August 19, 2024 • 33 mins
The Girlfriends’ Guide, hosted by Producer Anna Sinfield, is a three part mini series where we lay out how you can solve crimes and keep your girlfriends safe.
We dive back into our archive of never heard before interviews, break down real life case studies and give tangible tips on how you can do it yourself.
In this episode we uncover how to identify an unidentified person. Together, Anna and The Girlfriends’ Assistant Producer, Madeleine Parr, reveal the methods they used to solve a 35 year old cold case.
Relevant links:
The Girlfriends is produced by Novel for iHeartRadio.
For more from Novel visit novel.audio
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Novel.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hello.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
I'm Annasinfield, the producer of The Girlfriends, and I'm here
taking over the mic because I wanted to do something
that's very close to my heart and the philosophy of
the show. When we set out to make The Girlfriends,
I insisted on providing concrete resources for any listeners who
may relate to the hard topics that we cover. It's
(00:32):
why we always partner with relevant charities, So if you're
triggered or inspired by something we've mentioned, you've got somewhere
legitimate to go for advice. But I've also done a
lot of behind the scenes work to make sure that
we actually know what we're talking about. You know, from
boots on the ground reporting, intensive investigations, and countless conversations
(00:52):
with experts, you probably only hear about one percent of
the things that I get to learn during the production
of the podcast, and.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I want to pass some of it on.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
So let me introduce you to The Girlfriend's Guide, a
mini series where I lay out how you can solve
crimes and keep your girlfriends safe. We'll dive back into
our archive of never heard before interviews, break down real
life case studies, and give tangible tips on how you
can do it yourself. Oh and just a quick heads up,
(01:24):
we'll be discussing murder and acts of violence in this
episode from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts. You're
listening to The Girlfriend's Guide, Episode one, How to Identify
a dough. I feel like I need to say something
(01:54):
before we kick off. It's not normal for an everyday
person to attempt to identify a dough, but lately I've
noticed that more and more citizen sleuths are plugging the
gaps left behind by law enforcements, dwindling resources, or, let's
face it, lack of interest. It is estimated that four
(02:17):
hundred unidentified bodies are found each year in the United States,
and around one thousand of those people are still unidentified
a year later, which means, sadly, cases build up and
get forgotten. Today, there are over fourteen thousand unidentified bodies
on NamUs, which is the US database for missing and
(02:38):
unidentified people. Giving someone back their name is important. We
spoke about that a lot on the Girlfriends But before
we get stuck in, I want to ask you to
act with caution. Identifying someone who's been resigned to a
cold case is obviously a very caring and hard thing to.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Do when you don't know who they are.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
But the fact is someone does at some point along
the way, you might be tempted to contact their family
and friends to help connect the dots for you. This
may have become a challenge to be solved, but every
new hope or reminder can be devastating for the people
on the other side, So tread lightly on people's lives.
(03:18):
Something you need to ask yourself is why am I
doing this? And that is a really complex ethical question. Ultimately,
you just have to be considerate, think about if it's
appropriate to approach victims' families, and also then how you
would do it Instead, I'd recommend approaching the authorities first
so they can help you prove the connection before the
(03:38):
family is informed. All Right, ethics briefly covered, let's get
to it. So if you do find yourself interested in
a case involving an unidentified person, what do you do
and how do you identify them? Let's use an example
(03:58):
that I've come to know really well well, the case
of Heidie Bulch from season two of The Girlfriends. If
you listen to the series, then you know that Heidi
was identified twenty four years after her remains were discovered,
but for a long time, the detectives really only had
the information from the initial police reports to go off,
which reads like some.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Sort of murder mystery novel.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Here is my Canadian friend pretending to be an American
detective reading a summation of the police report.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
March nineteen eighty nine, two golfers discover a woman's head
on a golf course in Hopewell Township, New Jersey, sixty
five miles down from New York. A short while later,
her legs were discovered in a wooded area sixty five
miles away. A post mortem confirms that she was white,
blond hair, blue eyes, and matching blue eyeshadow line. She
(04:52):
has a couple of distinctive features, including a maul and scars.
Her estimated age is around twenty to thirty. The legs
are officially linked to the head via DNA analysis. No
arms or torso are found.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
In the first few weeks of the investigation into what
would one day be known as Heidi's remains, the detectives
tried everything. They put out nationwide requests asking for information
on any missing person.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
That would fit her description.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
They made flyers, they held press conferences, interviewed families of
people who thought the remains could belong.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
To their loved one.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Those were the textbook things that detectives would do back
in the eighties when working on a live case with
an unidentified body and an unknown killer. But none of
it worked and eventually the case went cold. By the
time the case was reopened in the twenty tens, there
(05:51):
were new options available, and that is when things really
started to heat up. An incredibly useful new resource available
to the investigators the National Missing and Unidentified Person's System
aka NamUs in the States.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Me and my.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Assistant producer Maddie use this a lot on the Girlfriends,
and Maddie is brilliantly wonderfully here joining me to explain
how you can also use NAMOUS to help with the
Doe case.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
So, hey, Maddie, Hello Anna, Thanks.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
For having me tell me about NamUs. What actually is it?
Speaker 5 (06:25):
First of all, so NamUs is this amazingly vast database
in the US which includes the profiles of every currently
reported missing person and also every unidentified body. What's great
about NamUs is that it's used by government agencies like
(06:45):
the police and detectives, but also.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Anyone can access it.
Speaker 5 (06:49):
So if you are looking to identify your own dough,
this is an incredibly useful resource for you too.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
So what does it actually look like as a normal
service and just accessing this online?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
What do you see?
Speaker 5 (07:03):
What you're going to see is thousands and thousands of
profiles listed under missing people or on the unidentified body section.
It's basically a way of cataloging the profiles of every
single one of these people.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
And so you kind of would search via location, age,
that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
There's actually lots of different things. You can search by
date that people went missing, date that body was found,
estimated age, race, gender, So any small details that you
do have about your dough is something that you can
enter on there.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
And I think the idea is that every single unidentified case,
every single missing person's case, is meant to be listed.
Are there any instances when that doesn't happen? Theoretically No,
Every missing person who has been reported as missing will
be on there, and every unidentified dough will be on there.
(08:03):
An exception to this, and it's something that actually happened
in The Girlfriends Season two when we were looking for
our dough. We couldn't find a matching profile on NAMOUS
and this really confused us for a while, but it
was actually a massive clue. Basically, if someone's not listed
on there, it probably means that they have been identified.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Mmm, I know, I wish we knew that much much
earlier on.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
Yeah, we definitely thought maybe we were going crazy and
not searching it well enough. But no, that's another clue
that you can definitely include in your investigation.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And so you've got things like this government resource name US.
But there's also other databases for missing people and unidentified people,
aren't there?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, there are.
Speaker 5 (08:45):
There are a bunch of independent volunteer run projects like
the dough Network that we partnered with the Charlie Project.
There's also databases that focus on more specific groups of people,
like LGBTQ plus databases.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
There's one for people of color.
Speaker 5 (09:04):
And these have really been set up, I think in
response to some of the inaction that comes from government
agencies to serve a specific group which maybe hasn't got
the attention that they deserve from government resources.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Also in some cases just not having the expertise from
the communities involved to identify things that could be clear clues. Yeah, totally,
like someone's sexual orientation might not be listed on their
names missing profile, but that's something that could lead to
other clues about who they were. But what if you
(09:44):
can't find the doe's information on these databases just like us,
or you think there might be more information out there,
or perhaps you think you know who it could be
and you want to request extra information on their case.
Well that's when you can deploy every journalist's favorite tool,
the Freedom of Information Act request.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
After the break, we'll.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Tell you all about how to access information from the
authorities that just might solve your case.
Speaker 5 (10:32):
Fifth of December twenty twenty two. Hi, there, I'm a
journalist from the UK and I'm wondering if you might
be able to help me find out some information about
a body that was discovered.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
In nineteen eight.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
Fourth of January twenty twenty three, Hi, I hope you've
had a lovely holidays and a happy new year. I'm
just wondering if you've got anywhere with tracking down those records.
Ninth of January twenty twenty four did happy new year again.
I'm writing to let you know that it has now
been over a year since my initial request was sent
(11:06):
to you on the fifth of December twenty twenty two,
and we are yet to receive any progress at all
on these records.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Nothing's world.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
So, Maddie, that was a clip of you from season
two getting really annoyed at the medical examiners for not
responding to your Freedom of Information Act request. It's fair
to say you've filed a lot and also you've had
to deal with being disappointed a lot. How many times
do you think you've done a for a request for
the girlfriends alone?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, that really was.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
The tip of the iceberg, I think from my calculations.
In total, I filed about forty four freedom of information
requests and some of those were obviously the medical Examiner,
but then a lot of them were the NYPD, various courts,
the district attorney, basically anyone I could think of that
might have information.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
It was amazing we got so much information based off
these for requests. I mean, I'd like, I don't think
we would have solved this case if it wasn't for
all of your foyers.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
So you like really saved the day there. Oh, thanks, Nna.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
That makes me feel better about the hours I've sunk
into this.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
And the amount of moaning.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeahah.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
But I was thinking feoyer is something that's really standard
kind of bread and butter stuff for us, and it's
something that a lot of people probably have heard of,
but they maybe don't know what it actually is.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
So could you break that down for the listeners.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
So, FEYER stands for Freedom of Information Act. Sometimes it's
called FOIL as well, and then its freedom of information
law has been in place since nineteen sixty seven, and
it means that the public have a right to request
access to records from any federal agency, and those federal
(12:50):
agencies have to disclose any information requested unless it falls
under one of the nine exemptions, which protect things like
personal information or obviously national security.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
That's fair enough, Yeah, it's fair enough.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
It's described as a law that keeps citizens in the
know about their governments.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
In what context can that be useful in the identification
of a dough.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
To put it really simply, when you're trying to identify someone,
the more information you have about them, the more likely
you are to figure out who they are. And FOIL
requests are really good way of accessing more information that
wouldn't be immediately available on the Internet or elsewhere. So specifically,
there are some very useful things you could look for,
(13:37):
like post mortem records or medical examiner records in general
could tell you more about how someone died and give
other clues based on their estimated age or their medical records.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Police reports can also be really interesting.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
We managed to access a trove of police files from
the time that Heidi's body parts were found and she
was being treated as Jane Doe, and you just never
know what kind of clues you might get with something
like that. In those reports, we found out that Heidi
was wearing blue eyeshadow when she was found, and this
could be something that we could ask someone who knew
(14:14):
her and they could confirm that that's something she always wore,
for example. And it also allows you to see what
investigating might have already been done by law enforcement, so
then you can pull together your information with theirs and
see which leads you could follow next.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
This all sounds like obviously amazing in theory, but I
think when I first started out as a journalist, the
idea of doing a foyer felt like a sort of
mystical beast, and I wasn't quite sure how I should
be approaching it. So how do you literally file a
foyer request.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
It depends a lot on the department that you're requesting
information for, Okay, but there often are forms on a
website that are pretty straightforward and easy to follow an email.
If you're unsure, the best thing you can do is
call up a records department at the institution you're trying
to get information from and ask a nice person to
(15:11):
talk you through it slowly as if you're very stupid,
which is something that happened to me on multiple occasions,
has probably led to the success of us getting this information.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
I think like the big takeaway that I want to
make sure everyone has is that the point of foyers
is that they are so that normal people can, as
I think you said earlier, sort of like know what's
happening in government. And so I think what I'd really
like to instill in people is that it isn't some
sort of elitist exercise to file a foyer. It's something
(15:44):
that in theory, everybody should be able to do, and
it's your right to do. It's your right exactly.
Speaker 5 (15:50):
Having said that, there are definitely some hurdles in getting
information from foyer requests.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
A huge one is.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
The timeframe that they can take.
Speaker 5 (16:02):
It definitely varies by location and institution, but it can
sometimes take six months just to get a response. And
also what you can access is obviously limited. Often with
medical examiners records. For example, the full post mortem can
only be accessed by a relative of the deceased person,
which of course makes things really hard when you don't
(16:23):
even know who the person is. And whilst it's frustrating
that there's a lot you can't access, it's for really
good reason. But you just never know what you're going
to get back once you send a request, so it's
always always worth filing them just to see. And the
feeling of waiting six months to hear if you've got
(16:43):
access to some records and then seeing something in your
inbox is truly the greatest thrill I can imagine.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah, but also, you know, we're talking about kind of
sloothing around online if you think that something's a live
case or whatever. I think there's a lot of slothing
around online and in kind of archival resources that we
do things that kind of don't require foroyers. You know.
The very specific example bringing it back to Heidi is
that her case was actually eventually solved in part because
(17:14):
the serial killer, Joel Rifkin, confessed to the murder in
a book years later. And so you never know when
that stuff's going to appear or if it's already out there,
and you just need to kind of look for it.
And so we did a lot of that, didn't we we'
gleaned lots of information from articles and forums. Maddie, do
you have any tips for how people can use the web.
Speaker 5 (17:34):
It definitely involves a lot of lurking around on random websites.
The first thing is, if it's a contemporary case, there'll
probably be some articles about it online and those will
be easy to access.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
If it's a bit.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
Older, you might want to search on an online newspaper database.
These are quite often behind payballs, but most libraries tend
to let you use theirs for free. And then we
looked in some really random places and found some quite
useful information. Forums can be good. I remember we found
a message on a forum from years ago of someone
(18:11):
who said that they knew Heidi and were friends with her,
and that gave us some information about where we think
Heidi lived. But also Reddit is amazing. I love readit
so much. And once we finished season one, we actually
found a group of people on Reddit discussing who they
thought the torso might be. So it's a great way
(18:34):
to pull your information with other people. If you are
looking into this case, there is a really good chance
that someone else's and teaming together is only going to
give you more information and make your case stronger.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
As you know if you listen to our second season,
when Joel Rifkin admitted to Heidie's murder, he named the
dough as Susie, and that meant that suddenly the detectives
had something to cling onto, so they started searching for
missing persons reports and arrest reports for somebody called Susie. Ultimately,
this led them to finding a mugshot for a woman
(19:09):
called Susan Spencer that looked very similar to their.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Dough, Maddie.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
That's a very convoluted way of going about this, but
that's often the way when it comes to unidentified cases.
Are there any similar techniques that we could use to
help identify a dough?
Speaker 5 (19:25):
Yeah, definitely. I think NamUs again is really useful for this.
If you have an unidentified person, there's a quite high
likelihood that that person is missing from someone else and
hopefully they will have reported them as missing, so there
should be a profile on NamUs for that missing person.
(19:48):
And what you can do is take the information you
have about your dough, like when they were suspected to
have died, how old they are, their gender, their race,
and put those into a search of missing people and
see if anyone matches or it could be a possible
candidate for your dough. And you might not find just
(20:09):
one person who's an exact match, but it might come
up with a list of names that you can then
work to rule out.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
But you've got to be flexible as well, don't you,
in a bit like creative about it, because you know,
sometimes people will have really changed since they were registered
as a missing person, or they might have traveled to
a state that the person who filed that missing person's
report had no idea of and stuff like that.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
So with all these searches, it could get you closer
and it could give you ideas of who it could be,
but definitely take.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
It with a pinch of salt and keep a very
open mind.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
And then I guess the next thing is that sometimes
none of this works right, And that's something that happened
to us when we were trying to identify the Jane
Doe who ended up being Heidi from season one. We
kept reaching these dead and so at one point I
went full obsessive journalists and I started looking into killers
(21:06):
from the time to see if I could match the
case of our Jane Doe, you know how she was killed,
her age, and see if it matched up with a
killer's m o at points. In order to do this,
I even had a phone call with the criminal profiler.
And actually, what was kind of neat is I had
that phone call with a criminal profiler. They told me
(21:28):
a bunch of stuff, and then we received the Hope
Well police report where they also had got the FBI
to create a profile of the killer back in nineteen
eighty nine. And you got particularly into this, didn't you.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
I found this fascinating. Yeah, they asked.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
The FBI Behavioral Science Unit to create a profile of
the killer very early on in their investigation, where they
had so little to go on other than Heidi and
the state that she was found in. And what's really
really crazy about this now knowing about Joel Rifkin and
who he is, the details are a really close. So
(22:07):
some of the characteristics that they predicted this person would have.
They'd be a white male in their twenties or thirties, single,
living alone. They may have an occupation which involves travel,
like sales, a truck driver, or construction. They're educated, and
this is the one that actually gives me chills. They
(22:28):
may not have killed before, but they will kill again.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah, and I mean, obviously we now know that Heidi
was the first of what is predicted to have been
seventeen victims.
Speaker 5 (22:42):
Yeah, it's true, but it's also a really interesting and
useful way of looking at a case like this to
turn your attention to when you've reached a dead end
trying to look at information about the victim, to try
and think if you can find the person who did it,
and if that would help you identify this person.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Do you have kind of any other tips when it
comes to foyers and getting that sort of information from
authorities or I guess even the web.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
I would say my biggest tip is persistence. It's not
an easy and it's not a quick process, and you
will reach a lot of dead ends and rejections, but
it is so worth it for the small glimmers of
information that you do get.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
I would also say, befriend people.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
What you're coming up against is often a lot of
bureaucracy and a lot of people who, even though your
interest in this case is huge and finding out details
is really important to you, is just one of a
million other things they're doing. So if you can get
a friend on the inside or someone who recognizes who
you are and will help you, that's also going to
be really useful.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Yeah, and just always send that extra email to the
medical examiners. Okay, so we're at the point in the
investigation where you hopefully have a hunch as to who
your dough might be, like the Hopeworld detectives when they
discovered Susie Spencer's arrest report. When you make that connection,
(24:10):
like Maddie said, it is honestly one of the best
and most exciting feelings in the world. But what do
you do now and how do you prove it? That's
after the break, so you think you know who your
(24:42):
dough is, but proving it is an entirely different ballgame.
The first port of call is to contact the agency
like the police department who's handling the doe case and
the missing person's case if there is one. Maddie, how
do you go about doing that.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
The first thing to do would be look at name
and see if there is a detective or an agency
attached to the case, and there should also hopefully be
contact details, or you can just look at what jurisdiction
your case should probably come under, and then contact someone
at the police station there. A big tip for this
is when you do it, try and get someone's name
(25:21):
or someone that will check back in with you if
there are any new developments. Having a contact like that
means that you'll probably be able to stay updated on
the case, and that.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Was just more likely to help you.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
So once you've spoken to the detectives in charge of
the case, you do kind of need to leave it
with them and hope that they look into it. Detectives
will then investigate it further and if they think it's viable,
they can compare the DNA of the dough with a
family member of the missing person. This is actually what
the Hopeworld detectives did after they figured out that the
(25:52):
arrest record they found of Susan Spencer was actually listed
under a false name. They instead matched up the mugshot
with a missing person's photo of Heidi Bulch and then
they track down Heidie's family and compare the family's DNA
with the remains they found on the Hope Well golf
course in nineteen eighty nine. But there is another similar
(26:13):
route that deploys the use of DNA, and that's called
complicatedly genetic genealogy. Maddie, What does that actually mean and
how can you use it to identify a dough?
Speaker 5 (26:25):
Put simply, genetic genealogy is the combination of genetic analysis,
so looking at DNA and the study of family trees,
and then using pretty standard historical investigation to find out
more about that.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Okay, So if you were to kind of apply that
to an actual situation, So say you've found a dough,
what would people then do to try and study that
in a genetic genealogy sort of context.
Speaker 5 (26:55):
So what you could do is take the DNA data
from the dough and then enter it into a website
like twenty three in meters or another one of those
big genetic databases, and then you can see if there's
any matches. Obviously, in a dream world, a perfect match
with a parent would immediately appear and then you could
(27:17):
contact that person maybe and you have identified them, but
it could be a sibling.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
It could be a very distant relative.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
But what it might do is start to build out
a family tree, which you can then investigate through other
resources and get closer and closer to identifying who this
person is.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
I mean that sounds amazing, the idea that you can
just put some DNA data in and then, you know,
pop outcomes a bunch of relatives and you whittle your
way down into identifying the person. Other benefits outside of that,
you must get a lot of information from DNA.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
I think it can really help with narrowing down locations
that they're from. Further, might help you identify their ancestral homeland.
I mean the dream is that there are living relatives
and that they're people happy to speak to you, or
their people who you could find out more about and
then find out the identity of your dough.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
I guess one of the big downsides is that you
can only work with what's in the system, can't you.
It really relies on people having put their DNA data
into the system in the first place, so that there
can be connections.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5 (28:23):
I think, like so much of this research, it relies
on community participation. But there are a couple of other
drawbacks too. Another big one is concerns over privacy. Not
everyone feels comfortable uploading their DNA and for that information
to be owned by another website. Understandably, there's also the
(28:43):
testing isn't perfect, the results can sometimes be a little misleading.
But one of the biggest drawbacks is the costs. Actually,
at one point on Series two, we considered extracting some
DNA from Heidie's grave in Heart Island when thought she
was there, and not only did the thought that just
seem kind of prohibitively gruesome, but also it's incredibly expensive.
(29:09):
And this is something I would say isn't necessarily accessible
to just the average person trying to look into a case.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Yeah, and it's also just something that's quite hard to
do on your own, isn't it. And so I guess
like the one thing I would say there is, if
that is a route that you're wanting to go down,
there are volunteers at charities that specialize in this that
will genuinely be happy to help you out. They can't
take on every case, but people like DNA Doe do
(29:37):
this every single day. They're the charity that we partnered with,
and they're really great at responding to inquiries or just
like perhaps giving you some advice, so do reach out
to them. I hope our tips have been useful, But
the truth is there is no one way to identify
a dough. Each new clue will open up a new
(29:58):
rabbit hole to fall down, and you've just got to
dive in Alice in Wonderland style. Get obsessed with the
necklace and finding out where it's from. Fixate on the
location the dough was discovered, spend weeks pouring over small turns.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Of phrases in news reports from the time.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
When I was trying to solve our dough case from
seasons one and two. I was deep in those kinds
of rabbit holes for a year and a half. At
points I had to accept for my own sanity that
maybe I'd never know who she was, or perhaps I would,
but I'd never be able to prove it and share
her story.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
With listeners like you.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
It felt like it was only at the last moment,
when budgets were dwindling Faith was in crisis about to
put out a show with no resolution, that we actually
found the definitive proof that we needed. So my final
piece of advice to you is to just have some faith.
Sometimes new evidence can emerge and change everything, like that
(30:58):
confession from Joelrih. Sometimes one new contact will give you
access to materials that you've been trying to get for years.
That's what happened for us, So good luck until next time.
Hold your Girlfriend's Tight. The Girlfriend's Guide is produced by
(31:28):
Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit novel
dot Audio. This episode is produced and hosted by me
Anna Sinfield. Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr and we've
had some fantastic additional production by Lee Meyer, Leona Hamid,
and Zaiana Yusuf. Max O'Brien is our executive producer. Production
(31:49):
management from Shrie Houston and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing
and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander. Music supervision
by me Anna Sinfield and Nicholas Alexander. Original music composed
and performed by Louisa Gerstein and produced by Louisa Gerstein
and you guessed it Nicholas Alexander. The series artwork was
(32:11):
designed by Christina Limcool. Story development by me Ana Sinfield.
Willard Foxton is creative director our executive producers at iHeart
are Katrina Norvell.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
And Nicki Etour.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Special thanks to Ali Cantor, Carrie Lieberman, and Will Pearson
at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carl Frankel and the
whole team at WME. And special thanks to Daniel Laskrin
for putting on your best detective voice
Novel.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hello.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
I'm Annasinfield, the producer of The Girlfriends, and I'm here
taking over the mic because I wanted to do something
that's very close to my heart and the philosophy of
the show. When we set out to make The Girlfriends,
I insisted on providing concrete resources for any listeners who
may relate to the hard topics that we cover. It's
(00:32):
why we always partner with relevant charities, So if you're
triggered or inspired by something we've mentioned, you've got somewhere
legitimate to go for advice. But I've also done a
lot of behind the scenes work to make sure that
we actually know what we're talking about. You know, from
boots on the ground reporting, intensive investigations, and countless conversations
(00:52):
with experts, you probably only hear about one percent of
the things that I get to learn during the production
of the podcast, and.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I want to pass some of it on.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
So let me introduce you to The Girlfriend's Guide, a
mini series where I lay out how you can solve
crimes and keep your girlfriends safe. We'll dive back into
our archive of never heard before interviews, break down real
life case studies, and give tangible tips on how you
can do it yourself. Oh and just a quick heads up,
(01:24):
we'll be discussing murder and acts of violence in this
episode from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts. You're
listening to The Girlfriend's Guide, Episode one, How to Identify
a dough. I feel like I need to say something
(01:54):
before we kick off. It's not normal for an everyday
person to attempt to identify a dough, but lately I've
noticed that more and more citizen sleuths are plugging the
gaps left behind by law enforcements, dwindling resources, or, let's
face it, lack of interest. It is estimated that four
(02:17):
hundred unidentified bodies are found each year in the United States,
and around one thousand of those people are still unidentified
a year later, which means, sadly, cases build up and
get forgotten. Today, there are over fourteen thousand unidentified bodies
on NamUs, which is the US database for missing and
(02:38):
unidentified people. Giving someone back their name is important. We
spoke about that a lot on the Girlfriends But before
we get stuck in, I want to ask you to
act with caution. Identifying someone who's been resigned to a
cold case is obviously a very caring and hard thing to.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Do when you don't know who they are.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
But the fact is someone does at some point along
the way, you might be tempted to contact their family
and friends to help connect the dots for you. This
may have become a challenge to be solved, but every
new hope or reminder can be devastating for the people
on the other side, So tread lightly on people's lives.
(03:18):
Something you need to ask yourself is why am I
doing this? And that is a really complex ethical question. Ultimately,
you just have to be considerate, think about if it's
appropriate to approach victims' families, and also then how you
would do it Instead, I'd recommend approaching the authorities first
so they can help you prove the connection before the
(03:38):
family is informed. All Right, ethics briefly covered, let's get
to it. So if you do find yourself interested in
a case involving an unidentified person, what do you do
and how do you identify them? Let's use an example
(03:58):
that I've come to know really well well, the case
of Heidie Bulch from season two of The Girlfriends. If
you listen to the series, then you know that Heidi
was identified twenty four years after her remains were discovered,
but for a long time, the detectives really only had
the information from the initial police reports to go off,
which reads like some.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Sort of murder mystery novel.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Here is my Canadian friend pretending to be an American
detective reading a summation of the police report.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
March nineteen eighty nine, two golfers discover a woman's head
on a golf course in Hopewell Township, New Jersey, sixty
five miles down from New York. A short while later,
her legs were discovered in a wooded area sixty five
miles away. A post mortem confirms that she was white,
blond hair, blue eyes, and matching blue eyeshadow line. She
(04:52):
has a couple of distinctive features, including a maul and scars.
Her estimated age is around twenty to thirty. The legs
are officially linked to the head via DNA analysis. No
arms or torso are found.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
In the first few weeks of the investigation into what
would one day be known as Heidi's remains, the detectives
tried everything. They put out nationwide requests asking for information
on any missing person.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
That would fit her description.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
They made flyers, they held press conferences, interviewed families of
people who thought the remains could belong.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
To their loved one.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Those were the textbook things that detectives would do back
in the eighties when working on a live case with
an unidentified body and an unknown killer. But none of
it worked and eventually the case went cold. By the
time the case was reopened in the twenty tens, there
(05:51):
were new options available, and that is when things really
started to heat up. An incredibly useful new resource available
to the investigators the National Missing and Unidentified Person's System
aka NamUs in the States.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Me and my.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Assistant producer Maddie use this a lot on the Girlfriends,
and Maddie is brilliantly wonderfully here joining me to explain
how you can also use NAMOUS to help with the
Doe case.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
So, hey, Maddie, Hello Anna, Thanks.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
For having me tell me about NamUs. What actually is it?
Speaker 5 (06:25):
First of all, so NamUs is this amazingly vast database
in the US which includes the profiles of every currently
reported missing person and also every unidentified body. What's great
about NamUs is that it's used by government agencies like
(06:45):
the police and detectives, but also.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Anyone can access it.
Speaker 5 (06:49):
So if you are looking to identify your own dough,
this is an incredibly useful resource for you too.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
So what does it actually look like as a normal
service and just accessing this online?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
What do you see?
Speaker 5 (07:03):
What you're going to see is thousands and thousands of
profiles listed under missing people or on the unidentified body section.
It's basically a way of cataloging the profiles of every
single one of these people.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
And so you kind of would search via location, age,
that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
There's actually lots of different things. You can search by
date that people went missing, date that body was found,
estimated age, race, gender, So any small details that you
do have about your dough is something that you can
enter on there.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
And I think the idea is that every single unidentified case,
every single missing person's case, is meant to be listed.
Are there any instances when that doesn't happen? Theoretically No,
Every missing person who has been reported as missing will
be on there, and every unidentified dough will be on there.
(08:03):
An exception to this, and it's something that actually happened
in The Girlfriends Season two when we were looking for
our dough. We couldn't find a matching profile on NAMOUS
and this really confused us for a while, but it
was actually a massive clue. Basically, if someone's not listed
on there, it probably means that they have been identified.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Mmm, I know, I wish we knew that much much
earlier on.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
Yeah, we definitely thought maybe we were going crazy and
not searching it well enough. But no, that's another clue
that you can definitely include in your investigation.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And so you've got things like this government resource name US.
But there's also other databases for missing people and unidentified people,
aren't there?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, there are.
Speaker 5 (08:45):
There are a bunch of independent volunteer run projects like
the dough Network that we partnered with the Charlie Project.
There's also databases that focus on more specific groups of people,
like LGBTQ plus databases.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
There's one for people of color.
Speaker 5 (09:04):
And these have really been set up, I think in
response to some of the inaction that comes from government
agencies to serve a specific group which maybe hasn't got
the attention that they deserve from government resources.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Also in some cases just not having the expertise from
the communities involved to identify things that could be clear clues. Yeah, totally,
like someone's sexual orientation might not be listed on their
names missing profile, but that's something that could lead to
other clues about who they were. But what if you
(09:44):
can't find the doe's information on these databases just like us,
or you think there might be more information out there,
or perhaps you think you know who it could be
and you want to request extra information on their case.
Well that's when you can deploy every journalist's favorite tool,
the Freedom of Information Act request.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
After the break, we'll.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Tell you all about how to access information from the
authorities that just might solve your case.
Speaker 5 (10:32):
Fifth of December twenty twenty two. Hi, there, I'm a
journalist from the UK and I'm wondering if you might
be able to help me find out some information about
a body that was discovered.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
In nineteen eight.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
Fourth of January twenty twenty three, Hi, I hope you've
had a lovely holidays and a happy new year. I'm
just wondering if you've got anywhere with tracking down those records.
Ninth of January twenty twenty four did happy new year again.
I'm writing to let you know that it has now
been over a year since my initial request was sent
(11:06):
to you on the fifth of December twenty twenty two,
and we are yet to receive any progress at all
on these records.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Nothing's world.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
So, Maddie, that was a clip of you from season
two getting really annoyed at the medical examiners for not
responding to your Freedom of Information Act request. It's fair
to say you've filed a lot and also you've had
to deal with being disappointed a lot. How many times
do you think you've done a for a request for
the girlfriends alone?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, that really was.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
The tip of the iceberg, I think from my calculations.
In total, I filed about forty four freedom of information
requests and some of those were obviously the medical Examiner,
but then a lot of them were the NYPD, various courts,
the district attorney, basically anyone I could think of that
might have information.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
It was amazing we got so much information based off
these for requests. I mean, I'd like, I don't think
we would have solved this case if it wasn't for
all of your foyers.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
So you like really saved the day there. Oh, thanks, Nna.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
That makes me feel better about the hours I've sunk
into this.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
And the amount of moaning.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeahah.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
But I was thinking feoyer is something that's really standard
kind of bread and butter stuff for us, and it's
something that a lot of people probably have heard of,
but they maybe don't know what it actually is.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
So could you break that down for the listeners.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
So, FEYER stands for Freedom of Information Act. Sometimes it's
called FOIL as well, and then its freedom of information
law has been in place since nineteen sixty seven, and
it means that the public have a right to request
access to records from any federal agency, and those federal
(12:50):
agencies have to disclose any information requested unless it falls
under one of the nine exemptions, which protect things like
personal information or obviously national security.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
That's fair enough, Yeah, it's fair enough.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
It's described as a law that keeps citizens in the
know about their governments.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
In what context can that be useful in the identification
of a dough.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
To put it really simply, when you're trying to identify someone,
the more information you have about them, the more likely
you are to figure out who they are. And FOIL
requests are really good way of accessing more information that
wouldn't be immediately available on the Internet or elsewhere. So specifically,
there are some very useful things you could look for,
(13:37):
like post mortem records or medical examiner records in general
could tell you more about how someone died and give
other clues based on their estimated age or their medical records.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Police reports can also be really interesting.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
We managed to access a trove of police files from
the time that Heidi's body parts were found and she
was being treated as Jane Doe, and you just never
know what kind of clues you might get with something
like that. In those reports, we found out that Heidi
was wearing blue eyeshadow when she was found, and this
could be something that we could ask someone who knew
(14:14):
her and they could confirm that that's something she always wore,
for example. And it also allows you to see what
investigating might have already been done by law enforcement, so
then you can pull together your information with theirs and
see which leads you could follow next.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
This all sounds like obviously amazing in theory, but I
think when I first started out as a journalist, the
idea of doing a foyer felt like a sort of
mystical beast, and I wasn't quite sure how I should
be approaching it. So how do you literally file a
foyer request.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
It depends a lot on the department that you're requesting
information for, Okay, but there often are forms on a
website that are pretty straightforward and easy to follow an email.
If you're unsure, the best thing you can do is
call up a records department at the institution you're trying
to get information from and ask a nice person to
(15:11):
talk you through it slowly as if you're very stupid,
which is something that happened to me on multiple occasions,
has probably led to the success of us getting this information.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
I think like the big takeaway that I want to
make sure everyone has is that the point of foyers
is that they are so that normal people can, as
I think you said earlier, sort of like know what's
happening in government. And so I think what I'd really
like to instill in people is that it isn't some
sort of elitist exercise to file a foyer. It's something
(15:44):
that in theory, everybody should be able to do, and
it's your right to do. It's your right exactly.
Speaker 5 (15:50):
Having said that, there are definitely some hurdles in getting
information from foyer requests.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
A huge one is.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
The timeframe that they can take.
Speaker 5 (16:02):
It definitely varies by location and institution, but it can
sometimes take six months just to get a response. And
also what you can access is obviously limited. Often with
medical examiners records. For example, the full post mortem can
only be accessed by a relative of the deceased person,
which of course makes things really hard when you don't
(16:23):
even know who the person is. And whilst it's frustrating
that there's a lot you can't access, it's for really
good reason. But you just never know what you're going
to get back once you send a request, so it's
always always worth filing them just to see. And the
feeling of waiting six months to hear if you've got
(16:43):
access to some records and then seeing something in your
inbox is truly the greatest thrill I can imagine.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah, but also, you know, we're talking about kind of
sloothing around online if you think that something's a live
case or whatever. I think there's a lot of slothing
around online and in kind of archival resources that we
do things that kind of don't require foroyers. You know.
The very specific example bringing it back to Heidi is
that her case was actually eventually solved in part because
(17:14):
the serial killer, Joel Rifkin, confessed to the murder in
a book years later. And so you never know when
that stuff's going to appear or if it's already out there,
and you just need to kind of look for it.
And so we did a lot of that, didn't we we'
gleaned lots of information from articles and forums. Maddie, do
you have any tips for how people can use the web.
Speaker 5 (17:34):
It definitely involves a lot of lurking around on random websites.
The first thing is, if it's a contemporary case, there'll
probably be some articles about it online and those will
be easy to access.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
If it's a bit.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
Older, you might want to search on an online newspaper database.
These are quite often behind payballs, but most libraries tend
to let you use theirs for free. And then we
looked in some really random places and found some quite
useful information. Forums can be good. I remember we found
a message on a forum from years ago of someone
(18:11):
who said that they knew Heidi and were friends with her,
and that gave us some information about where we think
Heidi lived. But also Reddit is amazing. I love readit
so much. And once we finished season one, we actually
found a group of people on Reddit discussing who they
thought the torso might be. So it's a great way
(18:34):
to pull your information with other people. If you are
looking into this case, there is a really good chance
that someone else's and teaming together is only going to
give you more information and make your case stronger.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
As you know if you listen to our second season,
when Joel Rifkin admitted to Heidie's murder, he named the
dough as Susie, and that meant that suddenly the detectives
had something to cling onto, so they started searching for
missing persons reports and arrest reports for somebody called Susie. Ultimately,
this led them to finding a mugshot for a woman
(19:09):
called Susan Spencer that looked very similar to their.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Dough, Maddie.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
That's a very convoluted way of going about this, but
that's often the way when it comes to unidentified cases.
Are there any similar techniques that we could use to
help identify a dough?
Speaker 5 (19:25):
Yeah, definitely. I think NamUs again is really useful for this.
If you have an unidentified person, there's a quite high
likelihood that that person is missing from someone else and
hopefully they will have reported them as missing, so there
should be a profile on NamUs for that missing person.
(19:48):
And what you can do is take the information you
have about your dough, like when they were suspected to
have died, how old they are, their gender, their race,
and put those into a search of missing people and
see if anyone matches or it could be a possible
candidate for your dough. And you might not find just
(20:09):
one person who's an exact match, but it might come
up with a list of names that you can then
work to rule out.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
But you've got to be flexible as well, don't you,
in a bit like creative about it, because you know,
sometimes people will have really changed since they were registered
as a missing person, or they might have traveled to
a state that the person who filed that missing person's
report had no idea of and stuff like that.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
So with all these searches, it could get you closer
and it could give you ideas of who it could be,
but definitely take.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
It with a pinch of salt and keep a very
open mind.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
And then I guess the next thing is that sometimes
none of this works right, And that's something that happened
to us when we were trying to identify the Jane
Doe who ended up being Heidi from season one. We
kept reaching these dead and so at one point I
went full obsessive journalists and I started looking into killers
(21:06):
from the time to see if I could match the
case of our Jane Doe, you know how she was killed,
her age, and see if it matched up with a
killer's m o at points. In order to do this,
I even had a phone call with the criminal profiler.
And actually, what was kind of neat is I had
that phone call with a criminal profiler. They told me
(21:28):
a bunch of stuff, and then we received the Hope
Well police report where they also had got the FBI
to create a profile of the killer back in nineteen
eighty nine. And you got particularly into this, didn't you.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
I found this fascinating. Yeah, they asked.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
The FBI Behavioral Science Unit to create a profile of
the killer very early on in their investigation, where they
had so little to go on other than Heidi and
the state that she was found in. And what's really
really crazy about this now knowing about Joel Rifkin and
who he is, the details are a really close. So
(22:07):
some of the characteristics that they predicted this person would have.
They'd be a white male in their twenties or thirties, single,
living alone. They may have an occupation which involves travel,
like sales, a truck driver, or construction. They're educated, and
this is the one that actually gives me chills. They
(22:28):
may not have killed before, but they will kill again.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah, and I mean, obviously we now know that Heidi
was the first of what is predicted to have been
seventeen victims.
Speaker 5 (22:42):
Yeah, it's true, but it's also a really interesting and
useful way of looking at a case like this to
turn your attention to when you've reached a dead end
trying to look at information about the victim, to try
and think if you can find the person who did it,
and if that would help you identify this person.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Do you have kind of any other tips when it
comes to foyers and getting that sort of information from
authorities or I guess even the web.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
I would say my biggest tip is persistence. It's not
an easy and it's not a quick process, and you
will reach a lot of dead ends and rejections, but
it is so worth it for the small glimmers of
information that you do get.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
I would also say, befriend people.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
What you're coming up against is often a lot of
bureaucracy and a lot of people who, even though your
interest in this case is huge and finding out details
is really important to you, is just one of a
million other things they're doing. So if you can get
a friend on the inside or someone who recognizes who
you are and will help you, that's also going to
be really useful.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Yeah, and just always send that extra email to the
medical examiners. Okay, so we're at the point in the
investigation where you hopefully have a hunch as to who
your dough might be, like the Hopeworld detectives when they
discovered Susie Spencer's arrest report. When you make that connection,
(24:10):
like Maddie said, it is honestly one of the best
and most exciting feelings in the world. But what do
you do now and how do you prove it? That's
after the break, so you think you know who your
(24:42):
dough is, but proving it is an entirely different ballgame.
The first port of call is to contact the agency
like the police department who's handling the doe case and
the missing person's case if there is one. Maddie, how
do you go about doing that.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
The first thing to do would be look at name
and see if there is a detective or an agency
attached to the case, and there should also hopefully be
contact details, or you can just look at what jurisdiction
your case should probably come under, and then contact someone
at the police station there. A big tip for this
is when you do it, try and get someone's name
(25:21):
or someone that will check back in with you if
there are any new developments. Having a contact like that
means that you'll probably be able to stay updated on
the case, and that.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Was just more likely to help you.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
So once you've spoken to the detectives in charge of
the case, you do kind of need to leave it
with them and hope that they look into it. Detectives
will then investigate it further and if they think it's viable,
they can compare the DNA of the dough with a
family member of the missing person. This is actually what
the Hopeworld detectives did after they figured out that the
(25:52):
arrest record they found of Susan Spencer was actually listed
under a false name. They instead matched up the mugshot
with a missing person's photo of Heidi Bulch and then
they track down Heidie's family and compare the family's DNA
with the remains they found on the Hope Well golf
course in nineteen eighty nine. But there is another similar
(26:13):
route that deploys the use of DNA, and that's called
complicatedly genetic genealogy. Maddie, What does that actually mean and
how can you use it to identify a dough?
Speaker 5 (26:25):
Put simply, genetic genealogy is the combination of genetic analysis,
so looking at DNA and the study of family trees,
and then using pretty standard historical investigation to find out
more about that.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Okay, So if you were to kind of apply that
to an actual situation, So say you've found a dough,
what would people then do to try and study that
in a genetic genealogy sort of context.
Speaker 5 (26:55):
So what you could do is take the DNA data
from the dough and then enter it into a website
like twenty three in meters or another one of those
big genetic databases, and then you can see if there's
any matches. Obviously, in a dream world, a perfect match
with a parent would immediately appear and then you could
(27:17):
contact that person maybe and you have identified them, but
it could be a sibling.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
It could be a very distant relative.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
But what it might do is start to build out
a family tree, which you can then investigate through other
resources and get closer and closer to identifying who this
person is.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
I mean that sounds amazing, the idea that you can
just put some DNA data in and then, you know,
pop outcomes a bunch of relatives and you whittle your
way down into identifying the person. Other benefits outside of that,
you must get a lot of information from DNA.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
I think it can really help with narrowing down locations
that they're from. Further, might help you identify their ancestral homeland.
I mean the dream is that there are living relatives
and that they're people happy to speak to you, or
their people who you could find out more about and
then find out the identity of your dough.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
I guess one of the big downsides is that you
can only work with what's in the system, can't you.
It really relies on people having put their DNA data
into the system in the first place, so that there
can be connections.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5 (28:23):
I think, like so much of this research, it relies
on community participation. But there are a couple of other
drawbacks too. Another big one is concerns over privacy. Not
everyone feels comfortable uploading their DNA and for that information
to be owned by another website. Understandably, there's also the
(28:43):
testing isn't perfect, the results can sometimes be a little misleading.
But one of the biggest drawbacks is the costs. Actually,
at one point on Series two, we considered extracting some
DNA from Heidie's grave in Heart Island when thought she
was there, and not only did the thought that just
seem kind of prohibitively gruesome, but also it's incredibly expensive.
(29:09):
And this is something I would say isn't necessarily accessible
to just the average person trying to look into a case.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Yeah, and it's also just something that's quite hard to
do on your own, isn't it. And so I guess
like the one thing I would say there is, if
that is a route that you're wanting to go down,
there are volunteers at charities that specialize in this that
will genuinely be happy to help you out. They can't
take on every case, but people like DNA Doe do
(29:37):
this every single day. They're the charity that we partnered with,
and they're really great at responding to inquiries or just
like perhaps giving you some advice, so do reach out
to them. I hope our tips have been useful, But
the truth is there is no one way to identify
a dough. Each new clue will open up a new
(29:58):
rabbit hole to fall down, and you've just got to
dive in Alice in Wonderland style. Get obsessed with the
necklace and finding out where it's from. Fixate on the
location the dough was discovered, spend weeks pouring over small turns.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Of phrases in news reports from the time.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
When I was trying to solve our dough case from
seasons one and two. I was deep in those kinds
of rabbit holes for a year and a half. At
points I had to accept for my own sanity that
maybe I'd never know who she was, or perhaps I would,
but I'd never be able to prove it and share
her story.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
With listeners like you.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
It felt like it was only at the last moment,
when budgets were dwindling Faith was in crisis about to
put out a show with no resolution, that we actually
found the definitive proof that we needed. So my final
piece of advice to you is to just have some faith.
Sometimes new evidence can emerge and change everything, like that
(30:58):
confession from Joelrih. Sometimes one new contact will give you
access to materials that you've been trying to get for years.
That's what happened for us, So good luck until next time.
Hold your Girlfriend's Tight. The Girlfriend's Guide is produced by
(31:28):
Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit novel
dot Audio. This episode is produced and hosted by me
Anna Sinfield. Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr and we've
had some fantastic additional production by Lee Meyer, Leona Hamid,
and Zaiana Yusuf. Max O'Brien is our executive producer. Production
(31:49):
management from Shrie Houston and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing
and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander. Music supervision
by me Anna Sinfield and Nicholas Alexander. Original music composed
and performed by Louisa Gerstein and produced by Louisa Gerstein
and you guessed it Nicholas Alexander. The series artwork was
(32:11):
designed by Christina Limcool. Story development by me Ana Sinfield.
Willard Foxton is creative director our executive producers at iHeart
are Katrina Norvell.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
And Nicki Etour.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Special thanks to Ali Cantor, Carrie Lieberman, and Will Pearson
at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carl Frankel and the
whole team at WME. And special thanks to Daniel Laskrin
for putting on your best detective voice
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.