily
law enforcement, but with you know, a private investigator or someone else helping
out, they might find something thathe can't talk about. And I just
yeah, I mean, fake Redditaccount is my solution. But I feel
like you two have a little bitmore self restraint than I do. You
(32:28):
have to protect the case. Imean, there's a lot I left out
of my book because it was necessary, and I think I mean Eric,
of course, I mean that's hisbrother, so you know that case is
paramount. Yeah, protecting the caseis the most important thing. And I
think that's something that people don't understandwhen they are websle thing because they do
(32:49):
want the answers, And there areanswers that I have that people don't have.
And it's it's that way for areason, not not because I'm worried
about getting sued by you know,the purpose trait or anything, but it
is the most important thing. Andso I definitely, I definitely relate with
that, Laura. And even whenyou think you do have the answers,
let me tell you, Like Iwas wandering through a state park on several
(33:12):
different roads trying to figure out whichwas the exact right road with like formats,
do you know what I mean?So even when you think you're right,
you might be wrong. That's sotrue. So kind of speaking a
little bit to the case, afteryou identify the person, you still don't
know necessarily what happened to her.And when the identity was established, you
(33:36):
did contact her surviving family and youmet with them, with her sisters.
And first, can I say,I cannot picture you in a cracker barrel,
And so that part of the bookdidn't really ring true to me.
However, I'll trust that you werein fact at a cracker barrel. But
like, on a more serious note, what was you knew their sister in
(33:58):
a very different context and they did, So what was that meeting? Like,
Well, first, Charlie, Ididn't even know y'all had those in
the Midwest, So I was justsurprised. I'd like, it opened up
a whole new world for me.Like I thought cracker barrel was southern,
so but apparently they're up up inthe Midwest too. Who could say we
(34:20):
have them in New Mexico? Really? Wow, I thought this was a
whole southern thing. I mean,I hadn't been to one since I was
my accent comes out as soon asI start on this. Let me let
me, let me go back toAmerican standard. Yes, so I had
not been to one since I wasfive. So I had spoken to her
(34:42):
sisters several times on the phone,like you know, as we've gone through
the process of you know, theinvestigative genetic genealogy team working with them on
confirmation of identification, I'd spoken tothem as well. We're still in contact
today, like I literally spoke toher daughter this morning, so we're in
regular contact. But it was reallyinteresting because on the Fall line, we
(35:05):
have worked with families for years andyears and years and years. Right Brooke,
who is my co creator, asour main family contact, as she
does the family interviews, but Iwork with families a lot on the back
end, making sure scripts are approved, doing some pickup interviews, making sure
everyone is comfortable and feels good aboutthe situation they're in. So I do
a fair amount of family contact myself, but it's a very different kind of
(35:29):
family contact because we're working with familieswho are in that period of limbo,
who are waiting, and this isa family who has been absolutely shell shocked
by answers and this was the nightbefore the press conference to announce that she
had been identified, and I askedif I could take them to dinner,
and we happened to be at thesame hotel, on the same floor,
(35:51):
two doors down, and I wasby myself because the student assistant who worked
with me and Amy was coming tostay with me. She was lost at
the airport. It was the wholething, but I was really glad to
have that time alone with them.Like I didn't take a voice recorder,
I didn't take any notes. Wejust sat and talked, and they had
all of these pictures of their sisterthat they had rescued from a fire and
(36:12):
a flood. It was such asurreal experience because I had been waiting to
know this woman for years, andthey had been waiting to know what had
happened to her for years. Somy job in that situation, and I
didn't think of it in any kindof formal terms. I was just there
(36:32):
to be with them. But Ithink that my role in that situation was
to listen and to answer the questionsthat I could, and to make sure
that later on I got them theanswers to the questions that I couldn't answer.
And you know, just just tobe there and spend time with them,
and that has sort of been myrole since then. We didn't do
formal interviews until much later, youknow, after there was time to process
(36:57):
and to get answers and to speak. But it was one of the most
affecting experiences of my life. AndI've spoken to dozens and dozens and dozens
of families who have survived crime atthis point, but I think that is
a fairly unusual experience, I think, even for those of us who work
in this field, to meet witha family who's loved one has been identified
(37:22):
after almost thirty years, especially theirloved one whose case was closed because her
case was closed for nearly thirty years, so they were unable to look for
her in a formal way all thattime. She wasn't ennameous, she wasn't
listed anywhere. So a what anawesome thing, What an awesome gift for
(37:42):
that family to be able to hopefullyrest and find some peace in all of
this and some information that they wererelacking. It's a really really beautiful,
touching moment, and I hope thatthat they do find that rest in that
piece. Aside from the Aina Countydough case. Other cases overlapped in this
(38:20):
book, including mummified remains that werefound at a school. I would have
thought the times that human remains werefound in the school would be like nonexistent,
but it turns out that it's notthat uncommon. How do modern human
remains end up in a school,attict? How did that happen? Well,
you know, we have a lotof old schools here, nothing like
you know, say Europe, butthese will be human remains. I mean
(38:44):
there were two mummified human remains,separate sets of human remains that were mentioned
in the book that were found inolder schools. And right now I have
a friend who's dealing with a museum, a private museum, you know,
owned by singular individual, that hada bunch of human remains that were sort
of ill gotten, you know,because until that nineteen sixty eight act about
(39:07):
you know, the ethical donation ofhuman remains, people could pretty much do
what they wanted. So when wetalk about a mummy, I think a
lot of people think about Egypt,right although certainly there are other cultures that
practice mummification as well. But justfor listeners to understand this mummy that we
(39:28):
talk about in the book. Thiswas an amateur mummy, so someone who
was likely my best guess, wouldhave been an amateur scientist, so probably
somewhat wealthy, sort of the youknow gentlemen, you know diletant type had
practiced mummification. Someone may have donethat because they were some sort of you
know, educator, or they hadlearned about ancient Egypt and they wanted to
(39:52):
give it a try. And howthey got those human remains to practice on
we have no idea, but myassumption would be it would not be good.
It could have been someone who wasimpoverished. It could have been someone
who was an indentured servant. Itcould have been someone who was enslaved.
We just don't know. It couldhave been the remains of an indigenous person,
(40:15):
which of course means that those remainswould be under nagpra legally right required
to be returned to the proper peoples. And what was so upsetting about this
was this school really wants to dothe right thing. You know. This
is a private school. At onepoint was a seminary, you know,
(40:36):
so it has a very long background. It's a little confusing for them to
even figure out precisely where these remainscame from, and in the very far
back of their attic, And ifI could explain to you how big and
old the school is, it waslike entering Narnia to go up into this
attic, this huge attic that isbigger than my house. And in the
far back corner they'd found this wickerbasket that contained a mummified person. But
(40:59):
it was a that at first Ithink they didn't even quite recognize as a
mummy, because this decesion had beencoded in Lacker. So I think that
even perhaps they thought at first thiswas some kind of artificial sort of representation
of a human being. And youcan kind of imagine the horror they felt
when they realized this was a personin their remains. And then they have
(41:23):
to figure out what is the kindestand most ethical and the most right thing
to do. How do you possiblyget someone back to their people when the
scientists who us experimented on them hasdestroyed the best ways we know how now
to get that person back. Andso that was what we were left with
(41:43):
when Amy came in to work onthat project for them. I imagine the
care that the school has in makingthat right, even if they don't know
how it ended up on their schoolproperty. They're taking ownership, accountability of
making or it's right. It makesme wonder because, like Eric, I
would have thought zero is the numberof mummified remains in random schools, but
(42:09):
how many are there? And theschools are not making those efforts. And
so I'm glad you included that becauseit does speak a lot to the importance
and I felt like you you spenda lot of care going into the details
of that situation, which really humanizedthe Again, like we said, it's
(42:32):
not bones, it's a person.Humanized that situation where it's like, this
is somebody, and this is somebodywho is separated not just from their identity,
but possibly from their people and theirancestors and their descendants, and it's
time to return that. I hopeother schools are people reading this book who
(42:52):
know about situations like these in schoolswill will get them to do the right
thing. I think they will,because this school acted with a swiftness and
has really made this an ethical andcomplex learning project for their students as well
(43:14):
to research everything they can in thearchives, to learn about, you know,
ethical treatment of people and bodies,to research you know, who could
this woman have been? She alsomay have been a teenager or you know,
a very small woman. You know, how could this have happened?
Why did people mishandle human remains?And the students and staff still check in
(43:37):
to see if testing has you know, come any farther because they really do
care, you know, And soI think it was not only kind of
I wouldn't even say a wake upcall because I think gen Z are so
involved morally and ethically in the propertreatment of humans. I think it was
more of a call to action forthem than a wake up call. They
(43:57):
don't need a wake up call exactly. So before we let you go,
I just to leave us with someof your wisdom. I know that,
like you said, a lot oftimes, we have all the bricks to
the house and we put it togetherand we think there it is, everything
fits. And maybe we don't thinkthat we could fit all those bricks together
(44:20):
into different solutions to a case,and we get kind of some tunnel vision
as armchair sleuths, you know,as I'm sitting there on Reddit, not
on a fake account, FYI,I am on my regular account reading about
cases and reading people's theories and seeingwhat people can dig up, especially what
people can find out about the areasand things. It's amazing. But if
(44:43):
I want to contribute positively to acase, what would your advice be.
I mean, the number one thingyou can do is sharecases first, right,
sharing a case, learning everything youcan about a case, going and
clipping old news articles for people thatdon't have access to them, and sharing
them, especially with family members whohave made pages Facebook, who have set
(45:07):
things up. A lot of familymembers don't necessarily have like archival news account
access, like not just newspapers dotcom, Like I have a Lexus account
that costs me like two hundred bucksa month, Like it's horrific. Whenever
I build a file of archival newsarticles, I share them with the people
whose family member they are about.So that's one thing, you know,
(45:30):
building repositories of information. And whenI say that, I don't mean theories,
right, you know, like mapsof people's houses, intrusive information,
but background archival media information that youcan share, things that you can make
publicly available, but most especially publiclyavailable to the people who are involved.
(45:51):
Right. If you want to goto pages where people are sharing information about
does if there is already let's say, a page about that dough or a
post about that dough. Perhaps youwant to say, hey, I found
this article and you want to postit, right, So any of that
kind of information there if someone issearching, because I know in the case
in my book, the family wasconstantly searching for dough pages, and if
(46:15):
someone had seen a few of thearticles because they missed them because of the
way they were titled, By theway Eric and I talked about this when
we spoke like a year ago,titling something in a more human way could
have changed this case. You know, decapitated head found is not going to
tell you anything. Eric and Isat and talked about this, but if
(46:37):
you'd said, you know, remainsof redheaded woman found, things might have
looked a little different thirty years ago. So, you know, finding an
article, writing a summary, evenarticle, you know, providing that.
I know on Unresolved Mysteries on Redditthey do a really good job of writing
up really detailed objective case descriptions,you know, and sharing those, and
(47:00):
I think those are really valuable.People do that as well, So there's
a lot of ways to do that. Offering if you have graphic design skills,
and you are you know, friendlywith a family who would invite this.
Making missing persons posters. I dothat like all the time. Make
missing persons posters for people to shareif they would like to. If you
(47:22):
want to volunteer at your local MissingPerson's Day in missing person's events, you
can do that. If you don'thave one, why don't you send a
message over to local law enforcement orthe DA and ask why you don't have
one, because you should, right, every area should have one. So
these are all the things I thinkpeople can do, because the thing about
solving a mystery, this is somethingI've really realized. Nothing is a puzzle
(47:46):
with one missing piece, which isreally what I used to think before I
really started working on this stuff,that if I could just obsessively in the
dark find that one piece and stickit and everything would be fine. That's
not going to happen. That's nothow it works. Because a year plus
after this case was solved quote unquote, or at least part of it was
(48:08):
solved, her family is still processingthe trauma. You know. There we're
dealing with a woman whose body partswere separated. Her family is still haunted
by that. They wish they hadall of her to later rest. They
still don't know for sure what happenedto her, and they're still wondering when
(48:28):
they're going to be fully at peace. So is that puzzle solved? No,
I think if her killer was identified, the puzzle would still not feel
complete to them because there's going tobe lost there, right, So I
think we have to look for differentgoals there, and I think those goals
have to be about serving not onlythe case and the people involved in the
(48:51):
case, but looking at building bettersupport systems, better ways of communicating,
better ways of adding detail to howwe share cases with other people. So
not just throwing up, you know, missing woman, but the details we
add there. Eric and I havetalked about this before, that can actually
maybe get them to the right people. If you have archival research skills,
(49:13):
why don't you think about saying,hey, I can cover this case that's
hard to cover. Maybe you're nota podcaster, Can you write a blog?
Can you make a TikTok? Maybeyou can do that too. I'm
not the only person on earth thatcan do that. You know. I
wasn't more and special, you know, I am just stubborn. So you
know, so those of us wholike to do that, and you are
(49:34):
two people like that too. Otherfolks can do that too. Let's get
the cases out there that are lesspopular and maybe they will have a chance
of getting some leads in. Thismay not be the question you asked me,
but it's what I felt like talkingabout. It was the answer we
needed. It was the exact exactquestion I asked. Yeah, at some
point, at some point, youknow, my eyes glazed over and then
(49:59):
my my heart just began to talk. So, you know, I wanted
to know how armchair sleuths could contributepositively to a case, and your answer
is to actually contribute. Well.I want to thank you for joining us
and remind everyone that the podcasts arethe fall line and one strange thing.
(50:20):
But the book is called Lay Themto Rest. As people are listening and
or viewing this on YouTube, thebook will be out so you can get
it wherever you get your books.I mean, I don't know where people
get books, but I'll leave somelinks there. Eric has been representing with
the Green screen back there for you, and we really appreciate you taking time
(50:43):
out of your very very busy scheduleto give us so much time to talk
about this case and the process behindit. I am so thankful that you
had me on. I really appreciateit all my wonderful friends letting me talk
about my book. We loved yourbook. It was incredible and put it
down, so thank you for allowingus to read it and to talk with
(51:04):
you about it. And anytime weget to spend time with you is a
good time for us. So ifour audience wants to join the conversation,
find us on social media. Alllinks are in the description below. We'd
love to hear what you think aboutthe solvability of doe cases as well as
your thoughts on Laura's book, andwith that, we'll see you in a
few weeks.
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