An Interview with the DNA Doe Project – Identifying the Unknown Through Genetic Genealogy

hi we're here with two luminaries from the DNA Doh project who want to talk about their work today what did you guys introduce yourselves I'm Colleen Fitzpatrick I'm one of the founders and I am the co-executive director of the united oak project and i'm marga press and i'm the other co-founder and the other executive director and we founded the project a little over a year ago incorporated as a non-profit and we've been talking every day since then you have done quite a bit since I saw you last year maybe whatever you want to just update me on how DNA doe was formed and why and what you've been doing well well we can we saw you last year ago and we had we were just starting to incorporate that month but we had had our first case for a couple of weeks so we were a little distracted at is she and we would go back to our hotel rooms every night afterwards and look at his results look at his matches and wonder what we were seeing if it was even real so interesting do you want to talk about that first case was it that was challenging gender right that was actually interesting because Joseph Chandler was a man who stole Mazon his name he stole somebody's identity it was a man who committed suicide the name take adopted by man who committed suicide in Cleveland Ohio area in 2002 when he died they discovered in trying to contact his relatives that that was in his name he had taken that name in 1978 and it was the identity of a boy who had been killed in a car accident in 1945 Wow so that's a pretty cold case you know 2002 really nothing was really done they did a lot of investigative work but with no conclusions in 2014 however they were able to find a tissue sample from a cancer biopsy and he had in the 1990s and from that tissue they were able to extract DNA it was highly degraded but yet they were able to get a CODIS profile it didn't match anything so when we came in in 2016 that's what Margaret is referring to we had we put the pedal to the metal because his not only was this our first case where we had no road map to figure out whether this would even work with DNA from we had some reason to believe DNA would work for one deceased person on Jed match but this was highly degraded DNA from a deceased person so I'd added a layer of complexity so we were kind of in sure how it would work out but the end is we made the identification that was our first success story in March of this year that's so remarkable how did you two find each other to begin working on this case you know but you know before it became the DNA Doh project Facebook I yeah I that's where matches are made all had this crazy idea that the methods we were using an adoptee searches could be used for dough's and started reaching out to everyone I could imagine on the internet and saw Colleen's page as a forensic genealogist who might actually get it and once we made contact she did and had all her contacts with the agencies where she could actually get us cases that was the key that and her brilliance in that in the area of DNA in genetics at forensics I want to say we made a good pair because I was not so much in the match made in heaven I wasn't so much in the genealogy I had moral I had moved more into forensics okay so I wasn't doing genealogy day-to-day although I kept up with it so I had more contacts in law enforcement in forensics I've been working cold cases since 2011 but Margaret had the other side of that equation with all the knowledge of the tools in genetic genealogy no genealogy knew what was the buzz knew what was the new stuff you know she had all that and you know we've pulled together a team of volunteers sort of from both sides and the rest is history did you have any idea where genetic genealogy was going I mean it's in the headlines every day almost now shouldn't it well genetic genealogy we knew was exploding with adoptee searches so this was really the next logical step the perfect storm last year was that sequencing testing was getting cheaper particularly whole genome sequencing which is the route we had to go because ancestry and 23andme won't let you won't let you send in DNA extract only vials or swabs so that and the fact that the databases had grown so huge just every year they shoot up another they double that makes adoptee searches for example very successful in about half the time just because so much of the population is represented in the database through third and fourth cousins it doesn't have to be you yourself having tested so I think we we got the picture that the field was just exploding use in forensic genealogy we knew right away would be very possible we didn't expect so much success very possible with unidentified remains because there's no reason not for this to not work but also for suspects we it was the same procedure exactly the same we made a decision early on because we wanted to be careful of public reaction and ease our way into it that we would not do assailant crime-scene samples as part of our nonprofit group because the waters hadn't been tested for any forensic use we did not want the one database open to us jed match to have to shut down because of any public outcry now if you ask me I would have not had an answer because I was so busy thinking about that day and how advanced I wouldn't have real I would have had to think about it but after some thought I would have said yes I think it's gonna be really big once we cross over the forensics makes contact with genetic genealogy I think it's going to be big but I really would not have said this big this quick it's been really remarkable to watch what are some of the challenging aspects of what you do every degree did you get everything as the Colleen said there was no road map I think of all the pieces that we had to invent on the fly by the seat of our pants the the hardest is that with unlike with assailant crime scene samples where the DNA is usually pretty good our DNA is typically very very bad so we have a very small amount of the genome to work with I think our best has been 50 to 70 percent after a lot of bioinformatics work but when we see matches normally you can say Oh a third cousin good I know that's a third cousin I'll go work the tree but with our cases it's is that a real third cousin or is it a figment of the matching algorithm stitching algorithms and imputation the JED match does behind the scene so we have an extra extra dimension of uncertainty that makes everything we do we have to question our assumptions and that that's been the most difficult in my mind well I want to say that everything because if you consider we started out with scratch with we had to figure out how to approach agencies explaining something they never heard of and never really to this day probably don't understand exactly we had to you know approach find the ones that were open get the the right kind of DNA sent to the right lab we had to research the labs we had to research bioinformatics capabilities we had those first samples came in we had to tweak the bioinformatics up and down inside ways to try and get that sweet spot so the DNA jedd Mashable DNA was maximum we had to look Margaret says look at the matches make sure they were real and not ghosts figments of the JED match imagination and then we had to puzzle it out and do the genealogy work had to get the volunteers we had to get the non-disclosure we had to get the 501c3 in place we had to get an attorney we had to get a CPA we had to get the infrastructure going and then we actually had to make the identifications which opened another whole set of experiences with the law enforcement contacting the families dealing with the families how they felt what we could do what we could say what we should hold back and then of course all the production companies descending on us unmercifully day by day so we've had no roadmap with this so everything was challenging but we're doing good aren't we we are yeah I think that's an understatement absolutely so you had that success with Chandler what came next walk us through how how it happened over the last we weren't allowed to announce that's what we're talking about in addition by the way Chandler Chandler case right yeah actually I would say that's the hardest that was the hardest part the whole thing was keeping quiet for three months on the channel saying do you have any any success stories and we wanted to say well yeah talk about it so shortly after that the Buckskin girls face came through the files became ready we're assuming that when we mentioned jed match we don't think okay this one's gonna be three thousand hours right but just president side we would have spent twenty minutes explaining the JED match is a public online database and genetic genealogy tool but by now I think probably most of your audience will have heard about Jetman but that's what it is when buckskin came in and the reason and the match list of DNA cousins that they called matches even though their third or fourth cousins finished populating we had a first cousin once removed on the top of the list and that's like shaking hand it's it's really like she just hold out her driver's license for us yeah oh it was like oh we didn't we weren't excited I said oh go to bed no but this was one o'clock in the morning with a salary so you can bet where they are hammering it and it was funny because Marga and I want on the phone oh go go look here look there you know we're building those trees off you click those I'll click these and I'm like typing looking and I see this tree building itself and I know she's on the other end doing that summer for volunteers yeah we're everyone's building the tree you know and saying oMG a minister so anyway Margaret then as we building the tree checking the cousins you know Margaret says I have chills up my spine she come up with we dig out dug out a cousin once-removed and it was Marcia Lenore's Sossamon King on ancestry a profile it gave her birth date in 1959 and under that the date of death said missing assumed dead wow I was in yeah that was in Margaret's saying well maybe there's two of them let's make you know he said I want to say don't jump to conclusions to conclusions they may be - no I said that's it she could have a twin but her father had that information had come from her father who had posted a tree but he died in January so he never knew also close him yeah so then the heart the next hardest part was waiting in three hours until the girls woke up so we could make a call yes what do you do what do you do when you have to go oh we call the agency because in these cases similar to adoptees with the Tufte searchers searches when you find a parent you turn that over to the adoptee you don't make that call you let them make that contact when they're ready so in a way it's the same with the doze you want the dough to make the contact through the agency they are used to notifying next of kin which yeah what this is death notification and it's a legal thing so we step aside and let them handle it but we are available to assist or you know if the family wants to talk to us great you know we're sure but we know yeah you know we've talked to some families right so what they usually do is they contact and they have that close family member if it's a parent or child going to their local police station and get swab to a CODIS test affirm the DNA match legally and forensically and that's been true in two cases yeah in the third it was the parents had a set of fingerprints for the child sorry what was the way I looked what was that their case like oh that was the last time he hung himself in a hotel room in Washington State in 2001 and he had become a cult figure there were reddit pages web sleuth pages on and on and on and so we I one day I received a and one too many emails about Lyle Stevic can you look at lau Stevic and I said hmm Margaret why not make dole fund me which is how we raise money for cases I said this would be a good case to start with so we posted a doe fund me button then we raised the money immediately really very quickly to have the DNA done and sequenced and and it was pretty a little bit tough case but that was our third success story the top fundraiser that's cries you that it went so quickly well it didn't because we had been the contact was through a reddit community of a thousand people who have been following this case forever for years so when he then posted back on reddit Colleen Fitzpatrick the Rockstar isn't going to take this case it exploded with excitement and he said we needed to raise funds fifteen hundred dollars is what these tests cost at the time they all started pledging on the spot you know I'll pledge this I'll pledge that I'll pledge I can only afford five dollars but we knew by the time and we said no money until he passes QC quality control quality testing at the lab because if there's not enough DNA to sequence there's no point in raising funds but as soon as that was accomplished we said okay here's the button and they all came through immediately yeah so you know hats off to the reddit community they they did a lot of hard work on their own and and almost all of them were just phenomenal and having that kind of support I think was a big lesson for us that these doz have you know in a way fan clubs people that have become they're okay online families while waiting for the real families to be discovered yeah you know I wanted to make a comment about going to law enforcement which is kind of interesting and that is that I spoke to someone in the DA's office the other day and you know he was asking a lot of the intelligent questions how it works and I said that whatever we provide you is a lead you have to go make the legal identification so he said like what do you mean by lead I said well suppose I we did this work we came to with the lead and it was that Joseph Newton Chandler his real name was Robin Ivan Nichols he lived he was born in September I think September 13 1926 in New Albany Indiana he was married to Lorraine court in the late 1950s he had three sons too which is still alive his parents were Silas nickels in alpha schreiber I said and we have his his high school graduation finished Social Security yeah Social Security that's a lead porch them in the most cases you do not reported them with a name until we are 99.9 yeah well never say a hundred percent so she doesn't say I never say this we close we close enough that they can run with we don't want them to go to the wrong person well you know if they do kotas you know that's not really legal because it's not a hundred percent I know it's that I'd agree it's not Chandler he said they didn't know existed it's only one of 10 trillion there's a little room for error there in a couple cases it's been that hard to narrow down the exact person if they've been siblings and they're hard to take you out in in terms of just the genetics so we've included the investigator as sort of part of the team and they they will go off and look in their databases that we can't get access to or their work history or other kinds of clues it was one case chief like that that we can't identify you know we can't tell you she is but there was a family story she had a sister from a distant relative that had apparently met her or the family once a long time ago and and so the that that was important because if there are two sisters their genealogy is going to look right identical after the then so we got the investigator involved and then an investigator did brilliant work she found the neighbors they grew up next to she found what was yours did oh the voluntary came up with a brilliant idea Firefox neighbors and that was true and then the investigator pulled up birth records I you know I don't know if she got a dog yeah she got some adoption record so yeah not for right yeah for now for that right but she pulled up you know work history she pulled up birth records that were from the 60s and she contacted the neighbors yeah contacted the neighbors so you know it we involved her because you know we we got to the point where we had done what we could on this side of the legal fence and the investigator of court says access to a lot more and that's why we found out that the sister was fictional and that really the woman had two brothers which made and then finally the investigator found a set of fingerprints from the 1960s when the woman had been arrested for a misdemeanor we can't go there so we're very happy when the investigators get involved that's really remarkable when you think about it Facebook reddit you know reaching out to it takes it really does it's been so successful yeah how many cases have you worked under are you working out well let's talk about how have you worked on and what's the success rate it sounds phenomenal we have seven right now that have gone to gedcom sorry Jed match right we've had a couple that the DNA was too degraded so they're non starters but our bioinformatics guy is still working on whether he can get us better data we have several that are in sequencing right now and we have a couple that have been shipped to the sequencing lab that needed to have DNA extracted from bone or fingernails so this morning fingernails are on their way yeah and we have some still getting bone extractions right I'd say we have 20 in the pipeline we've had probably I'd say seven that are on Jed match or have been right including the vi assaults of which yeah they're four out of four and close on a fish yeah four so four and a half out of seven and seem to be five we think we open which is really remarkable when you think about this in colon cancer did four Sola I said maybe we will get one in ten yeah amazing so what do you do now when you solve a case you will have a bottle of champagne yeah yeah I invite everybody over to my house so they often no one comes right champagne and I drink the hope in myself well it's become like a family the group the team that works on a case gets very close and the it's it's so surreal I mean we take it for granted now but it's so surreal to not even know these people except that you know them through Facebook yeah and and that's an important source of comfort when things are going hot yeah you know when they're tough it's it's so funny some of the volunteers specialize in certain things one of our volunteer specializes in doing educational webinars so he's put together a few webinars for like the new volunteers and he put together the go-to meeting right yeah we had our first meeting we had our first big meeting among the volunteers but I think attempts of celebration it's pretty sure you know it's pretty we're ecstatic but we're already moving on to our other cases so everyone is more motivated by the puzzle yeah than by the success yeah a new case comes in there Michael's full [Laughter] we're helping team leaders we're trying to become more structured yeah over the course of a year it's been big change how many volunteers are you working with and how do they find you we have 45 now and we've really stopped bringing in more genetic genealogists because we have plenty and we do divide them up into teams and are going to be structuring that more with our future cases we brought in a lot because we thought with the ones in the pipeline we would need five to ten volunteers on each case and they were starting to come in the problem and scrape problem to have is we were solving them so the volunteers on a salt case needs something to do so we really didn't need any new volunteers so ones that we bring on board now are retired homicide detectives contact us privatized peanut with a lot of specialized researcher Google experience that are just above and beyond so it's a very diverse team now yeah and it's it's a wonderful network of people that they can you know we have a couple who can do facial reconstruction or recognition or whatever or have other skills that are really important that's right we have facial artists that decimation reconstructions and he's pretty good you know we have the guy in the education we have people that are working on outreach so in fact the fact that we have quite a lot of volunteers in a few cases right now actually I think that's beneficial because that means everybody is going to start specializing in what they can do to help and developing their little niche of expertise that will go forward as we do get more genetic genealogists that are not specialized it's so fascinating what's next how what do you see the next year I'll be like well there's in 2007 there was a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey done of how many unknown dead there were in various corners of medical examiner's office the answer was 40,000 and that we've heard about right yeah really think it's right Beth's marie-france statistic was about right ten years later those are just reported those are the ones that are reported we don't you know yes right there's plenty to get beside yeah so next year we're gonna do them all that's what I was gonna say until five it's just in my birth we still got ten thousand left to do that's I can tell you what well I think but seriously what's next I think is so exciting is that as we we love the tough cases and we're the only ones who do tough cases yeah because we're working with a fabulous bioinformatics guy and a couple of other volunteers who are looking at paper writing papers on imputation algorithms or whether to use different kinds of sequencing chips or machines or whatever what we're trying to reach out to some of the more academic institutions and endeavors to to do a better job with degraded DNA we would love for example to do some of the 9/11 victims but we're told about DNA is so damn bad and so tiny right but the reason we're gonna get them is because we're trying to make context with the with the the research scientists who know what to do with tiny tiny amounts of DNA and can get us better data to work with and in the meantime the databases just keep growing and growing or so and we're getting requests from overseas we're getting right those are hard to deal with because they're not as well represented in the databases but we tell them that's coming along you know as as companies particularly my heritage markets abroad much more than the others so what's ahead I think is the kind is that we'll be able to expand our reach to the even more difficult cases and that's really exciting to me is how we're developing tools and new protocols we cannot also not mention that there's a lot of legal questions that are arising with this there's going to be a panel discussion here on that on privacy on cusp for example custody of the data we do whole genome sequencing does that have medical information in it is it abandoned DNA can you consider it abandoned DNA and therefore you know how do you how do you deal with that does do the police keep custody and be the custodian respected constant or should they be hands off so nobody can say Oh big brother is my DNA you know that old saying so there's a lot of open questions among the legal community about they want to handle it appropriately they're all good you know one they don't want their cases overthrown they want to do it right there's a lot of sincere respectful work on that side of the fence that you know is just about as important as all this other technical stuff so in the future I see a lot of those issues resolves a lot of policy developed I hope it's developed in the direction of continuing to use these methods in a very cooperative sense so we can identify a lot more people and brings up a lot of great questions and I can see you two being leaders on that I mean you know as I'm sure you've worked through over the last year process on your own but yes commercial databases bring up so many privacy questions it's just you know before they're even being used for them yeah correct but handle be fascinating what are you come to come out of that today ah just knowledge just the fact that people are what they're considering what that sign is are those kind of people in the panel are considering what their thoughts are because really there hasn't been a panel like that yet there really hasn't been much of an open formal discussion of course it's flying all over the internet you know and there's been articles and there's been you know news articles and professional articles on that subject so you know hearing sort of personally a formalized discussion will be very very interesting to me you know that brings up a good question how has she been for both of you maybe we can talk about the meeting a little bit I have loved seeing you guys and I'm so happy you were able to come back how does that help you advance your work well people gonna see your video then we get to we're gonna give a talk on Wednesday on Chandler and what I'd like to emphasize is that it's tough we do really tough cases that ordinarily would go by the wayside I know there's some easy cases now because my model is this when the when the fingerprint fingerprints were first computerized in the state of California there were hits left and right and left and right and then slowly you know they they leveled out so that you still use the tool and it's actually useful you keep getting those hits but not as quickly so my my view is that's the era we live in it's a new tool you're gonna get some really quick you know quick kills I call them which is all good you know I personally would expect that to fall off to some extent after a while but yet still have some and and in the meantime these really tough cases are going to be addressed sort of in a steady pace so I just want to point out that you know I look forward to the steady-state you know it's all exciting now but there's a lot of dynamics there's a lot of discussion there's a lot of unknown territory that has to be mastered but I think that'll happen and my hope is that that will all come to terms where we all cooperate and we can solve a lot of cold cases and John Doe cases and live happily ever after well said very well said I have a big question for you when am I going to be able to watch a reality show today I think we got time today just some days are busier than others it's it's it's hard because it's not house our favorite part we're neither of us media people no we're not we want to go solve the cases and I think our concern also is that very few of these cases wouldn't they're all exciting stories that beg to be told but unfortunately they involve a lot of families who want privacy and are going through a lot of pain yeah so unlike you know cold-case documentary series where it's all sort of win-win and the victim's family is grateful etc that that's not the nature of these stories so it's hard to imagine a series of of cases where where it's not impacting a family and a naked rice yeah and it's also hard to show what we do because in a salient cases you know you see the detectives out there knocking on doors and processing crime scene with the yellow tape I have yellow tape over my door but it's not the same thing if the door is right it is because I ran out of duct tape you know I have a monitor with a lot of colorful posts on it and that's about all we can show [Laughter] pataga for following me around for the day for BuzzFeed just to take one feature he followed me into the kitchen while I put my bowl of cereal together and asked if he could take a shot of that it was the most exciting that happen all day but I think that that kind of media it this this interview is great this is the kind we really feel comfortable with and joy you know as we said we have been contacted by so many and my feeling is as part of getting the word out there neither one of us are media mavens you know we don't do this to be on TV we do it to solve cases bring closure to the families to help out because we love doing that we love to work however I do know that that kind of series or that kind of documentary is inevitable we hope it's done well we hope you know we have a lot of hopes a lot of guidelines a lot of showstoppers that we are outlining demands that we we have and we're we're understanding it more now you know we got it we're smart we got it so I think that will be inevitable however I hope it's done well and it benefits everybody not just us yeah I mean our private the privacy issues the big one for us not only for the victims families but also and this is why it's difficult to film us at work we don't want them to see the matches the second cousins and third fuzzies that's all private information but also we don't want any of our volunteers to be identified because we worry about their safety so if you take those away what's left the military look in the future where you can vet it a little bit happen and in buckskins case you can you don't really have to expose your family but you can show that they had they replaced the stone with a new stone with a poem poem by the wrote part of the coin and the relatives that showed up if they are okay with that you can do that and then you can talk about the assailant see that if they're investigating it there is something around it but you have to be very respectful to the volunteers the matches and the doves families and I know you guys will take a thoughtful respectful approach and I like that the word is getting out so that people can find you if they do your service they can find us we surf in you know we do appreciate donations to help you know finance our dos we don't make anything of this this is all it's a pretty simple model we don't know one gets paid and then three thousand hours of work a typical professional genealogist pay that's a hundred dollars an hour you can do the bath all we raise the funds to cover the test costs and then a little bit to go towards our insurance and legal fees and corporate fees and that's it no one gets paid for their time yeah so far so good I think that plus the ridiculous cases that you have been able to solve that have you know cold cases that have existed for so long with no hope of resolution correct people are interested in a pill I can't wait to see what the next year brings yeah well we'll talk to you next year that game more stories thank you both so much fantastic [Music] [Applause]

Channel: ISHI News

Views: 22,983

Rating: 4.892683 out of 5

Keywords: genealogy, genetic genealogy, investigative genealogy, cold case, true crime, john doe, forensic, forensics, forensic science, forensic scientist, DNA, Colleen Fitzpatrick, Margaret Press

Id: 3W2_Fb5uj3M

Length: 35min 58sec (2158 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2019