S3E8: Family Trees

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This podcast is based on information sourced primarily from police and media reports, but certain names and other identifying details may have been changed or altered for privacy and security reasons. While the events and cases discussed are based on real investigations, some aspects may be simplified for time and for narrative purposes. Voice actors have been used to read from statements or documents. All information presented is intended solely to inform and raise awareness. Hosts may discuss theories regarding the cases examined in this podcast, but such discussions are not intended to and should not be considered by the listener to be legal conclusions. All persons discussed are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Listener discretion is advised.

**Ana Lalley** (1:02)
This is Chief Ana Lalley. Welcome to Somebody Knows Something, a podcast from the Elgin Police Department's Cold Case Unit. In this podcast, we will shed new light on cold cases in the city of Elgin by sharing untold details and by encouraging anyone with information to come forward. You will come along with real cold case detectives as they investigate active cold cases in real time and seek justice for the victims and closure for their families.
We believe that the Elgin Police Department and our community can work together to bring closure to cold cases because we know that in these cases, Somebody Knows Something.

**Andrew Houghton** (1:46)
Hello, and welcome to Somebody Knows Something, the Elgin Police Department Cold Case Podcast. My name is Detective Andrew Houghton.

**Chris Hall** (1:53)
And I'm Detective Chris Hall.

**Andrew Houghton** (1:54)
Last episode, we detailed our plans to use NamUs in this case, because we believe that it is possible that Wyteria has died and has been found but never identified. Collecting and testing familial DNA is a step that we have to take in this case.
Unfortunately, when we started this journey, we had no fingerprints for her, no dental records for her, and no DNA.

**Chris Hall** (2:14)
Wyteria would have turned 89 just last month on May 1st, if she is still alive. And while that is a possibility, it may not be very likely. So, we have to at least consider the possibility that Wyteria Jones is dead and still waiting to be found.
As we discussed in the last episode, to really utilize NamUs for its full potential, we need fingerprints, dental records, and DNA to compare against unidentified remains. But when we began looking at this particular case, we discovered that we had none of those for Wyteria.

**Andrew Houghton** (2:56)
Wyteria is listed in NamUs, but listeners will recall from our last episode that NamUs has two different databases. Wyteria is currently listed in the missing persons database with all the information that we have for her, but we still need forensics to compare her case to any potential matches in the unidentified persons database.
Beth has been attempting to track down any fingerprint records for her, but she was never arrested, and at least at this point, we have not been able to find any job or any other situation where she would have provided fingerprints for us to compare against those unidentified remains.

**Chris Hall** (3:25)
Yes, and unfortunately, we still don't have those fingerprints, and I know what people might be thinking. This case is over 40 years old, and if you did have fingerprints, would you even have prints to compare to for an unidentified body?
Well, as it turns out, the answer could be yes.
When unidentified bodies were recovered even back in the 1980s, prints were often rolled in ink by the agency that located them or by a coroner's office. So it is theoretically possible that we could use fingerprints on some remains, but certainly not all of them.

**Andrew Houghton** (3:56)
Yeah, for sure. A number of the unidentified remains are skeletal remains, so obviously there's no fingerprints. But NamUs does include numerous unidentified human remains that also have latent prints.
Obviously, in a perfect world for any case, we would have all three. We'd have fingerprints, dental records, and DNA that we could upload into CODIS. But as we said when we started this case, we didn't have any of those. Speaking of dental records, Matt and I had extensive dental records for Karen's case during Season 1
In fact, the forensic odontologist told Matt that they were some of the most complete sets of records he'd ever used to identify someone. Unfortunately, in several of our missing person cases on our current caseload, including Wyteria's, we just simply don't have those records.

**Chris Hall** (4:37)
Yes, it's really unfortunate that we don't have them. And after all, dental records can be more useful in cold cases because, like you said, Andrew, we often are looking at skeletal remains that have been recovered years or even decades after the person has died. So, if there are dental records, we can make comparisons in cases like that pretty quickly. But, sadly, we just don't have them in this case, at least for not yet.