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Murder Sheet
The Yogurt Shop Murders and Serial Killer Robert Eugene Brashers: First Person: Dr. Rachel Oefelein of DNA Labs International
00:53:31
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- [00:00]
Anya Cain
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
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Anya Cain
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
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Anya Cain
I'm Anya and today we're going to talk with an expert who's helped get answers in some major criminal cases.
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Kevin Greenlee
Content WARNING this episode contains discussion of cases involving murder and rape, including the murder and rape of children.
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Anya Cain
It's no secret that DNA changed investigations into some of the most heinous crimes of all time. Today we're going to be talking with someone who is at the forefront of all that. Dr. Rachel Afflein is the Chief Scientific Officer and Laboratory Director of DNA Labs International. I reached out to her because of the work DNA Labs International did on one specific case. On December 6, 1991, a serial killer named Robert Eugene Brashears went to the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt shop in Austin, Texas. He bound, gagged, sexually assaulted and murdered four girls there, 17 year old Eliza Thomas, 13 year old Amy Ayers and the Harbison sisters, 17 year old Jennifer and 15 year old Sarah. After years of questions and even some wrongful convictions, this case was finally solved. When Detective Dan Jackson of the Austin Police Department got up to thank those who worked on the case, DNA Labs International was one of the entities he singled out as making a big difference. Dr. Afflein will speak to us about her career which took her quite literally around the globe and across time as she worked on mysteries from long ago wars. She's worked on some major cases in the true crime world as well, including ones connected to serial killer Samuel Little and a case out of Virginia that we briefly covered on the show. She will also get into DNA Labs International, the work they do and how they came to be. This is a major lab that's connected with all kinds of cold cases that have gotten solved.
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Kevin Greenlee
She would talk about all of that, as well as the work DNA Labs International did on the yogurt shop murders, her work with detectives and police to help investigators preserve more evidence, her thoughts on why we shouldn't think DNA is a silver bullet, and her views on what's next in this developing field.
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Anya Cain
My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist.
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Kevin Greenlee
And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney.
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Anya Cain
And this is the Murder Sheet.
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Kevin Greenlee
We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet.
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Anya Cain
And this is the Ogre Shop Murders and serial killer. Robert Eugene Brashears. First person, Dr. Rachel A fline of DNA Labs International, I guess to start off with. Rachel, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it.
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
No problem. Thank you for having me.
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Anya Cain
So to start off with, can you just take the audience through your career trajectory a bit and just take us through what that has looked like over the years?
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yeah. So I think originally I wanted to be a surgeon, and then I found out that actually working with a living is incredibly challenging. So I was originally a pre med major and then ended up going criminal justice with a forensic science minor out of Loyola University New Orleans. And then I did my master's in forensic science at Strathclyde, which is in the United Kingdom. After my master's, I went to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, and I worked on past conflicts initially, so trying to identify remains from, like, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and then after a couple years in that section, I moved to current conflicts. And around that time, our laboratory relocated from just outside the D.C. area to Delaware, which was a change of pace as a young single woman. So I stayed there for a couple years in current conflicts, which was identifying remains for current conflicts, as well as working on crime at military institutions as well. And at that point, then I was ready to live closer to a major city again and started exploring other options and applied to DNA Labs International at that time. So I started on as a DNA analyst there, became the quality assurance manager. I also finished my PhD through Griffith University in Australia while I was at DNA Labs International. And now I'm currently the chief scientific officer there.
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Anya Cain
Very cool. I don't want to sound like a fan girl, but as a history nerd, that is so fascinating that you were working on some of those, you know, past, past conflicts. I do want to go back a little bit. You mentioned not really wanting to work with the living. That's definitely something That's a difficult part for any doctor or nurse or whatnot. But what drew you specifically to the law enforcement side or the kind of identification side of things was had. That's always been something that interested you.
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yeah. So with criminal justice being my major, I took a forensic science elective and I was like, oh, this is awesome. This is so much fun. I love this. And then when I went to go do my master's, they put you into a placement so you have to do an internship in another laboratory. And I ended up at the laboratory and Krakow in Poland. And I was like, I want to do anything but DNA. DNA is so boring. I think I want to be just like Dexter, minus killing people. I wanted to do blood pattern analysis and I was like, that'll be so exciting. But I'd actually shadowed at a coroner's office at one point and having to go on crime scenes. I am a neat freak and crime scenes are dirty. Criminals don't keep the well kept houses and I don't like bad smells and things like that. So I was like, you know what, maybe I'm actually more cut out for the lab. And going through my internship process and doing my dissertation research, I found out that I like being lab so much more and I actually love DNA. And now I'm like, it's not boring at all. I can't get enough of it. It's always changing.
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Anya Cain
It's so fun stepping away from the Dexter inspo and going with something else.
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
That's good. That's so fun.
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Anya Cain
Are there any memories or standout memories for you from those times where, you know, had a big find or were able to like find the remains of a veteran that had been lost for many years or were there any things like that that stood out for you?
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yeah, I think with past conflict, the thing that stands out with me the most, and this translates to what I do now as well, is for unidentified human remains or long term missing persons, how hard it is for people to find resolution. So they always say that there's never closure. Like people don't get closure. That's like a very big no, no word. A lot of times when you talk to victim advocates and you can really see that with family members who've been missing their loved one for dec, that even once they are identified, a lot of times they have a hard time accepting it. So that was a common theme that I see a lot from past military conflicts. But even now when we have these cold cases, especially ones where we do forensic investigative genetic genealogy, a lot of These cases are like 50 years cold. They've been waiting all this time. So we say, no, this is the answer now. We're 100% certain. We got confirmation and we'll go to the press releases or do these like big media things and the families there. And they'll come up to me and they'll be like, are you sure, though? Like, did the DNA, like, really, was it consistent or are you sure? And it's like they still have that same hard time accepting that this is like the resolution. I think you're left waiting and in limbo for so long, it's hard to like turn that switch off in your mind. I'm not a psychologist or a therapist or anything, but that's just my observations. I see like, continuity of that through military conflict, but also through criminal cases as well for current conflict. Honestly, I think I'm like, mostly just probably traumatized with planes. So, like a lot of current conflict stuff is when we have choppers that are, you know, shot down or planes that go down and things like that. And so being on call for that type of work for an extended period of time and having been on a really bad plane that had to have an emergency landing and all of that before myself, I think it makes me a very nervous flyer now. So that sticks with me.
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Anya Cain
That is terrifying. Yeah, I think, I think you're so right with these cold cases or with any long term cases almost in our minds, whenever there's something that's a really big deal to us, we almost expect like, psychologically there to be to some, you know, big finale to it where like, here's the answer and it's like emotionally resonant. But it would make sense that it's almost like you're so in that mindset of like, we're still waiting that it's hard to get out of that.
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
Absolutely.
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Anya Cain
So in terms of one question I do have for you, you've had such a fascinating career and I think we hear from a lot of people who, you know, are younger people and they, they want to go into things, they want to go into this field, they want to go into fields like this. What would your best advice be for someone who might be starting out and, and is interested in perhaps pursuing a career in this space?
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
I think the two biggest things are managing expectations. We get a lot of people where universities build them up so much and they're like, you have everything you need to be a DNA analyst and you can go on and take on the world. The reality is we actually have like really strict standards and rules that we have to follow. So you can't come fresh out of school and expect to immediately be a DNA analyst. You're going to have to go through additional training. You're going to have to do an entry level position. So maybe don't necessarily believe everything they tell you in school. In addition to that, on that same kind of token, to pay attention to the FBI qas, which is the Federal Bureau of Investigation Quality assurance Standards, they have requirements for DNA analysts which include specific coursework. A lot of people come out and apply for jobs and don't even have the minimum classes that they have to have. So pay attention to that. And then the other thing is, absolutely, do an internship. We probably hire like a third of our interns. It's the best way to get into a lab. And almost no labs want to take people fresh out of school who've had no experience at all. They want to at least see that you've been on an internship, because then we know that you can handle the type of work that you've been exposed to it. There's a lot of, you know, sad, hard parts of our job. There's a lot of bad smells that go along with our job. I have a hard time still to this day with any cases involving animals. So a lot of times people too, struggle with cases with like, children and things like that. Like, you need exposure to that because I think a lot of people watch Bones or CSI and Dexter and all these things are like, I can do that. That's so cool. And you get them into an autopsy room on day one and they're like, yep, nope. It's like, now you just spent all this time in school for something that's like, really you don't have the stomach for. So get an internship early, get exposure, make sure it's what you really want to do. But also it's going to help in your hiring process.
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Anya Cain
Yeah, I remember my dad's a physician, took me to take your kid to work day, and they were screening like a gallbladder surgery for the kids, I guess. And I just remember being like, nah, make sure you're not squeamish for any of this kind of work because as you said, it's. It's just because you're not working with the living or even like going to a crime scene, you know, like bone style. It's still. I mean, it's still pretty disturbing and morbid in terms of DNA Labs International. Can you tell me a little bit about the lab and what Kind of you guys specialize in.
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yeah. So our laboratory was founded essentially by a family. So there are person who is our CEO, her husband at the time was a DNA analyst. And he would come home from work and talk about backlogs and all the issues that they were having at the laboratory, getting casework through. And she was like, okay, let me get this straight. So if something were to happen to one of my daughters, like if one of my daughters were assaulted, their sexual assault kit would just basically sit on a shelf. And he was like, yeah, like pretty much. And she was like, okay, well, A, that's not acceptable. And B, this is a business opportunity really at this point too, because there's space in this industry for private partners. So she started the laboratory. They started primarily working in Florida and the Caribbean, but now we work in Australia, Central America, South America, Asia, and all over the U.S. i think we're in 49 states, the U.S. so really kind of all over the place has expanded quite a bit. And it's primarily working with law enforcement, but we do a lot of work with government laboratories as well, helping them with their backlogs. A lot of work with attorneys, cases, both on the prosecution and in the defense. Like, we've done a bunch of stuff for Innocence Project as well, so kind of all over the place. Primarily homicide and sexual assault. We do a lot with gun crime
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Anya Cain
as well when it comes to, you know, I mean, obviously this is a very well established lab now, but I guess, how do you forge those partnerships with law enforcement and the government to show them? Yes, we are a trusted private partner for you and we can do the tasks that you need us to do. And how do you kind of almost establish that reputation within the field?
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
I think a lot of it is just by having high quality work, being very careful with what we do. Also, we have to have good turnaround times because otherwise you would just wait on your government lab to test it. But the biggest thing for us is new technology and innovation. So we are always one of the first labs to bring on new technology. And we've actually created and innovated a lot of new technology on our own. Like a good example that would be fired cartridge cases. So I kept going out and doing these trainings with law enforcement. They would say, you know, what I really need help with is fired cartridge cases, because I have drive bys and the only evidence I have left is these casings and no one can do anything with it. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. Like, let me look at that. And we have a lot of university partnerships. So I did an internship with a student from Florida International University and I found essentially 12 papers from all over the world and was like, here's what everyone else is doing. We need to make it better. These are the only options that we have. Let's create a new option. So let's figure out what worked in each of these studies and what didn't work and create something newer and better. And we've been doing that since about 2017 now. And that gets you a reputation. People are like, hey, you know what? I actually got a CODIS hit on a fire cartridge case. And people are like, what? Like you even got DNA from that. Not to mention a CODIS hit. Like, that's exciting. So a lot of it for the law enforcement perspective is just word of mouth, but we also share a lot of our experiences with people too. So going out to conferences and trainings and talking and then people learn about us in that way.
- [15:54]
Kevin Greenlee
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Anya Cain
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yeah. So we are strictly DNA and serology, but we like to play nice with our ballistics partners. So we want to make sure we do things to preserve evidence for them. As far as latent prints on fire cartridge cases, I have yet to see a case where it's been really successful. So I usually tell people, do not mess with fingerprinting at all on those. And then it has to go to DNA first. But we will turn it around quickly so we will give you that casing back that same day if necessary, so that you can get it to a ballistic examiner and get it into nibin. We also did make sure when we were doing our validation testing that we weren't going to do anything that was going to interfere with the surface of the casing because we don't want to destroy striations or anything like that that could hinder downstream testing or defense testing in the future. So we made sure that all the chemicals we were using wouldn't affect that and partnered up with them as well. So a lot of it is, even though we're just DNA, we have to partner up with other forensic disciplines to make sure that all of our evidence is working well together so that we're maximizing all the potential investigative power we can get from a single piece of
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Anya Cain
evidence that makes sense. So if we look at a piece of evidence that you all receive, I was wondering if you could almost walk me through the whole process of it arriving at DNA Labs International, what gets done and sort of, you know, I'm sure it kind of differs based on what you have and what the case is, but just general, broad strokes of what we're looking at.
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yes, there's really two main pathways. So we got like high volume submissions where it'll be like, I'm sending you 1,000 sexual assault kits and those will be processed pretty routinely through them. Or we'll get cases where it's really either a current case or a cold case. It's very complicated and they'll say, I have 100 pieces of evidence. Like, what do I test first? How do I prioritize this? Because generally speaking, people don't have money. We're very lacking of resources in criminal justice. So as much as I would love to say we can test every piece of evidence in every case, we can't. So we'll look at it and say, okay, what has the potential to have the most probative value? What are we actually looking for here? So if you send me a T shirt, are you looking for who owned that shirt? Was it someone who stripped their shirt off when they were running away from the scene of the crime, and we're trying to figure out who was wearing it, or was this from some sort of altercation and someone touched the outside of their shirt? Like, I need to know that information so that I know what we're trying to look for and what we're actually testing for. And then we'll come up with a testing plan and say we'll test either these 3 items or 5 items or 10 items first. If nothing develops from that, we'll move on to the next 10. And here's our plan for those items. And then for the actual testing part, that's the same regardless. And once you actually have your sample collected, it's going to go through extraction, where we're going to use heat and chemicals to separate the DNA from anything else that's present there. Then quantification will measure how much DNA we got. If we got no DNA, we can just stop at that point. That's pretty simple and straightforward. But if we got a lot of DNA, we have to make it so it's the optimal input for the next step. Essentially, we can't put in too much and we can't put in too little. And that's where we're essentially going to do Xerox copies of all the DNA that's present and make millions of copies. And then the last step is actually developing that DNA profile. So once we have our DNA profile from our evidence, we'll say, is it suitable for comparison? How many people are here? Is it one person, two people, three people, four or five? If it is suitable and we determine how many are there or how many people we least think are there, then we can now compare it to any known individuals. So if we have suspects or victims or elimination samples for that case, we can compare it directly to them, or we can upload it to a database for searching.
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Anya Cain
One thing that did come to my mind, you're talking about these, like, batches of sexual assault kits. And we've all seen the headlines about how there can be just an extensive backlog and how even that went into the founding story of DNA Labs International. You know, right now in 2025, it sounds like the law enforcement agencies, at least working with you guys, are working on that by sending you these batches. But do you think this is still an ongoing, pretty severe issue when it comes to a lot of law enforcement agencies in terms of or laboratories in terms of having this backlog of sex assault kits?
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Dr. Rachel Afflein
I think it's 100% still an issue. A lot of times we'll clear a backlog, and by the time we're done, they already have a new one. So part of the problem is we change laws to make things so that you to try to help the problem. So by saying you have to test a sexual assault kit within 60 days or 90 days or some of the state laws that pass through. However, no additional funding was really given. So we have saki granting funding, which is the sexual assault kit initiative. So laboratories can apply for that funding, but not everyone gets it. So you don't really fix the issue if you don't give additional resources. So the root cause hasn't still been addressed. In addition to that, some of these are still serial offenders that are still out there, but they were passed the statute of limitations. So now we've identified the individual, but we can't do anything about it. So we need to change law to either extend or get rid of the statute of limitations on some of these types of cases. In addition to that, some people are like, yeah, we've tested all of our kits, but maybe they only tested one sample per kit or two samples per kit. Or maybe they did it 15 years ago when the technology wasn't as good. If you were to go back to it now, now all those ones that were insufficient DNA or inconclusive now probably are suitable for comparison. So there's a lot of different, like, layers to the onion of what the issues are for sexual assault kit backlogs. But I still think we've made progress, but we're a long ways away from fixing it.
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Anya Cain
That makes a lot of sense. And yeah, I think that that's such an important insight about the money. It makes sense, but I think people think sometimes, oh, okay, now there's a new rule for police to handle these or laboratories to handle these differently. And, you know, it's one thing to say that, but it's another thing to actually be able to fund that. So I guess if People are interested in this and they're, they're petitioning lawmakers around it. Attaching funding to it is, is super important as well.
- [24:00]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Well, I do think there is an element of, especially some of the older kits where maybe the victim just wasn't believed. People all respond very differently to trauma. So sometimes people might act weird in their interview or say the wrong thing or their story might change slightly. It doesn't mean it didn't happen. They're just, you know, post traumatic event just happened. So I do think there was some elements of kits not being tested for that reason. But the vast majority of them, they weren't tested because people didn't want to do it or didn't feel like doing it. It's because they didn't have the time or the resources to do it. And typically the more severe the crime is, that gets prioritized. So homicides are typically going to get prioritized over sexual assaults. But if you look at like any foundational criminal justice leagues, people escalate. So they typically start out with property crimes, sometimes move on to sexual assault, work their way up to batteries and then homicides and things like that. And it's not the trajectory for every criminal, but it is for a lot of criminals. So if we tackle some of these things that get ignored essentially for sexual assaults and property crimes, you might have less of the other downstream issues. But unfortunately it goes back to that root cause again. If we don't fix the real core of the issue, we're just going to keep having the same cyclical, you know, pattern.
- [25:13]
Anya Cain
Yeah, absolutely. And what you mentioned about a lot of these people, you know, they, some might be one off offenders, but many might be serial rapists or, you know, having a series of crimes. And so if you get one, then you have the potential to also stop future crimes. So in terms of your work with DNA Labs International, what you know, we talked about how the evidence processes through. What can a day in the life look like for you, you know, working there?
- [25:41]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
So for me, I'm kind of anomaly in the lab. I kind of work in everyone's department a little bit. So I don't have like a traditional analyst type job. I'm in charge of all of our new technology. So I help pick new technology. I bring it to our president and say, hey, I think this could help. Is this something that we can bring online? If it is, we decide a timeline, which technology we want to go with, which platform. If there's multiple options, I still actively do casework as well. So we Think it's really important for all of the people on our management team to still do casework because how are you going to tell people how to do your job if you, you don't even do it yourself? So I still do casework and review and write cases with that means I also still go to court. I'm on hold for court right now this week, just waiting to get the call that I have to fly out. So I do testify quite a bit still as well. And then I also travel to go train other scientists in law enforcement on all things new technology, testimony, investigative stuff and all that.
- [26:43]
Anya Cain
When it comes to testifying in court, what is your sort of philosophy and approach to doing that? In a way that breaks down this like, I am not a science person. I am a history major who went into journalism. So I mean, sometimes I feel like I'm getting the igg aspect of things and I'm like, okay, it's make, it's clicking for me. But you know, at sometimes I feel like I'm totally lost. So in terms of that, how do you convey what's going on with the science to a jury without dumbing it down and making them feel talked down to, but also without, you know, hitting them with a bunch of technical terms that they're confused by?
- [27:17]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
It totally depends. It varies a lot based on the case and also the jurisdiction. There's places where I still swear on the Bible when I go in, if I testify British court, I have to swear to the king. So there's a lot of variation between jurisdiction to jurisdiction and also the type of case and what the prosecutor's plan is. Because sometimes the prosecutor just wants you to get in and get out, throw a big sad at him and leave out of like fairness to the evidence. I do try to explain at least our whole process and what the report means sometimes too, we have cases. One of my best friends who's the technical leader at our laboratory literally had to wheel a suitcase into court the other day because she had so many case files for one case. So you kind of have to pick and choose your battles. Then are you going to go through every piece of evidence or are they only go through the pieces of evidence that actually requires resulted in something meaningful for the case. And a lot of that is out of our hands. That's really the up to the prosecutor and the defense attorney what they want us to tackle. But I do try to go over like the four basics of extraction, quant amplification, developing your DNA profile, how I make a comparison, how I Determine how many people might be in that DNA profile and give them at least those basics. Because we do so much new technology, we also have to do a lot of admissibility hearings which happen prior to trial. So there's no jury, it's just the attorneys, the defendant, you and the judge. And that's usually much more in depth testimony where they want to learn everything about that technology and why it should be admissible for court.
- [28:45]
Anya Cain
And then you mentioned training law enforcement. You know, when, when it comes to those trainings and some of those conversations. And I know we have law enforcement officers who listen to this show. You know, what are some things that you try to hammer home for, for law enforcement as they're dealing with possible DNA in cases or things that you feel like they may not realize that you're able to convey to them so that they can kind of incorporate that into their toolkit going forward.
- [29:09]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
I think a lot of it right now is gun stuff and fire cartridge cases. So for example, if you have a fire cartridge casing and you pick it up with a gloved hand, you're removing DNA off of that casing. So we're like, please don't. Even if it's a fresh pair of gloves, do not touch it. Use the stick end of a swap to pick it up, put it into a small, like, coin envelope. I can spend a whole hour just training on how to collect casings and what to do with casings. And a lot of that is changing protocols because they have standard operating procedures just like we do. So I can say, don't do this. It's bad for the evidence, but it's not quite that simple. A lot of times they might have to go back, go through their chain of command, get those protocols changed. Also a lot of different things. So a lot of officers now, for the most part, wear body cams, which is a good thing that, you know, more information and accountability, which is great. But through body cam footage, we've learned the hard way. Watching people sometimes, like, for example, when they find a firearm and they'll set it right down on the person's car seat or their bed and it's like, what are you doing now? If I get that person's DNA on it, it's essentially meaningless because you just put it in a place where they sleep every night. So kind of training on that to think through, like, what you're doing. So the first and foremost goal of any first responder should be preservation of life. So understandably, we want to render guns safe. We want to be Cautious of all that if someone's hurt, we want to attend to them first, but then also beyond that point, thinking about evidence. So if you collect a piece of evidence, put it down on a clean piece of butcher paper or collection paper or something like that, don't put it on a car seat, don't put it on someone's bed. So kind of thinking through some of those things so, you know, showing them examples of pictures, what not to do. I cringe every time I see the picture of all the drugs and like the assault rifles piled up against the drugs. I'm like, everything's touching each other. Don't let your evidence touch each other. So things like that. It seems like it should be common sense, but it isn't always.
- [31:04]
Anya Cain
Yeah, I get why in the, in the heat of the moment you might not be thinking like a DNA analyst, but it certainly would be better for cases, you know, in those instances, after you've taken care of all the basic like life saving measures and safety measures to immediately go into that mode.
- [31:22]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yeah, exactly.
- [31:23]
Anya Cain
One thing that I was thinking of was we often hear about the success stories with DNA cases and certainly that's how I found out about you guys and reached out a big success. And that's, that's all wonderful. Are there cases though, in your experience where, you know, you guys get all the evidence and it's just like, we can't do anything with this or like there's just not enough offender DNA or possible offender DNA or there's just not that outcome that everyone wants?
- [31:49]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yeah, I think I've been very fortunate the last few years that I've had. I have probably about a dozen really long standing cases and I think in the past few years about half of them have gotten solved. So I'm very lucky in that regard, which has been nice, but I do still probably have about half a dozen that I've been working on for over 10 years at this point, which is frustrating. But I'm always like, anytime you do get the long term solves, it's like that gives me hope that I'm like, all these should eventually be solved. One day we're going to resolve all these. And that might not be true, but that's what I tell myself at least. But some of them, like we have DNA and it's just not hitting to anyone and maybe there's not enough DNA back, like left to go back for genealogy. So we just kind of have to be in this waiting game. But every now and then someone will come forward, someone calls crime stoppers or something. And there's a new lead and now we have someone to compare to. And it ends up working out, I think too, with like the onset of genealogy. A lot of other cases that have gotten solved through that now ended up solving other cases. So like we had two out in Virginia where they did genealogy on one case and our two evidence profiles had hit each other in codis. So we knew it was the same offender from that, but we didn't know who the defender was. Well, we didn't have anything that they could use to do genealogy, but the other case did have genealogies, DNA left over, so they did genealogy identified. And because that now our person's identified too, so you end up having kind of weird workarounds or even with sexual assault kit backlogs. It's the same thing. Evidence to evidence will hit. And maybe they knew who the offender was in the one case and it was past the statute of limitations. They were never arrested. But because that now we know who the offender is in our case. So it. There is long standing ones. It is frustrating when they don't work out. Especially sometimes when I think like, oh, this is a great piece of evidence and you don't get a result. It just happens. But I do think eventually science is always evolving. Hopefully they'll all be solved one day.
- [33:43]
Anya Cain
I really hope so too. With the Virginia case, was that out of Stafford, Prince William County?
- [33:48]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yes.
- [33:49]
Anya Cain
That Jacqueline Lard, the DEA agent's wife?
- [33:52]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yes. Jacqueline Laird. And yeah, I can't remember which one was ours versus which one was the state police labs on that one, but yeah, our two cases hit together.
- [34:02]
Anya Cain
Yeah. Wow, that's huge. I remember when that was sort of solved. So that's pretty cool that you guys were helping with the. I know. I think it was Amy Baker and Jacqueline Laird were the two victims.
- [34:12]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yes, I think Amy was ours. And we ended up doing MVAC on that case, which I don't know if you've ever gone over MVAC ones, but it's basically just like a fancy vacuum for DNA.
- [34:21]
Anya Cain
It was originally invented to try to help clean meat in factory meat processing. And now it's had a wonderful impact on some of these cold cases.
- [34:31]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
But.
- [34:32]
Anya Cain
Okay, that's really cool. And then, you know, we talked about the Virginia case. Are there other cases of yours recently that you know, were sort of like, very gratifying for you and you can go into as much detail or as little detail as you want, you know, that. That got that solved recently?
- [34:46]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yeah, we've had kind of like similar To Virginia. We've had a couple cases recently too where there were serial killer cases, where they were id'd in one case and then that through kind of the chain of events ended up helping to solve others. So one of my really old ones from 2010, it was recently solved by that as well through a serial killer case where they said, hey, like we found out about this guy, similar mo, can we check it in our case? And ended up matching. So we already had DNA profiles. It just hadn't hit to anything. Which is what happens. Like people forget that CODIS didn't really come around until, you know, even though we were doing DNA testing in the 80s, CODIS didn't really start taking a hold until like late 90s. So if you have people that were incarcerated or deceased prior to that, they're never going to be in codis. So we can get DNA all day long on some of this evidence and if we don't have a suspect to compare to, then it kind of hits stall at that point. Samuel Little was another one recently. So we had a couple cases that were long standing cold cases. But after he came forward and for anyone who's listening who doesn't know, he's like one of the most prolific serial killers of all time. And you know, when he was finally arrested, he talked and basically, you know, admitted to the vast majority of dozens and dozens of cases for at least the ones he could remember details to. He didn't necessarily know people's names or didn't know remember exactly what they looked like, but he tried to draw pictures of some of them. So through that we've kind of been able to tie some of that to some of our older cold cases as well.
- [36:17]
Anya Cain
Yeah, I mean that's, that's definitely the big one. I think he might be one of the most prolific at least in the United States.
- [36:23]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
My name is Mackenzie and I started a GoFundMe for the adoptive mother of a non verbal autistic child. The mother had lost her job because she wasn't able to find adequate care for this autistic child. So she really needed some help with living expenses, paying some back bills. So I launched a GoFundMe to help support them during the this crisis. And we raised about $10,000 within just a couple of months. I think that the surprising thing was by telling a clear story and just like really being very clear about what we needed, we had some really generous donations from people who were really moved by the situation that this family was struggling with.
- [37:10]
Anya Cain
GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform, trusted by over 200 million people. Start your GoFundMe today at gofundme.com that's gofundme.com gofundme.com this podcast is supported by GoFundMe. In terms of the yogurt shop murders, can you talk a bit about how DNA Labs International sort of came to take on that case?
- [37:31]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yeah, so a lot of these cases that end up happening is again from going out and training. So we talk about different technologies that we have or things that we can do and people hear that and say, hey, maybe I can apply that to this case. Or here's like a good idea. And actually from yogurt shop too, from that case, their why searching techniques that were utilized in that case. Now we have people reaching out to say, hey, I have a long standing YSTR profile. Can we do the same thing in my case too? So a lot of it does come down to word of mouth and new investigative strategies. The investigators that were involved in that case were very forward thinking and really kind of tried to leave no stone unturned. That helped a lot. So they'd reach out to us at some point. We did a case review. Our laboratory does free case review. So anytime anyone has a cold case, if they want to sit down and go through all their evidence, our team will sit down with them and say, hey, here's what you have. Here's things you could try or maybe you don't have anything you could do right now, but come back in two years because I know this new technology is coming down the pipeline and maybe that could help you. So we did a case review on that case. We had tested a fair amount of items. A lot of things were kind of on hold, pending technology and waiting a little bit, because what ends up happening, especially with cold cases, a lot of times you only get one shot. So I'll say, okay, this is all that's left of this piece of evidence, or this is all that I could get from this extract. And I could only do one thing, which is challenging when a lot of times we really want to do three or four things. So in this particular case, because there wasn't a suspect, we knew it was pretty unlikely we were going to get something CODIS eligible because of how small amounts of DNA were and that most things were mixed DNA samples, we were at a bit of a standstill, waiting to see what might happen with other technology. For example, genealogy mixtures are very limited, what we can do for genealogy testing, but there's laboratories and really smart computer scientists all throughout the world. They're currently working on making that part of it better. So kind of waiting to see how some of that technology develops. And then once they actually developed a suspect and they knew we could directly compare then some of those items that we had pending, we're like, okay, let's take that forward now and see what we have. And if we're able to directly compare to the suspect, which we were able to.
- [39:46]
Anya Cain
Okay, wow, that's huge. I mean, like, yeah. And that what you said about there being one shot, I think sometimes, I don't know, like, do you feel like the CSI effect can be a bit of a problem in society or injuries where we almost expect abundant DNA in every case, even when there can be things like in yogurt shop, you know, like, I get why people think that where there's the element of sexual assault and multiple victims in a chaotic scene, but you also have like, there was
- [40:12]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
a fire, decades of time going by and over a dozen other laboratories already having tested the evidence. So there's very little remaining at that point.
- [40:22]
Anya Cain
I'm trying to get the public to be excited about DNA, but we need to, like what you said about like, you know, lower your expectations as far as careers, every career, that's probably a good idea, but people should really lower their expectations around DNA to the point where we can understand that some cases, it's going to be more precarious than others.
- [40:42]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yeah, absolutely. And evidence is precious and I don't want to waste it. So especially if it's already been through multiple laboratories at that point in time, and I'm looking at sometimes the equivalent of just a few cells worth of DNA, which is a very small amount of DNA, and it's in poor condition because it's been exposed to water, fire time, all these things. So I would love to be able to do like, so kind of a little bit of background on DNA. The vast majority of what we look at what goes into codas is what we would call autosomal DNA or strs. So that's where you got half for mom, half from dad. It's a series of numbers. We're just comparing numbers from evidence to different people. Pretty straightforward. And then when we have an exorbitant amount of female DNA present and we're trying to look at the male DNA, we have to look at stuff that just targets the male. So then we would do ystr testing much smaller statistic because you share the same ystr through your whole paternal line. So ideally we would get autosomal STRs or autosomal DNA from everything, but it's not always a choice. Then we have SNPs, which are single nucleotide polymorphisms, which we call SNIPS for short, because single nucleotide polymorphisms is a mouthful. And that's primarily what we're using for doing genealogy or determining someone's biogeographical ancestry or trying to figure out what they might look like, their hair color, eye color, skin color. So in a perfect world, you would take a case like a cold case and bring it to me and say, here's this item of evidence and I'd be able to do all the things. But the reality is sometimes we have so little that we don't even have the ideal amount to do one of those tests. So we're already coming in, you know, behind the gates on that a little bit because we don't have enough to even hit our optimal amount. And I could only pick one of the three things. So ideally we'd want to go into codis. But knowing based off of what the other evidence profiles looks like in this case, chances are we were not going to get a CODIS eligible profile because when samples are mixed with a lot of people, it's very difficult to get something CODIS eligible. And ystrs would be great if I have a suspect. But we already had YSTRs in this case and those YSTRs were consistent with each other, so it wasn't really super useful to be able to get that. Is it nice to show that same YSTR profile showing up in multiple places? Yes, but if I'm only have one shot. So then really that brings us to the SNPs so wanting to get genealogy. So if you don't think you're going to get into codis, you'd want to be able to get genealogy. But we also have some rules with that too, where you're supposed to go CODIS first. So things are developing where they're trying to make it to where you could pull a CODIS profile out from your SNPs and so you could get two in one. But all that technology is still developing. So a lot of times with cold cases, the best thing you can do for the evidence is just say, hey, I know things are coming down the pipeline. You need to pause because you're only going to get one shot at this. And I think if you, you know, shoot for the Hail Mary right now, you're probably going to miss.
- [43:35]
Anya Cain
That makes Sense. So a lot of. With yogurt shop with you guys was almost like, we're setting some of this aside for possibly further advances.
- [43:43]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yes. And trying to go back to see, like, how much, you know, the extraction part doesn't change as much. So seeing how much DNA we could get from different things. And in a perfect world, you know, you hit the jackpot and you get one that has more DNA, we have some more options. But everything was very limited in that case.
- [44:00]
Anya Cain
Absolutely. And yeah, no, I look back at like the, the Dennis Raider case out of Kansas, you know, in btk, where one of the reasons that got solved was because they kept delaying, doing anything with the DNA. And like, had they just wasted all of it early on with kind of rudimentary, primitive methods, they wouldn't have had it anymore when it. When it was more viable.
- [44:22]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yeah. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of Debbie Lynn Randall case was out of Marietta in Georgia. And in that particular case, I think we were like the fourth lab to get it at that point for genealogy. And there was very little of the extract left at that point because a lot of the extract had been consumed with other genealogy testing that wasn't as sensitive. And so they got a recommendation to go forward again. And at that point, the genealogist at the end was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, let's not keep trying the same thing. Like, have you talked to this other lab? Because they're doing this other thing that requires less DNA. So someone luckily intervened at that point, and the investigators were great in that case too, about being open to trying new technology. But a lot of times it takes someone to say, like, I know we all want to solve this case. And it's hard to. I get it. Like, when you have parents that are getting older and they want to know what happened to their, like, child. So a lot of times they're like, you know, mom is on hospice or, you know, dad has cancer. Like, I just want to get them an answer before they pass away. But we also just have to be very mindful of the evidence and not wasting the evidence.
- [45:26]
Anya Cain
That makes sense in terms of the actual physical evidence that you all received from the yogurt shop case. Was that like remains of clothing or, like, what was. What were you getting physical items from
- [45:37]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
the scene and then some, like, extract type tubes and things like that from previous testing that had been done.
- [45:44]
Anya Cain
Can you talk us through kind of getting this case to then it ultimately having a result and, you know, kind of being announced in all of that yeah.
- [45:53]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
So we receive the items. Evidence we did prior to receiving evidence, we did a case review and discussed which items we thought would be best to send. We tested a lot of items and everything was pretty much on hold. We've done a few rounds of testing and had everything on hold. We got an update that there was a potential suspect and then there was further evidence that helped, as you saw in the press release, kind of solidify that individual as a suspect. So at that point, then they picked a series of items that we had already extracted to move forward with to develop STR profiles and make those comparisons, which we did at that time. And then ultimately it was, you know, the fingernail clippings was the sample that ended up being consistent with the suspect.
- [46:38]
Anya Cain
Wow. So Amy Ayers, you know, fighting back in that instance. Ultimately, you know, all there was all this really good evidence around ballistics, around the Y profile and. And, you know, him being in the proximity around the same time, you know, being in Texas. But then that piece was where you guys were able to come in and say, yeah, it's Brashers.
- [46:58]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yeah. So it's. I mean, ysrs, like I said, are great. Especially, like, in this case, you have a bunch of other circumstantial evidence. But with ystrs, again, it only ties to a paternal line. So we can't exclude brothers or grandfathers or fathers or things like that, which is why, in general, the most you ever usually get is 1 in 1.2 thousand for a statistic for YSTRS, which in this case, the individual's deceased, he's not going to have a trial, but out of, you know, making sure that there's, you know, beyond reasonable doubt, just for the public, because there's a lot of questions around this case, it's nice to be able to have other evidence to support that as well. So being able to get the autosomal STRs, which are generally much higher statistics, because now it's at, you know, DNA unique to that individual, with exception of an identical twin. So that helps give more of a support towards the evidence in the case.
- [47:50]
Anya Cain
And for that key piece of evidence, as far as DNA goes, was that just in like. Was that just like in one of those test tubes that you mentioned, is something that had been tested in the past and is just kind of sitting there waiting almost.
- [48:03]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
No. So we had actually retested the fingernail clippings in this case. So they had been tested previously by another laboratory. We retested them. And what ended up happening, which I kind of talked About a little bit earlier is you can have like a male to female ratio. So if there's too much female DNA, we can't see the male. So you would only get YSTRs. And since they already had a bunch of YSTRS in this case, it wasn't as helpful. We went back and retested it. We were able to get a better male to female ratio. So we were able to do autosomal STR testing. Then.
- [48:33]
Anya Cain
I mean, what did it feel like, I guess, to have such a high profile case, you know? And Detective Dan Jackson, thanks. Thanked DNA Labs International, you know, by name during the press conference and sort of having this, you know, case get resolved that you guys had been working on.
- [48:47]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
I'm mostly just really happy for Dan and really happy for the families to finally have some answers. And this is something where, like, it's almost like the families are part of the investigative team. They were so actively involved in keeping on top of this case and making sure law enforcement stayed on top of this case. Mindy Montford out of the Texas Attorney General's office was amazing with the families and pushing this case forward as well. Anne Ray Schubert. Like, there are so many people, Steve Kramer, that were involved in doing cold case reviews on this case and keeping it present in people's minds and really just pushing it forward and making sure they had the best technology possible. It's interesting to me, not as much this case, but some of the other cold cases we work on. I see people online and I see the families and they're like, you know, law enforcement isn't doing anything and blah, blah, blah. And I've like, sit there and I'm like, oh. And I was like, I wish I could. You know, you can't say anything. We have confidentiality and we have to worry about preservation of the integrity of the case. So you can't say anything to them. But in this case, I think they did a pretty good job of letting the families know people were still working on it. I've seen a bunch of stuff online where people are like, oh, it's convenient that, you know, now they solve it right when the show came out, I'm like, it's. Swear to God, it had nothing to do with this. Like, these people like Dan and Mindy and all these people were working actively on this case for years and years and years. So it's almost one of those things where, I don't know, like, it sounds like I'm trying to think of an analogy that doesn't sound like, weird, but it's like I just am happy for them.
- [50:25]
Anya Cain
Yeah, I, I mean, I, I see some of that too. And there's got to be a balance between pressuring law enforcement and then just sort of making assumptions about what they are doing or not doing. And it's really hard to balance that because you don't want to. You sometimes that pressure can be really helpful in getting a case solved. But at the same time, you know, I think it's great that they had those good lines of communication at some point with these folks. But the idea that Texas authorities and like the victims families and you guys, professionals like yourself would be like, yes, let's wait for the HBO documentary to come out for what? Like, how does that benefit you guys? Like, it doesn't.
- [51:03]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
It doesn't at all. But there's a lot of Internet trolls out there, so there's one of those. You can only share so much info too. There is another big case that wasn't one of ours recently where they did share information with the family and like within an hour the family told the press and it's challenging. So like, I get, I feel for both sides of it because when I see how heartbroken the families are and that they just want any sort of update, but on the flip side, then it compromises the investigation sometimes because then that suspect's out there and now they're getting that information too. So it's a tough balance.
- [51:38]
Anya Cain
That can be a safety issue if there's a living suspect and you know, who knows how that person is going to react before they're arrested.
- [51:45]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Absolutely. Yes.
- [51:46]
Anya Cain
So that's awesome. So I guess one thing I wanted to ask you, you work with, you know, the new and emerging technology and just to sort of end on this note, where, where are you most excited in, in terms of broad. You don't have to go into like all the, the details of what the technology like is exactly. But like, where do you think there can be further expansion? Where's the new frontier when it comes to this technology as far as helping even more of these cases get solved?
- [52:11]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yeah, it's interesting because I usually have like one big thing every year where I'm like, this is the new thing I'm releasing. Genealogy has been like a three year thing where it's like, now I'm releasing this new part of genealogy now DLI has this new offering, but still related to genealogy. So like one of the cooler ones now, which is something I get asked for surprisingly a lot, is differentiation between identical twins. So that is a big one. There's surprisingly a lot of evil twin cases, so I have like an Excel sheet of all evil twin cases that we can go back to for that. What is it?
- [52:46]
Anya Cain
So pop.
- [52:46]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Really?
- [52:47]
Anya Cain
That's insane.
- [52:48]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yeah, I know. But I get a lot. I get at least like half a dozen a year. So it happens quite a bit. So I'm excited for that. And then beyond that, single cell technology is probably going to be one of our, you know, next big things moving forward where we're doing DNA profiles from just an individual cell. So I'm excited for that. So once genealogy things calm down and when I finalize all those existing projects, that will probably be the next thing that I tackle.
- [53:14]
Anya Cain
So. Wow. So like one. One cell and that would be enough to just get the DNA from that?
- [53:19]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yes, that's the goal.
- [53:21]
Anya Cain
That's incredible. I mean, that would definitely be a game changer for cases where there's scant DNA evidence.
- [53:29]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yes. And also the ability, like for in sexual assault cases where it's being inundated by female DNA, if I can just extract just from that single sperm cell or just a couple sperm cells and get a single source profile from the offender, that would be huge.
- [53:43]
Anya Cain
Wow, that's really. That's very exciting, I guess. Rachel, was there anything I didn't ask you about in this interview that you wanted to mention as far as, you know, you think it's important for the audience to understand or just anything else you wanted to say?
- [53:55]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
I would just say everyone opt in your DNA. If you've done Ancestry.com or 23andMe, please download your profiles, upload them to GEDmatch and Family Tree DNA websites, and opt in. For law enforcement, every little bit counts. And it's not even just about solving crime. It's the over 100,000 unidentified human remains in the United States where there's a family somewhere looking for that person. So if you love true crime and you want to help out, that is one way everyone can help.
- [54:24]
Anya Cain
I actually just did that recently, put it on GEDMatch. Kevin was already in there because he's more on the ball than I am, but I just did that and I would really encourage everyone and you can do for your family. It's a great gift and it's cool to see, like, where your family background is, but it's so helpful. And one thing IGG expert told me recently was that, like it, as you said, it's about the do's, it's about the unsolved cases and it's about the future because Once your DNA is helping, who knows what could happen in the future that you could be a part in actually helping solve something even down the road.
- [54:56]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Yes, it's definitely. It is like you said, fun for yourself, too. I did mine and I thought I was like over half German and found out I was like totally, like Swedish and Danish, which I knew I had a little bit of, but I was kind of like, oh, that. And everyone's like, really? You're surprised by that? If you looked at yourself, I'm like, I don't know. But so it is interesting for yourself too, but it's also really cool to be able to. And I mentioned gem match and family tree. But there is also a third database, DNA justice as well, which is exclusively for law enforcement. So you don't get any cool insights from that. But they will tell you if you want and they've opted in for it. If you do hit to a case, they'll tell you. They won't tell you what the case is, but they'll say like, hey, your DNA helped someone today. So that's kind of cool too.
- [55:36]
Anya Cain
So cool. Amazing. Well, yeah, this is a very exciting time and we just want to say we thank you so much, Rachel, for coming on the show and sharing your insights with us. We really appreciate it.
- [55:46]
Dr. Rachel Afflein
Thanks for having me.
- [55:47]
Anya Cain
Thank you so much to Dr. Afline for taking the time to speak with us. We really appreciated getting her expertise.
- [55:53]
Kevin Greenlee
Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us@murdersheetmail.com. if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.
- [56:14]
Anya Cain
If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com. if you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www. Buymeacoffee.com murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support.
- [56:37]
Kevin Greenlee
Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the web@kevintg.com if you're looking to talk with
- [56:49]
Anya Cain
other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening.