January 5, 2026 • 28 mins
This report details the arrest of David James Zimbrick for multiple child sexual assaults that occurred in a Kansas park over two decades ago. Although the cases went cold for years, advanced forensic genetic genealogy eventually allowed investigators to identify the suspect by linking DNA from a preserved cigarette butt to his biological relatives. By combining modern consumer database technology with meticulous evidence preservation from the original crime scenes, law enforcement successfully connected the 2000 and 2003 attacks to a single individual. The narrative emphasizes the persistence of detectives who utilized emerging scientific methods to solve a mystery that had remained stagnant for a quarter-century. This breakthrough highlights how modern DNA techniques can secure justice for survivors long after the statute of limitations might have typically discouraged further inquiry. Ultimately, the text serves as a testament to the evolving power of forensic science in holding predatory individuals accountable for historical crimes.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today we are opening a box that has been sealed
for a quarter to century. We're tracking the story of
a terrifying, repeated crime, and it was solved not by
a confession, not by some lucky break, No, not at all.
It was solved by a fusion of well hyper specific
technology and a detective's gut instinct, all the way back
(00:20):
in the year two thousand.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
It really is the ultimate cold case narrative for the
modern era, isn't.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
It is. It's this profound story about time and about
how the smallest, most ordinary discarded object, a single cigarette butt,
can survive what two and fifty seven days and bring justice.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
And that's what this is really all about. We're looking
at a decades long pursuit where the suspect was, for
all intentsive purposes, completely invisible to the established legal systems.
A ghost a ghost. So this deep dive is really
about witnessing that exact moment forensic science transcended its own limitations.
How so it shifted from a simple database search we'll
(00:57):
get into to an analysis that leverages the entire Hue
genetic landscape. It's a huge leap.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So we're focusing on the arrest of David James Zimbric,
a fifty eight year old man from Raytown, Missouri. He
was taken into custody on December thirty, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
And the charges are just extremely serious. We're talking about
sexual assaults on two different children in Lawrence, Kansas.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Back in two thousand and then again in two thousand
and three. And when you just look at that timeline
twenty five years between the first crime and the arrest,
you just you realize what a monumental effort this was.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
That twenty five year chasm is really the central character
in the story.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
That's a great way to put it.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
And our goal today is to meticulously walk you through
the three distinct eras of this investigation. Okay, first the
initial crimes and the incredible, meticulous collection of the evidence.
Then that long decade plus plateau where traditional science just failed.
And third the revolutionary breakthrough of forensic genetic genealogy or
(01:54):
FGG that finally gave them the answer.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
And when law enforcement finally closed that gap, that chasm,
the relief was you could feel it. It was palpable,
not just for the department, but for the whole community
that had carried this fear for so long. Lawrence Police
Chief Rich Lockhart, he didn't mince words. He called Zimbric
a sexual predator and said the arrest ensures he is
in a place where he will not ever be able
(02:18):
to hurt another child.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And that powerful sense of finality. Yeah, justice delayed, but
not denied. That's what we're trying to understand today.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
It's the ultimate proof that persistence, when you combine it
with scientific innovation, can overcome well, just about any passage
of time, precisely.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
So, let's begin at the very start, at a location
that should have been safe but it became the site
of repeat terror hashtag tashtag, the initial terror and the
critical evidence twenty twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
To really appreciate the foresight involved here, you have to
transport yourself back. We're in Lawrence, Kansas in the year
two thousand and the setting is Naismith Valley Park. It's
described as a popular wooded green space, you know, a
quintessential place for kids to just enjoy a summer ride
their bikes.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
And that very sense of openness, that accessibility is exactly
what the perpetrator exploited. It's a common tactic. Unfortunately, predators
use these seemingly safe public spaces where kids feel comfortable
and you know where their movements are less scrutinized. Right.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
And the first documented assault that we have in the
source material happened on August twenty five.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Two thousand, a seven year old girl.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Just seven. She was riding her bike near the park
when she was approached by a man. And the sheer
consistency of the predatory pattern across both of these crimes
is just chilling.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
What was the lure?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
The man used a financial lure. He offered the child
twenty dollars to help him find something.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
And that lure it serves two key purposes. First, it
creates a sense of compliance, and second, critically, it provides
a plausible reason to separate the victim from public view.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
And it worked. He successfully coaxed her away from the
busy parts of the park into a more secluded wooded
area where the assault took place. Her father, who had
rushed to the area looking for her, found her. She was,
as you can imagine, commatized, but she provided this crucial,
almost microscopic detail that would become the entire foundation of
(04:12):
this twenty five year case.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And what was that?
Speaker 1 (04:15):
She described her attacker as a man who had been
smoking a cigarette.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Wow, such a small detail.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Tiny, but that detail, which could have seemed so innocuous
at the time, it sets up the incredible action taken
by the first responders. This is where we have to
just you pay tribute to foundational police work. Absolutely, the
responding officers, including a then detective Mike Macarte who's long
since retired, they didn't just process the scene quickly. They
treated it with painstaking meticulousness, and they were specifically searching
(04:44):
for anything related to that cigarette.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
And they found several cigarette butts yep. But the true
investigative gold, the detail that just speaks volumes of out
the perpetrator's immediate flight from the scene, was that one
of those butts was still smoldering.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Still smoldering.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, just think about the timeline that implies the victim runs,
the perpetrator flees, and within moments the police are there
finding physical evidence that is still hot.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
It's a snapshot of the crime frozen in time exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Chief Lockhart later reflected on this, and he noted that
the officers, without knowing it at the time, were collecting
what would become the absolute lynchpin of the case decades later,
that smoldering butt was a perfect pristine DNA sample.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So Lawrence PD they have this phenomenal piece of evidence.
It's got the perpetrator saliva, so it has his DNA
and they moved with for the time a lot of urgency.
They extracted the DNA profile and entered it into the
FBI's Combined DNA Index System CODIS in November two thousand
and one.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
And this is where the limitations of the technology that
era become just brutally.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Apparent, because the result was nothing zero.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
COTIS back then and even now. It operates on a
very specific principle. It uses what are called short tandem
repeats or STR markers.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Okay, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
In simple terms, it's essentially a very high resid matching system,
but for a very limited set of data, looks at
maybe thirteen to twenty specific, highly variable regions of the genome.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
So it's looking for an exact match.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
An exact match. If the profile they found in Naismith
Valley Park didn't directly match someone who was already in
the system, a convicted felon, or maybe a profile from
another crime scene, the search just stopped dead.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
And since David Zimbrick had no prior criminal convictions that
would have required his DNA to be collected and uploaded
to CODIS. He was, for all intents and purposes, invisible.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Completely invisible. The system failed, but through no fault of
the investigators or the technology itself. It just wasn't designed
to catch someone like him.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
So the case goes cold for nearly three years. The perpetrator,
relying on that cloak of anonymity that COTIS gave him,
he returns to the same.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Area, which confirms the consistency of HISMO.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
It does. On May twenty three, two thousand and three,
we see the pattern repeat itself.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
This time he approached two ten year old boys who
were riding their bikes.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
And the exact same lure was used, offering the money
to help search for some kind of lost item. He
managed to separate them, leading one of the boys into
the woods and assaulting him.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
In this two thousand and three case, sexual evidence was
collected directly from the victim, and that sample was then
sent to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation the KBI for analysis.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
But interestingly, the records show this profile wasn't actually entered
into COTIS until much later, right in.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Twenty fifteen, and that delay, while it might seem trust rating,
it really reflects the operational realities of forensic labs. They're
often dealing with huge backlogs, shifting priorities over the course
of decades.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
But once that two thousand and three DNA sample was
finally uploaded in twenty fifteen, the system did exactly what
it was supposed to do.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
It did, and that led to the first major internal
breakthrough in the case. The KBI secured a DNA cold
hit in January of twenty.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Sixteen, so the two thousand and three sexual evidence.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Profile match the profile they'd extracted from the two thousand
cigarette butts. This was a critical moment for the investigation
because it proved definitively that these two heinous assaults, separated
by years, were the work of a single individual. The
police now knew they were chasing one ghost, not two.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
But critically, they still had no name.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
No name. They had a profile, an alphanumeric signature of
a predator, but zero identity to attach.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
To it, So the case plateaus again. From twenty sixteen,
they know they have a serial offender. They've got this
high quality evidence linking him to both crimes, but they
are still completely stuck. We have to really linger on
this point. Why did a case with perfect, undeniable DNA
evidence just languish for another several years and for over
(08:39):
fifteen years in total.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
It all boils down to that inherent design limitation we
mentioned the Codis wall.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
The Cotis wall.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Think of code as like a high security lock box.
It only compares keys that have already been vetted and
registered keys belonging to convicted offenders. Zimbric was a ghost
because he had managed to evade any serious arrest or
conviction before this time. As DNA wasn't in the system.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
So the key needed to open that lock box just
didn't exist in the database.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
It didn't exist, which means thousands of hours of traditional
police work, interviews, tips, psychological profiling, monitoring sex offenders, all
of that had likely already.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Happened, but it couldn't get them a name.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
It couldn't advance past the identity question because the system
of record was genetically silent on this individual. The sophistication
of the evidence preservation, which was amazing, It allowed that
cigarette book profile to be viable fifteen years later to
make the twenty sixteen connection was ironically overshadowed by the
lack of a suitable technology to identify the person behind
(09:39):
that profile.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
They had reached the absolute limit of direct match forensic science.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
The case was completely unsolvable until the entire scientific paradigm shifted.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
And that shift, that paradigm change, is exactly what sets
up the next act of this investigation. The Caddess wall
started to erode around twenty eighteen, and it was driven
by headlines that had nothing to do with Lauren's key,
but everything to do with forensic science.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
We're talking, of course, about the arrest of Joseph James Angelo,
the Golden State Killer, the Golden State Killer. And that
case wasn't just a win for justice, it was a
revelation for cold case detectives everywhere. It proved absolutely and
undeniably that forensic genetic genealogy FGG was a real operational tool.
(10:22):
It could solve the oldest and most difficult cases by
completely bypassing the code's limitation.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
This national revelation provided the immediate inspiration for Lawrence PD.
And what's fascinating is that Detective Amy Price, who recognized
fgg's potential, had been involved in this case since its
early days.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And that long term institutional memory, that persistence, it's so
vital for catching that necessary wave of technology when it comes.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
She led the crucial decision to engage Parabon Nanolabs.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
A Virginia based company that specializes in FGG analysis. So
the first step was translating that twenty five year old
DNA profile, the one from the smoldering cigarette butt, from
the SPR format used by code is into the specific
data format needed for genealogical searching.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
What's remarkable here is the procedural timeline the genotyping that
conversion process. It was successfully completed in March twenty twenty,
which seems.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Fast, but it's still a critical four year lag between
the inspiration the Golden State killer arrest in twenty eighteen
and the actual data conversion. And even this step faced
delays that were completely out of their.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Control, right the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Exactly, which impacted everything from lab staffing to supply chains.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
But once that conversion was done, the real work began,
and this is the part we really need to explore
for you, the essential mechanical difference between the old way
and the new.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
It fundamentally changes how we think about individual DNA privacy
versus our familial connections.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
So let's dive deep into that comparison with CODIS. You
have the str profile, as we said, it looks at
maybe thirteen to twenty highly variable regions or marker right.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You know, all those markers are unique enough to distinguish one
individual from another for a direct match. They are not
dense enough to reliably trace family relationships beyond say a
first or second cousin.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
FGG, on the other hand, it relies on a massive
amount of data known as single nucleotide polymorphisms.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Or SNP SMP. Yeah, and you can think of smps
as the tiny single letter variations in your genetic code.
Where CODIS looks at a few dozen features, FGG analyzes
hundreds of thousands, sometimes over seven hundred thousand specific genetic markers.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So the density of information gives it immense statistical power.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
It's like comparing looking for a person based on their
height and eye color that's CODIS, versus looking for them
based on every single fingerprint, skin pore, and hairstrand on
their body. That's FGG.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Okay, So the SMP data allows for reliable identification across
vast distances of biological relationship.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Precisely, the method is built on finding distant relatives instead
of looking for David Zimbrick's profile directly. The analysts uploaded
the crime scene SNP data to specialize consumer genetic databases.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
About platforms like gd match or Family Tree DNA exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Which are unique because they allow users to submit their
commercial test results from places like ancestry or twenty three
AMBI and crucially opt in to permit law enforcement to
search their genetic data.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
That voluntary consent is the whole legal foundation that FGG
investigations stand on.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
It is, so the magic isn't locating the suspect directly,
but locating say a third or fourth cousin who submitted
their DNA to one of these platforms and click the
allow law enforcement box.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Okay, so the statistical power comes from triangulation.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yes, Let's say the crime scene DNA matches a third
cousin on the suspect's paternal line and a fourth cousin
on the maternal line, and maybe a second cousin once removed,
who lives in a specific county in Kansas. Right by
identifying shared segments of DNA across these multiple distant relatives.
The genealogists can mathematically work backward to determine the most
(13:55):
recent common ancestor the great great great grandparents maybe, and
then trace the subsequent descent lines forward.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
And that process doesn't just trace the family tree. It
helps triangulate geography and age, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
It creates a sophisticated dynamic map. If five distant cousins
all trace back to the same couple who lived in Lawrence,
Kansas in the nineteen twenties, you now have a very
specific lineage to flow.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
This is a painstaking process building these extensive family trees
spanning centuries, tracing shared segments forward and backward through public records, obituaries,
census data.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Newspaper archives, everything. It's a huge shift. We move from
a passive system codis just waiting for a direct match
to an incredibly active, sophisticated process of building an entire
lineage based on genetic proximity and pair bond nanilabs.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
They didn't just do the genealogy right, no.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
They also assisted initially by creating predictive composites of the
suspect's potential appearance, things like eye color, hair color, basic
facial features all based on the DNA.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
But the family tree is the main investigative tool.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
It's the primary tool. The composits can sometimes provide psychological
guidance for the detectives, but the key takeaway here is
that FGG allows justice to entirely bypass the inherent limitations
of the code of system, and it does it by
leveraging voluntary genetic submission by the public. It is, without exaggeration,
the single biggest leap in forensic science in the last
fifty years. Hashtag touch HAG Tracing the roots and closing
(15:21):
the net twenty twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
So by early twenty twenty they have this high resolution
SNP profile. It's ready for the databases. But the genealogical
path it wasn't a straight.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Line, No, not at all. The parabon analysis immediately indicated
a significant complication for the investigators. What was it The
genealogy suggested the suspect had been adopted. Oh wow, And
from a detectives perspective, this is like hitting a massive
non genetic roadblock. Standard genealogy relies on unbroken lines of inheritance,
you know, tracking names through birth certificates and historical.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Records, and an adoption record often just severs that paper
trail completely.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
It makes the tree instruction exponentially more difficult.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
So that means the detectives couldn't just rely on the
thousands of public records that genealogists typically use. They have
to go right to the source.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Which necessitated intense legal and investigative work to identify the
biological parents. It means getting court orders or search warrant
subpoenas to access adoption records.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Which are frequently decades old and often sealed under privacy laws.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Exactly. It's a complex, time consuming legal dance that contrast
so sharply with the quick digital search in the genealogy databases.
It forces the investigation back into the paper.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
World and the investigative scope it must have broadened dramatically.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
It did. The initial leads generated by the FGG analysis
and the subsequent paper searches weren't just localized to Lawrence.
Detectives were tracing these leads across multiple states.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
That introduces logistical hurdles, travel costs, the need for complex
inneragency coordination.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Think about the commitment involved. This wasn't a local issue anymore.
The search for a suspect in a Kansas assault case
now required investigative resources spanning the Midwest, possibly even beyond.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
But the good news is that by twenty twenty two,
so two years into this intensive follow up, the power
of FGG was sufficiently recognized that the case started getting
some real institutional weight behind it.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
You mean the Canvas Bureau of Investigation and the FBI
stepped in to provide active assistance. That's right. Absolutely, the
KBI and the FBI now have dedicated resources and expertise
specifically for complex FGG follow up. And this institutional support
providing staff funding for travel access to cross jurisdictional databases,
(17:37):
that was crucial in accelerating the final stages. Local agencies
can only handle so much complexity on their own.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
So the ultimate breakthrough, the moment that DNA profile finally
got a name, happened in late twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
And it's so important to note that time lag. The
FGG genotyping started in twenty twenty and the name wasn't
confirmed until twenty twenty five. It just shows the intensive,
years long slog of that follow up work.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
That October twenty twenty five breakthrough required a long distance
effort detectives traveled all the way to Santa Fe, New Mexico,
to interview the biological birth mutter that they'd identified through
that meticulously constructed genetic trade, and this.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
One single interview proved to be the final piece of
the puzzle.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
She confirmed it she had placed a child for adoption
many years ago, but the critical game changing detail she
provided was that the child she gave up had actually
contacted her in two thousand and five. And with that revelation,
she provided the name they had been searching for all
this time, David Zimbric.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Wow. Just imagine that moment for the detective. You spent
years chasing genetic markers, building ancestry trees, navigating sealed records,
and suddenly a name, David Zimbric is provided, attached to
the very source of the biological material.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
It's the ultimate convergence of the genetic and the historical record.
It is so once they had the name, the investigation
pivoted back to traditional means, and with lightning speed, they
immediately cross referenced David Zimbri's name with residential records, adoption records, and.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
The subsequent investigation confirmed that he had lived in key
areas surrounding the crimes Lawrence, Kansas City, and Raytown.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
And the birth mother provided another vital confirmation, a photograph
of David Zimbrick. Right When detectives compared this current photo
against the original suspect descriptions provided by the victims twenty
five years earlier, and remember, those physical descriptions were the
only non DNA evidence they had for decades, the physical
match just further solidified their certainty they had their man.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
The net then closed very rapidly. In November twenty twenty five, detectives,
now working with the assistance of Raytown Police, located Zimbric
in Raytown, Missouri, and they conducted an interview.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
The sources indicate Zimbric was noncommittal. He provided very little
information during that interview, but.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
The most critical step was securing a direct comparison DNA sample.
And given the overwhelming evidence trail they had, officers had
the legal authority to either gain his consent or compare
tell him to provide a DNA.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Swab, regardless of which path was taken. The sample was secured.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
The final indisputable scientific confirmation arrived on December eighteenth, twenty
twenty five. The KBI conducted the final comparison and they
confirmed a direct one to one unquestionable match.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
The profile from the smoldering cigarette butt from the year
two thousand was a genetic match for David zimbric and.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
That match means the entire twenty five year long search,
from the initial sighting of a smoldering butt to the
multi state genealogy, the adoption subpoenas, the interview in Santa Fe,
all of it was correct. The evidence had simply waited
for the science to catch up.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Ten days after that confirmation, the arrest was executed. US
Marshals arrested David Zimbrick in Retown, Missouri, without incident, on
December twenty ninth, twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Five, and he now faces extremely serious legal charges rape
of a child under fourteen, aggravated criminalsodomy, and aggravated indecent
liberties with a child. He was initially held on a
massive one million dollar bond in Missouri, pending his extra
addition back to Douglas County, Kansas, where the crimes took place.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
So the investigative journey is over, but the.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Legal battle for justice has just begun. Hashtag tagshag Broader
applications and justice delayed.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
We have spent a lot of time detailing the technological advancements,
and you know rightly so. FGG is the big story
of the twenty twenties and cold casework.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
It is.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
But as we pivot to the broader implications, we have
to return to that fundamental, low tech beginning.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Yes, the success of this case is dual layered. The
technological sophistication of FGG is the headline, absolutely, but it
is ultimately useless without that foundational evidence. This case is
a profound case study in the power of preservation.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Detective Macade's decision in two thousand to collect that smoldering
cigarette butt to catalog it.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Correctly, and the institutional commitment of Lawrence PD to meticulously
store and preserve that evidence for a quarter of a century.
That is the essential prerequisite.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Just think about the logistical challenges involved maintaining a perfect
chain of custody, ensuring the sample didn't degrade or become contaminated,
paying for the storage, and just maintaining the faith that
an unsolved case from two thousand would eventually yield fruit.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
And had that cigarette but degraded or been lost, The
link between the two thousand and two thousand and three
cases would have been impossible to make regardless of whether
FGG was ever invented. The path had to be preserved
perfectly for the future science to.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Work, and that preservation allowed for justice to finally be addressed.
For the human cost, we have to acknowledge the survivors
who are only children at the time of the assaults
and who have lived with this trauma knowing their attacker
was free for decades. They are adults now who can
finally hopefully receive some measure of closure.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
And Chief Lockhart expressed that hope that the arrest brings
them some measure of comfort, recognizing that this is truly
a victory for their well being.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
The police chief actually quantified that commitment. He noted that
nine two hundred and fifty seven days elapsed between the
first assault and the arrest.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
That number just underscores the sheer perseverance of the law
enforcement community, the thousands of hours of investigative work, the
periodic file reviews, when technology updated, the interagency collaboration, and
the monumental effort required for that cross country genealogical trace.
They just never gave up.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
No, they didn't, and this perseverance extends beyond the solved cases.
Law enforcement noted publicly that there were three other similar
incidents in the area during that period.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
With matching descriptions of the assailant.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Exactly but critically lacking corresponding DNA evidence. So the public
appeal following Zimbrick's arrest underscores the wider impact of having
a sexual predator operating undetected in a public space for
so long, and they urge any potential victims in those
other three incidents to come forward.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Now, let's connect this success back to the technology, but
through the necessary lens of ethical scrutiny. Right while we
celebrate this resolution, FGG is not without its ethical and
legal tension. It is, after all, a tool case capable
of identifying individuals who never consented to law enforcement access
to their DNA simply because a distant relative did.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
This is the crux of the modern debate, isn't it.
The success stories like the Zimbric case, they highlight the
immense benefit delayed justice for victims of violent crime.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
But the method raises serious questions about genetic anonymity. You have,
in effect relinquished a degree of your own privacy. Simply
because your third cousin, who you may have never even met,
chose to submit their DNA and opt into law enforcement searches.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
We have to be clear on the current guardrails that
are mentioned in the source material. Very important fgg relies
on the voluntary nature of consumer databases like ged match
and family Tree. DNA users must actively opt in to
allow our data to be searched by law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
That voluntary submission is what maintains the legal footing. If
a consumer site does not have an opt in policy,
law enforcement typically needs a court order that has to
meet a much higher standard of probable cause.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
And Furthermore, guidelines currently limit fgg us strictly to serious
violent crimes right.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
That's right, homicide, kidnapping, and aggravated sexual assault. The exact
charges zimbric phases. This prevents its use as a sort
of phishing expedition for lower level offenses. The system is
designed to close only the most egregious cold cases where
traditional methods have failed.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
But the concern that's often raised is the concept of
genetic surveillance by proxy. Does the state gain a level
of access to citizens' genetic information through their family members
that they wouldn't normally possess, And how.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Do we balance that right to genetic anonymity against the
societal imperative to solve cases of extreme violence and protect
the public. It creates a compelling and I think necessary tension.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
And the fact is science has created a means to
dissolve the anonymity that predators have historically relied on the
passage of time.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Zimbric's case is now part of a broader national trend,
and the advances aren't just in genealogy, they're also in
the sensitivity of DNA analysis. Labs can now extract usable,
high quality profiles from samples that are tiny or highly degraded,
something that was unimaginable in two.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Thousand, which means that every unsolved case with viable DNA,
however old it is, is essentially being reopened.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yes, the story of David Zimbric is proof that science
is relentlessly catching up to those who relied on the
simple hope that time would shield them from accountability. The
tiny trace left twenty five years ago on a small
piece of trash became the undeniable witness.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
In the end, As we conclude this deep dive, let's
distill the three key takeaways that should really resonate with
you the listener from this extraordinari investigation.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
First, the absolute enduring value of meticulous evidence preservation. If
that smoldering cigarette butt had not been collected and stored
perfectly for quarter century, the link between the two crimes
and the subsequent FGG investigation would have been completely impossible.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
That low tech, foundational police work was the essential engine.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
It was everything.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Second, revolutionary power of forensic genetic genealogy. FGG has redefined
the cold case landscape by moving the investigative search from
relying on direct matches of known offenders to successfully tracing
complex familial networks.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
It shattered the anonymity afforded by the old codis limitations.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
And finally, the profound impact of institutional and individual persistence.
We are talking about a commitment that spanned three decades.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
It required collaboration between local police, state agencies, the FBI,
and private genetic labs. It's a testament to the fact
that dedicated law enforcement will not let time erase the
need for justice.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And Chief Lockhart's message to the survivors who are now
adults and have carried this burden for so long, it
provides the final urgent hope, don't give up hope. We're
not going to.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Give up hope, and the tenacity shown in this case
confirms that science and dedication can reach back decades to
deliver accountability. It does, and that leads us to the
final thought we want to leave you with. Building directly
on the foundation of the Zimbrac case, this entire investigation
hinged on a discarded item and the voluntary choice of
a distant relative to share their DNA give an fgg's
(28:10):
capability to solve cases like this, And considering that our
genetic data is increasingly digital and connected, what is the
optimal societal balance between leveraging this incredibly powerful tool to
bring delayed justice to violent crime survivors and protecting the
fundamental right to genetic privacy for individuals who never consented
to have their lineage searched by the state. It attention
(28:31):
that every generation moving forward will have to navigate
Today we are opening a box that has been sealed
for a quarter to century. We're tracking the story of
a terrifying, repeated crime, and it was solved not by
a confession, not by some lucky break, No, not at all.
It was solved by a fusion of well hyper specific
technology and a detective's gut instinct, all the way back
(00:20):
in the year two thousand.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
It really is the ultimate cold case narrative for the
modern era, isn't.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
It is. It's this profound story about time and about
how the smallest, most ordinary discarded object, a single cigarette butt,
can survive what two and fifty seven days and bring justice.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
And that's what this is really all about. We're looking
at a decades long pursuit where the suspect was, for
all intentsive purposes, completely invisible to the established legal systems.
A ghost a ghost. So this deep dive is really
about witnessing that exact moment forensic science transcended its own limitations.
How so it shifted from a simple database search we'll
(00:57):
get into to an analysis that leverages the entire Hue
genetic landscape. It's a huge leap.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So we're focusing on the arrest of David James Zimbric,
a fifty eight year old man from Raytown, Missouri. He
was taken into custody on December thirty, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
And the charges are just extremely serious. We're talking about
sexual assaults on two different children in Lawrence, Kansas.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Back in two thousand and then again in two thousand
and three. And when you just look at that timeline
twenty five years between the first crime and the arrest,
you just you realize what a monumental effort this was.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
That twenty five year chasm is really the central character
in the story.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
That's a great way to put it.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
And our goal today is to meticulously walk you through
the three distinct eras of this investigation. Okay, first the
initial crimes and the incredible, meticulous collection of the evidence.
Then that long decade plus plateau where traditional science just failed.
And third the revolutionary breakthrough of forensic genetic genealogy or
(01:54):
FGG that finally gave them the answer.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
And when law enforcement finally closed that gap, that chasm,
the relief was you could feel it. It was palpable,
not just for the department, but for the whole community
that had carried this fear for so long. Lawrence Police
Chief Rich Lockhart, he didn't mince words. He called Zimbric
a sexual predator and said the arrest ensures he is
in a place where he will not ever be able
(02:18):
to hurt another child.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And that powerful sense of finality. Yeah, justice delayed, but
not denied. That's what we're trying to understand today.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
It's the ultimate proof that persistence, when you combine it
with scientific innovation, can overcome well, just about any passage
of time, precisely.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
So, let's begin at the very start, at a location
that should have been safe but it became the site
of repeat terror hashtag tashtag, the initial terror and the
critical evidence twenty twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
To really appreciate the foresight involved here, you have to
transport yourself back. We're in Lawrence, Kansas in the year
two thousand and the setting is Naismith Valley Park. It's
described as a popular wooded green space, you know, a
quintessential place for kids to just enjoy a summer ride
their bikes.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
And that very sense of openness, that accessibility is exactly
what the perpetrator exploited. It's a common tactic. Unfortunately, predators
use these seemingly safe public spaces where kids feel comfortable
and you know where their movements are less scrutinized. Right.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
And the first documented assault that we have in the
source material happened on August twenty five.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Two thousand, a seven year old girl.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Just seven. She was riding her bike near the park
when she was approached by a man. And the sheer
consistency of the predatory pattern across both of these crimes
is just chilling.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
What was the lure?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
The man used a financial lure. He offered the child
twenty dollars to help him find something.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
And that lure it serves two key purposes. First, it
creates a sense of compliance, and second, critically, it provides
a plausible reason to separate the victim from public view.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
And it worked. He successfully coaxed her away from the
busy parts of the park into a more secluded wooded
area where the assault took place. Her father, who had
rushed to the area looking for her, found her. She was,
as you can imagine, commatized, but she provided this crucial,
almost microscopic detail that would become the entire foundation of
(04:12):
this twenty five year case.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And what was that?
Speaker 1 (04:15):
She described her attacker as a man who had been
smoking a cigarette.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Wow, such a small detail.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Tiny, but that detail, which could have seemed so innocuous
at the time, it sets up the incredible action taken
by the first responders. This is where we have to
just you pay tribute to foundational police work. Absolutely, the
responding officers, including a then detective Mike Macarte who's long
since retired, they didn't just process the scene quickly. They
treated it with painstaking meticulousness, and they were specifically searching
(04:44):
for anything related to that cigarette.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
And they found several cigarette butts yep. But the true
investigative gold, the detail that just speaks volumes of out
the perpetrator's immediate flight from the scene, was that one
of those butts was still smoldering.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Still smoldering.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, just think about the timeline that implies the victim runs,
the perpetrator flees, and within moments the police are there
finding physical evidence that is still hot.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
It's a snapshot of the crime frozen in time exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Chief Lockhart later reflected on this, and he noted that
the officers, without knowing it at the time, were collecting
what would become the absolute lynchpin of the case decades later,
that smoldering butt was a perfect pristine DNA sample.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So Lawrence PD they have this phenomenal piece of evidence.
It's got the perpetrator saliva, so it has his DNA
and they moved with for the time a lot of urgency.
They extracted the DNA profile and entered it into the
FBI's Combined DNA Index System CODIS in November two thousand
and one.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
And this is where the limitations of the technology that
era become just brutally.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Apparent, because the result was nothing zero.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
COTIS back then and even now. It operates on a
very specific principle. It uses what are called short tandem
repeats or STR markers.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Okay, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
In simple terms, it's essentially a very high resid matching system,
but for a very limited set of data, looks at
maybe thirteen to twenty specific, highly variable regions of the genome.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
So it's looking for an exact match.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
An exact match. If the profile they found in Naismith
Valley Park didn't directly match someone who was already in
the system, a convicted felon, or maybe a profile from
another crime scene, the search just stopped dead.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
And since David Zimbrick had no prior criminal convictions that
would have required his DNA to be collected and uploaded
to CODIS. He was, for all intents and purposes, invisible.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Completely invisible. The system failed, but through no fault of
the investigators or the technology itself. It just wasn't designed
to catch someone like him.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
So the case goes cold for nearly three years. The perpetrator,
relying on that cloak of anonymity that COTIS gave him,
he returns to the same.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Area, which confirms the consistency of HISMO.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
It does. On May twenty three, two thousand and three,
we see the pattern repeat itself.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
This time he approached two ten year old boys who
were riding their bikes.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
And the exact same lure was used, offering the money
to help search for some kind of lost item. He
managed to separate them, leading one of the boys into
the woods and assaulting him.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
In this two thousand and three case, sexual evidence was
collected directly from the victim, and that sample was then
sent to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation the KBI for analysis.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
But interestingly, the records show this profile wasn't actually entered
into COTIS until much later, right in.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Twenty fifteen, and that delay, while it might seem trust rating,
it really reflects the operational realities of forensic labs. They're
often dealing with huge backlogs, shifting priorities over the course
of decades.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
But once that two thousand and three DNA sample was
finally uploaded in twenty fifteen, the system did exactly what
it was supposed to do.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
It did, and that led to the first major internal
breakthrough in the case. The KBI secured a DNA cold
hit in January of twenty.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Sixteen, so the two thousand and three sexual evidence.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Profile match the profile they'd extracted from the two thousand
cigarette butts. This was a critical moment for the investigation
because it proved definitively that these two heinous assaults, separated
by years, were the work of a single individual. The
police now knew they were chasing one ghost, not two.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
But critically, they still had no name.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
No name. They had a profile, an alphanumeric signature of
a predator, but zero identity to attach.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
To it, So the case plateaus again. From twenty sixteen,
they know they have a serial offender. They've got this
high quality evidence linking him to both crimes, but they
are still completely stuck. We have to really linger on
this point. Why did a case with perfect, undeniable DNA
evidence just languish for another several years and for over
(08:39):
fifteen years in total.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
It all boils down to that inherent design limitation we
mentioned the Codis wall.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
The Cotis wall.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Think of code as like a high security lock box.
It only compares keys that have already been vetted and
registered keys belonging to convicted offenders. Zimbric was a ghost
because he had managed to evade any serious arrest or
conviction before this time. As DNA wasn't in the system.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
So the key needed to open that lock box just
didn't exist in the database.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
It didn't exist, which means thousands of hours of traditional
police work, interviews, tips, psychological profiling, monitoring sex offenders, all
of that had likely already.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Happened, but it couldn't get them a name.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
It couldn't advance past the identity question because the system
of record was genetically silent on this individual. The sophistication
of the evidence preservation, which was amazing, It allowed that
cigarette book profile to be viable fifteen years later to
make the twenty sixteen connection was ironically overshadowed by the
lack of a suitable technology to identify the person behind
(09:39):
that profile.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
They had reached the absolute limit of direct match forensic science.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
The case was completely unsolvable until the entire scientific paradigm shifted.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
And that shift, that paradigm change, is exactly what sets
up the next act of this investigation. The Caddess wall
started to erode around twenty eighteen, and it was driven
by headlines that had nothing to do with Lauren's key,
but everything to do with forensic science.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
We're talking, of course, about the arrest of Joseph James Angelo,
the Golden State Killer, the Golden State Killer. And that
case wasn't just a win for justice, it was a
revelation for cold case detectives everywhere. It proved absolutely and
undeniably that forensic genetic genealogy FGG was a real operational tool.
(10:22):
It could solve the oldest and most difficult cases by
completely bypassing the code's limitation.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
This national revelation provided the immediate inspiration for Lawrence PD.
And what's fascinating is that Detective Amy Price, who recognized
fgg's potential, had been involved in this case since its
early days.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And that long term institutional memory, that persistence, it's so
vital for catching that necessary wave of technology when it comes.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
She led the crucial decision to engage Parabon Nanolabs.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
A Virginia based company that specializes in FGG analysis. So
the first step was translating that twenty five year old
DNA profile, the one from the smoldering cigarette butt, from
the SPR format used by code is into the specific
data format needed for genealogical searching.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
What's remarkable here is the procedural timeline the genotyping that
conversion process. It was successfully completed in March twenty twenty,
which seems.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Fast, but it's still a critical four year lag between
the inspiration the Golden State killer arrest in twenty eighteen
and the actual data conversion. And even this step faced
delays that were completely out of their.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Control, right the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Exactly, which impacted everything from lab staffing to supply chains.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
But once that conversion was done, the real work began,
and this is the part we really need to explore
for you, the essential mechanical difference between the old way
and the new.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
It fundamentally changes how we think about individual DNA privacy
versus our familial connections.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
So let's dive deep into that comparison with CODIS. You
have the str profile, as we said, it looks at
maybe thirteen to twenty highly variable regions or marker right.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You know, all those markers are unique enough to distinguish one
individual from another for a direct match. They are not
dense enough to reliably trace family relationships beyond say a
first or second cousin.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
FGG, on the other hand, it relies on a massive
amount of data known as single nucleotide polymorphisms.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Or SNP SMP. Yeah, and you can think of smps
as the tiny single letter variations in your genetic code.
Where CODIS looks at a few dozen features, FGG analyzes
hundreds of thousands, sometimes over seven hundred thousand specific genetic markers.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So the density of information gives it immense statistical power.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
It's like comparing looking for a person based on their
height and eye color that's CODIS, versus looking for them
based on every single fingerprint, skin pore, and hairstrand on
their body. That's FGG.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Okay, So the SMP data allows for reliable identification across
vast distances of biological relationship.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Precisely, the method is built on finding distant relatives instead
of looking for David Zimbrick's profile directly. The analysts uploaded
the crime scene SNP data to specialize consumer genetic databases.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
About platforms like gd match or Family Tree DNA exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Which are unique because they allow users to submit their
commercial test results from places like ancestry or twenty three
AMBI and crucially opt in to permit law enforcement to
search their genetic data.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
That voluntary consent is the whole legal foundation that FGG
investigations stand on.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
It is, so the magic isn't locating the suspect directly,
but locating say a third or fourth cousin who submitted
their DNA to one of these platforms and click the
allow law enforcement box.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Okay, so the statistical power comes from triangulation.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yes, Let's say the crime scene DNA matches a third
cousin on the suspect's paternal line and a fourth cousin
on the maternal line, and maybe a second cousin once removed,
who lives in a specific county in Kansas. Right by
identifying shared segments of DNA across these multiple distant relatives.
The genealogists can mathematically work backward to determine the most
(13:55):
recent common ancestor the great great great grandparents maybe, and
then trace the subsequent descent lines forward.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
And that process doesn't just trace the family tree. It
helps triangulate geography and age, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
It creates a sophisticated dynamic map. If five distant cousins
all trace back to the same couple who lived in Lawrence,
Kansas in the nineteen twenties, you now have a very
specific lineage to flow.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
This is a painstaking process building these extensive family trees
spanning centuries, tracing shared segments forward and backward through public records, obituaries,
census data.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Newspaper archives, everything. It's a huge shift. We move from
a passive system codis just waiting for a direct match
to an incredibly active, sophisticated process of building an entire
lineage based on genetic proximity and pair bond nanilabs.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
They didn't just do the genealogy right, no.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
They also assisted initially by creating predictive composites of the
suspect's potential appearance, things like eye color, hair color, basic
facial features all based on the DNA.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
But the family tree is the main investigative tool.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
It's the primary tool. The composits can sometimes provide psychological
guidance for the detectives, but the key takeaway here is
that FGG allows justice to entirely bypass the inherent limitations
of the code of system, and it does it by
leveraging voluntary genetic submission by the public. It is, without exaggeration,
the single biggest leap in forensic science in the last
fifty years. Hashtag touch HAG Tracing the roots and closing
(15:21):
the net twenty twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
So by early twenty twenty they have this high resolution
SNP profile. It's ready for the databases. But the genealogical
path it wasn't a straight.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Line, No, not at all. The parabon analysis immediately indicated
a significant complication for the investigators. What was it The
genealogy suggested the suspect had been adopted. Oh wow, And
from a detectives perspective, this is like hitting a massive
non genetic roadblock. Standard genealogy relies on unbroken lines of inheritance,
you know, tracking names through birth certificates and historical.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Records, and an adoption record often just severs that paper
trail completely.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
It makes the tree instruction exponentially more difficult.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
So that means the detectives couldn't just rely on the
thousands of public records that genealogists typically use. They have
to go right to the source.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Which necessitated intense legal and investigative work to identify the
biological parents. It means getting court orders or search warrant
subpoenas to access adoption records.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Which are frequently decades old and often sealed under privacy laws.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Exactly. It's a complex, time consuming legal dance that contrast
so sharply with the quick digital search in the genealogy databases.
It forces the investigation back into the paper.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
World and the investigative scope it must have broadened dramatically.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
It did. The initial leads generated by the FGG analysis
and the subsequent paper searches weren't just localized to Lawrence.
Detectives were tracing these leads across multiple states.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
That introduces logistical hurdles, travel costs, the need for complex
inneragency coordination.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Think about the commitment involved. This wasn't a local issue anymore.
The search for a suspect in a Kansas assault case
now required investigative resources spanning the Midwest, possibly even beyond.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
But the good news is that by twenty twenty two,
so two years into this intensive follow up, the power
of FGG was sufficiently recognized that the case started getting
some real institutional weight behind it.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
You mean the Canvas Bureau of Investigation and the FBI
stepped in to provide active assistance. That's right. Absolutely, the
KBI and the FBI now have dedicated resources and expertise
specifically for complex FGG follow up. And this institutional support
providing staff funding for travel access to cross jurisdictional databases,
(17:37):
that was crucial in accelerating the final stages. Local agencies
can only handle so much complexity on their own.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
So the ultimate breakthrough, the moment that DNA profile finally
got a name, happened in late twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
And it's so important to note that time lag. The
FGG genotyping started in twenty twenty and the name wasn't
confirmed until twenty twenty five. It just shows the intensive,
years long slog of that follow up work.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
That October twenty twenty five breakthrough required a long distance
effort detectives traveled all the way to Santa Fe, New Mexico,
to interview the biological birth mutter that they'd identified through
that meticulously constructed genetic trade, and this.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
One single interview proved to be the final piece of
the puzzle.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
She confirmed it she had placed a child for adoption
many years ago, but the critical game changing detail she
provided was that the child she gave up had actually
contacted her in two thousand and five. And with that revelation,
she provided the name they had been searching for all
this time, David Zimbric.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Wow. Just imagine that moment for the detective. You spent
years chasing genetic markers, building ancestry trees, navigating sealed records,
and suddenly a name, David Zimbric is provided, attached to
the very source of the biological material.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
It's the ultimate convergence of the genetic and the historical record.
It is so once they had the name, the investigation
pivoted back to traditional means, and with lightning speed, they
immediately cross referenced David Zimbri's name with residential records, adoption records, and.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
The subsequent investigation confirmed that he had lived in key
areas surrounding the crimes Lawrence, Kansas City, and Raytown.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
And the birth mother provided another vital confirmation, a photograph
of David Zimbrick. Right When detectives compared this current photo
against the original suspect descriptions provided by the victims twenty
five years earlier, and remember, those physical descriptions were the
only non DNA evidence they had for decades, the physical
match just further solidified their certainty they had their man.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
The net then closed very rapidly. In November twenty twenty five, detectives,
now working with the assistance of Raytown Police, located Zimbric
in Raytown, Missouri, and they conducted an interview.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
The sources indicate Zimbric was noncommittal. He provided very little
information during that interview, but.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
The most critical step was securing a direct comparison DNA sample.
And given the overwhelming evidence trail they had, officers had
the legal authority to either gain his consent or compare
tell him to provide a DNA.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Swab, regardless of which path was taken. The sample was secured.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
The final indisputable scientific confirmation arrived on December eighteenth, twenty
twenty five. The KBI conducted the final comparison and they
confirmed a direct one to one unquestionable match.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
The profile from the smoldering cigarette butt from the year
two thousand was a genetic match for David zimbric and.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
That match means the entire twenty five year long search,
from the initial sighting of a smoldering butt to the
multi state genealogy, the adoption subpoenas, the interview in Santa Fe,
all of it was correct. The evidence had simply waited
for the science to catch up.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Ten days after that confirmation, the arrest was executed. US
Marshals arrested David Zimbrick in Retown, Missouri, without incident, on
December twenty ninth, twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Five, and he now faces extremely serious legal charges rape
of a child under fourteen, aggravated criminalsodomy, and aggravated indecent
liberties with a child. He was initially held on a
massive one million dollar bond in Missouri, pending his extra
addition back to Douglas County, Kansas, where the crimes took place.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
So the investigative journey is over, but the.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Legal battle for justice has just begun. Hashtag tagshag Broader
applications and justice delayed.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
We have spent a lot of time detailing the technological advancements,
and you know rightly so. FGG is the big story
of the twenty twenties and cold casework.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
It is.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
But as we pivot to the broader implications, we have
to return to that fundamental, low tech beginning.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Yes, the success of this case is dual layered. The
technological sophistication of FGG is the headline, absolutely, but it
is ultimately useless without that foundational evidence. This case is
a profound case study in the power of preservation.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Detective Macade's decision in two thousand to collect that smoldering
cigarette butt to catalog it.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Correctly, and the institutional commitment of Lawrence PD to meticulously
store and preserve that evidence for a quarter of a century.
That is the essential prerequisite.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Just think about the logistical challenges involved maintaining a perfect
chain of custody, ensuring the sample didn't degrade or become contaminated,
paying for the storage, and just maintaining the faith that
an unsolved case from two thousand would eventually yield fruit.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
And had that cigarette but degraded or been lost, The
link between the two thousand and two thousand and three
cases would have been impossible to make regardless of whether
FGG was ever invented. The path had to be preserved
perfectly for the future science to.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Work, and that preservation allowed for justice to finally be addressed.
For the human cost, we have to acknowledge the survivors
who are only children at the time of the assaults
and who have lived with this trauma knowing their attacker
was free for decades. They are adults now who can
finally hopefully receive some measure of closure.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
And Chief Lockhart expressed that hope that the arrest brings
them some measure of comfort, recognizing that this is truly
a victory for their well being.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
The police chief actually quantified that commitment. He noted that
nine two hundred and fifty seven days elapsed between the
first assault and the arrest.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
That number just underscores the sheer perseverance of the law
enforcement community, the thousands of hours of investigative work, the
periodic file reviews, when technology updated, the interagency collaboration, and
the monumental effort required for that cross country genealogical trace.
They just never gave up.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
No, they didn't, and this perseverance extends beyond the solved cases.
Law enforcement noted publicly that there were three other similar
incidents in the area during that period.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
With matching descriptions of the assailant.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Exactly but critically lacking corresponding DNA evidence. So the public
appeal following Zimbrick's arrest underscores the wider impact of having
a sexual predator operating undetected in a public space for
so long, and they urge any potential victims in those
other three incidents to come forward.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Now, let's connect this success back to the technology, but
through the necessary lens of ethical scrutiny. Right while we
celebrate this resolution, FGG is not without its ethical and
legal tension. It is, after all, a tool case capable
of identifying individuals who never consented to law enforcement access
to their DNA simply because a distant relative did.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
This is the crux of the modern debate, isn't it.
The success stories like the Zimbric case, they highlight the
immense benefit delayed justice for victims of violent crime.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
But the method raises serious questions about genetic anonymity. You have,
in effect relinquished a degree of your own privacy. Simply
because your third cousin, who you may have never even met,
chose to submit their DNA and opt into law enforcement searches.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
We have to be clear on the current guardrails that
are mentioned in the source material. Very important fgg relies
on the voluntary nature of consumer databases like ged match
and family Tree. DNA users must actively opt in to
allow our data to be searched by law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
That voluntary submission is what maintains the legal footing. If
a consumer site does not have an opt in policy,
law enforcement typically needs a court order that has to
meet a much higher standard of probable cause.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
And Furthermore, guidelines currently limit fgg us strictly to serious
violent crimes right.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
That's right, homicide, kidnapping, and aggravated sexual assault. The exact
charges zimbric phases. This prevents its use as a sort
of phishing expedition for lower level offenses. The system is
designed to close only the most egregious cold cases where
traditional methods have failed.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
But the concern that's often raised is the concept of
genetic surveillance by proxy. Does the state gain a level
of access to citizens' genetic information through their family members
that they wouldn't normally possess, And how.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Do we balance that right to genetic anonymity against the
societal imperative to solve cases of extreme violence and protect
the public. It creates a compelling and I think necessary tension.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
And the fact is science has created a means to
dissolve the anonymity that predators have historically relied on the
passage of time.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Zimbric's case is now part of a broader national trend,
and the advances aren't just in genealogy, they're also in
the sensitivity of DNA analysis. Labs can now extract usable,
high quality profiles from samples that are tiny or highly degraded,
something that was unimaginable in two.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Thousand, which means that every unsolved case with viable DNA,
however old it is, is essentially being reopened.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yes, the story of David Zimbric is proof that science
is relentlessly catching up to those who relied on the
simple hope that time would shield them from accountability. The
tiny trace left twenty five years ago on a small
piece of trash became the undeniable witness.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
In the end, As we conclude this deep dive, let's
distill the three key takeaways that should really resonate with
you the listener from this extraordinari investigation.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
First, the absolute enduring value of meticulous evidence preservation. If
that smoldering cigarette butt had not been collected and stored
perfectly for quarter century, the link between the two crimes
and the subsequent FGG investigation would have been completely impossible.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
That low tech, foundational police work was the essential engine.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
It was everything.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Second, revolutionary power of forensic genetic genealogy. FGG has redefined
the cold case landscape by moving the investigative search from
relying on direct matches of known offenders to successfully tracing
complex familial networks.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
It shattered the anonymity afforded by the old codis limitations.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
And finally, the profound impact of institutional and individual persistence.
We are talking about a commitment that spanned three decades.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
It required collaboration between local police, state agencies, the FBI,
and private genetic labs. It's a testament to the fact
that dedicated law enforcement will not let time erase the
need for justice.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And Chief Lockhart's message to the survivors who are now
adults and have carried this burden for so long, it
provides the final urgent hope, don't give up hope. We're
not going to.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Give up hope, and the tenacity shown in this case
confirms that science and dedication can reach back decades to
deliver accountability. It does, and that leads us to the
final thought we want to leave you with. Building directly
on the foundation of the Zimbrac case, this entire investigation
hinged on a discarded item and the voluntary choice of
a distant relative to share their DNA give an fgg's
(28:10):
capability to solve cases like this, And considering that our
genetic data is increasingly digital and connected, what is the
optimal societal balance between leveraging this incredibly powerful tool to
bring delayed justice to violent crime survivors and protecting the
fundamental right to genetic privacy for individuals who never consented
to have their lineage searched by the state. It attention
(28:31):
that every generation moving forward will have to navigate
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