Detective Chris Hall

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176 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 28 Jul

Detective Chris Hall’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Somebody Knows Something · S3E8: Family Trees · 29 Jun 2026 podcast

I think we have to apologize to our listeners.

It might feel like we are talking you all back to high school biology class here, but we think it is rather important to explain what these two types of DNA are and how we inherit them, because it is extremely important in cold cases.

Nuclear DNA is a combination of both of your parents' genes.

However, children inherit mitochondria only from their mother, so mtDNA provides a direct maternal line extending backwards in time.

Here's what the FBI Forensic Lab says about mtDNA.

If we had shed hairs or hair fragments that we believed came from a suspect, for example, we can only use mtDNA to point us in that right direction.

We could obtain a standard from our suspect and have a lab process the mtDNA in his or her standard and can then compare it to the shed hair or hair fragment.

Then, the lab could tell us that the shed hair came from that person or anyone in his or her maternal line.

But, it can't tell us 100% that the hair came from that person, just that someone in their maternal line provided the hair.

Specific to this case, as the FBI forensic lab says, mtDNA is highly sensitive and extremely useful on things like bones, shed hairs, in other words, meaning hairs without a root, and teeth.

As we work to try to compare DNA for Yteria's family to unidentified remains, that mtDNA might be the best option we have, depending on the condition of the various unidentified remains we hope to test again.

For law enforcement agencies out there looking into these types of cases, you certainly can use paid services and genealogists to build family trees.

You can also use interviews with family, when you can find them, to help fill in those gaps.

But we have found that the most simplistic ways to build a tree is using sites like Ancestry.com or other similar sites.

For this investigation, Andrew and Beth have been doing a lot of work on family trees and records, and the work has been pretty extensive.

That's true.

And for one thing, while various ancestry sites don't allow us to upload DNA profiles or provide us access to the DNA that they collect from customers, we can still use the search tools and records that they have to conduct research on Witeria.

The process is actually pretty simple, but as you stated, it's also very time-consuming.

Anyone who has done genealogical research on their own family will definitely understand what we mean.

For example, we have to review each record that we come across.

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