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00:00Seattle, 1967. A young woman is found murdered near the Seattle Space Needle.
00:08When they looked at who the victim was and then looked at her identification, they were shocked to see that it was 20-year-old Susan Galvin who worked for the Seattle Police Department.
00:19It's just shocking. You're going to work in the police department. It should be a safe environment. And our records employees that are working the night shift aren't walking the length of downtown Seattle to get to work anymore.
00:34Despite an extensive investigation and multiple suspects, the case goes cold for decades.
00:39A case may be old and it's unsolved, but that doesn't mean it's not being worked. Something could come about tomorrow that could change everything.
00:50In the 1990s, DNA forensics brings new hope. Detectives track down the list of suspects.
00:58You go through that murder book from page one to page 200 or whatever and your head's buzzing. You're like, wow, there's a lot here.
01:07And that's good because that means there's a lot to work with, but it's also a little bit overwhelming.
01:13I developed the smell profile from the underpants, put it into the CODIS database and we didn't get any hits to the database.
01:23But investigators refused to give up on this half a century old case.
01:30When we were using CODIS and we weren't getting any hits, I personally thought that that was the dead end.
01:36I didn't see that genealogy was on the horizon and was going to burst open and provide another tool for solving these old cases.
01:46Criminals who have hidden in the shadows for years find there's no escaping science and their own family DNA.
01:52Welcome to Bloodline Detectives.
01:55Soybean.
01:56Me.
01:57I'm Geneal.
01:58Welcome to Bloodline Detectives.
02:00Seattle is a major city in the Pacific Northwest region
02:26of the United States, located between Puget Sound and Lake Washington.
02:32I grew up in Seattle. It's a great city. It's beautiful. I love that it has the water.
02:43The mountains are nearby. You're not too far from the ocean. And it's just a really nice
02:48place to live and grow up.
02:53It's still kind of the heart of the counterculture.
03:01There are a lot of arts and sporting events and things of that nature, but it's really
03:05become known as a hub for technology.
03:11Everybody's planning to see Seattle's spectacular $100 million World's Fair.
03:18In the beginning of the 20th century, there was a space of land in downtown Seattle that was used as just a public event space.
03:26And in 1962, this six block by six block area was chosen to be the home of the World's Fair.
03:32It brought the monorail, the iconic Space Needle and 10 million visitors to the city.
03:38That area of the Seattle Center would host all sorts of events.
03:42And eventually part of it became an arena where the Beatles would play a $5 concert.
03:47They have a lot of play areas for the children.
03:55They had a lot of games. At the time it was like an outdoor fair.
03:59There's a big park with a big fountain that runs as well as a children's museum.
04:05There was just a place to go and gather and spend time with friends and family.
04:15But on July the 13th, 1967, a discovery in the Seattle Center car park sends shockwaves through the city.
04:23In the morning hours of July 13th, 1967, a parking attendant went to the Seattle Center parking garage off Mercer Street and was unlocking the elevators.
04:33When one of the elevator's doors opened, he was shocked by what he saw inside.
04:38A young woman was clearly deceased and it was just a grisly, horrible scene.
04:46Investigators quickly arrived and they cordoned off the area and then went to the elevator to start processing the scene.
04:53When they looked at who the victim was and then looked at her identification,
04:57they were shocked to see that it was 20-year-old Susan Galvin who worked for the Seattle Police Department.
05:04So this case took a serious turn right away.
05:09Primary detectives were Archie Porter and Dave Grayson.
05:14And they started working on the crime scene.
05:23And processing it using the strategies available to them in 1967.
05:28They called out our criminalist section who actually dusted the elevator for fingerprints.
05:35They actually took the handrails out of the elevator and submitted them into evidence.
05:41They searched the pit, the area below the elevator for any pieces of evidence.
05:46Photographed the scene, measured the scene.
05:49They created a history of what they found so that future generations of detectives could continue to work on this case.
05:59They knew that they had a Seattle Police Records employee, one of their co-workers who had been murdered.
06:06And they were gearing and gunning to get to the bottom of that right away.
06:10One of the worst parts of a first responder's job is notifying a family when someone has died.
06:19And this case was even more difficult because, again, we're talking about the late 60s.
06:23We didn't have cell phones or Zoom calls.
06:25And Susan's family was about 300 miles away, almost to the Idaho border in Spokane.
06:31And her dad was living down in Portland.
06:33So not only did the investigators have to find out who her family was and where they were located,
06:40they had to notify them.
06:42And then they had to make the very long trip into Seattle to get Susan.
06:50The city really reacted to this murder because it was just so unexpected.
06:56And her youth and the fact that she was a police department employee and it happened at Seattle Center.
07:05Just so many things about it, I think, really affected people.
07:09She was very young and really liked her job and liked to go out with her friends.
07:14She had a pretty big family and was just getting started in her career.
07:19And it's a shame that this took place.
07:22Susan Galvin moved to Seattle from Spokane just about a year before her death.
07:30She had been born in Massachusetts and was the oldest of all of the children in the family.
07:35After graduating from North Central High School, she attended Spokane Community College.
07:39And even though it was the Northwest and it was deeply in the 60s, she was far from a counterculture kid.
07:46She was not interested in breaking the rules or being a hippie.
07:49She was very straight-laced and career-driven and focused on her future.
07:54And that included a job in law enforcement.
07:57And once she got to Seattle, she was able to get a job with a Seattle PD as a clerk.
08:02Susan was thriving in her position with the Seattle PD, which was unusual.
08:07Not only was she a female, but she was only 20 years old.
08:11But she fit with this job perfectly.
08:13She was known for how focused she was for her work and that she had perfect attendance.
08:18She took her job very seriously.
08:20Susan loved Seattle as much as she loved her job.
08:23She worked the night shift, which she really enjoyed because it was peaceful and quiet and she could focus on her work.
08:28But even though she was working at night, it didn't keep her from living her life.
08:32She was often out with friends.
08:34She enjoyed hanging out in the Seattle Center.
08:37She enjoyed going to restaurants and just exploring what was now her new home.
08:41Police begin their investigation by building a timeline of events leading to the discovery of Susan's body.
08:51She didn't come to work the night of July 9th going into July 10th and then she didn't come to work the next day either.
09:00On July 12th, her friends and coworkers made a missing persons report and that investigation began.
09:07And detectives actually on July 12th, they went to her apartment on Lower Queen Anne and took a look around and didn't find anything suspicious.
09:19There was no sign that something horrible had happened.
09:24So the missing person investigation continued until 6.40 p.m. on the night of July 13th.
09:33Susan's common route to work going from her apartment on Lower Queen Anne would be to walk to the Seattle Center,
09:42take the elevator up to an elevated crosswalk bridge that goes over Mercer Street,
09:48and then she would either walk from Seattle Center to police headquarters, then called the Public Safety Building,
09:54or she would take the monorail, which is an elevated train that goes from Seattle Center to West Lake Park.
10:01And this was her route every night.
10:05And that night, July 9th, going into the morning of July 10th, she was supposed to be at work at midnight.
10:12She had excellent attendance.
10:14She showed up on time consistently.
10:17She didn't come to work.
10:19On July 9th, the Sunday before Susan's body was found, there had been an event at the center.
10:28And for whatever reason, the garage was actually going to be shut down and the elevators were going to be locked.
10:34They remained open because people were still parked there and needed to access their car to leave.
10:39But that did help investigators because it really narrowed the timeline.
10:43And they were able to surmise that she must have been walking to work like usual and, like she usually did,
10:49used the garage as a shortcut to get to the office.
10:52Some point while walking through the garage, she was either ambushed or approached by someone she knew.
10:58And that was when the attack happened.
11:00She was then locked into those elevators for the next four days.
11:04The next step is to conduct an autopsy to determine the exact cause of her death.
11:13She had been raped and strangled.
11:17In this case, all of the victim's clothes were preserved and submitted into the Seattle Police Department's evidence vault,
11:28which is really impressive going back that far because that didn't happen every time.
11:33Investigators compile a list of suspects and quickly locate one individual who raises more suspicions than the others.
11:41Police are investigating the 1967 rape and murder of 20-year-old Susan Galvin, whose body was discovered in the Seattle Center.
12:01Investigators are now searching for witnesses and potential suspects.
12:09In this circumstance, she was found in an elevator, an elevator that had been closed for several days.
12:15So there wasn't immediate people waiting to talk to them that can say, this is what happened.
12:22So they started a canvas and there was a lot going on at the Seattle Center and there was a lot of people to talk to.
12:28And that was just a matter of going person to person, establishment by establishment and just saying, hey, do you know anything about what happened?
12:38Were you here on the night of July 9th? Have you seen Susan Galvin? Do you recognize her?
12:47About a week prior, she was seen on a double date.
12:50Her and a friend had actually paired up with some local sailors and they went on a date, had a nice time.
12:56They were kind of talks of a follow-up date, but that never really came to fruition.
13:01Officers did actually go to the naval base they were located and checked and talked to them about where they had been when Susan was murdered, checking their alibis.
13:12They eventually took polygraph tests. They had no information about what happened to Susan Galvin.
13:19They had not been with her or around her that weekend that she went missing and they were eventually cleared.
13:25Most violent crimes tend to be between people that know each other.
13:31People that we are closest to are usually the ones that hurt you the most, right?
13:34So that's usually the person you're going to look as to there could be some sort of disagreement, some sort of fight, some jealousy, who knows what could be going on.
13:45And so your instinct naturally is to look to family members, especially significant others, anybody that's around them quite a bit, but especially a significant relationship.
14:03Detectives zero in on one man who had been working near the crime scene.
14:09When detectives were canvassing the Seattle Center, they ran into witnesses who thought they saw Susan Galvin on that Sunday, July 9th.
14:16And several witnesses came forward and said they saw her with the Seattle Center clown, who was a young male whose job was to dress like a clown and made his rounds in and around the park.
14:31There is kind of a silly stereotype about the evil clown committing evil deeds, doing bad things, dressing up and being there to entertain children, but living a second life.
14:43Right. And so when this lead came up, I'm sure there was a little bit of.
14:48Well, number one, trepidation, but number two, kind of like, what are we doing here?
14:55This is like a bad movie. We're really investigating the clown.
14:58The clown was immediately identified and it turns out that he worked the night of July 9th.
15:04Then he was off July 10th and July 11th.
15:07Then on July 12th, he came to work and abruptly quit.
15:11And then he skipped town. This was obviously incredibly alarming to the police.
15:17They were able to track him down and they asked him about Susan in that day.
15:21He was kind of aloof about it and vague, and he was starting to really look like the most likely suspect.
15:28With all of this information, the clown was given a polygraph test and he didn't pass. He didn't fail. It was inconclusive.
15:36And there just wasn't enough evidence for any arrest to be made, but he remained an important suspect in the case.
15:43Despite early efforts, the case stalls and all leads are exhausted.
15:49If you were to ask the Seattle Police Department, they would probably say that Susan's case never went cold because they were always working on it and they didn't want to let one of their own down.
16:02But it didn't take long for all of these suspects and leads to go nowhere.
16:07And they really didn't have anything to go on. So the case went cold pretty quickly.
16:12It wasn't until the early 2000s that the case was really reopened and reviewed again.
16:18And that's when they started to realize maybe technology would be able to help them solve that.
16:27In 1967, no one was talking about DNA. In 1977, no one was talking about DNA. In 1987, no one was talking about DNA. In the late 90s, yes.
16:39And in the early 2000s, we assigned a couple detectives to go through all our unsolved homicides and pull out the cases that were clearly sexual assaults that would have the most potential for identifying suspect DNA left either at the scene or on the victim or the victim's clothes.
17:01In 2002, detectives McSell and Gagnon reopened this case and they submitted items from the autopsy of Susan Galvin to the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory.
17:14The scientist assigned to the case was Lisa Caraba, who now is Lisa Collins, but she was the DNA scientist from the beginning.
17:27The evidence being from 1967. And over time, DNA degrades. And so you never know when you're going back to evidence that old if you're going to be able to get any usable DNA.
17:42I had the background information. I had a pair of underpants and I knew that she had been sexually assaulted.
17:50And so I was looking at the pair of underpants for the presence of semen.
17:55And so I first looked at the underpants with a what's called a forensic light source.
18:00And I'm looking for any areas where there would be fluorescent staining.
18:04So body fluids will fluoresce when exposed to this light that we use.
18:09So I found areas of fluorescence in the crotch area, but also on other parts of the underwear.
18:16And so I ended up taking samples from those areas that I had seen fluorescence.
18:22And I was looking for the presence of spermatozoa.
18:25And so one of the samples that I collected from the crotch of the underpants had spermatozoa.
18:31So I only went forward with that one sample.
18:35But from that sample, I was able to develop a male profile.
18:41And the reason this case was submitted in the early 2000s is we had just started using CODIS database.
18:47So CODIS stands for Combined DNA Index System.
18:50And so we were going back to these old cases and seeing if we could develop a DNA profile from a perpetrator
18:57that we could then put into this CODIS database and see if we could identify any possible offenders
19:05that are in that database that could match this evidence profile.
19:09So I put it into the CODIS database and we didn't get any hits to the database.
19:16And essentially, there weren't any other crimes that were linked to this case.
19:21And then there weren't any offenders that were identified to this case.
19:25And so I personally thought that that was the dead end.
19:32Decades pass without a match.
19:33But in 2016, the case is taken over by Detective Rolf Norton,
19:37who is convinced this case will be solved.
19:51Seattle, 2016.
19:54Detective Rolf Norton and his cold case team reopen the 1967 sexual assault and murder of Susan Galvin.
20:03After decades without answers, new forensic technology offers a renewed chance to identify her killer.
20:10Rolf and I were in the academy together.
20:12I've worked with him my whole career.
20:14We've worked pretty closely now that he's been in homicide and me and CSI have been in CSI for 20 years.
20:21He was a great fit in our cold case unit because those are the most difficult.
20:26And he just has the tenacity for those cases.
20:30For someone who started working on this case in 2016 to go and find out that those clothes from 49 years ago are still there,
20:40people are doing their job and they're looking out and they're creating a work product that allows future investigators to be successful.
20:51I can't tell you how many people came to me once I started working this case that had been around forever and said,
20:59Hey, Rolf, that could have been me.
21:02People that weren't around when Susan Galvin was murdered but were working in records would come up to me and say,
21:08that could have been any of us.
21:11It's just shocking is what it was.
21:14You're going to work in the police department and public safety building every day.
21:18It should be a safe environment and our records employees that are working the night shift aren't walking the length of downtown Seattle to get to work anymore.
21:27Her death, her murder affected people in the department to a great degree and was never forgotten.
21:33Detective Norton believes that one suspect who had inconclusive results on the lie detector test should be first on his radar.
21:43The clown who performed at the Seattle Center.
21:48People said that clown was with Susan Galvin and then inexplicably he quits.
21:54And his behavior after the fact just didn't make sense.
21:58Kind of raised the hackles a little bit and, you know, he peed very, very suspicious.
22:05And immediately after I finished going through everything, I was like, I need to go talk to Punchy the Clown.
22:11And I actually wanted to get his DNA and I got a search warrant within a couple of days of going through the entire case.
22:18And it was signed in King County Superior Court, which is our jurisdiction here in Seattle.
22:24And I started looking for this clown and he was still alive.
22:28He had an address up in North Seattle and after knocking on a few doors, I learned that he had moved away the year before.
22:37And ultimately I was able to figure out that he was residing in Salt Lake City, Utah.
22:42So I reached out to a homicide detective, Corden Parks, down in Salt Lake City, PD.
22:51And collaborated my warrant with their process for getting a search warrant.
22:56And we got one for that jurisdiction and I flew down.
23:00And we served that warrant on the clown in November of 2016.
23:05And I sat down with him and interviewed him in his apartment.
23:12All right, this is Detective Norton with Seattle Police.
23:16You know that I'm recording this, right?
23:18Yes.
23:19Back in 1967, were you employed as a clown at the Seattle Center?
23:25Yes.
23:26Do you remember working there?
23:28Of course.
23:29How old were you when you first started working as a clown?
23:32Seven years old.
23:33Wow.
23:35So at the Seattle Center back in 1967, a young woman was killed.
23:40Do you remember that happening?
23:44It was in the elevator across the park in the village.
23:49Exactly.
23:51What do you remember about that incident?
23:54Just it was on the news.
23:56Okay.
23:57Do you remember being interviewed by the police detectives?
24:03It's barely.
24:04Do you remember taking a polygraph test, a lie detector test?
24:09No.
24:11Do you remember the girl's name who was killed, the victim?
24:14Do you remember her name?
24:15No.
24:16Did you know her?
24:17No.
24:19Were you in that elevator with her?
24:21No.
24:22Did you have anything to do with her death?
24:24No.
24:25Okay.
24:26Did you have her have sex with her?
24:28No.
24:29Okay. Are you sure about that?
24:30Positive.
24:31Positive.
24:32Absolutely.
24:33500%.
24:34This is a really old grainy photo.
24:36And that's a picture of the woman that was killed.
24:43You recognize her at all?
24:44No.
24:45Okay.
24:47And you remember that she was in an elevator.
24:50Is that right?
24:51Yeah.
24:52I heard it on the news or something.
24:54Okay.
24:55That was a long time ago.
24:56That's interesting that you could remember that.
24:58Yeah.
24:59That's a bad thing to remember.
25:00Yeah.
25:01To stay away from her.
25:02So this incident happened on a Sunday afternoon.
25:05Yeah.
25:06And you ended up quitting your job a day or two later.
25:09Do you remember that?
25:10Yeah.
25:11I was going on.
25:12I had to go somewhere else.
25:15Move away.
25:16How come?
25:19It's time to move.
25:21It changed.
25:22Mm-hmm.
25:23But it seemed kind of abrupt to me as I was reading kind of a chronology of things.
25:28Yeah.
25:29Did you leave because of that girl's murder?
25:32No.
25:33It had nothing to do with it.
25:36So just to be certain, you don't think you knew the victim at all?
25:41No, I didn't.
25:42And you certainly never had sex with her?
25:43Of course not.
25:44Okay.
25:45Yeah.
25:46It's not what clowns do.
25:47Working two or three jobs, you do something just to bring them alive.
25:52Yeah.
25:53Okay.
25:54And the reason why I've asked you that multiple times now in different ways.
25:58So what I'm going to do is I'm going to test the saliva from your swabs and I'm going
26:03to be able to determine whether you were involved or not.
26:05Okay?
26:06Of course.
26:07So if there's anything you're holding back on, I want you to tell me today.
26:10Okay?
26:11No.
26:12Nothing?
26:13I did the DNA analysis, compared the DNA profile from this individual to the crime scene profile,
26:24and the profiles did not match.
26:27So that was, he was excluded as being a possible suspect at that point.
26:32I was disappointed.
26:33I know that he was disappointed because you're always hoping that you're going to find the
26:38answer to the question of who did this to this victim.
26:42When the clown was cleared of involvement, my first reaction was, okay, the name's in
26:52that book.
26:53I just need to find it and match that name with that genetic profile with the DNA we have.
26:59And that was going to be my plan.
27:01But it turned out the name wasn't in that book.
27:02And it turned out that other investigative strategies became available that I wasn't even imagining
27:18in 2016.
27:19In 2018, news comes out of a major breakthrough in solving cold cases, a novel tool that could
27:29change the future of crime fighting.
27:31Interestingly enough, I was working on another case, and that detective had started asking
27:38about genealogy.
27:39And he started asking questions about GEDmatch database and the ancestry process.
27:47And I didn't have any familiarity with that.
27:50But then the information came out about the Golden State Killer.
27:54I remember exactly where I was when I first heard about that case and how it was solved.
28:00I was traveling in the Midwest and had a long drive and I was listening to the radio and kind
28:06of a coverage of how this went down.
28:08And I just about pulled over and started yelling because I was like, I have five cases right
28:13away that we could use this strategy on that maybe could get us there.
28:18And the first one I thought of was Susan Galvin.
28:23So we started looking more into it.
28:28So I had a case, not this one, but a different case in 2018 that we sent a sample out and identified
28:36a possible suspect and got a sample from that suspect and so solved that case.
28:43And that was when my eyes were just completely open to this absolutely amazing new tool that
28:50could be used to provide investigative leads for these old cold cases.
28:57This new tool is known as Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy.
29:03Genetic genealogy is the combination of traditional genealogy and DNA.
29:15And so we are using people's DNA to learn more about their family history, to extend their
29:21family trees in some cases.
29:23And in the application of investigative genetic genealogy, we are using that combination of
29:30genealogical records and genetics to help identify violent criminals and to bring the names back to
29:37people who died without their identification, Jane and John Doe's.
29:42Although there are over 50 million people who have taken direct-to-consumer DNA tests, for
29:47law enforcement cases, we are limited to the two smallest databases.
29:52And those are FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch.
29:55Those are the two databases that have agreed to work with law enforcement and have alerted their
30:01customers to this and allowed them to opt in or opt out of being compared against law enforcement cases.
30:08Unfortunately, the biggest databases, AncestryDNA, 23andMe, and MyHeritage, have terms of service
30:15that bar law enforcement's use.
30:18And so this means we are often able to only compare against 2 million or less profiles,
30:24and it can make our work very challenging.
30:27Genetic genealogy is used to reverse engineer the identity of a DNA contributor, whether that's
30:38a violent criminal who's left their DNA behind at the crime scene, or whether that's a person
30:43who died without their identification.
30:45And so we're using that combination of public records, such as vital records, census records,
30:52marriage records, obituaries, newspaper archives, and social media, to learn about these families
30:59and document them.
31:00But we only know which families that we should be researching because of who they're sharing
31:06DNA with, who that subject that we're trying to identify is sharing DNA with.
31:12So you share DNA with the people that share your common ancestors.
31:18And the closer that common ancestor is in time, the more DNA that you will share.
31:23We measure that in a unit called centimorgans.
31:27So the more centimorgans you share with the person, generally the closer your relationship is.
31:32So with your parents, you'll share about 3,600 centimorgans, whereas with your first cousin,
31:39you'll share about 850 centimorgans.
31:42In genetic genealogy cases where we're working with law enforcement, we're often working with
31:47people who share less than 1% of their DNA.
31:50Now that would typically mean that they might be third cousins, for instance, which means
31:55they share a set of great, great grandparents.
31:58Then we have to reverse engineer that work and that family tree and identify the descendants
32:06of those common ancestors.
32:09And from among those descendants, we should be able to identify our DNA contributor or what
32:15we call the subject.
32:17I knew that there was some extracted DNA remaining that we had retained at the laboratory.
32:25So I went back to the sample and evaluated it to see if it could be used for the genealogy testing
32:33and determined that it would be a good candidate for that.
32:36So then that sample was sent out to have the different type of DNA testing that's called SNP,
32:42single nucleotide polymorphism.
32:45And so they used that type of testing on the same sample that I had developed from the crime scene evidence.
32:52Once that SNP profile is created, it contains about 850,000 genetic markers across the genome.
33:01When that SNP profile is uploaded to GEDmatch, it's compared against everybody else in that database
33:08who has opted into law enforcement matching.
33:11And that means they are allowing their DNA file to be compared against the unknown subjects file or suspects file.
33:22What happens once that DNA file or that SNP profile is uploaded to the database, it's compared to everybody else's SNP profiles
33:31that have been uploaded to that database who've agreed to be compared against these law enforcement profiles.
33:37From that, we're looking for people who share long segments of identical DNA.
33:43These are not single marker matches.
33:45These are long stretches of hundreds or thousands of genetic markers that two people share in common.
33:51If they have that significant shared DNA, it means they have a common ancestor in their family tree.
33:57So that's really the basis of investigative genetic genealogy.
34:02We are lucky if we get a second cousin or closer.
34:05We're often working with third cousins and more distant.
34:10Parabon NanoLabs gets straight to work uploading the killer's DNA profile to public databases.
34:16It doesn't take long before they begin receiving hits that could lead to the identity of the killer.
34:22Detectives are reinvestigating the 1967 rape and murder of Susan Galvin, whose body was found at the Seattle Center.
34:41The killer's DNA was recovered at the scene, but for five decades no arrests were made.
34:48However, the Seattle Police Department has just teamed up with Parabon NanoLabs, experts in forensic investigative genetic genealogy, who could help them finally crack this case.
34:59We started on Susan Galvin, and the first thing that needs to happen is our scientist needs to take the sample and it needs to get reformatted into an SMP file.
35:14And that file then can be entered into a genealogical website.
35:21And again, you need DNA left, you need extract.
35:24It cannot all be consumed.
35:26And again, the mixture cannot be too complicated.
35:30Both those criteria were met in this case, and the DNA was sent to Parabon.
35:37It was sent to Parabon in July 2018.
35:43In August 2018, the lab work was completed and that SNP profile was created.
35:50At that point, it was very important for our bioinformatics scientists to work with that sample in order to deconvolute it.
36:00It was a mixture between the victim and the suspect.
36:04And so I didn't see the match list until September.
36:11So in September, I was alerted to the Susan Galvin case and asked to look at the match list in GEDmatch.
36:21I determined that it was definitely viable for genetic genealogy research.
36:26So our case manager reached out to Detective Norton to get approval to start that genetic genealogy research.
36:33Then we were able to upload to GEDmatch and my work could begin.
36:40And almost immediately, results confirm a match.
36:46So the common ancestral couple that I identified for those top two matches was Jeremiah Huffman and Nancy Tate.
36:54They were born in the 1820s and 1830s respectively.
36:58Unfortunately, they had 16 children.
37:01So I knew that the suspect had to descend from this couple because he was carrying DNA that he clearly inherited from them.
37:10And I found that at least 12 of those children had children of their own.
37:15So that meant that this couple, this Huffman couple, had hundreds or thousands of descendants living at the time that Susan was killed.
37:25I needed to find somebody who had Native American ancestry and somebody who had Eastern European ancestry.
37:34When I built the trees of the very distant matches, I was seeing Polish.
37:40Many of these people had Polish ancestors.
37:43So I hypothesized that our suspect was going to be about half Polish and it was likely to be on his father's side.
37:51And somebody who descended from them had to have a child with a person of Native American ancestry.
37:58So as I built forward, I found that one of their descendants married a woman who was half Native American on paper.
38:08Her mother, Katie Jack, was a tribal member.
38:12And so that gave us the right ancestral mix.
38:17That meant that the Huffmans, who were of Northwest European ancestry, one of their descendants,
38:24married and had children with a woman who had Native American ancestry.
38:29So then I continued building forward and I found that one of their children married a man who was of full Polish ancestry.
38:39His parents were both born in Poland.
38:42And so that was extremely promising because out of all those hundreds or thousands of Huffman descendants,
38:49this was a unique mixture of ancestry.
38:54And so I zeroed in on that couple and found that they only had one child and it was a son.
39:02His name was Frank Edward Wippich.
39:06And he had the correct ancestral mix to potentially be Susan Galvin's killer.
39:13Frank Wippich was born in Seattle in 1941, making him 26 at the time of the murder.
39:23However, obtaining his DNA poses a serious challenge.
39:28When I heard the name Frank Wippich, I also learned the information that he died in 1987.
39:35So I started researching.
39:39We needed to do a couple of things.
39:42We needed to confirm that we believed there was a link between the Wippich group and our suspect.
39:49And then if that was proven, then we needed to more narrowly focus it down and see if we could positively identify Frank Wippich as a suspect.
40:00So the first thing we attempted to do was to obtain DNA via consent from a family member of Frank Wippich.
40:11This jaunt to this location where possible relative was not simple to get to.
40:18And I was having a hard time finding the person, even though I believe I had the right location until finally I was able to have an audience with the family member.
40:31And that's a strange conversation to have.
40:35Thankfully and gracefully, this family contact listened to my story.
40:40The person said they understood and the person provided a sample.
40:45So that sample then was sent back to Lisa Collins at the crime laboratory.
40:49And she came back within a few weeks and said, yes, there's a very strong likelihood that this sample you just collected is a direct descendant of individual A.
41:03So we're getting closer.
41:05And now it's a matter of getting Frank Wippich's DNA.
41:10And so I did DNA testing on the suspect's son and compared that profile to the profile from the crime scene.
41:18And it was consistent with a parent child relationship.
41:21So that told us that we were on the right path.
41:25The first time I heard Frank Wippich's name was on that phone call in December of 2018.
41:35I spent the next weekend going through every page of that homicide file again saying his name's got to be in here.
41:42His name's got to be in here.
41:44It wasn't.
41:45His name never came up.
41:47Frank was born in 1941 in Seattle.
41:53At the time of Susan's death, he was fairly newly married.
41:57He had one child.
41:58Another child would be born two years later.
42:00He was an army veteran and was just kind of known for being in the area.
42:06He worked as a security guard for Seattle Center.
42:08So he knew the area quite well.
42:10He would have a second child two years later.
42:13In 1971, he was charged with larceny.
42:16And in 1975, he had a weapons charge.
42:19That was actually a lesser charge from what he had actually been arrested for,
42:23which was impersonating a police officer and using a gun to stop people on the side of the road.
42:31To confirm it beyond doubt, detectives take the next step.
42:35Then it was just a matter of getting a sample from him.
42:40At that point, they determined where he was buried.
42:43And so they started looking into exhuming his body.
42:46We were told that his body was buried in a wooden casket, but it had been encased in concrete.
42:52So it was quite a process to exhume that once we had the search warrant.
42:58Now it's 2019 and this is a fairly wet climate and water pools.
43:08Decompensation occurs and there's no guarantee that there would be samples to collect that would be DNA rich.
43:15We learned right away he had no teeth.
43:18So that was out, but we recovered several leg bones.
43:22We now have Frank Whippage's DNA and there's just one more step.
43:27That DNA has got to go back to Lisa Collins for analysis and comparison to individual A.
43:37Lisa Collins received the profile in April 2019.
43:43And within that same day, she called me and said, it's confirmed.
43:48Frank Whippage is your suspect.
43:57After more than 50 years, the case is finally closed.
44:02This case was now solved.
44:04It was really exciting to be able to share that information with them.
44:08The day Lisa called me, yeah, it was like, it was a long journey.
44:13It was relief more than anything and it felt good.
44:16But I think you have to temper all of this with a lot of grace and humility and recognize Susan Galvin,
44:25because this is about her.
44:28I think we did our job, but we should do our job.
44:32And it's kind of what you expect.
44:34And even though there's so many cases where you don't get there, you need to expect that you are going to get there.
44:43So that was also a huge part of my takeaway.
44:47And also just, you know, them beginning the process of reaching out to the Galvin family and, you know,
44:53and realizing this isn't, you know, just investigative challenge to them.
44:59This is their life.
45:00This is the worst thing that ever happened to them.
45:02I spoke with her brother and he said that the mother and the family were just so grateful that this was finally over
45:11and they didn't have to wonder about this anymore.
45:17This becomes one of the longest cold case murders solved through forensic investigative genetic genealogy.
45:23A landmark investigation driven by the determination of detectives and the power of science.
45:32With the advances in DNA technology, the secrets are coming to light.
45:36So I don't think that you're going to be able to get away with it much longer.
45:41I am proud, but I'm also humbled.
45:43I'm humbled by the work that occurred before me.
45:47I'm humbled by the people that I work with on this case.
45:50And I'm humbled by the Galvin family and the legacy of Susan Galvin.
45:59I'm humbled by the foundation.
46:08You are already in a row.
46:11I want to see.
46:14I want to see.
46:15Transcription by CastingWords
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