NEW: Ancestry.com Rules Block Law Enforcement Searches

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders, and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
My name is Kristin Dilly.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
I'm a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate,
as well as the social media manager and co administrator
for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime, Bill Thomas.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
It's important to note that this podcast was recorded a
couple of weeks ago, just before we got the latest
solved in the Colonial Parkway murders, that of my sister
Kathy Thomas and Rebecca Dowski. So when I'm referencing Alan
Wade wilmer Se being linked to four homicides, that number
is now six. Now on with the show, Welcome to

(01:01):
mind Over Murder. I'm Bill Thomas. My podcast partner, Kristin
Dilly is not here this week. She is away on assignment,
but should be back next time. Here on Mind over Murder. Today,
we have a very special guest, and I'm going to
struggle pronouncing her last name. It's okay, Jennifer Boocholts. Is
that closed?

Speaker 4 (01:20):
I got a prompt?

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Oh, okay, I practiced, Jennifer. Welcome.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
Thank you so much for having me. Bill.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Tell us a little bit about yourself, and don't be modest.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
I'll try to keep it short. I'm an Army veteran.
I served in the US Army as a counter intelligence agent,
and I've done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I've
done enforced Protection Operation Lizard called all around the world
as a contractor for different agencies. Several years back, I
went and got my master's in forensic science and started

(01:55):
teaching forensics and criminal justice at American Military University, and
I'm still there as a part time instructor. Now. I'm
currently a cold case investigator for the Opatha County Sheriff's
office in Colorado, not Texas, but that's fair to mix
them up that they get half in Bolotin. I'm actually
a civilian criminal investigator, so I'm not badged. But I

(02:18):
can do pretty much everything the detectives can do except
arrest somebody or swear under oath before a judge for
something like a search one. But I do interviews, interrogations,
my foot bunsard warms all the time, write rewards, whatever,
work alongside the detectives. And like I said, I teach
part time. And then my civilian non work investigative partner

(02:41):
George Jared and I host a podcast called Break the Cakes,
and we also co founded a nonprofit by the same name.
So we're dedicated to trying to help families and law
enforcement with unsolved home side cases around the country.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
And the work that you do with Break the Case
that's volunteer work, is it not.

Speaker 4 (03:02):
Yes, and completely separate from my position to the Sheriff's office.
I keep the two separate.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Like you didn't have enough on your plate, then you
had to start a podcast where among your distinguished guests,
and I'll put myself in a less distinguished category.

Speaker 4 (03:16):
No.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
No, I've suggested with you and George several years ago,
and then we've seen each other at Crime con and
other conferences, and I always feel like we have these
fantastic conversations which are not long enough.

Speaker 4 (03:30):
It's really hard though, when you're standing on your table
and you've got tons of people commide one and speak
to you and Kristen.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, one of the great things about crime Con is
you see so many people that you know and respect
and can learn from. In addition to meeting friends and
fans and all that stuff. I love the networking that
can take place. And I can't count how many people
I've met at crime Con and other true crime conferences
that have proven to be incredibly helpful in terms of

(03:59):
educating christ an enemy about various aspects in terms of
their own areas of expertise. That has great value too.

Speaker 4 (04:07):
Oh for sure. And I'm always looking for outside resources
that I call a lot of particular case for assistance
or something. So networking the most valuable part.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Do you feel like there's a through line here with
your army experience and counterintelligence and then moving into more
of a law enforcement and an investigative role. I do so.

Speaker 4 (04:29):
Counter intelligence is an investigative role. We were badged in
the army and on investigative status in most of the
places I was assigned. It's just a different type of investigation.
The cycle of investigation is pretty much the same no
matter what type of case you're working on. But in
addition to that, I think the most valuable things that
bridge those gaps between the two career lines is my

(04:51):
interview and interrogation experience from the Army. He was in Afghanistan.
I interviewed over five hundred local Afghan nationals. Got some
amazing experience there in interviewing and interrogation, and it's some
in Iraq. Know as much, I was doing some different
stuff when I was in Iraq, but have you worked
in South Korea with different human sources, lots of interviewing there.

(05:11):
It's just very interview heavy, and of course that really
teaches you like about human behavior in general and nonverbal behavior, right,
and all those little things that you see on the
via that you're supposed to pick up on Carring is
across in the cold case investigations a lot, because we're
always going back and reinterviewing people or finding new people
to interview. So I think my skill set is directly

(05:34):
applicable there in the patience level that you're taught when
you work in color intelligence. You know, the ultimate goal
of counterintelligence is to recruit human sources to give you
information about your adversary, and so if you're at wartime,
that's going to be whatever country you're fighting. But you
learn in ait the very beginning of your training in

(05:54):
the army that you're just going to be one part
of that process and you may never get to see
the end result of what happens with that source. But
your work, no matter what it is very important. But
you have to have so much patience. And so patience
is definitely a virtue, and that definitely carries over into
cold case investigations because you've got to be patients not

(06:16):
going to happen right away like with a brand new case.
But I enjoy that because it gives me so much
more time to become a subject matter expert on a case,
really evaluate it. It makes freadsheets Lambily's notes, and I
could take my time of me methodical and I love
that software cuttings, but I love it.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Would there be a lot of work with translators because
here I am listening to you talk about being in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea,
you weren't necessarily always conducting those investigations or those interrogations
in the person's native language. Where you would you be
working in a partnership with a translator. Yep.

Speaker 4 (06:53):
In Korea, we had a Korean, a lincol guy who's
grown up in South Korea. He was assigned to us
as a full time translator, so we had him wherever
we need to go or whatever, because, Yeah, most of
the kre instance speak English. With innovating and interrogating, if
you can conduct it in that person's native language, it's
better than trying to get them to think through the
wording to translate themselves. Yeah, and iraqis Afghanistan the same things.

(07:18):
A few Iraqis I worked with did speak decent English.
Usually I'd still take an interpreter with me. And Afghanistan,
nearly every interview I conducted was in their local language
with an interpreter. Right, I just don't speak their language.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
And I suppose in all of those examples, you're looking
for thoughtful answers from this individual, and most of us
are going to think in our native language. So it
actually was simpler to ask someone in their native language
so they could think about their answer and provide you, yeah,
a good in depth answer. But I suppose the trust

(07:53):
of your translator partner is absolutely critical to hear too.
Because say that you need like details, you.

Speaker 4 (08:00):
Have to have an excellent working relationship with your interpreter,
and we would do a lot of training with them
on We would have to train them to pick up
on things we couldn't.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yes, I would.

Speaker 4 (08:10):
Don't you think they're lying or you know they're lying.
You've got to convey that to me.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Don't just think I'm going to get it.

Speaker 4 (08:17):
Correct and we can take a break and walk out
of the room and talk about whatever's going on. But
you've got to convey your thoughts that are in your
head to me because I can interpret their body language
and stuff. But still different because with a different culture.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah, culturally, but you're literally on the other side of
the world. Culturally, you want you didn't grow up there,
and here's this five foot ten blonde woman asking all
these questions. I know we were talking off air about
the fact that in certain places in the world, like
in Germany and Norway you mentioned you fit right in.

(08:50):
And then, knowing that you'd worked in Iraq and Afghanistan,
I thought to myself, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'll
bet a five to ten blond woman really stood out.

Speaker 4 (08:59):
In some way. But a lot of the people I
worked with or talked with were intrigued.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
Oh they were.

Speaker 4 (09:05):
Yeah, they would ask me questions too, And I don't
mind that in an interrogation, right, most of the stuff
I was doing was interviewing the difference. I don't mind
answering questions. What's it like in there? Sim uh huh dog.
Then then after getting sant Obama is an outre So
what do you think about Obama compared to Oh, yeah,
we have to go down this road.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
But it's interesting because people from another country would be
asking you about US presidents and things like that. But
I find even in my working with people from around
the world, they're very interested in what goes on in
the United States politically, socially, even entertainment wise. Yes, movies
and television shows and all that stuff. They have a

(09:48):
great deal of interest.

Speaker 4 (09:50):
Yes, it's so different to them to what they're used to.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
So what brought you to Colorado?

Speaker 4 (09:56):
Colorado is my first thirty station in the Army. I
was stationed at Fort Carson. I really enjoyed it when
I was stationed here. The mountains are really close by,
tons of hiking and wreck climbing, and I liked to
skie so it has all the outdoor stuff and four seasons.
And ironically, my husband, who was Air Force, we were
stationed here at the same time, but we didn't meet here.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Oh that's interesting.

Speaker 4 (10:20):
You actually met in Korea. And then I got out
of the Army. We were in Florida because he was
stationed at Florida and we really didn't like Florida. Yeah,
so he got out, We're like, where do you want
to go? So we both kind of like Colorado situated
halfway between our families. And then he got accepted to
the University of Colorado for engineering, and so we just

(10:41):
ended up moving back and we've been here ever since.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Oh got it. I wasn't sure if it was a
work thing, but it was really one of those where
where do we go from here? Question?

Speaker 4 (10:50):
Out in a way we can go where we want.
When I was working back then, I was traveling, so
if I was hold, you could live wherever you want
in the US and the flight to where you needed to.
So it was a fun decision.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
And then what kind of cases have kept you busiest with?
Break the Case both the podcast and your nonprofit organization.
You and George Jarrett have been working together for how
long now.

Speaker 4 (11:14):
It willed begs years this month. Sorry, I had to
think it was January thirtieth of twenty nineteen that we
met over the phone, that we got connected at the
hip on the Rebecca Gold case. It had a positive
outcome on that one her killers now serving forty years.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
Wow, fantastic work.

Speaker 4 (11:32):
For those who don't know the case. I'll just be
real short.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Were they Oh sure?

Speaker 4 (11:36):
Unting out there and all over our website too. You
can go look at all the content. But ultimately her
killer joined a Facebook group that George and I were
admins of and he was making comments and then he
started direct messaging me in twenty twenty and we had.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
A and this is under his name, his real name,
And was this a name that was already known to
you as a potential suspect, not as a suspect.

Speaker 4 (11:58):
So when he joined the group, one of our crowdsourcing
team members that gets picked a caller Miranda. She's amazing,
she's great in genealogy. She had mapped the whole family
tree of Rebecca's boyfriend, and that was important because Rebecca
was killed inside her boyfriend's house and then her body
was moved to a secondary location when someone tried to
clean the scene, so I just know from experience, like

(12:20):
with someone then't that much effort. They got a known
connection to the victim, right of course, were eyeballing the
boyfriend and like, how did he get cleared and does
he actually have an alibi? And if it's not him,
then somebody connected to.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Him to him.

Speaker 4 (12:32):
Yeah, So this guy named Larry Miller joined our Facebook
group and Miranda says, hey, by the way, that's Casey's
first cousin. Okay, that's interesting, and you see there's real name,
all right, But we did a bunch of research and
at the tire Rebecca's murder, William was living in Texas
with a wife and a small child, and we didn't
no reason to believe he was anywhere near the state

(12:53):
of Arkansas with like twelve hours the way. So that's
why he was never a suspect to us. But we
weren't curious why he was in the group, and then
he definitely lied to me when we were d mding
each other, I found roundabout ways to ask how did
you find out about this murder? Living overseas working in
the oil industry, And so he went to great lengths
to keep his relationship to the family private, but it

(13:16):
knew so I played don't but I was like, that's interesting,
but we still don't have a reason. I think he'd
been in the state of Arkansas within about six weeks
before his arrest. Swinney, we got the magic tip.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
From somebody that put him there.

Speaker 4 (13:28):
Found out he had come to visit that weekend because
his mom and brother were living in the area, and
that was another piece of the puzzle we did not know.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Wow, something went to.

Speaker 4 (13:37):
Huge lengths to cover up the fact that these three
were in the area at the time for murder.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
By the time it was confirmed that he was in
Arkansas at the time of Rebecca Goulds murder, were you
suspicious of him by that point.

Speaker 4 (13:53):
No. It was that piece of information that changed our
whole focus right then, where we're like, okay, okay, there's
these two brothers that nobody ever admitted were in the
state at the time. One of them has got to
be involved in this at a minimum, but we didn't
know which brother. We were looking at both the brothers,
like doing as much ancestry and back hoomb research as

(14:14):
we could have to figure out everything we could about them.
What's really disheartening about this case is that William Miller's
name had been in the case file since the first week.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Of course, police had known he'd.

Speaker 4 (14:25):
Been in the state, and they didn't think it was
weird that he fled with state the day after, and
that his mom packed up her entire house and moved
to Texas the week of the murder.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
How is that even possible that someone that blows town
right after this Brital murder doesn't move on to law
enforcement's radar.

Speaker 4 (14:43):
I don't know, because obviously as soon as we found out,
we were alarmed.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Oh no, all yeah, so without question.

Speaker 4 (14:51):
So in November of twenty twenty, and part of the
problem with this case is that they'd had the same
detective onage for fourteen years who believed that this was
a drug deal gone wrong.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
And he was locked into that theory.

Speaker 4 (15:03):
And it was completely false. We know that now he
completely publicly accused this guy with no evidence, oh boy,
and basically ruined his wife. But anyways, outside in twenty twenty,
they also got a new detective on it. Finally he
let an open mind, so she went back to the beginning,
and he started looking at William Miller unbeknown to us,
moved out to Oregon where William was in November and

(15:25):
interviewed them, and William.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Confessed, so really that part of it was a new detective,
fresh eyes, not being locked into past theories.

Speaker 4 (15:33):
Yes, correct?

Speaker 2 (15:35):
Was your relationship with the new detective? Was it able
to be a cooperative one?

Speaker 4 (15:40):
It was okay. It was falsely a one way road
where if we found information that seemed important, we would
pass it to him. He did call me in Georgia
a couple times with questions. He was in our Facebook
group under fake name, he told us then he was
I don't know which fake person he was.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, maybe better for you not to know just exactly. Yeah,
John Smith was a member of the Facebook group.

Speaker 4 (16:04):
I was just happy he was watching working around. So
there was some collaboration, But honestly, after the conviction, we
asked if we could meet with him because we wanted
to better understand what did we do that helped, What
could we have done better? Did we overstep? And he
refused to meet with us.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
Oh my, because we're.

Speaker 4 (16:21):
So basically talked to us ever since, and the story
is actually not over because the way I am confessor
Rebecca's murder, he confessed to five other murders, but with
the other five he claimed they were sex workers, so
he didn't know their names, so he couldn't tell and
best meters exactly through and he did get some details.
He did give some locations Arkansas. They pleased didn't do

(16:42):
anything about those extra confessions, those additional confessions.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Excuse me, wow, how disappointing.

Speaker 4 (16:49):
Been trying to work on that on our own ver and.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
You've worked on other cases as well. For again, this
is all at no charge. This is out of the
goodness of your heart.

Speaker 4 (16:59):
Really ever take money from a victim's family. Never.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
And you mentioned something which is I think our reason
for this conversation today. You mentioned in the Rebecca Gould case,
which had a tremendous outcome, will you identify a suspect?
And if Arkansas law enforcement doesn't want to acknowledge your role,
I guess we'll just have to live with that. But
it sounds like you played a pretty major role in
helping build this case against this suspect. You mentioned using

(17:28):
ancestry to help you build out family trees, and I
know you've done this successfully in other cases. You and
I were talking about this a week or so back
and we thought we should get together and talk about
it on the podcast. What's going on with the changes
in what they call the terms of service for ancestry
dot com, which I know many of us, myself included

(17:51):
use for family DNA research. My understanding is that mid
last year ancestry dot com made change to their terms
of service. What does that mean for investigators like yourself?

Speaker 4 (18:05):
I mean the giant mess It was actually a lean November,
I believe, but they change their terms of service. So previously,
as me working for somebody in law enforcement, we were
not allowed to upload a DNA profile and Ancestry we
understood that right weren't supposed to use it to try
and identify suspects. But we could use it and I

(18:25):
have done this extensively at work. We could use it
to build chandy trees of missing persons or to help
us an attempt to identify the owner of unidentified human remains.
So I did this on at least a half dozen
of our cases at work. Part of my purpose with
a couple of the missing persons cases is because I
discovered that we didn't have a relative's DNA of the

(18:47):
missing person and coded so built these family truths to
identify which relatives of the missing person were still alive,
and then figure out which is the one that's going
to share the most DNA with the person, And then
I would use my law enforcement out of bases to
find that person's phone number, usually because they might not
live here and won't explain what I'm doing. And you
never had any problem with anybody giving me the DNA.

(19:09):
And again, we wanted to make sure that for each
missing person case we had a relative's DNA and CODUS
and then a name US which is another database for
missing and unidentified persons. So now with the updated terms
of service, and this is the direct quote from their website,
but we are not chusing services in connection with any

(19:29):
law enforcement investigation or judicial perceiving, which means I can't
even use it like in the examples they just gave
to try to locate the missing person's relative. Can't begin
to understand who wouldn't want that done?

Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, this whole thing seems in it just completely insane.
I don't want to move too quickly past something, which
is that for those situations where law enforcement is uploading
a profile, a DNA profile of either a missing person
or a suspect in an investigation, and they're uploading those
two Jedmatch and Family Treat DNA because those two databases

(20:07):
permit law enforcement to upload an unknown person or a
suspect into their databases. But no one's trying to upload
into Ancestry or there's there's my Heritage, and so many
other popular sites, but the only two that allow uploads

(20:28):
are jed match and family Tree DNA. Am I correct?

Speaker 4 (20:32):
That's correct, and an author has one they've started well, DNA.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Solves, which I know is a bit smaller, but every
DNA database could potentially offer a lead to law enforcement
in those situations. But there are no violations of terms
of service when someone does that.

Speaker 4 (20:49):
That's correct. So another quote from they're updated terms of
service is that users are not to use information obtained
from Ancestry DNA services, whether they're in whole or art
in combination with any other database or service for law
enforcement like so basically acting only half a law enforcement
or helping law enforcement or any judicial proceeding. So it's

(21:10):
not only that I, as a Sheriff's office employee, can't
use it. I can't ask a failing member of my
missing person, say to go to their Ancestry account and
could you look in your tree for me and tell
me this, that or the other. Technically not allowed to
do that. The other thing we've done in the past
is ordered at home Leona kids from Ancestry for victims'

(21:31):
family members to take and upload into Ancestry so that
they can see if they number one get a mash
to their missing person, there is an off chance that
the missing person is out there alive.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
Absolutely yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:44):
Or also to help us find relatives. And again we've
never had anybody have an issue doing that for us,
but now that's we're not allowed to do that either.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
I'm outraged. I think what Ancestry is trying to do
is so overstepping their bounds. First of all, well, where
do they get off telling the family member of a
missing person, for example, that they can't upload their DNA
as part of a quest. Look, my family found a

(22:12):
half sister we knew nothing about, which has been an
exciting journey in and out of itself. I'm sure conversation
for another day, but we have a new sister and
we're thrilled to have her. I don't see how Ancestry
has a leg to stand on in terms of you
telling a family member, here's a home kit, spit in
this tomb like we've all done, and upload your DNA.

(22:35):
This might help in the search for your lost loved
one or your murdered sibling, like in my example, a
sister Kathy is a murder victim as part of the
Colonial Parkway murders. I don't even think they're standing on
very firm ground here. They have no right to tell
you what you can do. We all pay for our
subscriptions to ancestry where you were doing genealogical research. I'm

(22:59):
looking into the promises and the mcneces, which is my
mom's maiden name, which is one of the ways we
ended up finding my new half sister. This is crazy.
I don't even think they're standing on very firm ground here.

Speaker 4 (23:11):
And not only is applying to ancestry dot com, but
the other databases that I guess they control, well, I
don't know if they own, but that includes find a grank,
which I thought was a totally public website that any civilian.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
User companion inform each and we infuse that in our
case too.

Speaker 4 (23:28):
Yeah, so I have a homicide victim from nineteen eighty eight. Oh,
she has a daughter who was one year old when
she was killed. I knew the daughter had been in
the military. I'm using all my law enforcing databases like
she and not find this girl. None of the information's correct.
I'm like stretching my head. How am I going to
find this girl? I need her DNA. I don't have

(23:49):
any relatives DNA for this homicide victim. I'm just googling
my victim's name one day, let's see if there's anything new.
And up comes a link to find a grave And
there's no obituary, but there is a list with a
photo of her headstone. And I noticed there's one comment
from her daughter, made ten years prior. But I noticed
the daughter actually made to find a grave account. I

(24:10):
made an account and find a grave, messaged the daughter
to find a grave, and that's how we connected. What
is wrong with that?

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Who? What? Nothing?

Speaker 4 (24:18):
Once? The problem?

Speaker 2 (24:20):
This daughter, who would have been one at the time
of her mother's death, would now be a grown woman.
Yes she is and has every right to hear from you.
Was she aware of the fact that you were looking
for her?

Speaker 4 (24:35):
No, the like all the other information I had found
on her, was not valid. I had found her ex
mother in law and spoke to the ex mother in law,
but she'd been divorced for a while, so the X
mother in law didn't know where she was living.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
It weren't in touch anymore, that kind of thing.

Speaker 4 (24:49):
Didn't have any more contact information for her. And when
I finally got a hold of her, she goes, this
is the first phone call I've ever gotten about my mom.
It was so critical, it was so important, and she
was so thankful. So, like you said, how dare you
prevent me from trying to find somebody through an open
source database.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
You're listening to mindover Murder. We'll be right back after
this word from our sponsors. We're back here at mindover Murder.

Speaker 4 (25:22):
And then they're also saying we can't use newspapers dot
com anymore. So you're telling me you can't go look
up my person's obituary.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
This is crazy. I use newspapers dot com probably at
least once a week. They Ancestry also own newspapers dot com.

Speaker 4 (25:38):
I guess.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
So I find myself looking up things regarding our family history,
and it's incredibly helpful to be able to look up
an article. I'm very disturbed by something which is that
many of the sources of information in the ancestry kind
of array of tools that are used by genealogists, our
public information to start with, like local and state records

(26:03):
of births, deaths, marriages. Yeah, and I'm willing to pay
for my subscription. I don't have a problem with it.
I recognize the providing a valuable service. But for them
to say that you can then not look for this. Now,
woman the daughter and it sounds like very happy to
hear from you with information about her late mother. How

(26:25):
can they say, oh, we're not going to allow you
to use this information, and if you pay for it,
you're not doing anything that's untoward or illegal done at all.

Speaker 4 (26:38):
We're just helping the groups and their families. And I
would love, I would actually love to talk to somebody
in Ancestry who did all this, because they actually contradict themselves.
Is also in the terms of service, it says, quote
Ancestry does not claim any ownership rights to your content,
control how you choose to share your content within the services,
or limit how you share it outside of Ancestry. I'm like,

(27:01):
wait a minute, so which is it?

Speaker 2 (27:03):
So which is it? Are you going to try to
prevent me from using this information to move an investigation
forward or not.

Speaker 4 (27:12):
So they have someome they really need to make some
check sits to their wording if you asked me, but
if you want to get minitty gritty, I was just
reading it a line for line. I'm like, wait, this
contradicts what they.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
What it says two paragraphs before this whole thing. It
just I'm disgusted, And like I said, I have no
problem whatsoever paying for the service. I pay for the
service of a year. I use the service. As I
was mentioning to you, I think I probably looked something
up no less than once a week. We have friends
of ours that are helping us research the Colonial Parkway murders,

(27:42):
which is a case. Now we're finally, after all these years,
starting to see some significant movement forward thanks to the
Virginia State Police and SAKE grants at a Sexual Assault
Kit initiative grants that they've been applying for. And now
they've linked this suspector's deceased Alan Wade Wilmer Sr. To
four murders, one pair of which are part of the

(28:03):
Colonial Parkway murders directly, and one Loriente. Powell has a
newly identified victim of Wilmers. She had been considered what
Kristin Dilley often calls Colonial Parkway Murders adjacent. It was
a murder that took place right around the same time
and in the same geographic area of Virginia, and we
had always thought that Lorient Powell might be related to

(28:25):
the Colonial Parkway murders. Again, thanks to the Virginia State Police,
DNA Labs International and their team, Yes, the Department of
Forensic Sciences for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and a whole
bunch of people I'm probably forgetting they all worked together.
Blied Versaki Grant sent the evidence down to DNA Labs
International and lo and behold we got another hit. Amazing,

(28:47):
but it's so exciting when you see this moving forward. Now.
Did they use ancestry in any of their searches? I
don't know. I've never even asked them.

Speaker 4 (28:58):
Who cares right?

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Who cares well?

Speaker 4 (29:02):
You solved a murder? Who doesn't want that?

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah, her family's been waiting for answers for over thirty years.

Speaker 4 (29:10):
I was randing with George about this the other day
and I'm like, who know what he goes? There's one
group Jen and I'm like, who, And he's the criminals themselves.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
I was gonna say, is Joy's talking about the bad guy?
Who else would not want this?

Speaker 4 (29:23):
Yeah, and so Ancestry, let's just help the rapists and
murderers stay out there longer.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Yeah exactly. They'll be your biggest fans. But the rest
of us are standing here scratching our heads.

Speaker 4 (29:33):
Yeah, it's point not Also, it's taxpayer dollars that paid
to digitize all those public records. Yeah, in story didn't
pay for that. This is unbelievable to me. I'd love
to get somebody from Ancestry on the podcast to explain
just how this benefits anyone. The one thing it did

(29:54):
occur to me reading articles preparing for today's conversation, this
feels like they're trying to protect their terf because they
have and are probably, without questioning, the market leader in
terms of genealogy. I know there are lots of other
sites that provide similar services, but I've found it in
my limited experience that ancestries array of tools are very helpful,

(30:16):
which is why I use.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
It and am happy to pay for it. This almost
feels like a defensive move, like they're trying to prevent
other companies or competitors from getting any kind of leg up.
The whole thing just feels so counter productive. Where would
it leave investigators like yourself in terms of the work
that you do both for your volunteer not for profit

(30:40):
organization and for the work you do during the day.

Speaker 4 (30:43):
Technically there are rules apply to both roles, because in
both roles, I'm working on unsolved cases, whether it's directly
short my law enforcement or indirectly through the nonprofit, but
ultimately for law enforcement use. I'm stuck. I'm literally payicking
because my subscription's gotta run out soon and I'm not
going to have anything, and I will find a replacement,

(31:06):
But what I've found is there's nothing comparable right now
on the market. My understanding is there's a couple of places,
a couple companies that have something that they're working on
that will be allowed to be used by law enforcement.
Is not going to be next month, six months, a year.
Like I got cases that work on. I have massive
family trees I've built in ancestry and now what Yeah,

(31:26):
I can download the jed com file. There are other
programs where you can upload a jed com file. Right,
don't look anything like your tree did on ancestry, and
it's not nearly as usual friendly. It's also not connected
to all those historical records, so there's major limitations, and
it's gonna stall cases. There's absolutely no doubt if we
abide by their terms of service, which my ethical guidelines

(31:49):
say I have to, it's going to stall progress in cases,
especially unidentified human remains cases. Who doesn't want their missing
launched one identified? Oh, there's nobody who wouldn't want Maybe
even a criminal would want that if they're missing their brothers.
Has nothing to do with a crime being.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
I also think the people in those communities when you
hear about someone when they say remains were discovered somewhere.
A lot of times it's in isolated locations, or it's
on a farm or in a barn or places like
that where there really had a complete loss as to
who this person might be. The members of the community
often pull together and they say, we really want to

(32:29):
find out who this person is. There's the humanity of
it all. How tragic it is for someone to die
apparently alone, to not even be known by their families.
People always have these legends, Oh, my uncle moved to
California and we never heard from him again. Maybe that happened,
But what if it didn't. What if exactly your uncle

(32:51):
is the person that was found in this isolated location
with no clue as to who he is.

Speaker 4 (32:59):
I may give a real case scenario there just hopen Nework.
So in nineteen eighty six, here in Colora Springs, the
skeletal remains of a man were found in a field.
I say, there's no walidarid or anything. You give any
indication who he is. He was shot in the head.
It's a homicide. Forty years twenty twenty six, forty years.

(33:20):
Just last week we met with Ramdville College and if
law enforcement out there is listening and you have unidentified remains,
we use contact Ramobow because they had this amazing program
where they will hey for the development of the SNIP profile,
which is a type of DNA profile you need to
do genealogy, and they're students who are genealogists in training,

(33:40):
put together the family tree based on those connections and
figure out who your person probably is. Just had a
meeting Thursday. They put it We're on a zoom just
like you and I are right now. They put up
a PowerPoint its side too. It says, here's your league
candidate with a name and a lack of wow because
love it so one hundred percent confirmed.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
Not confirmed yet but not even part of the less.

Speaker 4 (34:01):
Right so emotionally and positively overwhelming. Forty years and we've
been trying to figure out who this guy is. Yeah,
this poor man MO homicide investigation. If you don't know
who the victim is, because.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
It's right, Yeah, you can't ever tell who killed someone
if you don't even know who the poor victim is
to start with. You have a name, Now I.

Speaker 4 (34:22):
Have a name, and everything so far in our research
is falling into place, thankfully. He has a brother and
Hassan who were alive. Huh I did both of them?

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Did they know what ever happened to them? To their
no idea brother.

Speaker 4 (34:37):
And he was an infant when his dad went missing.
It was killed. He had no memory of his dad,
and he'd heard stories through the years like maybe he
was in witness protection and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Yeah. Boy, some of these start to sound like urban legends.

Speaker 4 (34:51):
After a while, Draling was a little more reliable, but
not much. He's like, I think the last tie my
son was in the late seventies, and I remember he's
out my mom and then he took off, and but
he moved around a lot. He was in and out
of jail, and we just lost track of it. And
so without genealogy, we never ever would have figured out
who this is because he was never reported as missing.

(35:13):
None of his relatives are felons, so they're not in codis,
so there's no DNA hit and there was nothing else
to go on. So without genealogy, he would still be unnamed.
This will be the first case at my Sheriff's office
that I can't co exult because it's still.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
An open homes Did you've identified the victim?

Speaker 4 (35:30):
You've identified, We've solved part of it, and be the
first one where we used genealogy to do again. I
keep saying, who wouldn't want that for their family member?
His brother was just overwhelmed naturally emotions, But who wouldn't
want their loved one found and identified? And so now
we can give him his name back, Now we can
give his remains to his family, so he can have
a proper burial. Those things are so important.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
They are, and this is the kind of thing where
you think to yourself, why would ancestry want to stand
in the way of giving that family answers. They have
every right to use the ancestry system to find their
lost brother and father. I recognize that it would be

(36:13):
a significant challenge. I'm not saying it can't be done,
and your team might be able to actually solve the
homicide part of this equation. But at least we've solved
the missing person's side of the equation. And with all
due respect, no, he didn't go into witness protection or
anything like that. He was a homicide victim. They have
to live with that sadness, but at least they know

(36:34):
what happened to him, and as you said, if they
choose to, they'll know where his remains are. They can
if there's a family plot or whatever. I just think
this is a human being. He deserved to be treated
with respect. And it took forty years the science caught
up here, and this is a great use of genealogy.

Speaker 4 (36:56):
Yeah, I don't know why they want to forbid that.
What the ultimately they do is I have more of
law enforcement off their site. Of course, so they're gonna
lose a bunch of money. I'm sure one of these
other companies is going to develop something very similar and
then all the business will go there.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yeah, so it doesn't have to be that way.

Speaker 4 (37:12):
So I got a lot of people say just keep
using it and they're never gonna know. But there's problems
with that when you're law enforcement, because you have ethical guidelines, right,
and you've built of follow those morally. Personally, I want
to say, yeah, I'm just gonna keep using it, but
I can't and my agency won't let me. So I
have to find an alternate, and we will. It's just

(37:35):
gonna be a challenge, and I know I'm not the
only one in this country going through it. I'm sure
there's tons of others panicking and trying to figure out
what to do.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
Also, in the example you just used from Colorado Springs,
will there be an announcement that his remains have been found?
What's the next step?

Speaker 4 (37:53):
So we got the brother and son's cheek swaps, and
then those will go to the lab and they'll do
a one to one comparison between the DNA profile from
the skeleton to those two relatives, and then they'll pretty
confidently be able to say, yeah, this is the guy,
especially since we have his son. That's really good and
then we'll then me and my partner will write on

(38:13):
the press release and there will be an announcement. But
we don't want to be premature because there is still
a chance that it's not him, we think, so we
have to be sure DNA wise. But yes, but it'll
probably be a couple of months because lab work takes
a while. Super exciting, it's just you can't describe the feeling.
You can identify, I think with what I'm feeling in
a way like when they start getting the DANI results

(38:35):
around the murders that are possibly connected to your sister,
I'm sure you get that same elation, Okay, And.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
We're thrilled for the other family where eight visions and
what they call the core of what they call the
Colonial Parkway murders, four couples. We've always said for years,
decades even that we would be happy with any movement whatsoever,
and so for us to find out and we all
know each other that the killer of Robin Edwards and

(39:04):
David Nobling, who were one of the couples in the
Colonial Parkway murders, I know those people. I have spent
a lot of time with the Edwards and Nobling families,
I'm beyond thrilled that they finally have answers. I'm not
saying it makes their lives perfect from here on out.
We all have the usual struggles in real life. It

(39:25):
makes me happy that they have answers. Our suspect Wilmer
is dead. But we're grown ups here. We know that
it's been thirty nine years since the start of this case.
We knew there was a real good chance that with
so many years going by, there's a very good chance
that the offender would be deceased by the time we

(39:46):
were able to identify him, and that would probably be
a good chance, good chance in the case you're describing too,
it's been forty years. Answers are very meaningful, and I've
been trying to convey this to particularly the FBI, who
are handling my sister and Rebekadowski's case. Two of the
double homicides in our case are FBI cases because they

(40:07):
happen inside in National Park, and then two of them
are handled by the Virginia State Police because they happen
outside the National Park. But I've been trying to explain
to the investigators over the years, answers are very meaningful.
If we have three hundred thousand cold case homicides here
in the United States. First of all, I believe that

(40:28):
should be a national scandal.

Speaker 4 (40:30):
It is in crisis and many other words.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yeah. At the same time, if you think about it,
let's just say each one of those three hundred thousand
people has a mom and dad and a couple siblings.
At a minimum, they're probably related to four people. I'm
just making this up. That means that right here in
America tonight, there are over a million people struggling to
get to sleep every single night for the rest of

(40:55):
their lives, wondering what happened to their loved one. I
think answers it's not always about punishment. Yes, of course,
if they identify an offender, and we do have some
living potential offenders in our case, would I like to
see them in jail for the rest of their lives. Absolutely,
Even answers are very meaningful and important. Like you say,

(41:19):
for this young woman who was one year old when
her mom died, it was very meaningful for her to
be provided with this information, just like the brother and
the son of this man that was a homicide victim.
Because even as you describe the situation, I thought to myself. Man,
that's going to be a long shot to solve that
homicide forty years later. It isn't like you got a

(41:40):
running start way back in eighty six. At the same time,
to know what happened to him, what happened to her,
that's incredibly important. Absolutely, I'm shocked that ancestry feels that
throwing up roadblocks in the path of hardworking and investigators
and forensic genealogists, law enforcement and other well meaning people

(42:06):
around the country. I think it's shocking.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
Yeah, and why could we at least get an explanation.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Because yeah, I still I haven't I haven't heard one.

Speaker 4 (42:15):
Very unclear as to what happened that led them to
make this decision. But obviously the higher up's ancestry don't
have any missing persons or homeside victims in their families,
because yeah, can ie making this decision that they did.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Welcome to my world. I'd be happy to sit down
with them, and I'll be polite.

Speaker 4 (42:30):
That's same year.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
I can't thank you enough for coming on Mind over
Murder and explaining a little bit about what's happened, perhaps
just as importantly, how this is going to impact cold
case investigations in Colorado and across the country.

Speaker 4 (42:45):
Everywhere it's going to stow. Some will into a cross
for a while, So I hope. I guess they can
sleep fine with that at night. But I can't. And
I will say, if you don't mind me addressing the
privacy concerns that often come up. Sure, I'm still in
your from so many people. I'm not letting law enforcement
out of access to my DNA. Listen to me, Your

(43:05):
DNA is not actually in any of these databases. Yes,
new spit in a tube and they developed a profile,
but that is not welling into the database. They turned
it into a code, which if he wrote it out
on a piece of paper and found all the street
would mean absolutely nothing. It's a code inversion that goes
in the database and your actual DNA is destroyed. So
I can't go in ancestry and take your DNA and

(43:29):
plant it out a crime scene, or give it to
a health insurance company, or any of that. Moment that
I'm still hearing, it's not true. Even in ancestry, you
can make your family tree one hundred percent completely private
so nobody can see it. I know this because this
is how I this is the settings I use for
my victims family trees. If you have privacy concerns, just

(43:51):
make your tree completely private. And if you want to
know how to shoot me email, I'll tell you how.
Not part it's two settings.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
But jen that they're going to clone me. You know
they're going to clone me?

Speaker 4 (44:01):
No, so I only join and address up privacy concerned
like even have a couple family members on not why
law enforcement see why DNA?

Speaker 2 (44:08):
You don't have to.

Speaker 4 (44:10):
Yeah, I'm not seeing your DNA.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
If you want to say no, just say no.

Speaker 4 (44:14):
Yeah. So I don't know why Ancestry couldn't just do
an opt in.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Opt out type saying Heaven forbid is due?

Speaker 4 (44:21):
Yeah, or people just learn how to make their treat
private if you don't want law enforcement to see you treat.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
But it's as simple as checking and unchecking boxes. And
if you feel strongly about it, I understand, then just
check the box or unchecked the box that says this
can be used by law enforcement. And I want to
be clear heer. This is not currently an applicable use
on the Ancestry database. It's only jedmatch and family Tree

(44:46):
DNA and the off RAM database that allow this kind
of use by law enforcement. I don't get the paranoia.
I understand there are people that distrust law enforcement. Look,
I've had my issues with law enforcement over the issue.
Any final thoughts before we wrap, How.

Speaker 4 (45:04):
Is this going to play out in sport someday? And
I can already hear my ideas office saying, oh, you
went against the term of service of a company, but
means we can't use anything that you collected, like fruit
to the poisonous tree. But the thing is a term
of service is not a law. So Ancestrys hasn't created
a law. I don't know what does light lead to,

(45:24):
and I don't even want to speculate, but I will
just say there's no court precedence yet that I know
about where an agency did go against the terms of
service and then what happened the judge? What a judge
showed out. I would hope not I identify somebody or whatever.
But it will be interesting to see how this plays
out in court in the future. But it could cause
really a ton of problems in court cases too, depending

(45:45):
on the judge.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
We'll be following this as we go along, and we'll
definitely have you back for further conversations about what you're
doing solving cold cases and helping families get answers.

Speaker 4 (45:56):
Well, I very much appreciate it. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
We'll do it for this episode of mind Over Murder.
We'll see you next time.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl Space Media.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway
Murders on Facebook.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas five six.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
Thank you for listening to mind Over murdero

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