02x03 - The Skull

[bunniefuu]

Narrator: Secrets in the wild.

Brutal murders.

Beautiful
yet treacherous places.

These are the stories
of the investigators

who solve crimes
in the wilderness.

Woman: And then
the skull was found.

Man: Oh, my God.
We could maybe start

to put a face with a victim now.

Put it out to the media
with no success.

Lucas did start
recanting his murders.

But some of those
confessions were bogus.

And then,
not too long thereafter,

three women went missing
in Yosemite.

He would follow people.
He would stalk them.

There´s a family somewhere
that their loved one

is still missing
all these years,

and they have no idea
what happened to her.

We´re going to
figure this thing out.

We´re reverse-engineering
somebody´s identity

from their DNA.

Man: They got a name for her.

The other half of the case
is now wide open.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Woman: When I was removed
from the case, I thought,

Okay, I mean, whether I do it

or somebody else does it,
there´s a lot of investigation

that needs to be done.

But in this particular case,
the Summit Meadow case,

I always assumed that there was
someone who knew the victim.

Now, there are probably family
members wondering where she is.

So it was...
It was hard.

My husband and I talk about it
all the time.

"Do you think they´ll ever
identify the victim?"

And then the skull was found.

♪♪

♪♪

Man: A visitor found it.

And Lee Shackleton contacted me
because I was the area ranger.

See if we can find anything
else, and we went on together

to try to locate
more remains or evidence.

You know, as I understand it,
the arm was found

on the Meadow side and the skull
was discovered on

the opposite side of the road

where the ski trail
begins to Dewey Point.

Woman: Typically in the Sierras
when we see bodies,

they get distributed
over fairly wide areas.

Coyotes will take portions
of the body back to their dens.

Man: Kim and I talked --
we both thought probably

it was associated
with the Summit Meadow case.

It makes sense -- it´s a skull,

that would be
the only other human remains

we found besides
what we found in the meadow.

They did a big search
of the area.

They didn´t find anything more,
but they had the skull.

There´s a family somewhere
that their loved one

is still missing
all these years,

and they have no idea
what happened to her.

♪♪

from the National Park Service.

The skull had been naturally
detached from the spinal column.

Generally speaking,
when people cut through things,

they´re not surgeons.

Woman: If somebody is
dismembered or decapitated,

typically we´re going to see
what we call sharp force trauma,

cut marks on the bones.

You can take apart limbs
relatively easily

if you know what you´re doing.

But taking apart a spine

is really, really tough to do.

Unfortunately, in this case,
we don´t have spine.

We don´t have
a lot of those areas.

So if this person
was dismembered,

there is no evidence
on the bones we do have.

Man: The skull is minus
the lower mandible, the jaw,

but all the rest of the skull´s
in fairly good shape.

It allows you
to make measurements

of the length of the skull,

the different relationships
of the face

in terms of other structures
on the skull.

These numbers are used
to make an estimate

as to the sex of the individual

and possible ancestry.

The skull had characteristics

that suggested Hispanic.

However, this is a call
that is made

where there´s a lot of error.

What is Hispanic?

From a genetic point of view
is a complicated issue.

So when you say Hispanic,

you say that´s a possibility.

The sex was female,

and it was sufficient material
to work with

to do a facial reconstruction.

Oh, my God, we can maybe start
to put a face with a victim now.

♪♪

In late-´80s
when this was found,

the way they were reconstructing
the face

was with a clay modeling

based on known tissue depths.

They would place markers

on different points on
the skull.

And they built a clay model
over the skull.

Based on that assumption
of a dark-haired Hispanic,

this one had a very dark wig
on it,

and they put it out the media.

They got some tips.

They ran through some possibles

with no success
in finding someone.

♪♪

It was the early ´90s
when I first had exposure

to the Summit Meadow case,

and I was assigned to Yosemite,
and my supervisor

handed me a stack of files
of cold cases,

old cases,

basically told me
while I was learning the ropes

here at Yosemite, my job was
also to start looking into these

and see if any of them
were viable cases.

There´s a few Jane Doe cases
over my career,

and this one just seemed --
I won´t say personal,

but I kind of latched on
to me a little more.

We were always
pretty comfortable

about Henry Lee Lucas

being involved with the m*rder
at Summit Meadow.

The way Henry Lee Lucas
described picking her up,

hitchhiking, then k*lling her,
dumping her.

And then some big story
came out about

basically laying out
all this evidence

where he couldn´t have committed
all these murders.

Woman: Bob Prince,
the Texas Ranger

coordinating the investigation
in Georgetown,

told me and anyone who asked

that everyone on the task force
expected Henry

to not want to die.

And one day he would claim that
the confessions weren´t real.

I´ve k*lled ´em in every way
there is except poison.

There´s been strangulation,

there´s been knifings,

there have been shootings,
there´ve been hit and runs.

Everyone involved,
from Phil Ryan to me,

knew that eventually
he would turn on us.

Man: Lucas did start
recanting his murders.

He claimed
to have found religion,

and he was this righteous
Christian person now.

And I think that was part of
why he started recanting.

But, I mean, he was smart enough
to realize

that the longer he kept talking

and saying things that law
enforcement considered useful,

the longer it would be
before they´d get around

to executing him.

And he decided that he hadn´t
k*lled anybody.

And he claimed that members
of the task force

had given him the case files,

that he could convince
the people

who came to interview him

that he was guilty
of their crimes

because he´d been coached
by the task force.

He was an innocent man
who had been framed.

Man: Henry Lee Lucas embellished
a lot.

He claimed a lot of murders
he didn´t do.

He wanted that attention.

"Look at me. I´m a tough guy.
I k*lled all these people."

He claimed I think 600 victims.

Why wouldn´t he recant them?

Keeps him in the press.
Keep the focus on him.

He wanted that attention.

And I suppose at some point
he wanted to save his own life.

There´s proof
that I haven´t done the crimes.

I mean, written proof.

There´s people that know
I haven´t committed the crimes.

Man: You know, he´d get
very emotional sometimes

when he was talking about cases,
he´d get very emotional

when he´d tell you that he --

that he´d been lying
all this time.

Now, which time was
he telling the truth?

♪♪

Your guess is
as good as mine.

♪♪

Woman: Once Henry recanted,

it called all of
the confirmations,

and all of the cases,
into question.

Some cases were reopened,
but not many.

Man: Finally, in, I guess
it was 1998,

Governor George W. Bush

commuted his death sentence

to a life sentence.

Bush: His confession
now recanted,

was the only evidence
which linked him to the crime.

Today´s knowledge about his
pattern of lies

raises doubt.

Man: He died in prison
a short time later.

I know he didn´t have any guilt,

but he had a whole lot of lies
he took to the grave.

Man: But only he really, really
knew whether he had k*lled

any more than just his mother,

just Kate Rich,
just Becky Powell.

All three of which
were horrible murderers.

Woman: To dismiss him as
a suspect

is a mistake, in my opinion.

I absolutely believe that Henry
was guilty of committing murders

across the country.

Man: I don´t think that an old
case could absolutely be

ruled out just because
Henry Lee Lucas was the suspect.

♪♪

With Henry Lee Lucas,
anything is possible.

Man: Henry Lee Lucas recanting
and then some of his confessions

being disproved threw us
for a loop for sure.

So, yeah, we did some digging.

We did find a window
during this time

when he says
he picked up this woman,

that he could have been
in California easily.

The specifics of the crime
scene, specific locations,

descriptions,

the evidence of the beer cans,

which was always a big one
for me,

there is too much evidence
to discount.

I wanted to solve this,
I wanted to resolve this.

Then the hard part really came
because we sat for

several years --
decades --

because we had
no further leads at that time.

At a certain point, you hit
a point of diminishing returns.

You know, you´re putting
money and time into it

when there´s other crimes,
other victims

that need
to be taken care of.

I had to call it
and put the case back

in inactive status.

One of the worst things I hated
as an investigator

is when a case I was working
had to be suspended.

You can ask folks who worked
for me and worked with me.

I hated that, that felt like
a failure point.

You know that --
that was rough.

♪♪

Woman:
Then a number of years later,

we have several murders
that occur in Yosemite.

♪♪

My name is Jeffrey Rinek,
and I participated

in the location arrest
of the Yosemite k*ller.

The Yosemite m*rder case
began in February of 1999,

actually the day
after Valentine´s Day.

And it was the disappearance
of three women.

Man: Juli Sund,
her mother Carole,

and exchange student
Silvina Pelosso

were last seen alive
in mid-February near Yosemite.

Man: Carole was the mom.
She was in her forties.

Juli and Silvina were teenagers.

These three women were staying
in their -- in a hotel

at Cedar Lodge outside Yosemite.

Woman: When three women went
missing in Yosemite,

I and another agent
went out there to assist the FBI

and local law enforcement
to analyze the crime scene.

The case grew into a case
of national priority.

Man: The haunting mystery
of three women

who disappeared last month

outside Yosemite National Park
took another somber turn.

Woman: Someone abducted them,
m*rder*d the mom

and one of the young girls,

and then took the daughter
to another location

where he sexually assaulted
and m*rder*d her.

♪♪

Man: Five months later,
Joie Armstrong,

who worked in the park,
went missing.

Eventually they located
Joie´s remains

in a nearby creek,

and she had been beheaded.

♪♪

Shortly after discovery
of her body,

Cary Stayner was identified
as a suspect.

He was a handyman
from Cedar Lodge.

Man: Stayner worked at
the Cedar Lodge

for the past two years.

It´s where the three sightseers
had stayed

and the place Armstrong visited.

Man: Cary Stayner is a very
interesting case

because he comes from a very,
very dysfunctional family

to begin with.

Cary Stayner was born in 1961
in Merced, California.

Man: The Stayner family
was already well known publicly

because their son,
Steven Stayner,

was abducted in 1972.

Steven Stayner disappeared
on his way home from school

in Merced, California;
he was seven years old.

Man: And that had given the
family a national attention.

Steven was abducted by a man,
a stranger, a child molester,

probably a pedophile,
who took him into the mountains

and kept him there
for seven years.

Steven and Cary
were brothers.

Cary was always sort of
in the background

because the focus
was to find Steven.

And for years this went on.

So Cary was sort of,
almost like, forgotten about.

Man: There were times where
his father was sitting

in the family room

in a way that indicated

he was preparing to take
his own life.

And when Cary would go up
to talk to him...

his father would tell him that,
you know, "My son´s gone.

Who are you?"

Man: Then when Steven reappeared
after seven years...

If you look at some of
the photographs of him,

pictures, you can see Cary
was in the background.

"I´m here." But but it was
always about Steven.

♪♪

I was the supervisor
of the investigations unit

when the Cary Stayner
murders occurred.

You know, that was 1999.

We were loosely involved

after the first three,
supporting the FBI.

We became very involved
when Joie was m*rder*d.

Within a few days
after her m*rder,

Cary was taken into custody.

Woman: They say they have found
considerable evidence

since discovering Armstrong´s
decapitated body last Thursday

in the park near her home.

Man: My boss was there and he
had asked me

to interview Cary Stayner.

He was in an interview room.

When I went in,
Cary was sitting in a chair

and he was facing
the far corner of the room.

And he said, "I´ve done really
bad things,

really things where
I´m ashamed of myself.

I´ve just done horrible things."

I asked him,

Are you talking about the three
women from the Cedar Lodge?

And he - he kind of did
this long winded nod.

And he indicated there was more.

He made some statements
that indicated to me

that he might be the person
that is responsible

for what happened
to Joie Armstrong.

♪♪

And I asked him, you know,
why did you take her head?

Because what he described
is he held her head for a while.

I believe that Cary Stayner

was searching for intimacy.

I´ve learned through the years

that two of the most
intimate times in life

is when you´re having relations

and if you´re holding someone
when they die.

I believe that he had
absolute control of her,

that it was a control thing.

And I think with
the absolute control

and the fact
that they were alone,

this, I believe, is part
of his quest to find intimacy.

He held all of his victims
when they died.

♪♪

No one wakes up in the morning
and says,

"Today I´m going to be
a k*ller."

You go through this
long process,

especially those
who´ve been traumatized.

It´s about taking
the power back.

Man: He said,
"I´ve never told anybody this,

but I was molested by my uncle."

He was traumatized.

So we highly suspect that trauma
then would have driven him

to fantasize --
create sexual fantasies

that would be very, very dark,
probably harming people.

I believe his fantasy started
after he was sexually assaulted.

♪♪

♪♪

He said, "Sometimes I can sit
and think about world peace,

and sometimes I think I can k*ll
everybody in the world."

♪♪

I had the opportunity to look
at some of his paintings,

well, almost all of his
paintings,

of 15 of them he had done.

The paintings were all
about women´s heads

on the ground in the woods.

And then he would have monsters
hiding behind the trees.

♪♪

And of course,
he was the monster.

♪♪

Police all over the state
are investigating

whether Cary Stayner,

who has confessed
to four murders

at Yosemite National Park,

might be connected
to other murders.

Man: When it came to Stayner,

there is many investigators
involved in that case

who believe that these
four victims were not his first.

Woman: I know from experience
most serial sexual K*llers

will start to k*ll initially

in their late teens
or early twenties.

Man: Cary Stayner was 37
when he committed

his murders at the lodge,

and I suspect that he had
some practice homicides

where he learned
from his mistakes.

He could´ve pick up sex workers.

He could have
picked up hitchhikers.

He was always a loner
and liked being on his own.

Man: He would go to
Yosemite National Park.

He would know the area,

and I suspect that,
in the woods,

that he would follow people.

He would stalk them.

♪♪

♪♪

Cary Stayner could be
a suspect in

the Helle Olsbro
case as well.

Man: Helle Olsbro was a woman
that was m*rder*d in 1985

in Yosemite Valley

as she was hiking down a trail.

Man:
She was 18 years old.

The daughter of
a Danish diplomat.

♪♪

She had come up to Yosemite

to spend time in the park.

She passed some tourists.

They waved at one another
and said hi.

Moments later...

[ Woman screaming ]

those tourists and others heard
screams, horrible screams.

[ Screaming ]

They ran toward the screams
and found Helle

bleeding to death
with multiple stab wounds.

It was a brutal blitz attack.

Man:
She´s not immediately dead.

There´s efforts made to
resuscitate her,

but she dies.

They didn´t find the knife.
They didn´t find the guy.

Nothing.
Nothing was found.

Man: Nobody was ever arrested.

Man: Stayner´s weapon of choice
was a knife,

and at least two of his victims
were k*lled

with a knife stabbing
and beheaded.

Joie Armstrong.

Man: He used to camp at
the campground

right near where Helle Olsbro
was m*rder*d.

So in my mind, he couldn´t be
ruled out of that m*rder.

We never had the opportunity
to interview him

or confront him about that.

Man: He could have been in the
park doing it in the ´80s.

I really still felt that
Henry Lucas was our suspect,

was responsible for it.

But was it possible that
Cary Stayner had something to do

with k*lling our victim?

Man: He´d have been
about 20 at the time --


Man: Henry Lee Lucas said
that he strangled her.

Without the body itself,
there´s no way we could tell

if the person was strangled
or stabbed or how she died.

But they didn´t want
to give up on that case.

Man: The technology at the time
had its limitations,

I think we pushed
those limitations

as far as we could as an agency,

and then we had to wait.

♪♪

Throughout my almost 30 years
stationed at Yosemite,

the Summit Meadow case
was always

kind of on the back of my mind.

Every time I go into
the cold case files section

and it was sitting right there,
big letters staring at me.

So when I became a supervisor,
I tried to assign

one cold case to every agent.

Can we make progress on it,

you know, given
today´s technology?

My name is Cullen Tucker.

I´m a National Park Service
special agent.

My parents were
Park Service rangers

and criminal investigators.

I grew up in Yosemite.

As a kid,
it was just a small town

that just happened to be
surrounded by a national park,

and everyone was kind of linked
in some way to the park.

The Tucker family conversations
would not be

your typical conversations

at most the households.

You know, my mom and dad
would be trying

to have a private conversation

while making dinner
or doing something,

but we´d all hear it.

It´d be my dad and my mom

talking about work.

I remember my older sister,
like,

"Mom used to be a cop, man,"
like,

"you can´t -- you can´t pull
a fast one on her."

I´ve known Cullen since he was
three years old,

and I worked with his father
and his mother in Yosemite.

I think over the years,

the Park Service has had
an issue

admitting that there is
a serious enough crime

occurring in national parks

where you need a criminal
investigator to work on it.

You know, they --
they don´t want to admit

that they are needed.

They don´t want to pay for them.

And so I think those are
some of the big issues

that caused that early group
of investigators

to get shoved aside.

But when you get 20,000
to 50,000 visitors a day,

they´re going to bring
their problems with them.

There´s just no way to avoid it.

Man: Yosemite National Park

is one of the first
Park Service units

that hired full time
criminal investigators

to serve
that detective function.

And then other parks
throughout the service

saw the success of that
and followed suit.

In 2003,
the National Park Service

decided to take
all the special agents

across the country
at these individual parks

and make one national unit
out of them.

And that´s what we know today,

is the Investigative
Services Branch.

Man: And I really had no idea
at 21

that I would wind up
as a special agent.

My dad was -- was very excited,
very, very happy

about me becoming a Park Service
law enforcement officer.

My mom was very like,
"Do what you want."

She´s like, I mean,
she was always like,

"Please have a job, son."

Went in the military, came back
and became a ranger,

and he showed an interest
in investigations.

And one of my goals
was to hire him before I retired

because I just felt
he had what it takes.

And that came from watching him
as a ranger in the way

he did investigations --
h-he put his heart and soul

into ´em.

Tucker: So in the Yosemite
ISB office

above the door to the file room,

we had all of our cold case/
missing persons fliers,

and some of the fliers,

the bulletins
for our unsolved homicides,

they would just kind of
live taped to the wall

above the door.

And we did that
as a reminder to be like,

this is --
this is why we´re here.

I remember looking in the back
file room on the shelves

and there was
the Summit Meadow case file.

And I knew just growing up
that this was that case

where my mom
flew to Texas with Don

and talked to a serial k*ller.

Tucker: I´ve known about that.

And -- but I didn´t know
the details.

I just knew
that my mom did that.

And I was like, Well, what´s up
with this one, Jeff?

Man: I decided that this would
be a good case to assign Cullen.

The fact that his mother worked
on it 40 years earlier

as one of the original
case agents on the case,

I thought it would
just be a good match.

And if nothing else,
he could learn all the things

about the case and, you know,

that maybe that hadn´t come up
at the dinner table.

Woman: He called me up and he
said, "Hey, Mom,

I think I may be working on
the Summit Meadow case."

And I probably said something
like, "Well, that´s good,

and I´m glad --
I´m glad somebody is."

Man: Cullen started really going
over the case file

with a fine tooth comb.

Cullen: The Summit Meadow case
was opened in June 28, 1983.

I wasn´t even alive
at that point.

And so we had three
or four binders

and a couple of file folders

and a bunch of loose papers.

And nothing´s digitized.

And so there´s just binders
that you have to go through.

There really wasn´t that much.

But there´s this, like...

almost 20-year period

where, besides
the facial reconstruction

and maybe following up
on a few random leads,

there´s not a whole
lot happening.

We always assumed the arm
and the skull were together

just based on the location
they were found

and their --
their appearance.

You know, they both appeared
to be out on the ground

at the right amount of time
to have been deposited

at the same time.

Cullen: In 2009, that´s when
they officially prove through

DNA that the skull and the arm
are the same person.

They search CODIS,
the DNA database,

to see if it´s related to
any offenders or known

missing people or family,
and there´s nothing.

And so, um,

the case was eventually
suspended in 2012.

And there´s nothing.

I´ll be honest with you, when I
first assigned it to him,

I didn´t expect
too much to happen.

I just wanted him
to get familiar with it

just because I´d seen
some other people

take a run at it and just,
there´s just nowhere to go.

There´s no more evidence.

Cullen: The Summit Meadow
homicide investigation

has lasted
nearly 40 years,

and there´s two generations
of investigators

now have worked on it.

This unidentified skeleton
has a name.

We need to find it.

We need to help bring justice to
these people and these families.

♪♪

Cullen: So my first goal in
taking this case over

was to identify who she was.

The DNA profile does not match
to any known family members

in CODIS
or any known offenders

profiled in CODIS.

The whole time I knew, like,
nothing had worked yet.

Let´s, like, blank canvas,
like, let´s start over.

♪♪

♪♪

One of the things that I wanted
Cullen to do was to

research and find a way for us
to have a more hyper accurate

facial reconstruction.

Cullen: The first facial
reconstruction is the clay one.

It´s black and white.

Well, the person who created it
was working

with a very limited set of facts
and a very limited skeleton.

Cullen took that on,

he talked with the National
Center for Exploited

and Missing Children --
NCMEC --

and learned about
some technology.

So, the skull was taken in,
they did a CT scan.

Then those results
were sent to NCMEC

and they created this very
hyper-accurate

photo recreation
drawing.

♪♪

Then nothing really happens.

♪♪

And then all of a sudden
I´m catching cases.

So I´m starting to work on these
missing people

cases in Yosemite.

So I had some success linking

skeletal remains
to missing people.

Some of the DNA stuff
with missing people is, like

starting to come back,
and it, like, worked.

I was like,
this is -- this is cool.

This is how I´m going
to do this stuff.

And then they started talking
about the Golden State k*ller.

And he´d been on the news
in California

that they just caught the guy.

Reporter:
Police say they now have

the Golden State k*ller
in custody.

Reporter: The k*ller accused of
murdering at least 12 people,

sexually assaulting more
than 50,

Joseph James DeAngelo,

former police officer, family
man who is hiding in plain sight

in suburban Sacramento.

Cullen: They had linked his DNA
to multiple crime scenes.

But they didn´t know who he was.

And that´s when they started
reaching out

to these ancestry databases
for private genealogy.

And eventually they identified
Joseph DeAngelo.

Man: They used DNA
testing to find him.

So many families
are relieved this morning.

Cullen: But the big take-home is
that this company called Parabon

is doing this stuff.

This is going to be
the way of the future.

So when detectives have DNA
from a case

and they want to help identify
that person,

they come to us.

The cases that we work on,

they are decades old.

All they know is whether
the person is male or female.

That´s all that traditional
forensic DNA can tell them.

If you have a skull,
they can use this pretty cool

digital clay to mold

and figure out what this person
might have looked like.

But it´s still very broad.

They don´t know the person´s
eye color, their hair color.

So the reconstructions generally
have to be black and white

because they don´t have
that information.

What´s so exciting is the DNA
can now tell them

that person´s eye color,
their hair color,

the shape of their face,
their ancestry,

and help them winnow down
who that person could have been.

Cullen: I call Parabon and I
tell them the story,

and they´re like,

Well, yeah, that actually might
be something we want to do.

And so that´s like
summer of 2020.

I´ve kind of like just thought
to myself, like, you know,

we took it as far as we can.

If it works, it works.
If it doesn´t, it doesn´t.

♪♪

Woman: When the Summit Meadow
Jane Doe samples

came to us, they had DNA.

They knew this was
from a female.

They knew her age,

and that was about it.

The question was,
who was this person?

We do a technique called
whole genome sequencing,

where basically it takes
all of the DNA

that was extracted from that
sample and sequences it.

We end up with millions
and millions of pieces of data

and then we need to build
that back

into a profile of that person.

That´s where a forensic artist
comes in.

Man: They start off
with a gray 3D head.

My job as a forensic artist
is just to

turn it into
something that looks

like a normal, real human being.

Woman: Over many years, they
thought the person was Hispanic.

We were able to analyze that DNA
and say,

no, this is a person
of European descent

who´s going to be very fair

with blue eyes and blond hair.

♪♪

And I was like, "Oh, my gosh."
Right? Like, holy crap.

It was like Parabon, like,
took a laser beam,

and was like, "Boom.
That´s who it is."

I was like,
get to the good part.

Who is she related to?

Because once we know
who this person is, like,

the other half of the case
is now wide open.

In this investigation,
the biggest piece

of what
happened has always been,

who is this person?

Woman: So, we have two sides of
what we do.

The first is the phenotyping,

the prediction
of that person´s appearance.

The other is genetic genealogy.

And that´s where Cece comes in.

I´m Cece Moore,

I´m an investigative genetic
genealogist.

Genealogy has traditionally
been done through records,

and so we would use census
records, vital records,

birth, marriage, death records.

Genetic genealogy is using
someone´s DNA

to learn more about their family
tree and their genetic heritage.

Investigative genetic genealogy

is when we´re using it
for law enforcement purposes,

either to identify
a violent criminal

or to identify somebody who
has died without an identity.

We´re reverse-engineering

somebody´s identity
from their DNA.

In the Golden State k*ller case
that´s what they did.

They found common ancestors
between people who shared DNA

with that
unknown Golden State k*ller.

They built forward
from those people.

And they eventually narrowed it
down to just one person,

which was Joseph DeAngelo.

Man: When investigators used
genetic genealogy

to crack
the Golden State k*ller case,

it was a watershed moment

for how law enforcement
solves crimes.

Woman: So the National Park
Service came to Parabon

and asked if we could use
genetic genealogy

to try to identify
Summit Meadow Jane Doe.

We upload
to the GEDmatch database.

Law enforcement doesn´t
access information

from consumer companies
that collect DNA,

but they do use GEDmatch.

Cece: GEDmatch is not a DNA
testing company.

They are a raw data repository.

Man: And people can volunteer
to add their DNA information

to GEDmatch.

Woman: And then GEDmatch runs
a comparison

against all of the hundreds
of thousands of people

who are opted-in to law
enforcement matching --

basically
gives us a list:

Here are the people who share
DNA with your unknown person.

And so if we can find a number
of matches

who share DNA with each other,
we build their family trees

and we look for a common
ancestral couple

or a common ancestor --
I call that a genetic network.

So I had these three sets
of common ancestors

that I knew had to be in
Jane Doe´s family tree.

Now I have to find someone who
is descended from all of them.

So because most of the matches
in this case were so distant,

I had to build those trees back
to the early 1700s

and even the 1600s
in some cases.

It took me a long time,

but I finally found
the triangulation marriage,

the convergence of all of
those genetic networks.

I found a marriage of someone

who descended from genetic
network number one,

to somebody who descended from
genetic networks two and three.

We know it´s a female,
so it´s got to be a daughter

or granddaughter of this couple.

So once I was finally able
to zero in on that one couple,

that one immediate family,

it became obvious to me
that one of their daughters

had not generated
any records since 1983.

And when I found her photo
in her high school yearbook,

I was shocked how much it looked
like the snapshot phenotype.

So I felt very confident

that this must be
Summit Meadow Jane Doe.

♪♪

Cullen: January 4, 2021,
was my first day back to work

after, like holiday leave.

And I open up my email

and there´s the second
Parabon work,

and we call on them, and it was
Tom, Shawn, Cece Moore.

♪♪

And I was like,
Oh, my gosh, you got a name?

♪♪

Was Patricia Hicks Dahlstrom.

♪♪

♪♪

Cullen called me.

And I´m not ashamed
that we were both in tears

because it had been a long,
long road

that we were finally going to
give this family some answers.

Cullen: I remember calling my
mom and I was like,

"Hey, Mom, I got to tell you,
like, we got a tentative ID

on Summit Meadow, her name´s
Patricia Dahlstrom."

And I remember
she started crying.

Just bawling.
She´s like,

"You got to call Don.
You got to call Don."

Man: We´ve been waiting
almost 40 years

to actually find out
who our victim was.

Who would have thought
that, back in ´84,

when Kim and I are finding
the evidence,

and the next day,
she´s taken off the case,

that her son would come back
in the same position

that she was in
and identify her.

And all I could think
of was like, wow,

what if he solves it?

Oh, my God, after all these
years, I thought,

well, okay, I mean, you´re going
to have to

follow it where it leads.

♪♪

Now we have a name.

Now we have to kind of
try to figure out how she died.

♪♪

How did this woman
get to Yosemite

and be m*rder*d.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

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