Podcast on Crimes Against Women

The Power of Investigative Genetic Genealogy

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

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

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

Maria MacMullin:

The subject matter of this podcast will address difficult topics multiple forms of violence, and identity-based discrimination and harassment. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult and have listed specific content warnings in each episode description to help create a positive, safe experience for all listeners.

Maria MacMullin:

In this country, 31 million crimes 31 million crimes are reported every year. That is one every second. Out of that, every 24 minutes there is a murder. Every five minutes there is a rape. Every two to five minutes there is a sexual assault. Every nine seconds in this country, a woman is assaulted by someone who told her that he loved her, by someone who told her it was her fault, by someone who tries to tell the rest of us it's none of our business and I am proud to stand here today with each of you to call that perpetrator a liar.

Maria MacMullin:

Welcome to the podcast on crimes against women. I'm Maria MacMullin. Last time on the podcast, we discussed the case of Christopher Michael Green as one that was successfully prosecuted through the findings of Investigative Genetic Genealogy, or IgG. Today, we take an even deeper dive into IgG with two of its earliest adopters former FBI Steve Bush and Steve Kramer. In doing so, we will discuss the case of Eva LaRue, a Hollywood actress who portrayed Detective Natalia Boavista, a DNA analyst, in the hit show CSI Miami from 2005 to 2012. In her personal life, eva and her daughter, kaya were subjected for over 12 years to dozens of menacing letters and packages, with the sender threatening to rape, torture and kill them. The sender identified himself as Freddy Krueger, the fictional psychotic killer from a 1980s and 90s horror movie series. Although she reported the letters to the FBI and DNA was obtained from the envelopes, the FBI's traditional forensic efforts failed to identify her stalker. In 2019, the letter writer called Kaya's school and impersonated Kaya's father, and directed the school to bring Kaya outside so he could take her home. This attempt to kidnap was a significant escalation. In order to prevent any harm to LaRue and her daughter, the FBI employed a new forensic technique investigative genetic genealogy. Investigative genetic genealogy, which, according to the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, is the science of using genetic and genealogical methods to generate leads for law enforcement entities investigating crimes and identifying human remains. By using DNA profiles from a crime scene or from unidentified human remains, investigators are able to identify close genetic DNA profiles or matches, comparing the known genealogy of those close familial matches, thereby constraining the number of possible close relatives of the perpetrator or victim. Fbi agents uploaded the stalker's DNA to a genetic genealogy database, the same method utilized to identify the Golden State Killer. This episode will be a discussion with those two veteran FBI agents who will highlight the power of forensic, investigative genetic genealogy in the hands of law enforcement.

Maria MacMullin:

Steve Bush is a former FBI special agent and currently the founder of Indago Solutions, an organization he established with his former FBI partner, steve Kramer. Special Agent Bush spent 19 years as an FBI special agent and was the co-founder of the FBI's Forensic Genetic Genealogy Team and architector of the FBI's National FGG, now the IG Program. Previously, special Agent Bush worked investigative assignments, including counterterrorism and complex financial crimes. He also honed his leadership skills as a SWAT sniper team leader, routinely solving multifaceted problems in a high-threat environment. Steve Kramer is the co-founder and president of Indago.

Maria MacMullin:

With 25 years of experience in law enforcement as an FBI attorney, federal prosecutor and deputy district attorney, mr Kramer has prosecuted homicide cases, corporate fraud cases and national security cases At the FBI. He was responsible for legal matters in many of the FBI's largest and most sensitive criminal and national security investigations. Due to his interest in DNA-related investigations, in 2013, mr Kramer became involved in the FBI's investigation of the Golden State Killer, one of the most prolific uncaught serial killers in the United States history, responsible for 13 murders, 50 sexual assaults and hundreds of burglaries. Mr Kramer led the team of investigators on a forensic genetic genealogy investigation which resulted in the arrest of the Golden State Killer, joseph James DeAngelo, in April 2018. Steve Bush, Steve Kramer, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having us. We appreciate it.

Steve Kramer:

Yeah, thank to the podcast. Thanks for having us. We appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Maria MacMullin:

Both of you have retired from the FBI and since then you've been working on an investigative genetic genealogy program. But the FBI gave you the background in IgG and it is the leading law enforcement agency to embrace the use of investigative genetic genealogy. Can you tell us how these scientific methods were first introduced by the FBI?

Steve Busch:

Well, here's the thing, maria. It all started with a case Genetic genealogy. You're going to hear us refer to it as a couple different things throughout the podcast. Some people call it investigative genetic genealogy, some call it forensic genetic genealogy, some just call it genetic genealogy. You'll probably hear us refer to it as all three. The FBI now calls it just investigative genetic genealogy.

Steve Busch:

But that program it all started with one case, a case that's pretty well known in the community, a case called the Golden State Killer case, and that was a case that went unsolved for over four decades. And Steve Kramer, when we were working at the FBI, had the idea. He and Paul Holes were working together on it. He had the idea that they should take this mystery man's DNA. Keep in mind, this was a person who always wore a mask, never left a fingerprint and the only thing we had, the only piece of evidence we had on him, was his DNA. And so Kramer had the idea. He said well, what do you think would happen if we took this mystery man's DNA and we put it into one of these genealogy sites? Maybe we could figure out who his relatives were, and maybe from there we could figure out who he was and a lot of people thought he was nuts with that idea. But Steve persisted and he made it happen. So, steve, maybe you could tell the story from your perspective how that happened.

Steve Kramer:

Yeah, I mean, it was essentially like Steve said. It was an unsolvable case, you know, over four decades old, and all we had was DNA. So you know, Paul Holes and most of us thought the only way we're going to really solve this case is through the DNA of the Golden State Killer had been in the FBI's National DNA Index System, which people know as CODIS. It had been there since 1998, and it was never going to hit. By that point we figured the Golden State Killer, that individual, was probably in his 60s, 70s of age, so it was unlikely he was going to get arrested and have his DNA put into CODA. So that was never going to solve it. So we had to look for other means, other ways we could use the DNA. And then you hear about people finding adoptees, finding their biological parents. Well, it was kind of the same idea. Maybe we can take bad guy's DNA and put it into one of these databases and find the relatives of the suspect and then from those relatives triangulate back to who that individual was. So that was really the essence of the idea.

Steve Kramer:

The biggest thing I think about it was from the FBI's perspective. The FBI didn't provide any technical expertise in this whatsoever. The FBI doesn't have any technical expertise in genetic genealogy, at least up until 2018. And so, you know, myself and Paul, you know, we had to figure out this technique. You know how did people do this? How do these genetic genealogists, you know, find, you know, birth parents, things like that.

Steve Kramer:

So we learned how to do it and, being investigators, it wasn't terribly difficult to learn, essentially the tricks of the trade on how to do genetic genealogy. The FBI, I didn't ask for permissions, I basically made sure it was legal. Nobody could give me any objection that it was illegal. So we essentially had free reign to explore this technique and, you know, fortunately so we were able to upload the DNA of the Golden State Killer to a few databases and we were able to, in the term of 63 days, identify Joe D'Angelo as the Golden State Killer, and he was arrested, obviously, and that was April of 2018. And then, since then, you know, multiple law enforcement agencies, not only in the United States but also worldwide, have started using this technique to find not just the suspects in cold cases, but we've done it in a dozen active cases as well, including, I think, the latest one that you heard was the arrest of Koberger and the murder of the four Idaho students in Moscow, Idaho, back in 2022.

Maria MacMullin:

Yeah, I mean, it's genius, right? This was a genius what-if question in a haystack and just you start exploring all the different options of what's possible in order to to identify someone by uploading it into. I think you said 23andme is that right?

Steve Kramer:

no, we uploaded it. We 23andme and ancestrycom are two of the biggest genealogy databases but we could not upload manually to those databases. Those databases you need a saliva sample to actually you know.

Maria MacMullin:

So how did you put his DNA in that kind of a database?

Steve Kramer:

So the database that we initially used was Family Tree DNA, and this is where being with the FBI was really helpful. I was able to pick up the phone as an FBI attorney and call these companies Ancestry Family Tree DNA and say, hey, I'm an attorney with the FBI. Can I speak to your CEO? Can I speak to your privacy officer? This is what we want to do.

Steve Kramer:

One of those CEOs, in this case Bennett Greenspan at Family Tree DNA I got a hold of him and I told him we're looking at this terrible guy that murdered 13 people, raped 50 women, committed over 100 burglaries, and he's like I got to help. You guys, give me the DNA. I will get you the profile you need because it's a different type of DNA profile for genealogy than CODIS and then I'll put it in my database and we can find the relatives and you guys can identify who the Golden State Killer is. So that's exactly what we did. We went to one of the crime scene. Evidence in this case was from a 1981 sexual assault and homicide in Ventura, california, ventura County. They still had a sample from the sexual assault kit that was taken from the female victim and we were able to take the DNA from that sexual assault kit, send it off to Family Tree DNA in Houston Texas. They were able to get a DNA profile suitable for genealogy, upload it to their database and then from there we were able to do genetic genealogy.

Maria MacMullin:

To triangulate back to Joe D'Angelo, Without any ethical considerations, of using the information in the database that you consulted with.

Steve Kramer:

Right. So everybody in the database has agreed to match with everybody. So when you upload your DNA and you say I want to match with everybody, you agree to match with everybody in the database and so, legally speaking, the police can do police can, you know, do whatever the general public is doing essentially. And so we put the DNA of our suspect, which we had legal control of, into the database and to match with everybody else that had consented to match with everybody in the database.

Maria MacMullin:

And why this case? Why the Golden State Killer case? Why was that the case that you decided to use this technology on Well, I mean it was just a fascinating case.

Steve Kramer:

I mean it's a case that's been cold for 40 plus years and it was all over the state of California, from Sacramento all the way down to South Orange County, dana Point, orange County and plenty of spaces in between. Law enforcement was never able to catch them. I mean, they'd spent not only 40 plus years, but they'd spent hundreds of thousands of man hours on it. They'd spent tens of millions of dollars, they had thousands of potential suspects but nobody ever panned out, and so it was one of the most prolific. I think the Golden State Killer was considered one of the most prolific uncaught serial killers in US history up until that time.

Steve Kramer:

And so what did we have on him? We had DNA. The only reason I got involved is I knew we had DNA all over the state of California, so that's the reason we looked at it. I never looked at it for any other reason than to see if we could use the dna to solve it. I wasn't looking at rereading the police. I I barely read a police report in that entire case, because all I cared about was the dna, and that was why this was the focal point of that investigation gotcha.

Steve Busch:

Well, and maria, not to interrupt you real quick, the steve kind of glossed over it, but I want to hit this again. The numbers in this case are absolutely compelling because you think about the fact Steve mentioned this case was cold for 43 years. It's estimated that 650 plus detectives tried to solve this case from 15 different law enforcement agencies and, like Steve said, they spent the better part of 200,000 man hours and $10 million trying to figure out who this guy was. They had a suspect list that was 8,000 people long. There were 8,000 men's names on a suspect list. Wow, 300 of those men got swabbed for DNA and we compared their DNA to the crime scene. None of it matched right.

Steve Busch:

And so then Steve Kramer and Paul Holes put together a team of six people Monica Sykowski, kurt Campbell from the Sacramento DA's office, barbara Ray Ventura, a well-known genealogist, and Melissa Pariseau, a brilliant analyst from the FBI. Those six people in 63 days. They spent $217 and they figure out who Joe D'Angelo is. I mean that's remarkable. It's the most efficient use of government resources and time that I can think of. So when you look at the numbers that way, I think it's a remarkable success story.

Maria MacMullin:

Yeah, for sure, I can't argue with that. Now, the IGG work you started with the FBI is now the foundation of your company, indago Solutions. First, let's talk about that name. We had a fun conversation offline about this. Where does the name Indago come from?

Steve Busch:

So Indago is a Latin word that means to hunt or to seek out, to investigate, which is effectively what the software does. I had mentioned to you before that my wife teaches classical Latin to our kids, and when we were trying to form the name of our company, we wanted it to be something meaningful, and so we chose Indago, because it was indicative of what the software does and how it helps investigators get to the answer.

Maria MacMullin:

That's so interesting. And now, how did the two of you kind of come together and then tell us what you actually do at Indago?

Steve Busch:

I mean, it's such a long story we could probably waste your entire podcast talking about it. But Steve and I I mean we've worked together at the FBI for years. We were both at the FBI, for I was there for 19 years, steve was there for 23 years, and we had overlap. In my previous job at the FBI, prior to doing genetic genealogy, I was actually a tactical guy. I was a SWAT guy at the FBI, a SWAT team leader, a sniper team leader guy at the FBI, a SWAT team leader, a sniper team leader.

Steve Busch:

I was in a horrible accident back in June of 2015. And God had different plans for me at the FBI and after I was off duty for 21 months, I did 21 months of physical therapy to come back to the job. And when I came back, it was in late 2017, when Steve was in the middle of dabbling with the Golden State Killer case. It fascinated me. Steve was in the middle of dabbling with the Golden State Killer case. It fascinated me. I did some pretty heavy work on the Golden State Killer case, maria, like bringing coffee to Steve while he was solving the case. I didn't have really anything to do with that Someone has to bring the coffee.

Steve Busch:

That's right. Coffee's important. You're not solving cases without it. We all agree with that. But it was what happened after that, though, because you can imagine, the Golden State killer case gets solved at the bureau, and it's. It's a huge success because of the case itself, but the bigger success we didn't realize it at the time the bigger success was the development of this technique, right, the technique that is now on blast for the law enforcement world to see, and you can imagine, everyone starts calling you. You're old enough to remember dialing 411 information. You know I need the FBI office in Orange County and they called us and said how can I use this on my case? How can I help solve my cases? And so Steve and I and Melissa and a small team of folks at the Bureau without real, you know permission just kind of said hey, we're going to start solving these cases, we're going to start helping agencies solve these cases, and in the next 12 months from April of 18 to April of 2019, we solved a dozen more cases with this technique. Wow.

Steve Busch:

And these were all. These were all cases, Maria, that people said would never be solved, Similar to the Golden State Killer case. You know, 20, 30, 40 plus years unsolved. And we go through the process and each time we do it we're getting a little bit better. Each time we do it, we do it, we're figuring out a little bit more, we're learning a little bit more and we're getting to success. We're getting to end states that are identifying suspects that couldn't be identified through other means, and that success is what ultimately led into Indago.

Maria MacMullin:

So I see your website is indagoai. How does AI factor into this work?

Steve Busch:

I mean what Steve and I learned and this is through, you know, certainly through the initial 12 cases and that team, you know, when we were still at the Bureau, we went on to solve an additional 50 plus cases with this method. But what we learned very quickly, maria, is that genetic genealogy is about inferring genetic relationships between people based on their public records. It's about pattern recognition. A simple example would be my wife and I are about the same age and we live at the same address. We have some type of relationship. It's not hard to look at our public record and say those two people are related in some way. Maybe they're husband and wife, maybe they're brother, sister, I don't know. You can infer a relationship based on the public record. That's all of what genealogy does.

Steve Busch:

And so when Steve and I started looking at this and this was, you know, when AI was just kind of starting to come into the picture, we said, hey, you know what? There's going to be an artificial intelligence component, a machine learning component to recognizing these patterns faster and better and at a broader scale than a human can do. Machines are going to be able to do this better than humans can do it. And that's where, you know, we reached out to experts in the industry and said, hey, is this something that's possible? Is this something that we can, you know, apply coding and programming to, to make a software that would assist law enforcement? And the answer was clearly yes.

Maria MacMullin:

It's just hard, it takes a lot of time and a lot of money, and so you know that's the journey that we're on right now. So how does it inform law enforcement and like healthcare organizations?

Steve Kramer:

What our software does is it's simplifying this process. When Paul Holes and the rest of our team were doing the Golden State Killer case, we were going through thousands of names and you're looking for common names a lot of times between different family trees. If you built your family tree up and I built my family tree up and we could find a common name, a common ancestor, we'd realize, hey, we might be distant cousins. And when you're going through thousands and thousands of names, trying to remember you know which names are in common with which trees. Obviously very difficult.

Steve Kramer:

But, that's in essence how you know manual genetic genealogy works and you know I remember looking at it going. A computer could just remember all of this instantly and make this, you know, find all the connections between all the people, like Steve was saying. And so what our software is doing is it's taking this process, which right now takes on average about 12 months. 12.1 months was one of the studies a couple of years ago, 12.1 months for law enforcement to solve each case. So it's a long time.

Maria MacMullin:

So is this applied on a case by case basis?

Steve Kramer:

Correct, correct.

Maria MacMullin:

And how do you have cases referred to you?

Steve Kramer:

We do lots of presentations with law enforcement at law enforcement conferences. Obviously we worked in law enforcement, you know, for several decades so we have a lot of contacts in law enforcement. So we're constantly contacted by different agencies, both foreign and domestic. You know that want help solving these type of cases.

Maria MacMullin:

And so do you have to prioritize them.

Steve Kramer:

Oh, absolutely. I mean years in some cases, just because certain populations don't test at these genealogy companies. So if you have somebody from Guatemala or Venezuela, they came into this country, they committed a crime and we had their DNA. It's not going to match a lot of people that are in these databases. 80% of the people that are in these databases are from the United States Now in Europe. That's okay because we've solved cases in Europe as well. We've solved cases in Australia because we Generally, particularly Western European Caucasians, immigrated from Europe to the United States, canada, australia, so you can even Asia, where we have a lot of people in these databases in the United States. That can basically be a close enough relative where we could do genetic genealogy.

Maria MacMullin:

So if it takes 12 months, or maybe a little bit more, to solve a case, how many can you actually handle at one time?

Steve Kramer:

That's a good question. I mean any individual like Steve and I. Just when I was Steve and I, he and I started the FBI genetic genealogy team shortly after the arrest of the Golden State Killer. Like he and I alone. It took us about a year. We solved 12 cases and that was working more or less full time on it. But I mean, some cases are cases you can solve in a day. Other cases will take two years to solve. So there's kind of a bell curve of the different types of cases out there. The whole idea with software is to make it fast and the easiest analogy is like I'm sure you remember from fourth grade when your teacher gave you that homework assignment and gave you 30 long division problems. Remember that Like when you have 30 long division problems and you're like oh my God, this is going to take me all night I repressed those memories.

Steve Kramer:

Right, exactly, but you remember.

Maria MacMullin:

Those, along with my Latin exams. They're all.

Steve Kramer:

Yeah, like just, oh, my God, right, I got 10 of them done and you know it's been 45 minutes and I got another 20 to go, right, right, you know, like we call that, that's called long division. Well, that's how genetic genealogy, you know, is doing it manually like that, as I told you earlier. Now, imagine if you had a calculator when you did your long division, so you had 30 long division problems. You could be done in two minutes, right?

Steve Busch:

Hey Maria, your question your question is so spot on, though, because these are the exact same questions that Steve and I started asking ourselves at the FBI, because, as my caseload went from five cases to 10 cases to 20 cases to 200 cases, at some point, you go well, how many cases can we actually do? Can we train people in order to do what we're doing? And so Steve and I put together a 40-hour training course and started training other FBI agents, other FBI analysts, to try to build capacity within the FBI to do what we were doing. That team now has about 250 people that are doing this, but here's the problem. When you take that, the next logical question then comes well, how? Many cases are there.

Maria MacMullin:

I was going there, I was like I can't even count them. There are so many. Correct.

Steve Busch:

So if you were to go and any of your listeners could go to FBIgov right now and they could search the CODIS statistics and what it will tell you is that from 1994, when Congress authorized CODIS to be established, until today, there are about 23 million total profiles DNA profiles that are in CODIS 1.3 million. Almost 1.3 million of them remain unidentified. They're what they call an unknown forensic profile, meaning that profile was put into CODIS by an investigator because somebody was raped, somebody was murdered, there was some other aggravated felony that happened that required police to collect that DNA from a crime scene and they put it into code, is hoping to get an answer, but they didn't get it. So that's kind of the. That's the debt, if you will, that's the backlog of unsolved cases. But that number every year. If you look at 2018 until now and say year over year, what is that number doing? It's increasing by an average of 80,000 profiles. Okay.

Steve Busch:

So here's the analogy I always use. And maybe you have a teenager, like I do, and maybe he's got a credit card, like mine does. It would be like your teenager coming to you and saying hey, dad, I ran up a $1.3 million debt on my credit card. Okay, I'm making minimum payments, I'm still spending $80,000 a year on my credit card. When do you think I'm going to pay this debt off? Okay, the answer is you know, somewhere North of never. You're never going to pay that debt off.

Steve Busch:

Hence the reason why 12.1 months is not acceptable. Even when Steve and I got really good at this and our team was, like you know, really really doing well, it was still about four months. I think it was 3.9 months, steve, that we estimated back then that we were on average for a case from start to finish. And that might seem like a success because you go, hey, this case was unsolved for 40 years and you guys did it in four months Like great job. Well, no, it's not a great job. When there's 1.3 million unsolved cases and it goes up by 80,000 a year. You're just never going to get, you're never going to bring justice to those families and those victims without software.

Maria MacMullin:

Yeah, I mean there's got to be a lot more that can be done to solve cases, more cases, faster using all of this AI. We just haven't caught up with it yet. Right, I want to talk about a specific case today, though. Now, on the last show that aired for a podcast on crimes against women, we discussed the Christopher Michael Green case, which was here in Dallas County. That was solved with some help from investigative genetic genealogy. But I'd like to talk with you about a case that you both worked on, and that is the case of Eva LaRue and her daughter and the stalker who pursued them. Tell us about that case, what happened?

Steve Busch:

That case started Maria with. So after Steve and I, we told you the story about doing the initial 12 cases and the FBI started to take notice of that, of the technique at that point, and they decided to assign me full-time as actually the first FBI agent to do this full-time work in genetic genealogy cases. Only that required me to transfer offices up to Los Angeles. I was down in Orange County and when I went up to Los Angeles to my new desk, I sat down at my new desk and there was a binder that was sitting on that desk that was titled Eva LaRue Threat Letters and it had a case number on the front of it and it's one of these big, thick, white government binders and I'm a curious guy. I'm going to open the binder. I don't want to see what's going on. So I opened this binder and I started reading these handwritten letters that were written by somebody and sent to Evil LaRue, who, as we know, is an actress.

Steve Busch:

Eva LaRue starred on several different shows CSI Miami is one of the more recent ones that we talk about and so I started reading these letters and they were horrible letters. I mean, this person, whoever was writing them, was claiming you know he wanted to, among other things, rape and murder Eva. He wanted to do horrible sexual things to her young daughter, and I read through these letters and just thought this is insane. And then I looked up the case number. I figured this case has got to be solved because the dates on these letters was old.

Steve Busch:

Five years ago, six, seven years ago, the case was not solved, and so we dug into it a little bit more and realized that this was a case where we had one piece of evidence that was common amongst all of these letters. There were, I think, up to almost 50 different letters that were written to her over the course of a decade or so. We had DNA on all these letters, the suspect, whoever had written these. They had already done handwriting analysis, fingerprint analysis. They'd done everything they could to try to figure this out. But the one thing they and they had taken DNA they put it into CODIS.

Steve Busch:

Remember we talked about the 1.3 million it was one of those 1.3 million sitting in CODIS, churning in CODIS, not finding anything. And so Steve and I had the thought hey, why, why don't we use this technique, this new technique that we have to take this suspect DNA that's on every really, really bad? Now, about the same time we were doing that, this suspect, this unknown suspect, upped his game Because, remember, he was not just writing these letters to Eva, he was writing them to her young daughter, kaya. Kaya was five at the time these letters started coming. By the time we looked at the case, kaya was in high school. So Kaya's in high school, and what the suspect decides to do is he decides to start calling Kaya's high school. Kaya attended Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, a very prestigious private school here in the Los Angeles area. He started calling the high school and he was pretending to be Kaya's father. Could just, you know, let Kaya know I'll be there to pick her up today. Have her meet me out front. You know I'll be there and I can get her. Just let her know I'll be there, thank you.

Steve Busch:

And the office doesn't know any better. They thought, oh, kaya's dad called and he's going to come pick her up. And so they gave that message to Kaya and said hey, kaya, your dad's going to come pick you up, but Kaya supposed to be here. That can't be right. And that's when she called her mom and realized this guy has found me again, right, right Over all these years of sending letters, he's now found me and he's now trying to lure me into something worse. And so Steve and I decided hey, let's take this DNA and let's go through the process. We're going to send it off to a private laboratory, we're going to get this profile, this genealogy profile that we need. We're going to get this profile, this genealogy profile that we need. We're going to put it into a genealogy database and then we're going to reverse, engineer a family tree and figure out who this guy is. And that's exactly what we did.

Maria MacMullin:

And about how long did that take, once you got involved?

Steve Busch:

I mean the actual genealogy part of that case did not take very long at all. I mean, steve, we did that at your house right.

Steve Kramer:

Yeah, I think we did the whole thing in like three or four hours. So, yeah, we sat down. We had to get out of the office because to do manual genetic genealogy you have to sit and concentrate for long periods of time. So he and I got a bag of chips and salsa, sat down at my kitchen counter and it was about three or four hours, I think, and we more or less identified who the guy was.

Maria MacMullin:

Okay, and then what happened? Tell us, tell us how you know you were able to apprehend this person and and how was he prosecuted?

Steve Busch:

Well before, steve, I'll let you take that in a second. But before we get to that, when you, when you're doing this process, maria, you know you're, you're building family trees backward, like, typically, when people put their DNA into a genealogy site, they, of course, they know who they are and typically they know how to build their tree up and out from them. We do it the opposite. We start with all of these distant relatives and then we reverse, engineer the tree to come back down to say, well, how could all of these distant relatives produce a person who might be the person that could produce all of these relationships? And so, when this case, when we were doing this case and I remember this vividly, steve, because it was so interesting, you know you start getting back down and you're connecting people and you're getting into the nitty gritty of where the guy's going to be, and we identified a potential suspect, his name, the suspect's name is James David Rogers. When we identified Rogers, we thought, well, could this be the guy?

Steve Busch:

We knew that the letters were all mailed from the Ohio area and this guy lived in Ohio. And then we went to Eva's social media page. We went to her Instagram page and her Twitter page to see what are the odds. What are the odds, maria, that we just reverse engineered a family tree? We picked a guy out of the middle of Ohio. You think he follows Eva. Yeah, and he did, and he did, and he had written her a bunch of like little love notes on Twitter, and so then we thought, oh well, what do you think of the odds that he also follows her daughter, kaya?

Steve Busch:

Wow and he did, and so at that point we're like OK.

Steve Kramer:

I'm always a skeptic, and Kaya not being a celebrity of any sort, just a high school student.

Steve Busch:

Right, right, correct. And so this guy was following Eva LaRue and he was also following Kai, and so we thought, you know what? He's got the geographical connection, he's in the right age range and he's following both of them. Now you would think and a lot of people think this, maria, you think we would just run right out and arrest this guy, but we don't. The end of this process requires us to collect DNA from that unknown suspect and compare it to the crime scene DNA, which, in this case, was the DNA from all of these letters. And so one of the one of the great things about the FBI is you can call, you know, somebody in Ohio and say I need you to go find this guy right now, and I need you to get his DNA right now. And then we got a guy. I got a guy right.

Maria MacMullin:

I can go do that.

Steve Busch:

And so we we put. In this case we did a a trash collection, so a task force officer with the FBI went out and followed this potential suspect around, and the suspect had just eaten at Arby's restaurant and so he had a bag of trash from Arby's that the task force officer watched him put into. It was one of these dumpsters that has like a locked lid on it and it's got a chute that kind of comes up the top. You know that you can put the stuff in and it goes down. You open the lid and it goes down the chute and it's got a chute that kind of comes up the top you know that you can put the stuff in and it goes down.

Steve Busch:

You open the lid and it goes down the chute. And so the task force officer watched the suspect put the trash into the chute and he thought, oh my gosh, we all know what that means. That means you're going to have to call the trash company.

Steve Busch:

You got to get the key and you're going to get to crawl through people's trash. But the TFO task force officer thought you know what? I'm just going to check. I'm just going to check to make sure the bag went down and get this. He comes up and he opens up the flap and he looks into the chute and someone had thrown away a set of mini blinds that was obstructing the chute and the bag was just kind of hanging there the way it was told to me was hanging there by one of the mini blinds and he was able to take the bag out and inside that bag was a cup and straw from Arby's that the suspect you know had drank from the straw. So his mouth, his saliva, had touched the straw.

Steve Busch:

We were able to get DNA. We sent that right to the FBI lab and said get DNA from that straw, compare that DNA to the letters and tell us does it match? And if you've ever seen these matches, maria, it's actually fascinating because the numbers are astronomically impossible. I always use winning the lottery as kind of a baseline. If you look on a lottery ticket the lotto this is the one where you got to pick six numbers It'll tell you it's about one in 292 million that you're going to win and I don't know if you've ever won. I've never won.

Steve Busch:

I don't suspect I ever will win the lotto but the the odds for the like, for example, the odds in the golden state killer. When we looked at those, it was one in 47.5 septillion, wow, okay, which is, which is millions of times larger. Uh, you know worse odds than winning the lottery.

Maria MacMullin:

and the odds in the in the uh you're talking about the odds that you would find a match. Is that it?

Steve Busch:

That's right, the odds that you would that DNA that we pulled off of the cup and straw, the odds that it would match a random person. You say the odds are one in 50 septillion that you're going to match a random person, which is more than that's. More than the number of humans that have ever been on the planet. Right, it's more than the number of humans that have lived.

Steve Busch:

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

Maria MacMullin:

We now know that he's the guy, and we're going to go out and put handcuffs on this guy so you did that, and I mean I'm sure he was just flabbergasted, right that you were able to find him and put all this together.

Steve Busch:

Yeah, he, I, I flew, me and another agent named Amy Whitman, a fantastic FBI agent who actually currently runs the the program, the genetic genealogy program at the Bureau. Amy and I flew out to Ohio and put together an arrest team of FBI folks and task force officers out there in Ohio. We went to his house and knocked on his door and we arrested him and he and you know he does, like a lot of suspects do oh, I don't understand. Like, what are you here for? Why, why me? Like I don't, I don't get it.

Steve Busch:

But one of the things I remember from that day, which was so funny, was when we served, you know, we had a search warrant, of course, for his house as well, in addition to an arrest warrant for him. Sitting on his nightstand, right next to his bed, was a flip phone. Okay, and we opened up the flip phone and there were two phone numbers programmed in this flip phone too. Okay, one of them was his mom's phone number, who he lived with. And take a guess, what was the second number? Maria, it was Notre Dame high school.

Maria MacMullin:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that would have been his Dame. That was the only two numbers he had in his phone.

Steve Busch:

And so it's like, wow, that's, that's. How random. Would it be that I would pick some guy's house, you know, out of Ohio, and you're going to have two on your nightstand. You're going to have two phone numbers in there. What are the odds on that? One, correct that and you go. It's like at that point, in case there was any ambiguity, that we got the right guy of course we knew we had the right guy.

Steve Kramer:

Yeah, that kind of nailed it Right. So what kind of sentencing did this person get? Yeah, so he ended up getting I think it was about three and a half years, steve, is that correct? Or just right around three years approximately, plus that sentence is to be followed by three years of supervised release, which is kind of like parole in state court, basically you have a probation officer, you get restricted, you know movement, other restrictions on you, but yeah, it was only three years, which was pretty interesting because when some of the press came out on that case, a lot of people you know, particularly women, but just in general people were like I can't believe a guy would be able to essentially torture, scare, torment, stalk two women for 12 years, say and do these terrible things which are horrific, and only get about three years in prison.

Steve Kramer:

But fortunately, or unfortunately, there was a federal statute on the books you know, for this type of offense. So we were able to get a felony conviction on him and you know he's put away for several years to give some peace to Eva and her daughter and, like I said, he'll be on restriction once he gets out, I think, which is later next year, I think it is. So we consider it a win all in all. I mean, granted, yeah, it'd be great to see guys like this, you know, put away for a longer period where they couldn't do something, but just the way that the laws work, that was basically the most you could get.

Maria MacMullin:

What were the actual offenses that he was charged with?

Steve Kramer:

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

Steve Busch:

Steve offhand, I don't, You're right though Mailing threatening communications was one of them, and it made it interesting because most of these cases, maria, most of them are charged at the state level, and most either you know, rape and murder is usually charged at the state level, but this was the first case, the first case in history, that federal charges were filed against a suspect where genetic genealogy was used to identify him.

Maria MacMullin:

So how was that a federal case?

Steve Busch:

Well, because because of the use of the, of the US mail is what the nexus was that we used.

Maria MacMullin:

Okay, okay, gotcha.

Steve Busch:

And it was I mean for the record it was taken. I mean, and no disrespect to LAPD, they're an awesome organization, but LAPD had this case as well, but they had the same set of evidence that we had. You know, the LAPD had a bunch of letters and they had DNA and they had all the fingerprint stuff, but there just wasn't anything to go off of based on that. Now, you may remember too, there was an actress in Los Angeles. Her name was Rebecca Schaefer. Rebecca Schaefer was stalked by a guy and that guy ended up traveling. He got on a Greyhound bus and traveled from Arizona I think it was out here to Hollywood, out here to LA where she lived.

Steve Busch:

And he knocked on her door and he shot her in the chest. Yeah, I do remember that case. And that changed California. It changed the laws in California and they put laws in place to say like, hey, and this was a guy who had written her letters, a guy who had admired her and told her how much he loved her, which was a little bit different than what James David Rogers did with Eva. Because he didn't I mean, he didn't just say he loved her, he said he wanted to kill her and dismember her and I mean all kinds of horrible things, not just her but her and her daughter.

Steve Busch:

So it changed laws in California to make things, to make a law that LAPD could have used, but they just couldn't. They couldn't identify the guy.

Steve Kramer:

Yeah, there was a. I remember and this was long before Eva Littler's case when I was a federal prosecutor for a while as well, in Los Angeles, and we had a case that came before us another type of stalking case and involved an actress too. It was Gwyneth Paltrow and we looked at it and this was a guy that was calling, sending letters, going to her house. And we looked at it and we you know a federal offense that fit it eventually went to LAPD and they ended up charging the individual. He ended up getting acquitted because they couldn't show that he was going to do any harm to her. He wasn't making threatening communications, which is part of the key.

Steve Kramer:

So it's difficult in some of these stalking cases, you know where somebody's like what's the difference when they're just trying to, you know, be a fan, versus when they're going to be a threat. In this case, you know, I just looked it up on Yves LeRoux's case the Rogers in this case he was actually he ended up getting 40 months, so 40 months prison and he was, like we said, one count of threat by interstate commerce communications using the mails and the telephone, as well as two counts of stalking. So that's what he was charged and convicted of. And then you said you had asked earlier how this makes it a federal offense. Anytime there's, you know, interstate commerce, like crossing state lines, right Most of the time that will invoke federal jurisdiction on certain crimes, and one of them being threatening, communications, stalking, even kidnapping. Kidnapping becomes a federal offense when you cross state lines to commit the kidnapping or, you know, in the process of it.

Maria MacMullin:

Yeah, thank you for clarifying all of that. Let's talk about access to DNA. Do law enforcement have the ability to obtain it from everyone they arrest or everyone they convict, or how do they access that?

Steve Kramer:

Okay, so you're talking. There's a couple of different things. So the DNA that law enforcement traditionally has is something called an STR, short tandem. Repeat, it's just a DNA profile that's used by the CODIS software. So, as Steve mentioned earlier, there's 20 million profiles in CODIS, that's the FBI's national DNA index system and that has this STR profile. Those profiles are obtained generally either from a crime scene so it's an unknown profile from missing persons, sometimes like from their family members, but the majority of it comes from convicted felony offenders and I believe all 50 states.

Steve Kramer:

If you get convicted of a felony, you have to put your DNA into the state DNA index system, which can be shared with the national DNA index system, and there's many, many, many states I don't have the exact number that also take DNA and you get arrested for a felony as well. So that's generally how the FBI and the state database DNA databases get their DNA. Again, that's a different type of DNA profile from what's used in genealogy databases, but in general I will tell you that. You know the Supreme Court said any type of abandoned items. If you abandon you know an item like, you've given up your expectation of privacy, and that also applies to biological materials, including DNA. So if you take a sip of your Arby's cup, you know, and then you throw it in the trash can and it becomes public property.

Maria MacMullin:

Is that what you're saying?

Steve Kramer:

It does, you've abandoned your expectation of privacy Interesting. So that's how they can take the DNA from a straw in the garbage and identify you with it.

Steve Busch:

That's typically. That's typically how these genealogy cases conclude is that trash pulls are about the easiest way. So if I know where our suspect lives and we know that he's the only man that lives at that residence, it's not hard for us to just figure out. Thursday is trash day, and once he takes his trash out and he puts it beyond the curtilage of his home, ie in the street in a trash can.

Steve Busch:

He's abandoned it and this is not a genealogy technique. This is just a DNA collection technique that law enforcement has used for decades to go. We call it a trash pull or a trash run. You go, pull trash from a suspect's house and then you can look and see I mean there might be other things that you want to get there for other cases. Maybe it's a, it's a credit card fraud case and you want to see is this guy you know putting stolen identities in the trash? Or maybe it's a you know some other case?

Steve Busch:

So it's not just trash pulls are not just to find DNA but, like Steve correctly pointed out, what's in that trash is abandoned and once you've put it there, it's your way of saying look, I don't have ownership of that anymore and legally, the Supreme Court has said that law enforcement can do that. There are some states that still don't allow it. I think Oregon is one of them, and there are a couple others that say you can't do a trash pull without a warrant, but most states allow you to pick that up as abandoned property.

Maria MacMullin:

So would it make sense at this point for the DNA profile that law enforcement collect and the IgG type of profile to be similar? Okay, Steve Kramer's laughing.

Steve Kramer:

No, I mean it's a great point. Myself, steve and plenty of law enforcement have talked about that. I mean the genealogy databases, the way the profiles work. These databases are good forever, like I mean. In fact, sometimes the older the DNA is in it the better, because, like you have a great-great-grandparent and their DNA is in it, they're going to have 1,500 relatives that you could touch with them. Whereas the CODIS database you know that DNA profile, the STR profile is only good about finding one person and the CODIS database tends to age out about every 15, 20 years Because most people in general are committing crimes between 18 and 35 years of age for the most part, and then if you're 60 years old, you're probably not as a man, you're probably not out there raping women, so it's unlikely that you know your DNA is ever you're ever going to get arrested and put your DNA into CODIS to identify a crime from 25 years ago.

Steve Kramer:

So the DNA in CODIS is only good essentially for the time and when. We're talking about the DNA from unknown crime scenes like who's this DNA belong to? Who committed the time, and we're talking about the DNA from unknown crime scenes like who's this DNA belong to? Who committed the murder who committed the rape. The only time you're going to get caught with your DNA is if you get arrested or convicted of a felony. And again, if you start to age out, you get in your 40s and 50s, you're no longer going out committing homicides, committing burglaries, committing rapes.

Steve Kramer:

It's very unlikely that your DNA is going to, you know, be matched with the unknown profile that's in CODIS. So my point is is CODIS, is it ages out and so it's only as good as it's the offenders that are going into it currently. So you hope, like there's unknown DNA, right, a woman is raped she doesn't know. You hope, like there's unknown DNA, right, a woman is raped she doesn't know, you know who raped her, but we have the DNA. It's in CODIS. It doesn't match anybody. You hope, like in the next few years, that that rapist gets arrested and has to donate his DNA. You know, compelled DNA into CODIS and it matches and you know that's what they call like a case to case match match and then they can say, hey, this guy we just arrested, he's good for that. You know that sexual assault from five years ago yeah, I guess I'm just.

Maria MacMullin:

My question is like couldn't those two profiles be like the same then?

Steve Busch:

so it's, it's funny here. Let me take a shot at it. So the part of the reason why steve laughed is because the question or smiled is because the question you asked, maria, we get asked that question every time we train, every time we sit down with police or anybody. It's a great question and it's a logical starting point. But think about this the profiles, so the genealogy profile and the law enforcement profile, it's like an apple and an orange. I mean they are two completely separate pieces of information. The STR, the current profile that Leish uses, it's just like. It's like a bunch of numbers, it's a series of numbers. It's kind of like a lottery ticket, like, think of it like a lottery ticket. And then when you look at the genealogy profile, it is 700,000 lines of chromosomes and RSIDs and positions and alleles right, a, t, c or G. It's a much bigger, more informative piece of information than the STR profile is. So I use this as an example.

Steve Busch:

We all know what a phone number is and we can all identify somebody from a phone number. It would kind of be like saying let's take a license plate and let's send it to Verizon Wireless, the phone company, and say Verizon, can you tell me who this license plate belongs to, and Verizon would say well, we don't have a database of license plates, we have a database of phone numbers, and I get it. You can identify someone from a license plate, but not in our database. That's the same as if you took a law enforcement profile and tried to put it into a genealogy database. They would say we don't compute that type of profile. It's completely different. And there's no way to get apple juice from an orange or orange juice from an apple.

Maria MacMullin:

But can't you make the orange an apple?

Steve Kramer:

You can't, Are you saying when somebody gets arrested or convicted and we take their DNA?

Maria MacMullin:

why would we not create the profile that would be used for genealogy? I'm saying why wouldn't you do the same DNA test that you do for IgG when someone gets arrested, why wouldn't you just give them that test?

Steve Kramer:

Trust me, I mean that would be, you know, I think, a great idea. The way the laws are written right now, the DNA profile that's taken for law enforcement is a separate profile, and part of it was they didn't want. The CODIS profile is what they call junk DNA, like it doesn't tell you anything about the person. It doesn't tell you their eye color, their ethnicity or anything. It's just junk DNA, it's non-coding DNA, but it's really good at identifying you to the exclusion of everybody on the planet, and that's why they picked it, whereas the genealogy profile can tell you a lot about somebody. It can tell you their ethnicity, their eye color, hair color, things like that.

Steve Kramer:

In addition to you know who their first cousin, second cousin, third cousin, fourth cousins might be, and that is like kind of the privacy crutch on that, and that's why I think people get very concerned about like do do? I don't want to? You know I hear people say this all the time. I don't want to. You know, do a genealogy test because you know I don't want the police looking at it, or I don't want some people say I don't, I don't want to be, you know, part of a police investigation. I mean, there could be a lot of reasons. You know, some people say the opposite. They want to help, they want to put their DNA into these databases because, hey, if I have a second cousin and he or she's a murderer, I want to make sure they get caught. I don't want them around my family.

Steve Kramer:

So I think it would be great if we could figure out a way to use the genealogy profile and get more of them. I think it would be awesome because I mean, ultimately, you know, steve, and I look at it, this is a way to solve crime and you know, since the Golden State Killer, like, I haven't seen any type of like abuse of it. I haven't heard of anybody being wrongfully arrested. You know, using the techniques that you know the FBI and other law enforcement agencies use. You know, but I was getting a confirmatory sample from the person it's been.

Steve Kramer:

It's an amazing technique and I can tell you from plenty of the victims, like Eva LaRue, but plenty of the victims we've spoken with, they're like thank God we've had this technique. Thank God, who knows what would have happened otherwise? And I can give you cases where this technique stopped. What we believe are serial killers in the making. So it's an amazing technique and that's one of the things that we talk about is, like you know, our goal is to take the serial out of serial rapist, the serial out of serial killer.

Maria MacMullin:

Yeah, I think that's a great goal. What is your advice to people who are considering submitting their DNA to a database for the purpose of helping to find a loved one who is missing or, you know, it might be a cold case?

Steve Kramer:

They want to submit their DNA to a genealogy database to help a cold case or just to find a loved one.

Maria MacMullin:

Can it be both?

Steve Kramer:

Sure, yeah, like a missing person. You mean yes, yes, no, I mean I would encourage you know anybody in that situation to you know, do that. You know, not only take just one test, but I would take many. I would take an ancestry test, I'd take a 23andMe test and then I'd take both those profiles and I'd put them into GEDmatch, I'd put them in the family tree DNA and so you're in the biggest databases and that's going to give you the greatest shot of finding, say, you're missing a loved one. That's going to be the best shot for finding your loved one by getting into as many databases as possible. Also, for law enforcement. Even though law enforcement is just using GEDmatch and FTDNA, we do talk with people that have their DNA in the other databases and many times their matches can be very helpful, like if you're an ancestry and we talk to you like your matches can be very helpful to law enforcement. So I would encourage anybody to do as many of those tests as possible. It's very, very, very helpful.

Steve Kramer:

And remember, the police aren't out there, you know, looking at your actual DNA. They're not looking at your genome. They're not like, ah, you know, this person looks like they're susceptible to cancer or heart disease. We're not looking at that, it's just shared DNA. It's just telling the police, hey, you and I share a half a percent of DNA, so we're, you know, a distant cousin? Like they're not, these databases are not sharing, like I don't think you'd have you know, 25 million people on Ancestry all comparing their actual genomes. They're actually just looking at how much they share with each other to determine if they're a first cousin, second cousin, third cousin, that type.

Maria MacMullin:

Well at this moment in time, yes, who knows, as solutions grow in analyzing this information and doing IgG, who knows?

Steve Kramer:

Well, I mean the way the databases are set up right now. They're set up to protect, you know, the individual privacy you know of their users. Again, like you have to consent. Do you want other people to match with you? Like you can say no to that. You just want to know your own ancestry, your own ethnicity, your own you know, health conditions, like at 23andMe. You don't have to match with anybody in the database but you can choose to. You can, you know, sign, check the box that says hey, I want to match with everybody in the database and it's going to tell you we're not giving away your genome to anybody, we're just going to compare your genome, you know, with somebody else's.

Steve Kramer:

Like using Steve's license plate example, like, okay, we share two digits on our license plate, you and I out of 10. So we share 20% of the same digits, just like you would say I share 20% of the same DNA. So maybe we are, you know, nephews and uncles, or maybe we're, you know, 20%, maybe we're grandparent, grandchild relationships. It's just how much DNA you share with somebody determines your relationship. I don't need to know what your DNA is, no more than I need to know what your license plate number is. To use that analogy.

Steve Busch:

Yeah, I think that's an important distinction, though, maria, because even if I want to kind of go down the route of your question.

Steve Busch:

even if the companies, the genealogy companies, were to say, hey, we're going to put the whole genome on display for law enforcement to use, law enforcement doesn't need it, they don't need anything beyond that percentage, because it's the percentage that gives us that relative distance between this relative, this distant relative, and our unknown person. And you do that enough times over. You're able to reverse, engineer a tree. So the details beyond that aren't needed, even if they were available. You just need the percentage of shared DNA in order to reconstruct and re-engineer that family tree and find your guide I think that's a really important distinction, right?

Maria MacMullin:

you know honestly the most important?

Steve Kramer:

I'll ask steve this, because I know the answer is after the genetics team. What's the most important thing that we look for, when you know we look at subjects?

Steve Busch:

Oh, here's it. And this is. This is almost comical. We look at geography and time. I want to see, like, did this, was this person? Because here's the thing you have to physically be present to rape somebody, right? You can't rape somebody virtually, well, not literally. So you have to be physically present. And so when we have a crime that occurred on May 1st 1997 in Los Angeles, california, on this particular intersection or this address, I got to find somebody that has a time connection and a geography connection to that place, right, somebody.

Steve Busch:

Because victims tend to live in close proximity, suspects tend to live in close proximity to the victims that they commit crimes on. And so that's after we get past the DNA and we're starting to look at, you know, who is genetically in the right spot, who's genealogically in the right spot. We have to say, well, who geographically is in the right spot. And it's kind of like I like to think of it as like a Venn diagram. You know, you've got the three different circles and you're trying to look at where all of those circles overlap and we say, well, these two circles overlap genetically and genealogically. And then, when you put geography on there as well, now you know you've got a good potential suspect.

Maria MacMullin:

That makes sense. Thanks so much for talking with me today. I think we really learned a lot about IgG and the case and the work at the FBI. Thanks for all you do.

Steve Busch:

No, thanks for having us. We're always honored to talk and you guys keep doing the great work that you guys are doing. We appreciate the opportunity.

Maria MacMullin:

Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe. The 2025 Conference on Crimes Against Women will take place in Dallas, Texas, May 19th through the 22nd at the Sheraton Dallas. Learn more and register at conferencecaworg and follow us on social media at National CCAW.