Shortcut: The Woman Who Names the Unknown - ATC International

**Meshel Laurie** (0:03)
This is Australian True Crime International with Meshel Laurie.
CeCe Moore is one of the world's leading genetic genealogists using DNA and family tree analysis to solve cases that once seemed impossible. She joins us to discuss her work on the infamous Yogachop Murders, the identification of Australia's Poona Dam John Doe and how advances in forensic genealogy are transforming criminal investigations all around the world. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woiwarrung people of the Kulin Nation. And a warning, this episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.

**CeCe Moore** (0:50)
What we do is really just a hint, a tip, a lead generator.
It's a highly scientific one, but it's the beginning of the investigation, oftentimes for law enforcement, instead of the end. Nobody is arrested or charged with a crime based on genetic genealogy. We just point them in a direction that the DNA seems to be telling us to go. And then they have to do their full investigation. Same as if I call the name into Crime Stoppers. They have to do that deep dive, do the work that they would do on any other person of interest. And then most importantly, they have to collect DNA directly from that individual and compare it against the court admissible genetic evidence, which is not the genetic genealogy. It's a very different type of DNA profile that law enforcement has used for decades. And that is what's used to charge someone, arrest someone and eventually convict someone of a crime.

**Meshel Laurie** (1:45)
And you do so much research around what you're finding on the family trees and things.
One of my favorite things is to see a documentary, you pop up and then we, because they use the graphics department to show us the family trees. They show us where you found this third cousin and that fourth cousin. And then you build the trees up to the top and then you build them back down again. It's just one of my favorite things in the world. Now, I don't have the budget for that. I don't have a graphics department. So I need you to explain how you do what you do.

**CeCe Moore** (2:22)
Well, what we're doing is reverse engineering an unknown person from their DNA. So whether that DNA is left behind at a crime scene, a violent crime, we work with homicides and rapes.
Or if it's a person who dies without their identification, a Jane or John Doe, or unidentified human remains is the more formal term.
And so it doesn't really matter, which it is because it's the exact same process. It is taking that DNA, creating what we call the SNP profile that has hundreds of thousands of genetic markers across the genome, usually about 700,000, and then that is uploaded to the genetic genealogy databases that we're allowed to use on these types of cases. And we get a list of people who share significant amounts of DNA with that unknown person. Now typically, because we're limited to the smallest databases, we are getting very distant cousins, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth cousins and beyond. We are not very often working with close relatives. So that means that each of those individuals who shares DNA with the unknown suspect might share only 1% of their DNA. And from 1% we can predict they likely share great great grandparents. So we know how far back we need to build that person's tree to find the common ancestors with the suspect. But we all have multiple great great grandparents, right? Eight sets. So which one? Well, then we build the trees of other people who share DNA with that suspect, and we're looking for patterns and overlaps and eventually common ancestors. Then we have one piece of our unknown suspects or unknown Jane Doe's family tree, and we know it's got to fit somewhere, but we don't know where. Then if we take another cluster of matches and identify a second set of common ancestors, now we've got two pieces of that person's family tree.
We can then start moving forward, and instead of building backward in time, basically flipping it upside down, doing descendancy research or what I call reverse genealogy, because we know that individual that we're trying to identify has to be among the descendants of those individuals. So we're looking for that triangulation. Where does a descendant of couple number one and a descendant of couple number two have children?

**Meshel Laurie** (4:46)
Unidentified remains stories here in Australia. And I find them so sad. I think everybody does. And I know that the people here at the mortuary, at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, never give up on these remains. They keep them there with them. And they never stop trying to figure out who these people are and how this happened, and find a name and all of those things so that they can also be buried and things like that, you know. It's very, it must be a very moving. I can't imagine what it is like to find, to solve those mysteries. I mean, it's cool to solve crimes, but to give someone back their name, their family and their identity is huge.