203. How Ancestry Websites Solved a Cold Case
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The victim, she had been stabbed approximately 29 times. After 30 years, you're not sure where to look for a suspect. We would flood Facebook groups in the search to find him. Finally, we had a match. It's time to seek justice.

Hey everyone, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. I'm the husband. If you are watching on YouTube, please subscribe. Please turn on notifications. You guys, it helps us with the algorithm. I hate to beg, but I'm gonna do it. And if you are listening on podcast...

Leave us a review. We really appreciate it. It's a great way to support the show. So yeah, thanks for being here. And wait, before we get into your 10 seconds, I did just want to tell everyone we have bonus content on our Patreon, on our Apple subscriptions. It is $2.

full bonus episodes a month. You get two more episodes of Murder With My Husband. You get ad-free content. You get early release. There's a ton of benefits. So check that out if you are tired of listening to ads or just want more. It's so fun over there. So go check it out. All right, let's get into your 10 seconds. Well, Valentine's Day is coming up.

Is Valentine's Day celebrated worldwide? Actually, I think so because isn't Sir Valentine not from America? Like, I don't think that's an American thing. Yes, it is. It's celebrated around the world. Interesting. Yeah.

to celebrate Saint Valentine. Look at that, babe. You know what you're talking about. Yeah. Anyways, Valentine's Day is coming up. I may or may not have a surprise for Peyton. Do you think I have a surprise for you? Probably, except you need to tell me because I already told you that I made dinner reservations. So if I need to cancel that, you need to tell me. It's true. Well, maybe I don't have anything planned then.

Okay, and okay, let's just clear the air here real quick. Garrett and I never celebrate Valentine's Day. No, well, we don't celebrate anything really. Birthdays, Christmas. Yeah, we're not like huge. Like we sell like even for Christmas this year, neither of us got each other gifts. Yeah, we do gifts throughout the year type thing. But the last couple Valentine's Day, last minute on Valentine's Day, we've been like, oh, let's go out to dinner, you know? And then there's never...

ever any availability anywhere why is everything taken right now are you freaking kidding me so this year I was like just in case Valentine's Day rolls around and we're like hey let's just grab a quick a quick dinner to celebrate I made us reservations so we'll see what happens there so we got Valentine's Day it's also you were listening the day after the Super Bowl I'm kind of one I'm kind of indifferent about who I went to and honestly I kind of go back and forth

I think at the end of the day, I don't really care. Also, I wanted to address something. And a lot of people have been talking about Elias. I just don't know where this is going. This is a really important announcement. I wanted to talk about how a lot of people on our YouTube videos, on our Instagram posts everywhere, was like, oh, no, now robbers, TikTok, robbers are going to break into your house because they know how. I'm just like... Or office. Or office.

That's not going to happen. Okay. Number one, I don't know if I want to say this out loud because everyone's going to try to find the office. So never mind. But first of all, we lock the deadbolt. We have three deadbolts that we lock every single time. Right, babe? Yeah. So you're not getting it.

Okay, but honestly, we clarified in that story that there was a deadbolt that we needed to lock, but because we left the keys inside, we didn't lock it. And I was like, oh my gosh, you just showed everyone how to break it. And I'm like, we literally said that there's also a deadbolt lock that we lock. Also, someone had a good point. They said that, thank you for showing me that because I was going to get a magnetic lock where they're staying. And they're like, I'm not going to anymore because I didn't realize how easy it was. Yeah.

Basically any place with a magnetic lock, they can do that. It's actually the way any locksmith usually gets into an office or somewhere with a magnetic lock is they get a pole basically or something and they just wave it in front of the trigger and it opens it. So if you're considering a magnetic lock,

Don't do that. Get a double. That's all we got for my 10 seconds today. So let's hop into today's case. Our sources for this episode are Web of Death, Season 1, Episode 4, Cold Case Files, Season 2, Episode 26, NationalObserver.com, KTLA.com, ForensicMag.com, AETV.com, ScientificAmerican.com, VCDistrictAttorney.com, StoriesoftheUnsolved.com, The Cinemaholic, Bakersfield, VCstar.com, KernGoldenEmpire.com, and Wikipedia. My

I'm guessing this case is based in Bakersfield. Really? You said Bakersfield in the sources, so that's what I assume. That's around there. Okay. Are you doing a new thing where you listen now? Yeah, to the sources. Get little hints. Yeah, here and there. I know sometimes I just don't, I feel like it's important to say the sources, but sometimes I'm like, dang, it kind of gives away some things. Yeah, it's important though.

So by now, many of us have used or at least know of someone who's used sites like Ancestry.com to build out their family tree, maybe reconnect with a long lost cousin, see if they're related to a celebrity even. What most people don't expect to find is the answer to a decades old cold case just because they've uploaded their DNA.

Shockingly, the U.S. sees about 1,000 Jane or John Doe cases a year that remain unidentified. That's crazy. 1,000 people who are unidentified a year. But today, over 600 of those cases have been solved using investigative genetic genealogy through direct-to-consumer sites like Ancestry.com. 600 people have been identified.

However, this isn't always a perfect solution, primarily because genealogy sites like this are a privilege, not a necessity, meaning more marginalized communities don't have access to or don't want to provide information to commercialized sites like these, particularly those who are so rooted in oral tradition. I know a lot of people might disagree with this, and that's okay, but...

I'm fine giving my DNA to everybody just because I have nothing to hide. And if I could help catch someone, I'm like, ah, I'll just give it out. Well, this is the reason, though, why those who make up, honestly, the biggest murdered and missing populations in North America, the indigenous people community, weren't seeing results from investigative genetic genealogy until very recently. When in 2022, the process brought an indigenous woman who'd been missing for 40 years to

Home for the first time. So it's July 15th, 1980, the perfect summer's day in the Southern California town of Delano. That morning, a handful of irrigation workers showed up early for their shift on a local almond orchard. But as they took to their posts, one of them spotted something that left them shaking. A woman was lying in the middle of the field. She was curled up in the fetal position, presumably asleep.

But as the worker got closer, he realized she was covered in blood. And when he saw she wasn't moving or breathing, he knew it was time to call the police.

Within the hour, the Kern County Sheriff's Department was already swarming the scene, and after questioning the other workers, it was clear there were no witnesses. The crime likely happened sometime in the middle of the night, and since the victim was left with no jewelry, no purse, and no ID, it was clear this wasn't going to be a quick case to solve. Which is so true, if you can't even identify the victim of a murder, how do you even go about investigating that murder? Yeah, that's a good point, actually. I feel like...

Wouldn't you just have to, you couldn't do anything? No, you could maybe follow forensics, but if there's nothing, that can only get you so far. Interesting. So there were a few pieces of evidence for police to work off, though. Near her body was a half-smoked pack of cigarettes, an empty bottle of beer, and some tire tracks.

But there were no footprints in sight, almost as if she'd been pushed out of a moving vehicle. The woman herself was still fully clothed with multiple stab wounds in her chest. She was wearing a pink top, blue jeans and pristine white sneakers that didn't appear to have a speck of dirt or blood on them.

which told detectives that their victim had likely been killed somewhere else, probably in a lying down position where blood couldn't drip onto her shoes, like gravity wasn't there. So after bringing the victim in for an autopsy, officials determined her to be between 30 and 35 years old of either Hispanic or indigenous descent.

She had been stabbed over 28 times in the chest with a series of defensive wounds on her hands that showed she had tried to fight off her attacker. There was also evidence that she had been sexually assaulted. And on top of that, the woman seemed to have been intoxicated at the time of her death with a 0.3% blood alcohol content. Now remember, if you blow anything over a 0.08%, you could get a DUI. So 0.3 is pretty significant.

Luckily, pathologists also found a few different clues that could help narrow down her identity. For example, she had a scar on her behind, one on her left thigh, and another four-inch mark on her stomach.

leading officials to believe that she had at least one child through a C-section. On top of that, she had two pretty unique tattoos, a heart on her lower left arm that had the word Shirley written in the center of it with the words love you on top and Seattle on the bottom. So love you, Shirley in the heart, Seattle.

The second was of a rose on her upper left arm that read, Mother on top and I love you on the bottom. So the Kern County police figured they have some pretty good identifying features to at least kick off their search with. Like they can get this out to the news and then see if anyone recognizes her. However, they had no idea that three days later, a similar crime would be reported again.

about 130 miles away. That's kind of far, actually. So on the afternoon of July 18th, 1980, at around 1235 p.m., a janitor from Westlake High School in Thousand Oaks, California, discovered a similarly gruesome site. There, on a dirt hill near the school's parking lot, was the body of a woman, again of either Hispanic or Indigenous descent.

The janitor called the Ventura County Sheriff's Department who, after arriving, determined the woman had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest. Her shoes had been tossed up onto the hillside and smeared blood on the pavement indicated she had been dragged out of a vehicle and left here after her death.

Again, she had no purse, no ID. And after interviewing multiple people on the high school campus, no one admitted to seeing anything useful. So Ventura County PD brought her in for an autopsy, completely oblivious that just three days before a nearly identical crime had happened up in Kern County.

So like Jane Doe Kern, which is our first victim in this case, this victim, who we will refer to as Jane Doe Ventura, was around 25 to 30 years of age. They were about the same height and build. She'd been stabbed 16 times with defensive wounds also covering her hands, and she'd been sexually assaulted. Even more heartbreaking, they determined that this victim had been about 20 weeks pregnant at the time of her death. Oh my gosh.

Again, being stabbed so many times. Yeah. And while she had a few moles and scars, nothing was quite as distinguishable as the marks on the victim in Kern, which meant finding out who this woman was would prove even harder. And remember, this is the 1980s, which means evidence collection is limited. There are no DNA databases like we have today. They do pull fingerprints off of Jane Doe Ventura, but after scanning them through several states, nothing comes back a hit.

And after drawing a sketch of the victim and questioning locals about her possible identity, detectives in Ventura hit a dead end on their Jane Doe. However, the detectives up north in Kern County were having a little bit more luck. When Jane Doe Kern's fingerprints also produced no results, they passed the information on to police in Seattle because of her tattoo. Remember, it said Seattle on it.

Problem was, she didn't fit the description of any missing persons cases in that area either. Thinking she might have been a migrant worker, police also combed nearby farms, questioning anyone and everyone willing to speak with them. They also put out a public appeal with her sketch to see if anyone might flip on the TV and recognize the woman. And that's when the Kern County Sheriff's Department finally got a hit.

One woman called to ask if the person in the sketch also had a tattoo, one with the words Shirley and Seattle written on it. Now, this was a detail police hadn't included in their media statement. So they knew this lead was obviously worth pursuing. And when they speak to this witness, she says their Jane Doe might be a waitress in a bar out in Bakersfield about a half hour away. So the waitress's name, she believed, was Becky Ochoa.

Now, you'd think this would be a massive lead, right? Like they probably just identified their Jane Doe. But even pulling at this thread gets them nowhere. They start searching for Becky Ochoa's in the area, but there aren't any that are reported missing or that match the identity of their Jane Doe. Wait, I'm confused. So someone says they recognize her and they know who it is.

but the police can't do anything with that information? They say they think her name is Becky Ochoa, but when police go searching for Becky Ochoa records, there's no one, which means this could be a fake name. This could be like an assumed identity. Okay, got it. But they have... I guess we're back in the 80s, right? As well as not social media or anything. Okay, got it. While I never came across it in my research, I would imagine police also went to bars in the area to inquire about her. Like, hey...

Did Becky work here? But if they did, it never got them anywhere. And over the next several months of searching for Jane Doe Kern, no one calls to report a missing woman with the same description.

As a last straw, police go around to different tattoo shops in the area to see if anyone recognizes the woman's ink. So they have this Becky name, but they're not even sure that is their woman. So one artist in Kern County says it looks like a style that's frequently done in Los Angeles's Skid Row and Jane Doe might have gotten it there.

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So without anywhere else to turn to and still no idea that there's another Jane Doe who was killed with a similar MO 130 miles away, each department kind of moves on from their investigations with their Jane Doe. If they can't identify their victim, they've really got nothing to go on. They each box up what little evidence they have, and each county respectively buries their Jane Does in anonymous graves, which is where the woman will remain for the next two decades.

But in 2004, there's a major bill passed by California voters called Prop 69. This is the DNA Fingerprint Unsolved Crime and Innocence Protection Act. Essentially, the law now requires every previously convicted felon to give a sample of their DNA for a national database. Wow, so that wasn't a thing before? Nope.

And going forward, that also includes anyone who's simply arrested for felony crimes like burglary, sexual assault, and murder. They now have to give their DNA, which, again, you would think it's so common now that you have to give your DNA, your fingerprints. I give my finger... We gave our fingerprints recently for...

I think it was like TSA Travel or something. Yeah. Like I feel like you give them for so many reasons now. So around the same time, Kern County is establishing a cold case unit where they plan to re-examine old Jane Doe cases. So this is just in true crime. You will see that we go through this period where things are obviously progressing and then a lot of units also start to say, well,

Well, with things progressed as they have, maybe we should start looking at cold cases and try to solve them with the stuff we have now. 100%, yeah. So come 2008, they finally unpack that 1980 case of their Jane Doe Kern No. 5, the woman they found in the almond orchard.

Now, with DNA analysis on the rise and this new bill passed, they decide, why not send some of the victim's clothing out for analysis, compare it against this new system that Prop 69 had designed, and see if any convicted felons might have left something behind on her clothes. And shockingly, they get a hit.

Wow. DNA found in Jane Doe Kern's panties are a match with a convicted felon named Wilson Schuist. Could you imagine that? Could you imagine being in jail? New technology comes out. You think you've gotten away with this. Yep. And all of a sudden you're like, oh no. I guess if he's already in jail for, does it say what he's in jail for already? But if he's already in jail for exorcism.

x and x maybe he doesn't care anymore if he's there for life but well he was actually in jail for like kidnapping robbery and sexual assault so not necessarily murder but he's gonna be there for a long time yeah okay um okay so here's the thing this is so funny you bring that up because i was just thinking about how when dna became a thing right a bunch of

killers who thought they had gotten away with it were probably pooping their pants. Like, oh my gosh, they might test this DNA and find me. So I was just thinking the other day, do you think killers now, this new wave, is that they think, oh my gosh, some stupid podcast is going to look into this murder and then possibly pull my name up and might get police to reinvestigate? Because we've seen that. Your Own Backyard, The Terror Grin Side to Case. Like, a lot of podcasts have actually...

I don't. Urged police to relook into these cases. I don't think so. I think, I think in reality they, I mean, if you're really a killer, I think they're not thinking like that. I think they have. I hope not. I think they have too big of an ego. They probably don't even care. They're like, I'm never going to get caught.

I'd be surprised if they're like, oh, those podcasts out there. But I don't know. I could be wrong. Maybe they listen to the podcast. I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for that meddling podcast. I don't know. Maybe they listen to podcasts. Maybe they are scared. I just feel like if you're really a killer like that, your state of mind is, I don't know, I would like to say like just weird, just completely different than...

- Right, because if it was me, in my mind, anytime the case got brought up that I was involved with, say I'd killed someone and that case got brought up, whether on the news, on a podcast, on a documentary, any press would not be good. 'Cause you'd be like, I just want everyone to forget about it, you know?

So they find Wilson's DNA. And at the time, Wilson was a former U.S. vet who'd been discharged for heroin problems. And he was serving a life sentence in a state prison. And again, those were kidnapping, robbery and sexual assault charges. So when current police hear he's a match, they figure, OK, this has got to be our guy. Like he's already in prison for life.

Because not only was he out of prison and on parole in July of 1980, DNA analysis just doesn't lie. Although for some reason, they don't confront Wilson about the crime right away. They look for more evidence to build a case against him. And shockingly, in 2012, there's another DNA match against Wilson's shoeist. It comes from the underwear they found on...

Jane Doe Ventura County. Got it. So, I mean, at this point, open and shut, right? Right. You've got two murders, same MO, and now two of the same DNA. Okay. And it's only then that these two police departments realize, oh my gosh, they were dealing with extremely similar cases days apart from one another. It takes them this long to draw this realization. Yeah.

and Wilson's shoeist was likely to blame for both of these murders. So now, police are ready to confront Wilson about the two homicides, and they feel like this might be their best chance to find out the respective identities of their Jane Does. When detectives finally sit down with Wilson for an interview, it's September 2013, and they begin showing him pictures of different crimes to see how he reacts. And at first, they show him a few that they know he didn't commit, asking if he can offer any details.

All of this is just to build a sort of rapport with Wilson, who says he knows nothing. He was in jail when the crimes in those first two images occurred, which is true. But then they show him a picture of Jane Doe Ventura.

And Wilson's shoeist can barely look at it. And same goes for the image they show him of Jane Doe Kern. That's insane. Obviously, Wilson denies both of the crimes, refusing to admit he had anything to do with them. This is despite them telling Wilson, well, that's weird because we found your DNA at each crime scene. But unfortunately, this isn't the smoking gun you'd think it is. There's still a case to be made that Wilson just had intercourse with these women before they were killed. What are the chances of...

on both of them. I totally agree, but the fence is obviously going to do this. Yes, 100%. So it doesn't exactly prove that he was the one who wielded the knife. So all right, they figure he's not going to confess to anything today. We have our suspect though. So let's see what else we can dig up on this guy from around that time. If he's already in prison for life, why does he

Like, just admit to it. Right. So you can save them money, time. You can save the families more heartbreak. Yeah. I don't understand. So, and that's when police stumble upon a wild story. One that doesn't look good for Wilson Schuist. See, during the months of June and July 1980, Wilson was actually out on parole. We already said that. And at the time, he was living with a family called the Bells, a woman that he'd met through a pen pal program at the prison.

But come mid-July, Carolyn Bell, a single mom, had to leave town for work. And she left her three young sons in the care of Wilson Schuess, her pen pal that she met from prison. Now, when she comes back to town, she tells Wilson it's time for him to find his own place. She kicks him out of her home for whatever reason. But about two weeks later, she goes to get the vacuum when her oldest son stops her. He says, Mom, you might not want to use that.

And when she asks why, he says, well, while she was gone, Wilson disappeared for a day or two, only to return saying he'd hit a deer with his car, so he had to get rid of it. So he put it in the trunk, which was now covered in blood. And then he made Carolyn's boys vacuum the blood out of the trunk. That was extremely smart of the kid to say not to use it. But also, as a mom, you're like,

He disappeared. He comes back with blood in his trunk and then he made you, my boys, that clean it up? Well, the upside is the boys thought it was a deer, which obviously we're going to get to the point where we know it's not a deer. You know what? I'm almost glad that they believed him. Yeah. But also he's like, mom, mom, don't use that. There's blood all over. Yeah. Okay. So this happens, right? Like the son, one of the sons is like, hey, don't use the vacuum. There's blood. And, um,

And obviously Carolyn starts interrogating her boys. She's like, I need to know more about this. What do you guys know? What was the blood like? Blah, blah, blah. And at this point, this is when one of her boys, her oldest boy says, actually, I know more about this that I've been keeping a secret.

Apparently, a few days later, after the boys cleaned up the blood, Wilson confessed to Carolyn's oldest son, Scott, that he had lied to them and that it wasn't a deer in the trunk. It was a woman.

He'd picked her up in a bar in Bakersfield, took her out to the country and killed her. Then he dumped her body in the middle of nowhere. So detectives don't need much more than that. The Bell's testimony lines up perfectly with the timeline of the two Jane Doe crimes that mid-July. I do have to say, though, Carolyn knew that her oldest son had said it was a woman and never went to police. Yeah. About Wilson.

Not saying like it's just it's just I had to point it out. Yeah, for sure. Maybe she was scared of him or didn't believe or didn't believe whatever. So by September 1980, Wilson was already back behind bars for another felony charge, which he'd been facing time for ever since. So in 2015, they take the case to the D.A. and Wilson's shoeist is charged with the sexual assault of both women, as well as three counts of murder.

one for each Jane Doe, and then also Jane Doe Ventura's unborn child. So on October 1st, 2015, the now 63-year-old Wilson, although still serving his previous sentence, is arrested for these new charges, but it takes another three years for him to have his day in court.

So in May 2018, Wilson finally stood before the jury and pleaded not guilty to these crimes. And not only did Carolyn and her other son Patrick testify against Wilson, there's several other women who survived his attacks that come forward to tell their stories as well. He pleaded not guilty to all of them, even the sexual assault? Yes. How stupid can you be? Like his DNA is literally... Well, he's going to say it was consensual.

Ah, got it. Okay, duh. So they also proved that not only was Wilson's DNA found in both women's underwear, it was also found underneath both of their fingernails. Oh, come on, man. Again, they're going to say it was. What an idiot. Yeah. So, and it was also found on the beer bottle left at the scene with Jane Doe Kern, which is a little bit almost stronger because how do you talk away a beer bottle that's left by a dead body? Totally.

So with all of this evidence stacked against him, Wilson's defense falls apart. He's found guilty for the murders of both Jane Does. He is, however, found not guilty for the third count for killing Jane Doe Ventura's unborn child. And that's just because the laws in place during this time of the crime were a bit different. Still, on top of his existing sentence, Wilson was given life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The DA considers this a huge win for several reasons. One, because when you're dealing with a Jane Doe, you don't have the faces of the victim's loved ones staring back at you in the courtroom, which means it can be hard for the jury to connect with the victim emotionally. Like they don't have a name. Yeah. But that wasn't the case here. When they wrapped up

the trial, a few members of the jury said that hearing the case was one of the most important things they'd ever done in their lives, simply because these two women had no one there advocating for them outside of their attorneys. So with no family and no concrete identity, the jurors felt an even bigger responsibility to the victims.

And I think they served these women well, but it still doesn't solve the biggest problem, which is that the identity of these two women still remains a mystery. Their case is solved, but still no one knows who they are. Wait, I totally forgot about that part. Because he's pleading not guilty, so he's not going to say where he met them, who they were, nothing. And no family, no one's come to claim? Is that not weird? A little.

So in July 2018, after his sentencing, police paid one final visit to Wilson in hopes that, okay, now that you've, you know, been convicted, can you just give us something about these women's identities? And this is what they learned. He did pick up Jane Doe Kern at a bar, but he says it was in the town of Hanford. He also says he found Jane Doe Ventura hitchhiking in a town called Visalia.

Apparently, though, he never learned their names. So with Wilson becoming another dead end in the investigation, officials decided to turn to a new method, one that hadn't been there for them back in 1980 when they were first investigating this crime. So they reached out to an organization called the DNA Doe Project. Also interesting to me that none of the bars or wherever any of these people worked claimed, oh, they didn't come to work.

They're not here anymore. Why would you? Again, when I was doing my research, I never saw anything that police even went and talked to the bars. I'm just assuming that they did. Like, yeah, why would you not say, oh, so-and-so didn't come to work?

Right. Like after you saw someone is missing. I don't know. It seems strange to me. So the DNA Doe Project or DDP is a volunteer group that uses genetic genealogy to solve the identities of Jane and John Does. And the volunteers pride themselves on not giving up on a case until it's solved. Whether that means taking 10 or 10,000 hours, they're keeping the file open.

So back in 2018, they teamed up with law enforcement who handed over a piece of the blood-stained blouse that Jane Doe Kern was wearing at the time of her death. And while it had been decades and the evidence was starting to degrade, they managed to pull a sample off of it. After which, the DDP ran the results through their database. And they found something that was pretty revealing. Let's hear it.

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Jane Doe Kern descended from the Indigenous First Nations people in Canada. Wow. But they only find 19 possible connections along her entire family tree.

Which is minuscule compared to the hits someone with, say, European ancestry might receive. And that's just because the indigenous communities were one of the least represented in these databases. A lot of that is due to the fact that these groups prefer to pass down their family history orally. Some even have ethical prohibitions against the collection of DNA, particularly on the deceased. Okay.

I didn't know that. Interesting. Plus, they're wary of sharing that kind of information with the masses and the government for completely understandable reasons. I think a lot of people feel that way. But as I mentioned, the DDP wasn't going to give up until they found her. While it took some time, they eventually located the victim's grandfather and they discovered Jane Doe Kern was

was likely born and raised in an area of Alberta, Canada called Maskwacis, home to several Indigenous groups, including members of the Samson Cree Nation. But the lead kind of stopped there. So in 2020, the DDP used a familiar tool to connect to more people in the Maskwacis community.

They posted a sketch of Jane Doe Kern on a few Facebook groups geared toward the indigenous people in that area. And by the end of 2020, they received a hit. So 40 years later-ish. Yeah. A Cree woman named Violet Suse reached out claiming she'd been searching for her aunt Shalini.

Shirley since 1980 and she believed it might be her. Holy crap. By April 2021, Violet had uploaded her own DNA to the DDP database and when tested against Jane Doe Kern, it proved to be a match. Jane Doe Kern County was finally identified as a Cree woman named Shirley Susei.

The DDP was right about a few things. After she was born in 1945, Shirley did grow up on the Samson Cree Reservation in Maskwacis, Canada. In fact, she was one of eight children who, for the most part, had a pretty traditional upbringing. Her father had a ranch along the river, which Shirley helped with by tending to the horses and the cattle.

Meanwhile, her mother was a bead worker who designed some of traditional clothing. But in 1959, when her father died from an unexpected illness, things got more difficult for the family. Trying to maintain the ranch proved to be challenging as the family's income started to decline.

And without too many places offering steady employment on the reservation, Shirley decided it would be best if she went to the nearby city of Edmonton to find some work and send cash back to her family. Got it. So that's what she was doing. So in her early 20s, Shirley did just that, finding some work at an Edmonton catering business part-time. And on the off days, she'd return home to visit her family on the reservation, spending her free time with her young niece, Violet, who would go on to later identify her.

But according to Violet, Shirley preferred spending time out in the city. And in the 1970s, Shirley set off for Vancouver to see what opportunities might await her there. Fortunately, it wasn't the glamorous path that she'd probably imagined for herself. There she met a man who became her husband. They had two boys together, but the marriage didn't last long.

When Shirley tried to leave with the boys, her husband called the authorities and made false accusations of abuse and mistreatment. Before long, Shirley's children were taken from her and placed in a foster home. Oh my gosh, and then she gets murdered as well? That's horrible. And I just want to point out that this was a problem that was somewhat rampant in those days. Not just the fact that the authorities didn't listen to or really respect the accounts of Indigenous women, but there were also a lot of Indigenous children who were being ripped from their homes. I mean, we know this.

Under the guise of you'll have a better life with this family. Which is an episode for another day but you can imagine how devastating this was for Shirley. Out here in the big city trying to chase her dreams of simply making an honest living and suddenly her children are ripped away and her husband has left her to fend for herself. Which doesn't leave Shirley with many options so she finds herself living on the streets of Vancouver turning to drugs and alcohol at this time.

When Shirley came back to the reservation to visit in 1975, Violet said she didn't seem like herself. Shirley's mother begged her to just stay home, telling her she should, quote, stay in one place now because nobody will know you. But in Shirley's mind, that wasn't an option. Violet did give her some advice, though. She said if you keep moving around, you should at least get a tattoo, maybe something with your name on it.

A suggestion that Shirley clearly took years later. The question was, did Shirley's mother have some sort of premonition that something would happen to her daughter? Or perhaps she just understood how dangerous the world really was. Either way, Shirley went back to Vancouver, coming and going over the next few years until 1977 when she made her final trip back to the reservation. This time for her brother, Violet's father's funeral.

During that visit, she told her family she never wanted to come back again and was instead headed to the United States, particularly Seattle, to start a new life. Which is why she had the I love Seattle. For the next two years, Shirley continued to write home, sending Christmas and birthday cards to her loved ones, never missing a beat.

But then in December of 1979, they stopped. There were no Christmas cards that year. Nothing came when it was time for her mother's birthday in March of 1980. And that's when Shirley's family began to worry that something was seriously wrong. Now, I need to mention that her family did search for her like extensively, but it just never led back to Jane Doe.

And as the years passed, Violet, her niece, became interested in true crime, wondering if there might be a solution hidden somewhere in the true crime genre. And around 2018, a true crime show featured an image that sent a chill down her spine. It looked like a Cree woman, possibly her missing aunt. But when the program mentioned the woman's name was Becky Ochoa, Violet figured, okay, well, I'm just grasping at straws. They've obviously identified this woman. So...

She hits the dead ends. But then in 2020, she joins a Facebook group and finds that picture of Becky Achoya again. And she's like, OK, it looks like my aunt, but it's obviously not her. But then this Facebook group also had the picture of the tattoos. And on it, it said Shirley. And she was at a loss for words because this really, really could be her missing aunt. And obviously it was.

Which is a horrible way to find out. Horrible. Yeah. So in May 2022, Shirley's body was brought back to Maskwacis where she was given a proper funeral and burial. After 43 years, Shirley was finally home. And although hers has an ending, the identity of Jane Doe Ventura has never been uncovered. I forgot about that. But the DDP has never stopped looking. They're still trying to find her family. It seems so interesting in 2024 that no one's

It's claimed still. In fact, her DNA testing revealed she was primarily of indigenous descent with a mix of Hispanic, Caucasian and Asian ancestry. She her family could be out of the country. Who knows? Exactly. But thanks to organizations like the DDP, there is a lot more hope nowadays when it comes to returning a missing loved one home.

So yes, while Shirley Suse was the first Indigenous woman to be identified using investigative genetic genealogy, she certainly wasn't the last. In 2023, the remains of a missing Indigenous woman named Daisy Mae Tallman were identified and brought home to her family, which means there's still hope that Jane Doe Ventura and dozens of other missing and murdered Indigenous women may one day see these same results.

But for now, that is the story of Shirley Suse and Jane Doe Ventura. Obviously, check out the photos in this case, and if you have any information, reach out. I know we say it all the time, but oh my gosh, what a step in the right direction DNA became for the true crime genre. All right, you guys, that is our case for this week, and we will see you next time with another episode. I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye.