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- [00:00]
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- [01:49]
Sponsor/Promotional Speaker
Sam.
- [02:26]
Narrator
On January 29, 2016, an unhoused person was scrounging for items of value or purpose in a wooded area behind the Walmart at 7735 North Tryon Street. This was off University Point Boulevard in the University City Division of Charlotte, North Carolina. Among the trees, the person came upon a very tattered, weather worn sleeping bag lying on the ground. It was nighttime and as the homeless person peered into the sleeping bag, he or she, I don't know which, was startled and I imagine horrified to find a human skull and some body bones still inside clothing. Deputies from the Charlotte Mecklenburg PD responded to the scene and opening the sleeping bag found skeletonized human remains. Exhaustive searches of the area the following day discovered more human bones in the vicinity of of the sleeping bag. These were transported to the Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner's Office where a pathologist analyzed and cataloged the remains which were determined to be an incomplete skeleton. An anthropologist next evaluated the remains and it was determined that the deceased person was a white male between the ages of 30 and 40, and he stood between 5 foot 4 and 5 foot 8 inches tall. The bones bore no evidence of violence or foul play. While the exact cause of the man's death could not be determined, the manner of death was listed on the decedent's death certificate as being due to natural causes, and he'd been dead for as long as one to several years. The cause of death was just one of the questions surrounding Charlotte Walmart John Doe, as the decedent came to be known. Because no identification was found with the remains, Charlotte Mecklenburg investigators had no way of knowing who he was. All they had to go on were a few personal possessions and items of clothing found on or with the body. The skeleton was still wearing a long sleeved blue t shirt with an NYPD emblem, a light blue Stafford brand shirt size 1532-33, and a red thermal shirt size small. No pants or shoes were found. Since some of the long bones were also missing, it was surmised that perhaps these missing clothing items and possibly a wallet and cell phone were found scattered in the woods and repurposed by people living at a homeless encampment not far off. One thing that police searching the wooded area surrounding the body did find was what appeared to be an old school yearbook. It was so degraded that investigators could barely even discern where it was from, which turned out to be Virginia. Investigators assessing the scene and what they had gathered about Charlotte Walmart John Doe concluded that he was an unhoused individual who had been living in the wood where his remains were discovered. If he had a tent and additional personal items, those things had all disappeared. No official missing persons reports on file with the agency or other area agencies matched Charlotte Walmart John Doe. The clothing he was wearing led nowhere, Even though the NYPD shirt was not your average Times square touristy shirt, but an actual New York police department issue shirt as indicated on the inside label. But of course, it would have been futile to check all New York missing persons cases Looking for missing white guys in their 30s. In 2019, the Mecklenburg county medical examiner's office made a push to resolve about 12 unidentified human remains cases that they had on their books. One of these was Charlotte Walmart John Doe. They had entered his somewhat sparse personal details into NamUs as up 58098. But there were no missing persons in the database who matched up, so he remained unidentified. Cold case detective Matthew Hefner of the Charlotte Mecklenburg PD took on all dozen unidentified human remains cases. Charlotte Walmart John does was the most recent. So the detective pulled the evidence and reviewed the file, but with so few clues, his hands were somewhat tied. In 2022, the Charlotte Mecklenburg authorities decided to try IGGY to identify Charlotte Walmart John Doe. The state Anthropologist's office sent a bone sample from their John Doe to OTHRAM labs in the Woodlands, Texas. No STR profile had successfully been developed for Charlotte Walmart John Doe, but OTHRAM was able to generate a SNP profile for him. It was disappointing when uploads of the SNP into both GenMatch and Family Tree DNA did not locate significant matches and the IGG being worked by a private genealogist stalled. You've heard me talk in multiple episodes about the Investigative Genetic Genealogy center at Ramapo College in New Jersey. The center was founded in 2022. It offers a popular 15 week certificate program to train genealogists in IGG. Headed up by David Gurney, Director of the IGG center and an Assistant professor of Law and Society at Ramapo College, and Karen Binder, Assistant Director of the IGG center and the Director of the Certificate Program, the center features eight full time staff members and a large pool of trained volunteers. And cohorts of students in the certificate program often tackle real life cases in boot camp style training sessions. And that's what happened here. In 2025, Charlotte Mecklenburg cold Case Detective Matthew Hefner enrolled in the certificate program. His agency had had some luck with IGG solves but wanted to cut down on the expenses associated with outsourcing the igg. So he and two colleagues took the all remote class and after the class had solved all the other cases they had tackled, he proposed that they take on the Charlotte Walmart John Doe case. Detective Hefner felt the case was solvable even though the private genealogist working on it had hit a snag. It was one of my fresher cold cases, detective Hefner said in an interview with New Jersey Advance Media. I had a gut feel that somebody was still looking for this guy. So the class and volunteers who had graduated from the program got to work on the case. The top match to Charlotte Walmart John Doe In GEDmatch was 148 centimorgans, possibly a second cousin once removed or even a third cousin or equivalent relationship. Unfortunately, this top match's father was adopted. While the Top Match was able to provide some information about who his mother was, the he was not certain who his father was. Because of the remote relatedness of Charlotte Walmart John Doe and the Top Match, the Ramapo Genealogy team had to build out the tree for the top match to the second great grandparent level. They also had to build trees for other lower level matches who were also related to the John Doe. The genealogists used GEDmatches in common with Feature to see which matches shared DNA with each other as well as the Doe. The genealogy team quickly determined that Charlotte Walmart John Doe was of Irish descent. His matches had a lot of connections to Brooklyn, New York, often settled by Irish immigrants, as well as to Ireland itself. The Ramapo team explained to me that persons of Irish descent are not easily identified via genealogical analyses because of a significant lack of reliable records in Ireland prior to 1864. And indeed, this was a difficult case with students, staffers and volunteers at Ramapo working for months to identify Charlotte Walmart John Doe. Detective Hefner and his colleagues graduated from the certificate program and stayed on as advisors to the team, providing access to all the agency's records regarding Charlotte Walmart John Doe. But still, they were unable to make significant progress. After months of working the case, in September 2025, Ramapo sent a team to CrimeCon. Their booth on Creators Row was very enticing, with a poster exhibiting several unidentified human remains cases the team was working on. They offered participants whose genetic profiles were already in GEDmatch the opportunity to see if they matched to any of these does, with the goal of encouraging people to upload. I gave permission for them to search my GEDmatch kit against the does and was shocked to learn that I matched to one of them Charlotte Walmart John Doe. Now, before you get excited, let me state here that this match was incredibly minute. It was like five or seven centimorgans of shared DNA. Pretty much useless. Ramapo knew from Charlotte Walmart John Doe's matches that he was of Irish heritage. And I also have significant Irish heritage, as do tens of millions of Americans. Our shared DNA was consistent with us both having Irish roots and no more than that.
- [11:00]
Sponsor/Promotional Speaker
But.
- [11:01]
Narrator
But still, it was really cool to see results instantly. And I was left wondering whether Ramapo would be able to identify Charlotte Walmart John Doe. Well, before too long, there was an announcement.
- [11:14]
Sponsor/Promotional Speaker
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- [11:46]
Narrator
Tara Davis Woodhull and I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull.
- [11:50]
Sponsor/Promotional Speaker
As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that.
- [11:53]
Narrator
You can absolutely trust.
- [11:55]
Sponsor/Promotional Speaker
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- [12:03]
Podcast Advertiser
Learn more at pennymac.com PennyMac Loan Services, LLC equal housing lender NMLS ID 35953 licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now gener assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI, it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing, Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures.
- [13:17]
Narrator
So the Ramapo team was left with complicated trees for their top matches and no way to narrow down the field. So in order to figure out which side of Charlotte Walmart John Doe's family tree the various matches belonged to, they evaluated Segments. I haven't talked about segments before, so here's a little crash course. Segments are continuous blocks of shared DNA located on specific chromosomes. The total Centimorgans or CMS of shared DNA between two individuals are spread across these segments. Both the number and length of shared segments are key indicators of relatedness. Close relatives share many long segments, while more distant relatives share fewer, shorter and more fragmented segments. For example, a parent and child typically share between 23 and 29 large segments on any specific chromosome, whereas distant cousins share far fewer shared segments provide the genetic evidence that individuals are related because they represent DNA inherited directly from a common ancestor. In other words, if people share the same segment at the same chromosomal location, they are descended from the same specific person. Triangulation is the process of using those shared segments among multiple matches to identify their most recent common ancestor, referred to as the mrca. This step is important because if triangulation occurs among the DOE or unknown suspect and his or her top matches, then the DOE or suspect is also likely to be related to those matches same ancestor couple or single ancestor, which can happen if multiple marriages are involved. So matches may be a half relationship and only connected through a great grandmother or great grandfather and not both the great grandparents. Let me illustrate all this segment stuff with an example. Say two top matches share segments of DNA with the DOE or suspect, but they don't share those segments with each other. The genealogist can identify matches of those matches who do share those segments to track their specific relatives. This allows them to ensure they are building the correct trees. And if they build the trees of these matches back far enough, they should intersect at the mrca. Imagine the genealogists could see that matches A, B and C all share centimorgans of DNA. Segment analysis might allow them to see that A and B share segments of DNA on B's maternal side. But B and C share segments of DNA on B's paternal side. So tracing back A and C's trees would lead to the MRCA for A, B and C. In this case, the Ramapo team evaluated the segments of DNA they could see where were shared between John Doe and his matches to find out which matches were on which parents side of the tree. And they were able to identify multiple MRCAs they knew Charlotte Walmart John Doe must be related to. At that point the team started descendancy work building down from the MRCA couples, building out the trees of all their descendants and their descendants spouses trying to find a union couple whose marriage or at least procreation joined any genetic networks descended from the MRCAs. If they could identify this union couple, they could almost certainly identify Charlotte Walmart John Doe. They got stuck again. They needed more data. So at this point In November of 2025, Ramapo's newly hired staff investigative genetic genealogist Julian Rebelo began outreach to potential reference testers. One of the individuals contacted was a descendant of an MRCA couple on John Doe's paternal side distinct from the set of maternal MRCAs and DNA matches associated with Brooklyn, New York. The purpose of this outreach was to clarify which side of the MRCA couple was relevant given the complications introduced by multiple marriages. This individual agreed to upload their DNA to GEDmatch, and the results confirmed that they were not related to John Doe. This information was significant as it eliminated an entire branch of the family tree and redirected the genealogist's focus to the side of the MRCA with the surname McCarthy. After building additional downlines, the genealogists identified a descendant named Dennis McCarthy, who was also born in Brooklyn, New York. He married a woman who was a descendant of multiple MRCAs from John Doe's maternal side, indicating that this couple represented a union couple and were the parents of John Doe. Dennis McCarthy and his wife had three sons, any one of whom could have been Charlotte Walmart John Doe. But one named Mike McCarthy was alive and well. A second son had died and there was proof of death for him. A third son had no paper trail since about 2013. He would have been quite a bit older than Charlotte Walmart John Doe was predicted to be, but the genealogy pointed to him being the most likely candidate. His name was Kenneth Robert McCarthy. Ramapo told me that once they determined that Kenneth had no proof of life or death and gave his name to Detective Hefner, things moved very quickly. Detective Hefner located a home phone number for Mike McCarthy, whom they believe was Charlotte Walmart John Doe's older brother in New Jersey. He called their landline around 9 or 10am and left a message on the answering machine. When Mike's wife, Nancy McCarthy, got home from work, she saw the light flashing on the machine indicating there was a message waiting. She almost deleted it, assuming it was the usual telemarketers, but for some reason she decided to listen to it. It was a detective from Charlotte, North Carolina, looking for her husband, Mike. She called the detective back. She said, my husband will be home in an hour. But Detective Hefner could not wait. He said, somewhat breathlessly, let me ask you, is your husband missing a sibling? She said, he is. His brother Ken is missing. When did you last hear from him? The detective asked. 2013, she said. Where was Ken's last place of residence? She said he lived in Charlotte, North Carolina. Detective Hefner paused and said, I think we found him. Nancy quickly got hold of Mike and told him what had happened. Mike called Detective Hefner, who repeated the whole line of questioning. Then he said he believed Charlotte Walmart John Doe was Kenneth. They Just needed to confirm it. Mike said he'd taken a 23andMe test in the past. So the Ramapo team walked Mike through obtaining his raw data file from 23andMe and uploading his profile to GEDmatch. It was an excruciating 48 hours while all this took place. But when they got the results two days later, the GEDmatch one to one comparison showed that Walmart John Doe was a sibling to Mike. Detective Hefner delivered the news to Mike on the phone. I asked Mike what his feelings were at hearing that confirmation. Had he still had hope that his brother was alive and out there somewhere? Or did he recognize that he had passed? So finding him was something of a relief. He told me that they had come to terms with him being gone. But every holiday and birthday was darkened by grieving. Now, at least they had resolution. Detective Hefner, meanwhile, told NewJersey.com's it's one of the best parts of my job, giving people their names back to them. It's sad, yes, but it's also a relief. Nancy explained to NBC 10 Philadelphia, quote, so much time had passed. We just figured we would never, ever have an answer, end quote, to me. She described the news as a gift, a gift given to their family from the North Carolina investigators and the Ramapo IGG team. She called the Ramapo team to thank them personally and invited them over to meet her and Mike. Because the McCarthys lived just an hour's drive from Ramapo College, the team did get to meet Mike and Nancy at their home, and they expressed their extreme gratitude to the team for finding their missing loved ones. After 12 years, it turned out that Kenneth had several relatives who were NYPD officers. And he was very proud of this. Which explained the NYPD issue shirt that Charlotte Walmart John Doe had been found wearing. Because Kenneth's case was not a criminal one and no trial was anticipated, North Carolina authorities were willing to accept the snip to snip sibling match of Charlotte Walmart John Doe's profile to Mike's instead of the standard STR match. As proof of Kenneth's identity, they issued a formal death certificate in his name, indicating that he had passed away of natural causes. On November 11, 2025, Ramapo College IGG center and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department publicly announced that the unidentified man previously known as Charlotte Walmart John Doe had been identified as Kenneth Robert McCarthy.
- [21:55]
Sponsor/Promotional Speaker
You've never been one to settle, stand down or stand still. You're a lifelong learner, energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now. Not a chance. At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive. Now go earned the degree Capella University. What can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn more. Hey, this is US Olympic gold medalist.
- [22:27]
Narrator
Tara Davis Woodhull and I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull.
- [22:31]
Sponsor/Promotional Speaker
As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that.
- [22:35]
Narrator
You can absolutely trust.
- [22:36]
Sponsor/Promotional Speaker
So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you.
- [22:44]
Podcast Advertiser
Learn more at PennyMac PennyMac Loan Services, LLC equal housing lender NMLS ID 35953 licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply. Support for the show comes from Public the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1 per bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete Disclosures available at public.com disclosures.
- [23:59]
Narrator
So what do we know about Kenneth? He was born on November 16, 1961 to Dennis and Alice McCarthy and grew up in Brooklyn, New York before the family moved to New Jersey when Kenneth and Mike were in their 20s. Kenneth had no known connections to Virginia. Note that the yearbook found in the woods near his body turned out to be an unrelated red herring. As an adult, Kenneth married and divorced but had no children. He was beloved by his brother Mike, Mike's wife Nancy and their son, as well as Mike and Kenneth's two sisters and their sons who also live in New Jersey. Kenneth initially stayed in the Garden State. He and Mike worked together for 15 years in the IT field where Mike was his supervisor, which got a little hairy since the two siblings interacted like siblings, even at work. Then Kenneth took a job as a contract systems programmer for major US Corporations like Panasonic, Hitachi and Lockheed Martin. This required that he travel all over the country living in temporary housing while he fulfilled his contract. After Kenneth was identified, several New Jersey media outlets did articles about his family's quest to find him. Some of the following information is taken from New Jersey.com and NBC 10 Philadelphia and some comes from my own interview with Mike and Nancy. Kenneth's older brother Mike described the two to me as attached at the hip. He said Kenneth was a brilliant kid who excelled in school in Brooklyn. Although neither brother finished college, they enjoyed significant success in the IT industry as a child. Kenneth was a church altar boy. In his teen years, he channeled a lot of his restless energy into judo, becoming the three time East coast champion and one time American Canadian judo champion. In April 1981, a horrific family tragedy struck the McCarthys. Kenneth was just about 20 years old and Mike a little older. Their 28 year old brother, Dennis McCarthy Jr. And his own five year old son Dennis were killed in a house fire started by an electric blanket at their home in in Flatbush. Other family members in the home escaped unharmed, but the loss of Dennis and his son was devastating and traumatic. Mike feels strongly that Kenneth never really got over it and the incident was the beginning of his downward spiral. Mike told NBC10 Philadelphia that Kenneth struggled with issues throughout his life and his demons always returned even after it seemed he had defeated them. Mike told the station, quote, we would pick him up, dust him off, send him out, go back, pick him up, dust him off. In 2010, the last time Mike and Nancy saw Kenneth in person, he was already living in North Carolina and working a job down there. He came back to New Jersey to celebrate his brother's 50th in that in person reunion. Clearly sensing that his younger brother was struggling, Mike asked Kenneth, how much money do you have in the world? Kenneth showed him all the cash in his pockets. It was $4.87. This from NBC 10 Philadelphia. Quote Mike asked his brother if this was rock bottom. Ken looked at the money in his hand and said not yet. After that, Mike talked to Kenneth by phone periodically for three years Mike paid his brother's cell phone bill to be sure he would stay in touch. And he was regularly. Kenneth was last known by his family to be on a job in Charlotte. He told them that he was living at an extended stay motel. He lived there for months, and then in 2013, told Mike he was leaving the motel. Mike never heard from him again, and after a month or so, he started to get worried. And then Kenneth's phone stopped accepting voicemails. Because Mike was the account holder on Kenneth's cell phone contract, he was able to access Kenneth's call log records, and he started calling all the numbers that Kenneth had called or had called him. In this way, he was able to locate the exact motel where Kenneth had been staying in. Speaking with the manager, he learned that Kenneth had been evicted for failing to pay his bill. He left with all his things and was picked up by a couple in a vehicle. Persisting, Mike continued to use his brother's phone records and eventually found the female half of the couple who had picked Kenneth up. When he left the motel, she initially seemed cooperative. She said Kenneth had left all his personal possessions with her, but she didn't know where he was, and it sounded like she hadn't seen him in a while. She was able to describe some of the items which were familiar to Mike, including two laptops. So Mike arranged with this woman that he would send her funds to ship Kenneth's possessions to him and reward her with a small cash payment. He sent a western union for the amount agreed upon and waited. Well, the stuff never showed up in New Jersey. When Mike got back in touch with the woman in North Carolina, she acknowledged that she had spent the money on other stuff. Mike ran a background check on this woman and learned that she had a significant criminal record for felonies like burglary and possession of cocaine. It seems likely that this woman had befriended Kenneth because he was generous and always willing to help the down and out, no matter how little he had to his name. Mike never was able to recover his brother's possessions. Where they are now is unknown. Next, Mike called the Charlotte Mecklenburg police department, hoping to file a missing persons report on his brother. He was routed to the missing persons unit and spoke with a detective. He explained his brother's being out of contact and not using his cell phone and why it was concerning. In short, the detective was not receptive to the report. He declined to open a missing person's case. He deemed the case low priority because it seemed Kenneth, at age 52, was a voluntarily missing adult. Perhaps he had moved on to a different job in another state. Perhaps he just didn't want to be in touch with his family. The detective explained that they had over 700 missing persons cases in his department, many of which involved juveniles and only three detectives to work them. No report was taken, and that was that. Mike and Nancy called local hospitals and shelters, but those places were not able to comment on whether Kenneth was there because of privacy laws. Finally, Mike's nephew, a detective with nypd, arranged for Kenneth's fingerprints taken because of his high security clearance, to be submitted to APHIS, so that if he was ever entered into the system by another agency, he would be alerted. But it never happened. Frustrated beyond measure, over the following years, the McCarthy family continually scoured social media and online missing persons cases and considered hiring a PI but never found hide nor hair of Kenneth. He remained missing for 12 years. And then came the phone call from Detective Hefner. Let's all note that if the Charlotte missing persons detective had accepted a missing persons report back when Mike McCarthy first contacted his agency in 2013, then three years later, when Charlotte Walmart John Doe was found in 2016, they would almost certainly have been able to identify him fairly quickly, even with the anthropologist's estimate of the age of the John Doe being significantly off. After all, the family knew the name of the motel Kenneth had been staying at. The motel turned out to be very near the Walmart, so near that the woods where Kenneth was found behind the Walmart were visible from the motel. There were some unfortunate missed connections. And if the family had been told to keep checking namus, they might have zeroed in on Kenneth's entry when it appeared in the database. In 2019, Mike and Nancy told NewJersey.com that they were happy to know where Kenneth was and what had happened to him. But it's also been bittersweet to find out that not only was he deceased, he'd been out in the woods dead for three years and sat unidentified on a shelf for nine years. After that, Mike said, quote, I'm very happy because we've never stopped thinking about him, stopped looking for him. But he lamented he had family to go to. Mike said that he and Nancy would have helped Kenneth, even taken him in, had he reached out to them. They'd done it countless times before. Why not this time? No one knows why Kenneth didn't seek his family's help and became unhoused and eventually passed away alone in the woods of undetermined natural causes. Mike told me that he misses his brother's witness sense of humor and feels acutely that he has missed out on all the things they should have been doing all those years, like attending concerts and sporting events and playing chess and risk. The fact is that IGG should not have been necessary in this case. As I said, if a missing person's report for Kenneth had been documented, he likely would have been identified when he was found three years later, not far from where his family last knew him to be. But in the end, IGG found Kenneth and reunited him with his family. Detective Hefner spoke about IGG's efficiency and indispensability in DOE cases. Quote it's the best way to solve these cases hands down. There are unidentified victims all over the country. There's just not enough genealogy database users right now. End quote. And that's an understatement. Only about 3 million people in the US have uploaded their genetic profiles to the open source databases accessible to law enforcement. Let me reiterate, if your DNA is in MyHeritage.com, ancestry.com or 23andMe, it is not available to law enforcement and is not contributing to the resolution of homicide cases or John and Jane Doe identifications. If you have a missing person in your family, or if you just want to help, please take a consumer DNA test and upload the results to GEDmatch and family tree DNA. That way igg practitioners can quickly and easily make the connections they need to solve these cases. If Mike McCarthy, who had taken a 23andMe test, had known to upload his profile to GEDmatch, the genealogist would have seen a sibling level match as soon as Charlotte Walmart John Doe's DNA was entered. None of the months of work that went into the IGG would have been necessary. Mike told me the main reason he is speaking out so much about his brother's case is to encourage people to upload and and opt in. So please consider doing so. Also, be sure to check namus, the National Missing and Unidentified Person System, to see if your missing loved one might be listed there. Agencies Please make it a requirement for John and Jane does in your jurisdiction to be entered into NamUs, which is accessible to the public and a place where families can go to find their loved ones, obviating the need for igg. As for Kenneth, I asked where his remains ended up. Nancy and Mike laughed a little and told me he was about two feet away from them. As we spoke on the phone, Mike explained to NBC10 Philadelphia that he had arranged for Kenneth's remains to be shipped to him in New Jersey and he planned to cremate him. He said, I'm going to be in possession so I can keep an eye on him. He's not going anywhere. Well, Kenneth was indeed cremated and now has a place of honor in the McCarthy home where he was decorated for Christmas and will remain present as part of their family. The family plans a sort of welcome home party for Kenneth, gathering the loved ones to honor him with stories and tales about his life. Thanks for listening to this episode of dnaid. Before you leave, please let me tell you about some important things related to the show. If you'd like to support this podcast and in the process get access to early and ad free episodes as well as bonus content like crime scene photos, you can sign up for a Patreon subscription for only $5 a month by heading over to patreon.com dnaid of course, you're welcome to contribute more than $5 a month. We rely on Patreon funds to pay for the original source materials I use to research each episode. If Patreon isn't your thing, you can also show your support with an AbJack Insider subscription through Apple Podcasts. It costs just $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year. Your Abjak Insider subscription will give you the same benefits for not only dnaid but for all of the shows on the abjak Network like Killer Communications and Campus Killings. Head over to Apple Podcasts and find the DNAID page or look for the ABJAC Network to get started. If you're on social media, we'd love to interact with you there. DNAID is on every major social media platform. Search your favorite platforms for DNAID Podcasts to find us. We also have a YouTube channel and our website is DNAID podcast.com. you can find links to all of these anytime in our show notes. If you need to reach the show, contact us by emailing dnaidpodcastmail.com finally, if you want to pick up some fun DNA ID merch and represent the show, visit the store at www.customizedgirl.com DNA S DNAID podcast DNAID is researched, written and hosted by me, Jessica Betancourt. It's produced by me and Mike Morford of abjack Entertainment Music by Connor Betancourt.
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Podcast Advertiser
Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to Libsynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today.