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 Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. And a warning, this episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.

**CeCe Moore** (0:50)
You want to be able to explain the science and the techniques to the public in a way they can understand, but if you dumb it down too much, it becomes inaccurate. So that's true anytime you're talking about these types of cases. It's the science. You have to have caveats in there and likelies and theories, we believe. But then also when I'm discussing cases, I have to always inject those caveats. I have done probably 60 interviews about the Nancy Guthrie case, and I'm often asked to speculate about what law enforcement should or shouldn't have done, and I'm not there.
I'm not there on that crime scene. I'm not part of the investigation. So you have to be so careful when you are second guessing the people that are actually insiders in the investigation. So I never want to come across as like I know more than they do or in criticizing what they've done. Because when I'm involved on the inside in an investigation, and I see what the public is saying and what the experts are saying, it can be very frustrating. So that's been very informative about how to present myself when I'm the one talking about a case that I don't have inside information on.

**Meshel Laurie** (2:02)
I know. We have to be so careful, don't we? Not to be overly critical and assume the worst. Because we have so many great examples of, oh, actually it turns out the police were doing lots of work in between.
We have a doctor here in Melbourne where I live, Dr. Dadna, and she is the DNA whisperer, the DNA specialist, and she works on Australian cases, international cases, lots of things. But she always says to me, look, DNA is not the end of the story. When the police realize they've got DNA, people tend to think, oh well, case closed. But we're always going to need a human being to interpret the DNA and take it to the next step, which is part of what you do, right?

**CeCe Moore** (2:43)
Absolutely, yes. And the DNA just points them in the right direction. It doesn't close the case. And that's especially true with investigative genetic genealogy. Because 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 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. 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. That is what's used to charge someone, arrest someone and eventually convict someone of a crime.

**Meshel Laurie** (3:48)
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 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** (4:25)
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 that 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. So once we identify a common ancestors between some of the people who share DNA with our unknown person, because of course we know their family trees, we know their identities, we can build those trees, then we have one piece of our unknown suspects or unknown Jane Doe's family tree.