Hector Bravo UNHINGED
Official Hector Bravo Podcast
Hector Bravo UNHINGED
Lori's Commitment to Justice: A Deep Dive into Cold Cases
Former San Diego police officer and cold case detective Lori takes us on a riveting journey through her law enforcement career, revealing insights into the world of crime-solving that few have experienced firsthand. Growing up in a family with deep NYPD roots, Lori chose the sunny climes of San Diego to launch her career, and her stories from the Central Division and Logan Heights demonstrate the power of community-focused policing. This episode uncovers her transformative experience at the San Diego regional academy and highlights the camaraderie and innovative strategies that were the backbone of her formative years on the force.
Lori speaks candidly about the challenges and triumphs of working on cold cases, sex crimes, and Internet Crimes Against Children, shedding light on the emotional strength required to support victims and pursue justice. Mentorship plays a pivotal role in Lori’s narrative, with mentors like Sharon shaping her approach to thorough investigations and professional growth. Lori's story underscores the importance of patience, honesty, and resilience, offering a heartfelt look into the complexities of law enforcement and the profound impact of mentorship and teamwork.
For those fascinated by forensic science, this episode offers a deep dive into advancements in DNA profiling and forensic genealogy, which have revolutionized cold case investigations. From the gripping story of Arminda Da Silva's identification to the evolution of forensic practices, Lori illustrates how modern techniques bring closure to families and solve longstanding mysteries. Whether it's the excitement of solving a decades-old murder or the emotional weight of supporting victims, Lori's dedication to her work is a testament to her commitment to justice and community. Join us for this compelling exploration of law enforcement's past, present, and future.
Hector Bravo. Unhinged chaos is now in session. Welcome back to our channels, warriors. We are still growing. Today, another special guest man we have a former San Diego police officer but, aside from that, a homicide cold case detective by the name of Lori. Hey, lori, how's it going Good? Thanks for having me. Oh yeah, thanks for showing up. I'm excited about this one. I always, like everybody else, love true crime and I'm interested to hear how that everything panned out. So you told me you were originally from the East Coast, new York.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And then, oh, go ahead.
Speaker 2:So I originate from Orange County, new York, which is just north of the city, and my father was a New York City police officer, a lieutenant, and then my mom was a registered nurse and I had two sisters.
Speaker 1:So Orange County is north of Manhattan. Yes, so it isn't like the Bronx up there.
Speaker 2:It's north of the Bronx.
Speaker 1:North of the Bronx.
Speaker 2:Yep, it's commutable to the city. But enough out of the city so my father can raise his kids without the influence of the city.
Speaker 1:Cool. And then you eventually find yourself in San Diego. You said in your 20s, and you had the aspiration to be law enforcement.
Speaker 2:So what happened was I grew up with law enforcement. My dad, all of my uncles, are virtually in some form or another NYPD, so I grew up around the culture of law enforcement and I've always enjoyed it, you know, listening to their stories and watching the camaraderie, but I don't do well in the cold and in the snow, so it was never really something I seriously considered in New York. But one of my uncles retired NYPD and moved out to San Diego.
Speaker 1:Okay, and he got bored, then he got hired with San Diego PD.
Speaker 2:And but one of my uncles retired NYPD and moved out to San Diego Okay, and he got bored. Then he got hired with San Diego PD. And then two of my cousins moved out, and one of his, his son, and another male cousin moved out to California. Both got hired with San Diego PD. And I would come out and visit, realize that the sun really does shine most of the year 90 degrees all year round.
Speaker 2:Beautiful, and so I thought you know what, I'll move to San Diego and let me just try this law enforcement thing and see what happens.
Speaker 1:Here. So growing up in a household of law enforcement and a family of law enforcement how does that deter either way as opposed to not growing up? Is this something that's encouraged within the family, discouraged within?
Speaker 2:the family a rite of passage? You know, neither. It's just. I'm very fortunate to grow up with a very supportive father, very active father, very smart, well-educated, and he always said you know, follow what's right for you. Nice, they would say, a civil service job, is your best security blanket, but follow what you want to do, get an education and just if you follow your heart and you follow your passions, you're going to find something that you're really going to enjoy. Sweet, that's true.
Speaker 1:So you find yourself in San Diego. You said you started the department in 1995?.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Where'd you go to the academy?
Speaker 2:I went to the regional academy up in Miramore.
Speaker 1:So it's the same one.
Speaker 2:Correct the 32nd regional academy.
Speaker 1:How was that experience for you?
Speaker 2:So fun. I had a great time. You know I had never done the military and I hadn't finished my education, so this was kind of what I felt like my college years, my camaraderie years, and we had a good group of people, we had a good time, we worked hard, you do something that's difficult and you overcome it together, teamwork, teamwork, and you get in great shape and you're getting paid for it.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And at that time the Academy. We were going in and out. So after about three months we would go out and phase training for two weeks, go back to the academy for a couple weeks, then go back out and phase training. So you got little doses here and there and I remember my first dose of policing out in the field was my first phase down in Central Division, which is Logan Heights.
Speaker 1:I was hooked, you were hooked.
Speaker 2:I loved it.
Speaker 1:What infatuated about it? The adrenaline rush.
Speaker 2:Everything, I wouldn't say necessarily the adrenaline rush. I loved how Central cops took care of each other. I really appreciated how they always had each other's backs. I loved how creatively that they were policing. You know my FTO was big into narcotics so we would be, you know, hiding in an alley looking for someone to do a hand to hand, and you know I had never seen that before. So and I actually I really enjoy the culture of Logan Heights. I enjoy the people down there. I really felt like that was a really great place to thrive as a cop.
Speaker 1:It's Mexican dominated.
Speaker 2:Mexican. Mexicans are pretty cool and very cool, and I just you know the language, the food and so many families there that really do appreciate law enforcement. There's so many out there, so I felt very welcome.
Speaker 1:So you were saying there was techniques. How much of the stuff outside of the textbook were they implementing in that central division?
Speaker 2:Boy, that's a good question. I think I was just really fortunate to be around a lot of senior people, yeah, so what they were was it was kind of the generation of pop to problem-oriented policing. So sergeants expected squads to identify a chronic problem in an area and address it, and so we did a lot of that and I thought that's really cool and that you can make a difference.
Speaker 1:Boy, have we come a long way from that.
Speaker 2:Boy, have we come a long way from that. And you know the federal government would give grants out to law enforcement.
Speaker 1:Hey, go and see a problem.
Speaker 2:Go see your problem and attack it. Wow, don't think they're doing that today and I would imagine like minimal micromanaging no, the sergeants patrol sergeants different, different level, because they trusted their people, because we had career patrol officers. I had cops on my squad that were were patrol 20 years. Yeah, they knew more than the sergeant sometimes, yeah, or the patrol the patrol sergeants were seasoned. Yeah, they didn't worry about much they really didn't and your senior officer was the one you went to if you needed something, not your sergeant.
Speaker 1:Today, I think it's a little different and I think to the captain huh, yeah, a lot of questions being asked that I think officers should just naturally know the answers to.
Speaker 2:But that's where we are.
Speaker 1:And we'll get into that. So, man, perfect timing, perfect time frame. You have the personality for the job. You're eager. How much time patrol did you do before you started seeing that there was other options, like detective or?
Speaker 2:seeing that there was other options like detective or so you know, my dad was in investigations for NYPD, so I always knew that that was something that maybe I'd be interested in. So I was in patrol. I did two years up at Northeastern, which is Miramar Rancho Bernardo, mira Mesa area, which was interesting because I had just moved to San Diego.
Speaker 2:Bunch of drunk Marines, or I didn't even know where I was. I had to get out the map book. I didn't even know where the station was, so that was a challenge, because I really didn't know where I was. And then I wanted to go to Central Division. That's where I wanted to go. So after two years I sent me to Central Division, logan Heights, which I really, really enjoyed, and in the meantime I had met my husband, who was a patrol officer, and we married and I spent about four years in patrol at Central and then I went to Central Division Juvenile Services. I spent about 10 years at Central alone in various different capacities and that's why it kind of feels like home.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a great place to learn.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's phenomenal, and I've been so fortunate. My entire career I've always had senior officers around me, like my first squad, even at Northeastern 10, 15 plus senior patrol officers right now, I want you to tell us the importance of having senior officers willing to teach you, as opposed to now. You have the blind leading the blind mentorship is essential for us to all grow, learn and develop as law enforcement officers. I was fortunate throughout my entire career. Some of these individuals are still my mentors today even some of them that are retired.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Because they have the experience, they've been there, they have made the mistakes and they are trying to prevent you from maybe making the same mistakes, and so, when you're willing to listen, open your ears and absorb the information they're giving you, it's only going to make you grow as an investigator or a patrol officer.
Speaker 1:Right when you said they made the mistakes. You gave me chills because I was thinking like you're right and mistakes in law enforcement and or military can cost you your life.
Speaker 2:It can cost you your life and it can cost you your job. True your career, right, it could hurt you or it could hurt your partners. And so when you have the leadership on a squad of the senior officer who's willing to pull you aside and say, hey, you did this, I don't want to see that again. This is why Right, that's how you learn If no one pulls you aside to say you made this very bad mistake, how would you know? You may just continue doing it.
Speaker 1:So you mean to tell me you don't learn by getting all kinds of bad paperwork shoved into your career file and reprimanded?
Speaker 2:Or the award for just showing up to work. No, yeah, yeah, you don't learn from that. I mean, let's face it, you know, even you know athletes, professional athletes today, when they win a game, they don't always go back into the locker room and talk about what mistakes they won, what mistakes they made because they won. They go back when they lose and they say, hey, we meet these critical errors.
Speaker 2:We need to clean this up. It's the same thing in law enforcement If no one's pulling you aside to say, hey, you made this critical error, you could have died. I could have died or gotten injured, or that civilian could have gotten hurt. If people aren't willing to do that and if people aren't willing to listen to that feedback, you don't grow and develop.
Speaker 1:That's the after action report. Develop that's an after action report. We call it the military, but also, you're right, the ego, ego sometimes gets in the way of people and they refuse to address that.
Speaker 2:You know, elephant in the room. I think it's really important that we admit what we don't know Facts. And so when I first got hired, um, and I was up at Northeastern and I had that senior squad it wasn't that busy of a command at the time that you know, that whole Del Mar 56 route wasn't there. Um, I would, if we were going to a radio call and I had never experienced that type of call I would send a message on the MDT at the time and say meet me down the street, let's talk about it, let me handle it and if I'm messing up, step in and help me out. Okay, but that was how I knew I could learn, but I had people I could trust.
Speaker 2:And I say I don't know how to do this and they wouldn't degrade me, they wouldn't make me feel bad. They would say, okay, well, let's teach you Because, let's face it, academy is great. A lot of foundational work there. Field training is another great opportunity to expose you to what's going on. But until you get five, six, seven years on in the street, I don't think anyone's truly comfortable.
Speaker 1:I like that you said that. Five, six, seven years plus, every day you're learning. Every day it's something new.
Speaker 2:And every day the laws change. Every day policies change.
Speaker 1:So it is true, yeah, you're learning. Throughout your whole entire career, you're learning.
Speaker 2:If you stop learning, your career is halted Right and you have stopped progressing as a leader or as a person in law enforcement that has something to give your community.
Speaker 1:Facts, facts, facts. So when did the opportunity arise, or what did it look like when you evolved to the next level? Was it a bulletin? Was it an email, a letter saying, hey, apply for this position?
Speaker 2:No, the way the police department is set up they kind of tell you hey, we anticipate hiring X amount of detectives in February. Okay, so at the time it was not a very difficult process. So when I thought I wanted to go into investigations, I went first into juvenile investigations because there was a spot there and at the time we were prosecuting juvenile crime. Because there was a spot there and at the time we were prosecuting juvenile crime. So it gave me some exposure. But it got me in the detective bay so I could hear what's going on and I could say, hey, I hear you're working on this case. I've never seen that before, I have not investigated that before. Can I go with you? And I would just kind of go with people to their follow-up so I can learn how they did their business. And then from there I was able to get a detective spot, an acting detective spot for the 510s, which is Logan Heights, barrio, logan, sherman Heights, golden Hill. And that's where I got some of my best mentors for investigations. I had Lou Tumani there and Mike Rebell and my sergeant was Sharon Smith and I'm so grateful for those three because they really gave me a solid foundation of investigations.
Speaker 2:Don't cut corners. Do the job to the nth degree, finish the totality of the investigation before you make a decision. Make sure you follow up with everything that you should be following up on. Test every piece of every item of evidence, talk to every witness, take nothing for granted. And phenomenal people to learn from Phenomenal. And Sharon. She's still a good friend of mine today and I will tell you as far as a good sergeant goes, she was not afraid to say nope, I'm sending this report back to you because you should be doing X, y and Z. She didn't let you cut corners.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:And to this day, you know, until I retired, I before I would submit. There's a few people I have in my as mentors that before I submit a report I hear their voice. Did you do this? Why didn't? You do that, and so it makes me stop and go. I must know subconsciously I'm cutting a corner somewhere. Let me just do it, and it may not turn out to be anything, but you know, quite often it turns into something.
Speaker 1:Now everything you said right now don't cut corners. Look at every lead. Don't take things for granted. In current present times, policing is that being taught?
Speaker 2:I don't know, policing Is that being taught? I don't know. I don't know because I've been in cold cases for 12 years. My partners are the detectives from 1960s, 70s, 80s and the cold case investigators in between. I don't really. I didn't really get too involved with the active homicide teams. But the job, for sure, I could tell you, is changing and it really is dependent on the sergeant that has the team. What time and effort are they willing to put into that detective to make them truly their best, to truly be effective? And if that leadership is not there, it's really tough for an investigator to grow, because then you just bounce, you bounce from place to place to place and you don't really sit long enough to really saute in a spot so you can really absorb everything that you can.
Speaker 1:So it sounded like, by the time you hit, that you were already well molded and taught by the best.
Speaker 2:I feel like I was. And so once I was at Central Investigations for a couple of years and then my lieutenant at the time was transferred to backgrounds, and so Sharon said hey, they asked for you in backgrounds. And I first said no thanks, that's not where I want to go. I'm getting the hang of this investigations thing. I don't want to take a step back. I'm kind of getting the hang of this interview, interrogations, evidence. I'll lose that skill. And Sharon, being a good mentor, said if someone asks for you, you should really go. And interestingly enough, they took me and Sharon, mike Rebell and the other sergeant and plucked us all into backgrounds. And they did that because they kind of wanted to young up the office a little bit. Instead of having people that are on their way out of the career, they wanted people in the middle of their career to inspire, I think, and to maybe give people some energy going through the background process. So even though I didn't want to go there, I'm grateful I did.
Speaker 1:So it was a good career move for you 100%, and for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 2:Number one I said I'll go if you can send me sex crimes after, because that's where I want to work. But it taught me patience Because when you go through backgrounds as you have, you're with your background investor a long time and they ask you a lot of questions. So you have to be patient and then you have to learn how to dig. Is this person being honest? Is this person being truthful? What are they hiding? Are they deceitful? So I really learned patience in that position.
Speaker 1:Now you learned patience, but did you also identify reading people?
Speaker 2:Yes, and I was probably a little hard on my applicants, but I do firmly believe that law enforcement should not be your first ever job. And you know there are several people that didn't get hired. But I really pushed for. You know, and I hold those in the military in high esteem and I am grateful for their service. So, you know, they were someone that I always thought make good cops, and not because they know how to shoot guns and they've been in stressful situations, but because they know discipline. You know, and you need to have some discipline as a cop.
Speaker 2:But I also had several people that didn't have military but they went to college or they had long time careers in some other fashion and they showed that they can be dependent upon. You know, because we need a variety of people in law enforcement. You don't just need one flavor of people, you need all different types so we can see, through a variety of different lenses, what problems are going on in the community and how we can use our own perspectives to help solve that. So you know, backgrounds was a great opportunity for me to hopefully inspire some people that became cops.
Speaker 1:Now, was that a promotion for you or like a lateral Lateral, Even at the time was?
Speaker 2:that a promotion for you? Or like a lateral, Lateral, Lateral, yeah, Even at the time, uh, even being a detective was a lateral move from patrol, Okay. Eventually and I don't remember what year it was it, it they changed things and it became a promotion like a little pseudo promotion, uh, like its own rank, Um, but when I started it was just, it was just okay. Yeah, my whole process for getting hired was I had the acting experience and then I had a panel of three people that I did an interview with. That was it.
Speaker 1:After backgrounds, did you go to sex crimes?
Speaker 2:I did as promised. After two years in backgrounds, I was transferred to sex crimes, which is truly where I wanted to be, and, again very fortunate, to step into a senior squad of investigators. So many of the investigators that were there, I would say a large majority of them one, I think, had 10 years in sex crimes already. How many 10 years? Oh my God, yeah. Large majority of them. One, I think, had 10 years in sex crimes already. How many 10 years? Oh my God, yeah. A lot of experience. And then several other investigators up there.
Speaker 1:Is there a limit where they're like, hey, you should probably leave now. It's not good for your well-being.
Speaker 2:No, we have some people that are really dedicated to sex crimes and child abuse.
Speaker 1:We've had some child abuse detectives that were there 20 years.
Speaker 2:How many 20 years? Oh, no, yeah, phenomenal, phenomenal people.
Speaker 1:I can imagine, but the toll.
Speaker 2:Agreed, agreed. But you know a lot of the investigators. They had some experience somewhere else Gangs or narcotics Vice, Somewhere else. One was a former evidence tech for the lab. Before she was a sworn officer she was in the lab. So I thought, wow, I can really learn a lot of evidence from her evidence in lab stuff. So again I step into another great environment of senior people.
Speaker 1:Just hitting home runs.
Speaker 2:That's what I felt like. I was like, wow, this is great. And so I would hear them on the phone or scheduling an appointment to go meet with a victim or a witness or a bar or somebody that had evidence. And I would hear them on the phone or scheduling an appointment to go meet with a victim or a witness or a bar or somebody that had evidence, and I would just barge my way in and say, hey, I heard that conversation. Do you mind if I go? And they were really grateful, or it's a hey, listen, I hear you're doing a suspect interview. I'd like to sit in. I want to hear how you do it and that's how you learn.
Speaker 1:Closed mouths don't get fed. That's right. That is how you learn.
Speaker 2:And they were all so gracious and at the time the lieutenant was really, really great and so I really felt supported there. I knew again I knew there were people there that if I had a question I could go ask. And that's a key to moving forward Right, knowing what you don't know and not being afraid to ask Absolutely. So Moving forward Right, knowing what you don't know and not being afraid to ask Absolutely. So again, I still, you definitely know your stuff.
Speaker 1:Like definitely, I can tell.
Speaker 2:Thank you, yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. Was sex crimes what you had anticipated, or was there a curveball in your mind Like whoa? Maybe this wasn't what hey guys? Consider becoming a patron, where you will get first exclusive dibs on the video before it airs to the public and you'll get to ask the guests special questions that you have in mind. So that's also another way to support the channel. Thank you, guys. Appreciate all of you. Keep pushing forward.
Speaker 2:Make sure you hit that link in description below definitely a curveball, and so I remember going there and I think I'm going to be handling the stranger that jumps out of the bushes and drags somebody in there and sexually assaults them. But there's actually very relatively few of those.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:I was surprised to learn that a majority of my cases were some type of familial situation where there was someone being molested in the home. And so the way San Diego has it organized is if the disclosure of the sexual assault or the sexual abuse, if the disclosure to law enforcement happened after the age of 13, then sex crimes gets it. If the disclosure happened at 13 and younger, child abuse would get it. That's weird. So it's the way the laws are framed and it was a better way to kind of separate the two. So you know, I wound up investigating a lot of late disclosure child abuse cases. So that would come through CPS, mandated reporters or somebody would, at 20, 30 years old, come forward and say hey, I was, you know, sexually abused by this person, and as long as they never reported that to law enforcement before we can investigate it. And I will tell you, I at first thought I mean, that's kind of my first crack at cold cases right, that's a cold case.
Speaker 1:That is a cold case.
Speaker 2:So at first I thought, well, this is going to be challenging and maybe not as rewarding as I thought it was going to be. But it turned out I was wrong. It was absolutely to be able to help so many people who thought there's nothing you're going to be able to do. For me to be able to do something was remarkable.
Speaker 1:So it can be like if a person is speaking to a therapist and I believe one of the questions they ask you is hey, have you disclosed like child abuse or something elder abuse we have to report it? Is that something that gets reported to the cops? Would you receive information like that?
Speaker 2:So they would call an 1-800 number like a child abuse number, as long as there were still minors, and then that would get filtered to the departments that's applicable and then it would get. It would get to sexual abuse.
Speaker 1:And if they said, hey, john sexually abused me, was there times where you looked and John was in fact already incarcerated for sexual crimes? Sure. And it's almost like okay, well, this is connecting the dots.
Speaker 2:So you know, a lot of sex crimes, especially sexual abuse, is not reported. They go undetected for decades.
Speaker 1:Just, you know, that's like I wouldn't even call it a pet peeve. It like really is probably the only thing that will set me off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had one case it was interesting. A minor, she was a teenager, but she disclosed that she was sexually abused by her grandfather. Well, she has two older sisters and it turned out that he sexually abused all of them between the age of five and 12. And as one would age out, he would sexually abuse the next one. So we were able to make an arrest in that case of the grandfather, based on the determination of the victims, of the willingness of the victims to come forward, of their willingness to be vulnerable, to come, walk through those doors and tell that story.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And so we worked a lot of those cases and they're really challenging but very, very rewarding.
Speaker 1:So that's my next question was was the rewarding factor like? Is that what made it worth it? Was it that powerful of a experience?
Speaker 2:Yes, and some. Some didn't take me long at all I you know.
Speaker 2:I remember one case. I got a call from a school resource officer who said we have a girl in the office she's afraid to go home. She said her father's been sexually abusing her. So I said bring her in. Just don't bring her home, just bring her to me. And so I sat with her and you know, when you're talking to victims of sexual assault or child abuse, you really need to build rapport and take your time and gain their trust. And I sat with her and she told me her story, which I mean it's so hard to do. It would be hard to do if you're telling somebody about a consensual encounter, never mind being victimized, and so I said, okay, well, you know, the best way for me to understand your dad's perspective is to do a pretext phone call. And that's when, during a law enforcement investigation, I have the victim and sometimes it's a witness. But the victim call the suspect on a recorded line and I could hear what's being said and I can guide that victim until just you know what questions to ask.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know you would have them ask an open-ended question so you can get a narrative answer and you can develop information at that narrative answer and father spilled everything on this.
Speaker 1:On the recorded line.
Speaker 2:On the recorded line, and so we were able to get a team together and go out and arrest him.
Speaker 1:Father spilled everything on this pretext, on the recorded line, on the recorded line, and so we were able to get a team together and go out and arrest him.
Speaker 2:What advice would you have to viewers that are victims but just are struggling with the fact to let anybody know that you really have to find someone that you can trust, that you can talk to about it, because that's a heavy load to handle on your own and your life has value. Your life is worth the effort of somebody else to help guide you through that process and whether it be a therapist, you know, and if you you know, it's never too late and I will say that you know when in law enforcement, if we get those reports and we can document, it's never been disclosed to law enforcement before. Many times it's just the fact that we have sat down and we have listened to them, we've heard their stories. We respect their story, we respect their willingness to come in and be brave.
Speaker 1:Their vulnerability.
Speaker 2:Their vulnerability when they meet with us. Oftentimes, even with those pretext calls, I tell them listen. It will be emotionally difficult to make this call. Be emotional, be yourself. But I'm going to tell you at the end of this call you have regained your power back because you are sitting here and they don't know it. And I will say most of the victims that went through that process with me felt very much that way, even if I could not make an arrest and there's plenty of times that we won't be able to make an arrest but the fact that you sat down and respected somebody enough to give them your time and to hear their story really has a lot of value and it's a healing journey for them. And that's part of their healing journey Absolutely Someone listening to them and taking them seriously.
Speaker 1:Yeah, being acknowledged.
Speaker 2:Being acknowledged and having someone validate that, yes, you went through something very traumatic and you are worth it. It is worth it to try to resolve this within your own psyche so you can have the best life possible, because you deserve it.
Speaker 1:And it's not their fault, because I would imagine sometimes maybe they felt like it was their fault. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and especially when it comes to the family or friends that that's freaking horrible.
Speaker 2:And many times, or clergy, or counselor, or teacher. Many times the shame was a big factor and I would have to walk them through. The shame is not yours to own, the shame is theirs. Why are you holding on to their shame for them, and you know sometimes they have to hear something differently for it to click Like wait a minute, why do I feel you picked on me? You know you're the one who victimized me. So you know there's a lot of services out there that will help victims in these situations, and whether it be through coming, sometimes the advocates will come with the victims to the interviews with the cops. They're more than welcome to and the law allows that to happen. So this way they have a support person there. And so you know shame is a very heavy load for someone, especially if you're five, six, seven years old, and this has happened. I've had brave people come forward and they testify, but knowing that they just lost half their family because they testified against the uncle, even though the uncle, after prelim, pled guilty to 20, 25 years.
Speaker 1:I would do a lot more than just testify against the uncle. If it was my family, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:I know Well some of these victims lose their family.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Even if I have video evidence of the crime.
Speaker 1:No frick, no, I don't. Oh see, I can't even stomach this.
Speaker 2:I know it can be very challenging and I will tell you, I've never worked ICAC, that's the Internet Crimes Against Children.
Speaker 1:Oh man.
Speaker 2:And I will say hats off to them, because that is a tough job.
Speaker 1:Wow, so you have been introduced to the monsters of the world at this point in time.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And right, because once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Speaker 2:You can't unsee it, but you can defend against them.
Speaker 1:At this time? Do you feel any change in your psyche or emotions as you're continuing your career, or does everything just seem normal to you?
Speaker 2:I don't think you know that until you're out of it.
Speaker 1:Correct, correct, but at that time.
Speaker 2:At that time or in hindsight.
Speaker 1:Can you tell me if something shifted in you?
Speaker 2:It definitely shifted and at the time I have two girls and one stepson, so their lives definitely changed. Uh, you know, uh, my, my stepson's mom is also a cop, so he was surrounded by two cop moms and a cop dad. Uh, but my daughters, you know, uh, I worked sex crimes and they were in junior high and it was like Nope, you're not sleeping over anyone's house, you're not. You know, you're not alone with a coach. It does change your frame of reference considerably, and not always for the good, or if I was. You see things in some of these sexual predators. They're kind of all. They've got this similar style, I guess I would say and if I'm at someone's house and I get this sense from somebody, I'm out Like I'm getting my kids and I'm out.
Speaker 1:I was just about to ask you that, but you beat me to the punch Working in a prison. You're right, they have a style to them. They're old, they're passive, they're creepy and there's something in the eyes. Usually a white guy, and it doesn't have to be. You know what I mean. It varies in ethnicity, but you, yes, you can tell, or we can tell.
Speaker 2:You can tell, the biggest advantage I have in investigations is they're not sophisticated criminally. So you know very rarely and I don't even know if I know personally of incidents of a case that I had that I had a gang member that was sexually assaulting people. I'm certainly not saying that doesn't happen Right, but a lot of the times you're getting the average Joe yeah, and so they, number one think they could talk their way out of it. So they always talk. Number two they don't think they did anything wrong, truly. And number three they are so unsophisticated they don't understand anything about the law and they don't understand anything about the ramifications. They really don't think that they're going to get in trouble.
Speaker 1:Well, me personally. I think they're wired wrong in the brain, clearly wired wrong Right, and I only really think there's only one resolution to that. But that's my opinion, but well, they're wired wrong. They're wired wrong. Absolutely, absolutely and they're wired wrong and you can tell right. But that doesn't excuse it at all. But like you cannot fix them, you know there's maybe a misconception that you can fix these individuals.
Speaker 2:No, I don't think you can either. Correct.
Speaker 1:I don't want to hamper on this one because this, really that topic, gives me the heebie-jeebies. To be honest with you, man, I don't know how. My hat's off to you and credit to you for doing you know, the Lord's work.
Speaker 2:I very much felt that way and honestly, I felt like that barrier between that victim and that suspect. And if I could stand up for that victim and say you don't get to do this.
Speaker 1:That's powerful. That was very powerful.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, yeah. So when did you get onto the homicide cold case? So I was working in sex crimes and I had just come off a big case here in san diego and, um, my very good friend uh, my good friend today she was also she worked a sex crimes with me and then she did a little stint in homicide because they needed a Spanish speaker. And she came up to me one day and said, hey, there's a spot in cold case, you should take it, you'd be perfect. And I was like well, I work sex crimes, I don't work homicide, so why would I take that spot? They're not going to give me that spot. And she said, oh, they, so nobody wanted the cold case spot.
Speaker 1:There was no take-home car for the cold case position or in general.
Speaker 2:You know, for the cold case position, and none of the homicide teams wanted to give up their take-home ride. So I thought, well, that's not an issue for me. But I thought, well, do I really want to leave sex crimes? That's where I wanted to go, but I thought well, do I?
Speaker 2:really want to leave sex crimes. That's where I wanted to go and she really insisted this. I'm so grateful because it really was my spot. But my girlfriend said you really need to reach out because that is your spot. I just know it. And I was like, well, why don't you take it? She's like, no, because it's your spot. So I was like, well, let me just try, because I knew I could go back to sex crimes If I didn't like it. I knew I had it at home, cool. So I reached out to the sergeant and he said, yeah, come on over. So in 2012, I went over to Cold Case and I remained there until I retired in 2025 2012.
Speaker 1:Trying to think what was going on in the world in 2012. Wasn't it supposed to end, or something in the Mayan calendar? Oh, I'm sure we used to call this guy at work. 2012. Oh, really, always saying that, yeah, so cold case. How did the rest of the department, as far as the police officers, view cold case? Did they view them as not an active unit?
Speaker 2:Well, it has transitioned over the years, so, and this is where you got to know history of forensics in order to understand where cold case is today.
Speaker 1:Lay it on us.
Speaker 2:Okay, so DNA was never used in criminal investigations until the late 80s, and I think the first one in the United States was 87. And that was on a cold case. Before that, the best method that investigators had to solve cases was latent fingerprints, their tremendous interview and interrogation skills, their ability to identify behaviors that don't belong, their knowledge of the area. But DNA itself wasn't ever used until the late 80s, and so our department didn't even have a DNA lab, a DNA section in our lab, until the early 1990s.
Speaker 2:Now what we did have was the serology department, and what that means is they could identify blood type, right. So if you had blood drops that were obviously your suspect right, your victim is dead over here, there's blood drops leading away, probably your suspect they could swab that blood and they could tell you was it, what type of blood? Is it A, a, positive, b, o? And so you could rule out people and you could rule in people. They would also collect things that we would normally collect today, like cigarette butts and beer cans, because some people secrete their blood type in their saliva or other bodily fluids.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so some people we call secretors and non-secretors. So they were very good at identifying. Oh, let me collect this biological evidence semen or spit or blood so they could determine if this is a secretor or a non-secretor.
Speaker 1:And this is back in the day right.
Speaker 2:They were just collecting evidence, just collecting evidence. Regardless of whether they had the means to test it DNA-wise at that time and I'm sure most of the evidence in the 70s 80s they weren't even thinking DNA Correct. They're just thinking I can rule people in and rule people out.
Speaker 1:Which is a pretty large, vast. Yes.
Speaker 2:But the world was smaller then. I mean San Diego. We are a military town, but people didn't travel like they do today. Right, you could go have dinner in Florida, you know, and then come back the same day.
Speaker 1:That's the truth.
Speaker 2:It wasn't like that then, but but still, um so, so, knowing that, and so what they were experts at is lifting latent prints, identifying objects that would have valuable latent prints. But also remember there wasn't a computerized database for latent prints until the late 90s. Wow. So if you had latent prints that you lifted off of a cup, the only thing they could do with it is direct comparison, so you'd have to have an idea of somebody.
Speaker 1:You would have to have a suspect or an individual to match the print.
Speaker 2:You would have a direct. That's all you could do, and so when fingerprint databases did come on board, they were proprietary. So, like the San Diego, pd had their own database, sheriffs had their own database, lapd had their own database, sheriffs had their own database, lapd had their own database.
Speaker 1:They weren't talking to each other.
Speaker 2:So you would have to know. Oh, let me go ask the sheriffs to run this print. Let me go ask this agency to run this print.
Speaker 1:And was that happening?
Speaker 2:Sometimes, yeah.
Speaker 2:But they also we didn't have the laws that we have today of everybody wants to be a coach. You get fingerprinted. Every teacher gets fingerprinted. We have a lot more people getting fingerprinted today than they were originally. So you know there's so many different steps into forensic evidence that you really need to know the history of it so you can understand. What does any information I'm getting from this old report, what does that mean? What can I do with this old report, with this old report? So then you fast forward. You know in late 90s we're getting we started our first cold case unit, the police department. So they called themselves the heat team, the homicide assessment something team, and so they went through a lot of those cases that had obvious biological evidence to test for DNA, and they were. And CODIS is another thing. Codis wasn't a thing until the late 90s. What CODIS? The Combined DNA Index.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So that is anyone that's been convicted of a crime. So CODIS has Like the saliva swab.
Speaker 2:The saliva swabs from people that have been convicted of a crime or arrested, depending on your jurisdiction, missing, unidentifiedidentified people and crime scene DNA. So there's basically three different piles of CODIS that you can search and so, uh, if my, if I have a crime scene, if I have a crime scene here and that same suspect left DNA here and maybe at a rape scene, those two different DNA profiles developed from those two separate crime scenes will hit in CODIS as, hey, you got the same suspect in two crime scenes.
Speaker 1:So you're trying to tell me that there was a point in time in cold case homicides when there was just treasure troves of evidence, and now you had the ability to test it all.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that started in the 90s and so every little bit. So they picked through some of those cases with the obvious biological fluid and again, there was a lot of direct comparison happening, because CODIS was in its infancy so there wasn't a ton of people in there. So when I get to cold case in 2012, there was kind of a couple of different philosophies going. Number one all the good cases have already been picked through and any DNA that's been identified as suspect DNA that has not already hidden CODIS, that person's probably dead by now. Right, it's been 20 years.
Speaker 1:That was like the consensus amongst 100%.
Speaker 2:So you're wasting your time. Don't bother looking back at those cases. Well, it took me a back at those cases. Well, the it took me a couple of years to realize. Well, we're only talking about CODIS here. Those fingerprints have come a long way too. So, um, you know, right alongside with the, with the DNA forensic explosion, has been the latent print, forensic explosion and latent prints. They were experts at collecting them and today the systems are very, very sensitive on identifying people.
Speaker 1:What changed, what got better?
Speaker 2:Everything Technology just keeps getting better, like today. They have the federal system, so it went from proprietary to a federal system and then the federal system. You know it was. You need just like DNA. Originally you needed a big um piece of evidence. You needed a lot of dna to get a result like a partial print will work.
Speaker 2:Now partial print will work. They have a palm print database. It's remarkable what they can do. So you know you don't need the whole pad anymore. You could get a partial pad and get an identification.
Speaker 2:So all this is happening kind of when I'm there, and it was a little slow at first. I was like, okay, I'm looking for the needle in a haystack and I solved a couple of cases with some of the gang guys that had some snitches, and so I was able to work with them on a couple of cases, arrested the same guy twice and he was really pissed. I arrested him for one case and then about a year later, I'm like, oh my God, he did this one too. So I re-arrested him while he was in prison and so he's definitely never getting out. But you know, as you know all.
Speaker 2:So DNA is also so sensitive now that I don't need a lot of DNA. This touch DNA we call it touch DNA where we're looking at old robbery cases, people that maybe were murdered on the street and someone robbed them of their wallet and you could tell maybe their pockets are dog-eared, right. So obviously somebody went in their pockets. We can swab the pockets today and get a result of DNA of a suspect, and we have several cases where suspects were identified on the inside pocket of a homicide victim's clothing.
Speaker 1:What falls off Skin cells.
Speaker 2:Skin cells Sweat Right If they're sweating profusely. Nervous on drugs Maybe? Blood or Blood, yeah, and they reach in the pocket to grab, and that's as fast as it is. Sometimes they just reach in, grab the wallet and their DNA is there. So now, so you know, as DNA gets sensitive, as latent prints get sensitive, we have to go back to these cases and think, oh my gosh, what can we do now that we couldn't even do five years ago?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's moving fast, it sounds like it's moving so fast.
Speaker 2:It's moving very fast. So we're super successful because we have a lot of support from our agency, but also the DA's office has their own dedicated cold case prosecutors and DAIs district attorney investigators. But so much is happening and then you know all this great work is happening and then all of a sudden, a few years ago, you get forensic investigative genetic genealogy.
Speaker 1:Which is.
Speaker 2:What solved the Golden State Killer case, which is using suspect DNA to create a DNA profile, to upload into family tree DNA and then down into GenMatch.
Speaker 1:Unbelievable.
Speaker 2:So and it's important to distinguish CODIS works on DNA markers, that we call STRs. Forensic Investigative Genealogy works on SNPs. So they don't, they don't. They're not the same Right. Both have a lot of value. Fig is also what has been used in the Idaho college murders to identify the suspect. In that case they use genealogy from a nice sheet, from what I understand.
Speaker 1:So genealogy when it comes to law, because everything boils down to the law is there anything that rules it out? Like genealogy? Is there complaints against it? Like hey, this can't be used because of this?
Speaker 2:Sure, and there always will be. And so when we first started after the Golden State Killer success story, it was like okay, we all pivoted Like find a case that DNA has been sitting in CODIS for years and see if we can't solve it.
Speaker 1:Shoot it through the.
Speaker 2:Let's get it done, and so at first it's a slow roll, because now we're relying on outside labs and police departments don't like to rely on outside labs, but we've learned that we can trust them, and so you'd have to send an extract of DNA to that outside lab and from there they would take that extract of DNA and they would generate the SNP profile SNP, snp profile and from there they would download it into FamilyTreeDNA. That is the only database, consumer database that allows us to upload suspect DNA, suspect or missing persons.
Speaker 1:Does that require a search warrant?
Speaker 2:It does not, because that is their consumer product and that is part of their consumer plan, their business plan, and but they're the only ones, we. We don't go into ancestry. We're not in 23andMe, we can't access MyHeritage because their consumer business practices law enforcement is not allowed in, so we don't have access. But FamilyTreeDNA does, and what they specifically do it's a much smaller database, familytreedna compared to Ancestry, which has like 20 million profiles. Familytreedna has maybe 2 million. But from there, what they can do is they can download into GEDmatch. And what GEDmatch is? That started off just as genealogists trying to help people who were adopted find their birth family. So it's important to point out that Family Tree DNA, myheritage, 23andme and Ancestry they're all individual databases. They don't talk to each other. So if you and I are brother and sister and you're in Ancestry and I'm in 23andMe, we're never going to hit.
Speaker 1:That's cool. We'll never relate.
Speaker 2:The only way we will is if you voluntarily download your DNA from Ancestry into GEDmatch.
Speaker 1:Voluntarily.
Speaker 2:Voluntarily, and I do the same, and so GEDmatch is kind of that was created to capture all those connections that are being missed, because most people only choose one database to be in. So GEDmatch now has changed their rules of service, which is you have to opt in for law enforcement viewing, so everything is on the up and up. So if you are truly trying to find me, or maybe a family member that's been kidnapped or a family member that disappeared, you have to opt in for police viewing To view your profile.
Speaker 2:Yes, and it's really important that, if you're in GEDmatch, that you go back and you double check that, because it's critically important.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's something that I would do if I were to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think what most people don't understand is we're also looking for the identification of homicide victims that are John and Jane Doe's.
Speaker 1:It's kind of to me similar to like if you want to give Apple access to review your stuff so they can make better development.
Speaker 2:Very similar, very similar and I understand people have privacy concerns.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but if you've got nothing to hide, then you're good. But if you go to a restaurant and You're not murdering people, you've got nothing to worry about Exactly.
Speaker 2:And if you go to a restaurant and you leave your fingerprints on the water bottle and your saliva on the cup and you walk out the door?
Speaker 1:You can just swipe that up.
Speaker 2:And we do, but so we do have access. That's a lot of story there, but so we do have access to conducting genealogical investigations and we are very successful in doing that. And so you know we're not in places that we shouldn't be.
Speaker 2:We're in places that we have a right to be. And then a lot of times I just reach out to people, especially in the John and Jane Doe cases, like I have a baby case that I've been working for 10 years. But if I reach out to people and I say, listen, you're matching as a third or fourth cousin to this child. It's important for me to know your family history who are your grandparents, where were they born, who were their parents? Because I'm trying to get your ancestry back to a great, great, great grandparent to see if you have a great, great, great grandparent in common with this child, so I can figure out who this child is.
Speaker 1:So are you trying to identify the child or are you trying to catch the killer?
Speaker 2:Depends on the case. Now, in 2004, the skeletal remains of a two to four-year-old child boy. We're trying to identify the child.
Speaker 1:Can I ask you something? Sure, how does a two or four-year-old go unidentified? Isn't there a mom, a dad, somebody saying where the hell is my kid?
Speaker 2:Maybe so this child was found on a hiking trail in rancho bernardo as a bag of bones and some clothes, and so we've done everything that we can do dna wise with the clothing and the in the bag, but it's just dna degrades over time, especially if it's out in the elements yeah and so, um, you know, we don't know.
Speaker 2:You know, identifying the child or identifying the homicide victim, the John or Jane Doe, is the first step in identifying who the killer is. I don't know. I don't know if this child was kidnapped. I don't know if this child was abused or neglected. I don't know.
Speaker 1:And what year?
Speaker 2:So the bag of bones was found in 2004. Was found in 2004. We can't be certain how long? That child was out there or if the child was dumped there after a significant amount of time. I can say that, based on the clothing type, it's probably he was probably deceased somewhere within 10 years. But it's too hard to tell. So we are doing genealogy on. We call them baby doe, but knowing that you know so this is again how far we have come forensically.
Speaker 1:Baby doe is a name I never want to hear again. It's like that. I never even heard. That's the first time hearing it. I know it's my Didn't sit well, but.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is definitely. There's so much that has been done on this case that is fascinating Science is law enforcement's friend.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But because there's degraded bone and the DNA in the teeth wasn't yielding a result for us to get a SNP profile that I need. There is the technology today to get DNA from rootless hairs, so I know when you were in law enforcement, the follicles. I don't even need the follicle, I just need the hair shaft. I no longer need the root to get.
Speaker 1:Rootless hairs Okay the root, okay the rootless hair.
Speaker 2:So up until five, six years ago, if you had hairs in your case, if there was no root, there was nothing we could do with it, it's just a hair shaft.
Speaker 2:That is not the case anymore. The technology exists and we use it to get DNA from rootless hair just the hair shaft, and it could be one pubic hair, it could be a bunch of hairs. So that's what we're doing. Our genealogy on is the DNA that we got from the rootless hair technology, which sometimes isn't always the completest profile, depending on how degraded the DNA is. And it's interesting because initially, when we had our trace unit, look at the hairs to try to determine race of this child, they believed the child was mostly Caucasian, but we're now learning through the genealogy that the child is mostly Hispanic, originating from Mexico. The problem that we have is that there's not a lot of data points in GEDmatch for people who were born and raised or originated from Mexico. So it's really important that when we contact people who were born here but their grandparents might've been born in Mexico, that we get as much information as possible.
Speaker 1:Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know when we're looking for, you know, grandparents' birth records, because their birth records would have their parents' names on it. Their marriage certificates would have both sets of grandparents, and so you know, we're trying to go back to that lineage because, again, we have to go back multiple generations in order to find the person that's connecting my baby Joe with this third or fourth cousin, right? So I mean there's just a lot going. There's a lot that we have access to today.
Speaker 1:Now, is there patterns that you see or that are developed, like a baby in a bag abandoned on a trail? Is there like patterns where maybe you've seen that before in another scenario?
Speaker 2:You know what I have not Now. We have had two children in San Diego County go missing during my time on the police department. One was solved and one was Jahi Turner, whose body never turned up. But we so immediately we tested this child's DNA against the mother of Jahi Turner and it's not him. So we know we can rule that out. But we do have access to resources like NamUs, which is a federal database of missing and unidentified children or even adults. So missing people are in there, but also unidentified human remains, maybe the clothing, the location composites. So every so often I get a kind of like an armchair sleuth that's going through the NamUs database and will send me hey, have you thought about this child? It could potentially be your baby doe. I'm very grateful and we'll check it out and we'll contact that law enforcement agency to see if perhaps there's a match. We haven't been successful yet, but you know the tips do come in that way, which is really really. It gives me hope.
Speaker 1:It's so wild, there's so much, it's a whole other universe.
Speaker 2:It's another universe and you do step back in time.
Speaker 2:And so the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reached out 10 years ago and I've been working on this case before genetic genealogy and offered their assistance, and one thing that they did was we exhumed the baby, because the baby was buried and they were able to send I believe it was the teeth to the University of South Florida and the scientists there were able to send I believe it was the teeth to the University of South Florida and the scientists there were able to map out the food supply chain of where this baby likely resided, because your teeth hold on to the vitamins, the proteins in your teeth, your nutrients in your teeth.
Speaker 2:They stay there. So, with the teeth that haven't come through yet, was the proteins in your teeth, your nutrients in your teeth, if they stay there. So you know, with the teeth that haven't come through yet and the teeth that were um that came through on the on the child, the scientists were able to map out regions of the United States that this baby was likely in utero and where this baby was after birth. Wow, very exciting. And of course it's across the U S Mexico border, uh border, some in Texas, some here in California, but also in southwest United States. So science is exploding and law enforcement should be holding on for the ride, because it's amazing.
Speaker 1:I mean it's gotten ahead of law enforcement.
Speaker 2:Yes, Now they come to us and say we can help you solve that.
Speaker 1:That's so awesome. That's so cool. It's like teamwork it is. That's so awesome, that's so cool. It's like teamwork. It's like it is it's really exciting.
Speaker 2:It's a great time to be in Colgate, specifically because there really is it's. There's limitless opportunities and you know, going back to latent prints, half of the cases that we have solved over the past my time there, 12, 12 years have been solved through latent fingerprints. So for any young cops out there, make sure you're lifting fingerprints, and here's why we all have our fingerprints in the database, right, we're cops, we're in law enforcement, we're teachers, we're coaches. You know you're in certain federal databases, maybe for background checks. So there's a hundred million profiles in latent fingerprint database. Codis is very specific to suspects, unidentified persons or missing people, family members of missing people.
Speaker 1:So there's maybe 20, 25 million profiles when do you think you're going to get your hit from?
Speaker 2:Fingerprints. Yeah, as a matter of fact, I recently assisted on a cold case out of Florida very minimally, but there was a warrant in the system for this guy for murder, for hire, and the case was there was a warrant out for him and he was living out in the Descanso area and he renewed his passport that he had obtained fictitiously and must have forgotten. And he did his fingerprints and the passport office said just wait a minute, something's not right here, contacted the US Marshals and they arrested him and flew him back to Florida and he pled guilty.
Speaker 1:That's very interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he flew under the radar for 50 years. Until he renewed his passport and then gave himself up Fingerprints caught up with him. Wow, yeah him. Wow, yeah, so Wow.
Speaker 1:Don't discount you know.
Speaker 2:If you're out in the field and you're collecting evidence, lift fingerprints, take the time. We get paid by the hour, not by the incident or the call. So if you're at a call, a burglary I don't care what it is swabbing for DNA is doing a fraction of the job. You lift fingerprints or take the item and have the crime scene specialist lift the fingerprints. We are really very successful and if I'm that successful in cold cases, I can imagine what homicide and burglary and sex crimes and child abuse all those cases could really benefit from that.
Speaker 1:So my knowledge of any of this is just the movies or television shows. Is there boxes of evidence per case?
Speaker 2:depends. But yes, we have boxes of I think the oldest case we have downstairs and uh, where we keep like the older case files yeah, is I think it's 1914 and there's a box in there that says 1914. There might not be a lot in there.
Speaker 1:Unsolved crime. Yeah, so yeah we have it by decades. And who gets to? Do you get assigned a case or do you just mosey on down, pick up the box and say I have a hunch today?
Speaker 2:It's a little bit of everything, okay, so I know what cases I'm good at.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so I tend to steer towards those cases. Sometimes we get a call from a family member asking for an update and we'll go pull that case.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And we'll review it. And sometimes you're like, oh okay, it's been 10 years since this has been looked at, let's take another look at it. Sometimes I might be at a retirement party and some homicide detective that's been retired was like oh yeah, look at this case. We were so close, we know this, or we know that, or it's a tragic case. Somebody should look at it and it might pique my interest and I might go pull it. Sometimes it's just accidental. I might be looking for something else, and that's the case of my 1973 Jane Doe case. I was looking for something else and I'm flipping through the books and each homicide has its own page basically. So we have books by years, so 1973, 1972, so we have a year. So I'm just flipping through looking for something else and I saw this case and I was like, oh, we could solve that case today.
Speaker 1:What gave you that intuition?
Speaker 2:Because it was a Jane Doe case and as long as I have some of her hair, clothing or DNA, we'll solve it using forensic investigative genealogy or using the CODIS database for the missing and unidentified persons database, because family members, if your family member, goes missing, you can upload your DNA to CODIS into the missing persons file. So I thought this case hasn't been looked at since probably, I would say, the mid-90s.
Speaker 1:Is that one of the cold cases that you solved?
Speaker 2:So with a John and Jane Doe, half the victory is identifying the person.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So yes, we did identify her. We have not solved her murder and it's probably because you know time.
Speaker 1:How did you identify her? Can you say how you identified her?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, so I'll give you a little bit of the backstory. So Jane Doe was found in the waters by the Coast Guard station down by the airport, and she was decapitated. Her legs were sawed off and her torso was found in a suitcase with her hands tied behind her back and her fingertips shaved off. And so some fishermen at the time it was more of a boardwalk in front of the Coast Guard station saw the suitcase and were like, oh, that's weird and, you know, open, didn't quite open it, but tore a hole in it and saw a body part. And then it kind of looked around and saw, you know, a trash bag bobbing over here and a trash bag bobbing over there and those were her legs. And so they called the police and um they found, found all pieces of her and um tried in 1973 to identify her. And the best way to do that at the time was dental records, was putting information out over um, you know, the news media, to local law enforcement. They tried identifying where was this suitcase purchased from?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Um, but never identified. So I thought, oh well, today's work, we can identify her. So we exhumed her and were able to get a partial DNA profile to put into CODIS, the missing and unidentified person system. But there was no hit there. Okay, but it was a partial and those can be really tough and those can be really tough. But we were able to send off some of her I believe it was her femur to an outside lab that could develop a SNP profile for genealogy and they did that and put her genie in a database and oftentimes you get a hit that's third, fourth cousins. None of us know who our third, fourth cousins are Very rarely, do you?
Speaker 2:I mean, maybe some people know their second cousin, but Right right right, I do know a few second cousins, but most people don't know their third and fourth cousins. So the genealogist handling that case normally leaves it to us to make any contacts. And she said this is like a young man in his 20s in New Jersey. That's hitting as like a fourth cousin. Do you mind if I just call this kid? And I said oh sure, no problem, I wouldn't do that if it was a suspect DNA profile. But this is a doe and we're trying to identify this person. And, interestingly enough, often in these genealogical cases we run into either adoptions which skew our information, which we have to overcome, the adoption Another curveball.
Speaker 2:Curveball, or children that were born out of wedlock and no one knew about so kind of. There's some curveball.
Speaker 1:Like a bastard child.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or a love child, or maybe, like you know, mom and uncle had a tryst and all of a sudden dad's not the dad, but the uncle is, so there could be some something in the family history that didn't wasn't disclosed before.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So, um. So she calls this young man and he says well, I was adopted, but my mom, um, I have been in contact with my, my birth family, because my mom, I'm Portuguese and my mom really wanted me connected with my culture. And what rang wild was, you know, the Portuguese community here in San Diego.
Speaker 1:Point Loma.
Speaker 2:Point Loma. Where was the body found? Point Loma?
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:So immediately I thought, oh my gosh, that's exciting. So this was about two years ago, it was right before the Fourth of July holiday, and so I called the adopted mom and I explained who I am and what I was doing. And she says, yeah, well, I know, I know his like I can't remember exactly which family, but I'm in contact. His cousins, you know his grandparents were, you know we. We were in contact with them and they were in Newark, new Jersey, and which, unbeknownst to me, even though I didn't grow up too far from there, is a large Portuguese community. And I thought, okay, well, now we're starting to connect some dots here, even though they're different. New Jersey is from mainland Portugal, the Portuguese here are from the Azores Islands, so they don't really intermingle the two cultures of Portugal. But I mean that to me was like, okay, well, there's something here.
Speaker 2:I come back into the office after the 4th of July holiday and the Portuguese community in Newark, new Jersey, had solved it for me. They're that tight-knit of a community that the adopted mom contacted the family that she knew and said hey, could you ask around and find out, is anybody missing from 1973? A female, this is about her age. We did have a kind of a facial reconstruction of her, because we had her head of what she looked like, which was pretty good, and I sent it to her and she sent it out to the people she knew in the Portuguese community and, boom, the women that are now in their seventies and eighties all remembered a female that went missing. So she even went so far as to check um, the um, uh death records for me and the obituaries, and sent me her husband's obituary, which had the daughter's names on it, and so what we learned? Um, arminda da Silva was on it. And so what we learned, arminda da Silva was her name. And so what we learned was Arminda was born and raised in Portugal, married in Portugal, she gave birth to her daughters in Portugal and then her and her husband moved to Newark, new Jersey, to relocate in that Portuguese community.
Speaker 2:And really I mean it's really not that far from Portugal If you're in Newark. I mean it's really not that far from Portugal. If you're in Newark, new Jersey it's a four hour plane ride and but it's a very large Portuguese community. And in 1973, arminda went missing and last she was known to be with someone that she worked with at a fabrication company and that was her supervisor and she had two daughters. So when I contacted the daughters they're like yeah, it really can't be my mother, because we have no connection to San Diego, nothing, zilch. My mother didn't speak English, she didn't have the means to get a bus fare, she wouldn't know how to get on an airplane. Like it can't be my mom. And I said, well, do you mind if I come out and meet you and take your DNA? And they were very gracious because that's a heavy phone call, and I took their DNA and was able to match it to my Jane Doe.
Speaker 1:The femur.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then identify her as Arminda Da Silva-Ribero. And it was very emotional for their family because, you know, these young girls were five and nine when their mom went missing and so here they are thinking that their mom just doesn't want to be a mom. That's kind of how they what they thought, that maybe she's just unhappy being a mom and decided to decided to leave the family, when in all actuality, within two months of her leaving, disappearing from Newark, new Jersey, she was found dead here in San Diego, and whoever did it obviously knew she could be traced through her fingerprints, probably from her immigration here, that they shaved off her fingertips. So that case never would have been solved if it wasn't for forensic, investigative genetic genealogy.
Speaker 1:When you match the DNA from the daughters to the mom, is there room for error or is it like once? It's a direct hit, it's legitimate.
Speaker 2:Yes, and not just you know. So it's a direct hit both in the genealogical database but also with the limited DNA that we had, that CalDOJ was able to match the partial DNA profile that we had for Jane Doe and the daughter as a mother-daughter relationship, but also the factors involved, the factors of a missing woman at the same time that she's found.
Speaker 1:That is absolutely wild, it's wild.
Speaker 2:So her case is unsolved in the respect of someone has not been identified as being the murderer and it's going to stay open until we do.
Speaker 1:So what goes next? Leads motives, suspects and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know. I contacted members of the Portuguese community here. I went to one of their meeting halls and showed her picture around and no one recognized her. I still don't have anyone here that knows why she was here in San Diego or how she even got here.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the individual that she was last known to be with was not Portuguese and so she had very limited English, and so her daughters are kind of dumbfounded by that. So I don't know was she? Was she tricked to move here to San Diego? Did she come voluntarily? Was she held hostage?
Speaker 2:Nobody knows, and the last person that she was known to be with we have not fully identified, and that person likely is deceased based on their age unbelievable yeah, so you know, at least we were able to give absolutely some information, you know, and it's really important that we recognize that, even though I call and say, oh, that is your mom, it is an exceedingly emotional moment and my heart really, you know, it was kind of like a wow, like this is, we're really doing something here for people.
Speaker 1:Do you believe they found closure?
Speaker 2:I think they released some feelings of.
Speaker 1:Abandonment.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and so I think in that respect, yeah. They realized that my mom didn't leave me.
Speaker 1:She couldn't come back. Yeah, I think it's hard to hear.
Speaker 2:I think it's hard to hear, but I think it's also really rewarding for them to know that. Okay, and I just wish we could have solved it before their father passed away. He passed away a couple of years before we solved it.
Speaker 1:The father.
Speaker 2:So Arminda's husband.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Passed away before we were able to solve it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so there was no way of even talking to him, or no, but we did go back.
Speaker 2:We spoke to some family members and some people that worked with her back in 73 are still alive so we were able to contact them. Many of them still only speak Portuguese. So I did have a lieutenant on our department that speaks Portuguese and he are still alive, so we were able to contact them. Many of them still only speak Portuguese. So I did have a lieutenant on our department that speaks Portuguese and he did a lot of interviews. For me it's wild and it's interesting. They all remember her and they all remember her story. So she was never forgotten. She was never far from their thoughts.
Speaker 1:Man, I know earlier you were talking about that you would actually have to go to prison and interview suspects. How would those types of stuff come about?
Speaker 2:Again, that's just where the case takes you sometimes, and I really do enjoy going to prisons because it is a different world and I think you could feel the energy in the air, you could just feel it, the intimidation of just walking through those doors. But it is a city of its own and so, yeah, multiple times we go to prisons to interview suspects and one time I was a little taken aback. You know it's, it can be intimidating and, uh, it's not a great room to do interviews. Sometimes it's just kind of like the side office.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely, You're not getting. You're not getting a good room.
Speaker 2:No, no. And so, uh, there's a couple of times I was like you're not going to be far right, like this is a big mean dude I'm going in here to talk to Um, but uh, yeah, I, I actually really enjoy it. You know, one of my uh again, I've been surrounded by phenomenal detectives, and two of them were Sandy Opplinger and Tony Johnson. And Tony Johnson is still my mentor. He has 47 years in law enforcement and he's getting ready to retire. He's still working. He still works with me in cold cases.
Speaker 2:And um Sandy had this case when she was a detective with our agency, before going to the district attorney's office and she said I know, I'm confident that this guy murdered this woman in a hotel downtown. And so she said listen, you know, I wrote a warrant for him back then. He was a sex registrant. He failed to register and he did something else and he's in prison for life. She said, before I retire, let's revisit this case.
Speaker 2:So we did and we tested some more clothes and I can't remember what year the case was. It had to have been probably in the 90s. We retested some of her clothing, the victim's clothing, and this suspect's DNA came back on a belt and it was a suspect. She always thought it was now. Now we don't know. It's in the room and it's close to the body and she's like I know. I know he did it, you know based on her experience with him, then him absconding when she tried to narrow down a story, his, his criminal history. So we went up to a prison up in LA and I can't tell you which one it was.
Speaker 1:Lancaster.
Speaker 2:Probably, it was probably Lancaster, and so we were talking with him. And now he's 80 and still in pretty good shape, and we were talking about this case. And you know, I think one of my strongest suits is my ability to interview people, and it's because I don't come off as a bitch and I don't come off as an asshole, I just come off as I'm having a conversation. I'm just trying to solve this case.
Speaker 1:It would be the best way to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. He's been in prison for 20 years.
Speaker 1:That individual was in prison for a murder.
Speaker 2:No, I can't remember exactly, but it that individual was imprisoned for a murder no, I can't remember exactly but it had to do with some kind of sexual assault or sexual registration, something like that. So he was not getting out, and so Sandy and I were interviewing him. And there's just a moment in the interview like oh, we're close, like we're close, and so we just kind of kept working on him a little bit and finally he goes oh all right, all right, all right, I did it.
Speaker 1:I did it. I might as well just tell you I literally was like hold on, let's back it up a little bit. Yeah, you're in the interview room. You have a partner yeah, and then you have the, the inmate? Yeah. And how does the conversation start? Like, hey, I'm, I'm such and such from san diego pd. How do they go? Yeah?
Speaker 2:so I usually kind of dress like this okay sometimes even more casual. Okay, and hey, you know we're with san diego pd and then I just go off and start talking about anything else okay anything else, it doesn't matter. Oh, how is it in here? How's the food? How's live? What do you been up to? Typical interrogation skills yeah, this is like. I just want him to be comfortable talking right and seeing me not as a threat, and that's really important you know, right so I think people, by the time I'm done talking, they don't realize wow, you're really gonna arrest me like you're really gonna do it.
Speaker 2:So, um, so you know, just talking with them. And then we just said, hey, listen, this is why we're here. And um, you were interviewed before. This one's not a secret, so that's kind of a good opportunity to say we're revisiting this case. And finally, after about an hour and 20 minutes, listen, we know, you did it. This is really not. We're not really here as an exercise to get you to say something that isn't true. We already know, like we know, the facts are here, we're DNAs, we know. So you know you're really not. You know you're not going to tell us anything that we would be shocked at. And you know you could tell he was just, he wasn't a dumb guy. To be honest, I think he just knew like I'm not getting out of here anyway could tell he was just, he wasn't a dumb guy to be honest, I think he just knew like I'm not getting out of here anyway.
Speaker 1:What's the point? So you, being good at your job and being able to, you could already see the wheel spinning in his head like he's about to give up the goods a hundred percent and there was a couple of times and you know, there's that hesitant pause and kind of like the eye searching or just ambivalence?
Speaker 2:yes, and you think, oh damn, we're gonna get to get this. And you know, it's almost like you're holding your breath.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, dude, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's very hard not to just kind of go yeah. So once he said it, we're like, yeah, okay, well, good, I'm glad you finally told the truth, you know. And so let's just walk back through the story again. And inside I'm like don't smile, don't, don't even look at sandy, because I know what she's thinking and we're just gonna just continue doing this conversation. And you know, he told us the whole story, beginning to end, and thanked us for coming out and spending time talking with him and and thank you, guys.
Speaker 2:Even you're so good at what you do he did, he said thank you, you know I I've been debating on whether or not I should tell the truth and you know, know what I appreciate you coming out. Oh you're welcome.
Speaker 1:Is there anything else I can do?
Speaker 2:for you today. All right, have a nice day. And we left and Sandy and I got the car and we went. We're going in and out Like this is celebration.
Speaker 1:Animal style price.
Speaker 2:So you know.
Speaker 1:So what would happen next? What would happen next? Would you file charges with the DA?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the DA's office.
Speaker 1:So we would still put the case together present it to the DA's office and then they'd charge him, bring him down to San Diego and he pled guilty before prelim. Yeah, because at that point he's like my life's over I've been sitting with a secret.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not getting out.
Speaker 1:I'm not getting out Perfect timing. She was cool about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we weren't rude, we weren't jerks. We had another case. It is rare in my experience to have someone plead guilty before a prelim, but we did have another case of a guy, sam Quinton, that I interviewed again with Sandy and he denied, denied, denied ever being with this. It was a 15-year-old boy in southeast San Diego and denied, denied, denied. But I had his DNA and his criminal history in that same area preceding this crime was exceedingly violent. He held some people captive and a hostage in a house and sexually assaulted them. And very, very violent guy and actually he was in prison for narcotics and, because of the way the new laws are structured, that he was going to have an opportunity to get out. So we put that case to the forefront because it was a juvenile from Southeast San Diego and it was from 87. And we revisit the case with today's technology, with DNA, dna is super sensitive and boom, we got a hit that they didn't get before.
Speaker 1:Did you know he was going to get out soon?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And is that what initiated the yeah? How does that work?
Speaker 2:So you know he was in for narcotics violations and now he was supposed to be in there for basically the remainder of his life. But the laws in California are structured and as you know, they're letting a lot of people out of prison that should not be out of prison Thousands. So he was one of the people that was going to be slated for a revisit to resentencing. What I'm asking is who caught that? So the DA's office. So we've got a great partnership with our DA's office.
Speaker 1:Shout out to the DA's office on that one.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And again, we're very unique in Southern California, San Diego specifically. We have tremendous support with our DA's office from Summer Stephan down to the cold case unit, which has dedicated prosecutors. Down to the cold case unit, which has dedicated prosecutors, which prosecuting cold cases is more challenging because you have to know the laws from the year of the crime. Wow, you have to know the sentencing guidelines for the years of the crime.
Speaker 2:You have to know how to navigate when most of your witnesses, including officers, are deceased. You need to know how to get that evidence into court, you know.
Speaker 1:So it's a challenge you got me on the edge of my seat right now, so you got this. Uh, dude who's has the heinous history of sexually assaulting? Taking people hostage. Yes, about to get out. You have his dna, so what happens next?
Speaker 2:So he's up in San Quentin, which I do. I've been up there a couple times, weirdly enough, I like going up there because it's history.
Speaker 1:It is old.
Speaker 2:It's exactly what you think it is, but you could feel that energy in the air. I don't know how to describe it. It's like this bustling city of convicts and it's both intimidating and interesting at the same time. But, um, so they brought him into a room and he was a big dude and I thought I mean both Sandy and I are thinking, okay, where's our? We've got one door to get out of, okay, and I know the guards aren't far, but they're still six steps away. This guy is a big dude and we're going to confront him with a murder. And, um, but nothing, nothing negative happened, thank goodness. And um, he uh denied no, not me. And and some people will deny because they don't want to be associated with, maybe, some sexual activity- with somebody that's a young child or of same sex.
Speaker 2:So we can certainly understand. We try to overcome those obstacles of people telling us the truth and really there's. You know, in this particular case this young man was left in like the trolley was being built off of Euclid so it was kind of like a drainage ditch over in Euclid. This 16, 15-year-old boy was murdered.
Speaker 1:What was the cause of death?
Speaker 2:Gosh, I don't recall. It might have been strangulation, but he was also stabbed and he was mutilated, okay, so very violent. And you know, he was last seen by his mom leaving the house to go meet a friend what all kids do, yeah, and he didn't return home. But, um, so we knew that there would be an obstacle to him confessing because of the age of the victim and the same sex, and that some people don't want to be associated right with that type of crime. Um, but I have dna.
Speaker 2:So you can't tell me you don't know him. And you can't tell me you don't know him and you can't tell me you weren't sexually active with this person or being sexual around this person. I have, especially if I have, your semen. You can't deny it. So if you do go ahead and deny it, I'm okay with that too, because I could prove that's a lie. So he's the other one that pled guilty to murdering him before prelim and just spending the rest of his life in prison to murdering him before prelim and just spending the rest of his life in prison.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Jesus, that's crazy, yeah, so it's truly an honor and a privilege to work cold cases. It really is, because, honestly, I get to work with the investigators of the past, investigators that worked alongside of me and used today's technology to solve cases.
Speaker 1:Well, if nobody's ever thanked you, I want to thank you for doing that. Man, that's not easy. It seems extremely challenging. So many moving parts.
Speaker 2:It is challenging, but the excitement is the moving parts. Right, I'm not running out to a call on scene. Right, I'm not getting called out in the middle of the night to a scene. There's a lot of activity.
Speaker 1:I would much rather do with you. I scene there's a lot of activity. I would much rather do with you. I buy those games at Target, solve the mystery murder and you know the family game and I enjoy solving puzzles.
Speaker 2:And you know that's the other thing. So you know it's a challenge for law enforcement to go knock on a door and say, hi, I'm a detective in homicide. Can I talk to you about the murder of your neighbor? A lot of people are like, no. But when I go knock on a door and I say, uh, but when I go knock on a door and I say, hi, I'm a cold case homicide investigator I get the same response. I love that show, come on in and people tell me a lot because, because they see what we have done.
Speaker 1:You know, there's a lot of TV shows out there.
Speaker 2:You know some of it's not accurate, but there's a lot of interest out there for cold cases and people wanting to help want. People want to be meaningful, meaningful and helpful. So very rarely do I have someone say they don't want to talk to me.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of people that watch this channel, this show. What can you tell the viewers? What can they do to help a cold case homicide detective Like such as? One thing you mentioned was, hey, giving the approval for the genetics Right. What is something along those lines that the public can do to assist?
Speaker 2:This is the number one thing you can help, and it's not just solving a homicide, but it's also identifying a missing person and it's also identifying human remains that have no name John and Jane Does. And it's also identifying human remains that have no name John and Jane Doe's. But if you've taken a test in one of these ancestral type sites like Ancestry, 23andme, myheritage or FamilyTreeDNA, please I would ask that you voluntarily download your DNA into GEDmatch and opt in for law enforcement viewing. And that's really critically important for our victims who have family lineage in Mexico, because the databases are the more data points we have, the more successful we have, and we don't have a lot of data points in Mexico, and so we are a border city, so we have a lot of people who are from Mexico or their grandparents or great grandparents, and so the more data points we have from Mexico, the better chances we have of identifying my 2004 baby doe right, yeah, against women and children and innocent people or identifying people who are missing.
Speaker 2:You know we may have their remains, but we don't. You know we don't have a name to go with it, and perhaps that is your cousin or your aunt or your uncle, so you know everybody wants to help with cold cases because they are meaningful. We don't want to forget these victims. We shouldn't, and so you know. If you're already in one of those databases, please consider downloading into GEDmatch and every one of those sites. You could do it directly from that site. There's instructions.
Speaker 1:Which is the one, which is the company that you said works with the.
Speaker 2:Family Tree DNA.
Speaker 1:Family Tree.
Speaker 2:DNA Allows for law enforcement to input DNA for to download into GEDmatch so we have access to them. Okay, but even still, we would need that profile to be downloaded into GEDmatch with the opt-in for law enforcement viewing. And also consider we're not just a border city but we're a very transient city. We have a large military presence here.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So people don't stay here sometimes but four years and then they're gone. So a lot of our cases tend to go out of San Diego. So if you have family that maybe was here just for a short time and then moved back to Boston or New York or wherever they're from, there may be something here that you can help us with.
Speaker 1:Now, what about as far as children? I know they're fingerprinted at birth, but is there anything that a parent can do to assist?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I think, if you're talking about your own kids, I mean for my own kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your own kids.
Speaker 2:To your own kid.
Speaker 1:I have a six-year-old daughter. Is the reason why I'm asking yeah, so I would.
Speaker 2:I would take a dna swab from them and you could just take a q-tip and swab the inside of their mouth and stick it in in in a um envelope not a, not a plastic envelope, but like just a regular, uh kind of like a cardstock type envelope and just stick it in your sock drawer, right? So something horrible happens you have our dna immediately unbelievable right. So I do that, you know, I know how to you.
Speaker 2:I know how to fingerprint and there's a certain way to fingerprint which is kind of super cool where you dust the entire hand. You use fingerprint powder and you dust the entire hand and then you put sticky paper over the hand and you just massage that sticky paper all over the hand and then you peel it off and you have this ginormous beautiful handprint with the wrist marks with your fingertips and even the side tips. You can do that.
Speaker 1:I'm going to do that for sure, because you know God forbid anything.
Speaker 2:God forbid.
Speaker 1:Be proactive.
Speaker 2:Proactive, and the faster we have access to that information, the faster we can help Catch somebody. Yeah, and then just you know, be smart with your kids, Talk to them about. Talk to them about if you feel uncomfortable around somebody, then you know it's your time to leave. You don't have to have an actual reason.
Speaker 1:Hey, my daughter. She's very intuitive. She, I don't know like gifted with reading people too, that's great, yeah, yeah, for sure, that's great.
Speaker 2:And that takes courage to say, to say this person makes me uncomfortable, I'm leaving.
Speaker 1:I'll watch her too and I'll be like, oh, you're on your radar's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1:So, as we wrap it up, I'm blown away by this conversation, if you can give advice to the females, young females, because I believe you're one of the first women interviewers interviewees that I've had. So that's an honor. What would you give them? For instance, I have a six-year-old daughter. She's like Daddy I want to be a police officer. What can you say about the career through your experience?
Speaker 2:So I will say I have been blessed with my experience. I have been so fortunate. Really, there's never been a time in my career that I thought I don't want to do this anymore. As a matter of fact, when I approached retirement I thought, oh my gosh, I don't get to do this anymore. It really is a privilege and I would tell anyone that's getting into the profession today is absorb as much as possible, ask a lot of questions, maintain your skills through constant training and even just to be a police officer, you know that decision really shouldn't be made when you're you know, when you got nothing else to do right. It's a profession where we really have a high ethical standard and integrity is paramount in our profession. We have to have people who have high integrity standards so you know if you want to be in law enforcement, they're really your.
Speaker 2:Decision-making when you're in high school is critical. Who are you hanging out with? What do they do? And yeah, I get it that you know certain drugs are legal now, but is it? Is it acceptable to do those drugs and be around children? Is it acceptable to be around drugs and drive a car? You've got to be mindful of all these things. Driving a car. How are you driving that car, whether you're under the influence or not? Are you speeding? Are you reckless driving? All that matters. So start thinking in high school about what kind of cop do you want to be? Even if you don't become a cop until you're 25, they're going to look at your history.
Speaker 1:They right, you still they're gonna look at your history.
Speaker 2:they're gonna look at your background. Even if you don't want to become a cop, it's still good not to fucking do drugs and wild, very true. But I think there's a desensitization of all those things for a variety of factors. One is that legalizing so many drugs, and then you have the covid generation that was home and bored, and then people who normally wouldn't start dabbling in drugs Correct, yeah, there's a lot, a lot of factors there. But you know, I think it's really important that you find what you're good at and you just hold onto it and get the most out of it that you can. And you know some people think they want to be cops and they start and they don't like it, and that's okay. It's always okay to to pivot. Go be an attorney, go work probation, go do something else meaningful for your community. You know I knew my family history and who I was. We are public servants. I'm not the finance person. I'm not going to go on Wall Street and make millions of dollars.
Speaker 2:It's just not me, but I could be really effective in my community and really appreciate and enjoy the ride, and I am so grateful for all of my experiences and not all of them have been great. They've been really challenging and really, really, really tough, but it's an honor to be able to do that for our community.
Speaker 1:It really is Well, you did really good by honoring your family legacy by leaving your mark.
Speaker 2:In San.
Speaker 1:Diego, no less, so thank you for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're welcome.
Speaker 1:Wow, so I'm going to wrap it up now, but I want to thank you for coming onto the show and we've got to have you on some more for other stories.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got a couple of really good ones Fingerprints. Don't forget fingerprints. I have two really good fingerprint stories that I'll save for later, really good fingerprint stories that I'll save for later. But yeah, I really appreciate it being here. Thank you so much, and I think the more people that get to know a real cold case investigator, maybe they'll be more willing to help out. Absolutely, if you get a phone call from one of us, authenticate who we are and then maybe help out.
Speaker 1:Kill the beans man, yeah, cool. Well, there you guys have it, folks. Another banger. I want to thank you guys for watching. If you loved what you saw, make sure you hit that subscribe button. Remember, keep pushing forward. Unhinged line. Hector's legend engraved living life raw, never been tamed. From the hood to the truth entails pen. Hector bra Bravo on hinge story never ends. Thank you.
