Forensics with Laura Sudkamp & Marci Adkins

Forensics with Laura Sudkamp and Marci Adkins | Part 1 of 3 | Tuesday July 20. 2021

Forensics with Laura Sudkamp and Marci Adkins | Part 2 of 3 | Tuesday July 20. 2021

Forensics with Laura Sudkamp and Marci Adkins | Part 3 of 3 | Tuesday July 20. 2021

So, you want to be a crime scene specialist?  A forensic scientist?  A master of evidence procurement and analysis?

This is for you.  Even if you are not career searching, a True Crime fan will want to hear what this fascinating world is, by those that live there.

For this 3-part mini-series, David and Wendy sat down with two forensic scientists from Kentucky State Police Forensic Services for a candid conversation that have made careers at the lab: Division Director Laura Sudkamp and Forensic Scientist Specialist II Marci Adkins.

One of the big highlights of David’s time in homicide, was working with the professionals at Kentucky State Police Forensic Services.  Everyone was always willing to go above and beyond.  As a detective, everyone knew these people were clearly on the team.  They were educational (yes, they would tell you whether you were in the right direction), and really took the protocols seriously to safely fact-find.

As with any REAL team, many detectives and scientists got to know one another over the years, and instead of a just a name and a signature on a lab report, detectives knew just who they were.

Unlike TV and Hollywood fantasy, the field of forensics is very real, and extremely dedicated people make careers in the industry; quietly seeking the truth and providing advocacy for crime victims.

These episodes are for the true True Crime fan, that is interested in the mechanics of murder investigation, not just the salacious details of a murder.  For those that are interested in entering the world of forensics as a career, this is a must listen!  And as always on The Murder Police Podcast, we explore the personal side of this work, not just the technical.

So, take a listen and make sure you tell your friends about these episodes, especially if they are interested in making a difference through an amazing career!

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Show Transcripts

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Forensics with Laura Sudkamp & Marci Adkins Part 1 of 3

Wendy Lyons:

Warning. The podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder, and adult language. Listener discretion is advised.

David Lyons:

Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast, Forensics with Laura Sudkamp and Marcie Adkins, part one of three.

David Lyons:

Hi, it’s David with the Murder Police Podcast. For this three part mini series, me and Wendy sat down with two forensic scientists from the Kentucky State Police Forensic Services for a candid conversation about forensics. Those people happened to be division director, Laura Sudkamp. And forensic scientist specialist II, Marcie Adkins.

David Lyons:

One of the big highlights of my time in homicide was working with the professionals at the Kentucky State Police Forensic Services. Everyone, and I mean that sincerely was always willing to go above and beyond. As a detective, these people were clearly on the team. They were educational. Yes, they would even tell us whether or not we were in the right direction and straighten us out when we were making mistakes. And they really took the protocols seriously, in order to safely fact find for the cases they were working. And as with any real team, many of us got to know one another over the years. And instead of just a name and a signature on a lab report, we knew just who they were.

David Lyons:

Now, unlike TV and Hollywood fantasy, the field of forensics is very real and extremely dedicated people make careers in the industry, quietly seeking the truth and providing advocacy for crime victims. These episodes that we’re about to deliver are for the true crime fan that is interested in the mechanics of a murder investigation and not just the salacious details of a murder. It is also perfect for those that are considering entering the world of forensics as a career. This is a must listen for you if that’s where you’re headed. And as always on the Murder Police Podcast, we’re going to explore the personal side of this work, not just the technical. So what you’re going to hear for the next few episodes is the story of the real world of forensics, which is nothing like what you’ve seen on TV. You’re going to hear exactly how evidence is actually submitted and handled. And that might surprise you sometimes about how much time that takes.

David Lyons:

You are also going to hear what kind of background do you need to have and how to prepare yourself. If you’re trying to get into the forensics field, this is really important to listen to because they’re going to help you prepare for that by actually teaching you that in these episodes. You also hear what you can expect in the field once you get there, the training, the ongoing training, the fact that you have to conduct yourself appropriately during courtroom testimony and how often that might happen. More importantly, you’re going to hear the personal impact because of the work, all kinds of neat things with the sciences, DNA, genetics, serology, CODIS, robots, RFLP, SNIPs, PCR. And of course, the Beast, which you’ll learn about in here. So take a listen and make sure you tell your friends about these episodes, especially if they’re interested in making a difference through an amazing career. Now let’s jump in to the conversation.

Wendy Lyons:

Today on Murder Police Podcast, we have Marcie and Laura joining us. Thank you ladies for coming. And Marie, why don’t you start with telling us a little bit about yourself?

Marcie Adkins:

Well, thanks for having us. My name is Marcie Adkins. My title is a forensic scientist specialist II. I work in the area of forensic biology and there I am competency tested and proficient in serological testing, which is the identification of blood, semen, and saliva. I do DNA analysis and I also do paternity and other kinship analysis.

Wendy Lyons:

Very neat. So we have the real forensic file sitting right here with us today. Miss Laura, how about yourself? Thank you for coming. And tell us a little bit about you.

Laura Sudkamp:

My name is Laura Sudkamp and I’m the division director for the forensic services division at the Kentucky State Police. I’ve got 32 years in the system. I originally was a drug chemist. So if you were arrested with a powder or a pill or marijuana, it would come to the laboratory. And I would determine that it really was cocaine and not that you were bringing a bag of sugar to your neighbor.

David Lyons:

I was going to say, if it’s mine, it’s baking soda. Just to get that on the record.

Laura Sudkamp:

But also before I became a drug chemist, I was an intern in the forensic biology section. We were bringing on the DNA program. When I came in, Lucy Davis went off to the FBI for six weeks to be trained, to do DNA. And then she came back and I had to help her set everything up. And I started extracting DNA out of troopers, blood samples, which was really, really neat, but I ended up in the drug section and then I’ve moved up through supervision. I went into management and worked the grants and all the purchasing for the entire lab system. And then I got pushed over into managing the central lab. And ultimately now, I am overall six laboratories.

Wendy Lyons:

How neat. Well, we have a lot of experience sitting here with us and we are so glad that you have joined us today. And I can’t wait to hear about y’all’s careers because I guess not necessarily your careers, but your day to day duties because I covert forensic sciences. And we have also here with us, David.

David Lyons:

Hello.

Wendy Lyons:

As usual.

David Lyons:

Hello, exactly. The baking soda guy.

Wendy Lyons:

The baking soda guy.

David Lyons:

Good deal. Well, I’ll tell you what? That’s pretty cool. Let’s go a little bit deeper. And starting with Marcie, how did you get interested in the field?

Marcie Adkins:

Well, I started in 1998, so just a little math, that was 22 years ago. And back then we didn’t have shows like CSI or Forensic Files or things like that. So when I applied for this position, I was coming from the restaurant field and I knew I didn’t want to do the hard labor of that anymore. And I wanted to use my degree, but honestly I had no idea. I was applying for a forensic serologist position and I had no idea what that was going to entail. So I had no idea what I was getting into. I just knew I wanted to do DNA somewhere. And it just happened to be a really a perfect fit for me because it’s just so… The work is so varied and so interesting and I fell into it and I consider myself very lucky for that.

David Lyons:

And what degree did you have that you were using?

Marcie Adkins:

I graduated from the University of Kentucky. I have a bachelor’s of science in biotechnology, which is kind of roundabout genetic engineering.

David Lyons:

Gotcha.

Marcie Adkins:

So I studied mostly genetics.

David Lyons:

And so what drove you to that degree field?

Marcie Adkins:

Well, I was in high school and I had a biology teacher and we were learning about different genetic disorders and I knew… This is really corny, but I knew right then in high school that I wanted to do something with DNA.

David Lyons:

That is awesome. Just to have that kind of vocation speak to you at that young age, that’s pretty neat. And real quick, just for listeners use, you used the word serology. What was serology back then?

Marcie Adkins:

It is the same as it is now. It means a little something different to the forensic world than it does to the rest of the world. Serology is typically the analysis of blood. However, for us, we use it to cover the field of body identification. So we’re testing for blood, semen, and saliva, and we group all of that into this subdiscipline called serology.

David Lyons:

Cool. I’ve never heard it broke down that way before it. And again, what about your career so far? Where did you first start again? And we might be recovering that, but when you first got involved, was the KSP lab the first place you landed?

Marcie Adkins:

I had a job right out of college where I was working in a research laboratory and I knew that research really wasn’t for me, I was more… I think you’ve got research scientists and then you’ve got applied scientists and I knew I wanted to apply my knowledge somehow. I applied for KSP. And like Laura, I started as a technician of sorts. So I would make reagents for people. And then I did various other tasks, but the lab grunt work that keeps things going, ordering, stocking, things like that. So when a permanent position opened up, I applied and I got it and that was in the database unit. So that’s where all the convicted offender samples go and get put into the database. And then this database is stored so that forensic cases can be run against it, to hopefully generate an investigative lead for officers. So I started there, but then I moved into case work and that’s where I’ve been ever since.

David Lyons:

Is that database attached to a national database? Does it integrate with anything other than the stuff that y’all have at the lab at KSB?

Marcie Adkins:

Yes. It’s the CODIS database. So CODIS stands for the Combined DNA Index System. It’s run by the FBI. It connects all the laboratories across the country at the national level. And then we also have state databases as well. So it exists as a hierarchy.

David Lyons:

Since you’ve been there, have you seen that lay any cases down or approve anything? Have you had any matches that have mattered since you’ve been there?

Marcie Adkins:

Tons of them.

David Lyons:

Oh, we’re going to get into that. We got to talk about that because I know back in the day when I did it, that was like a scratch off lottery is that you felt when you got the call, that was incredible. And then that goes back ways we were talking before we started recording that it was in its infancy would probably be a way to put it too. So fantastic stuff. Laura, do the same thing. Talk about where the passion came from, what you did to prepare for it, and whatnot.

Laura Sudkamp:

So when I was in high school, I thought I wanted to go into law enforcement. I wanted to be a police officer. So I started with the University of Kentucky in high school with one of their Explorer programs and loved it. Absolutely loved it. And we would go help with the football game traffic. And we figured out I have a temper.

David Lyons:

Oh, God.

Laura Sudkamp:

And the University of Kentucky police officers were great. And they recognized that temper that was in me, tell you wants to do something and you don’t do it. I’m going to make sure you understood me the second time. And if you still don’t do it, then… I have very well behaved children by the way.

David Lyons:

I can only imagine and nothing will show temper like traffic.

Laura Sudkamp:

Yes.

David Lyons:

Like traffic. I always tell people in your career, what’s the wildest thing? And I’m being honest with you, probably the most virulent and violent person in a mild thing. And we dealt with others, was riding a fire lane ticket in a shopping center. I had to push a guy back into his car one time just to keep us both out of trouble. So yeah, the people’s responses to those small things, like you can’t turn right here right now. Yeah, that’ll test your temper. Yeah. So good for you. I’m glad you recognized it.

Laura Sudkamp:

I did. And so they got me. They knew I was good in the sciences in high school. So they actually got me a tour of the crime lab and we all went, but that was when I knew. So when I was a junior and senior in high school, I knew I was going into forensics. And so I still give them credit for that. I saw a bunch of them a little while ago and I tell them thank you all the time for my career in forensics.

David Lyons:

Awesome. So when you talked about, you knew in high school, so what did you start doing to prepare yourself for that? What did you start as far as planning your education and what your focus was going to be? What else did you do?

Laura Sudkamp:

Well, I knew that it was going to require either biology degree or chemistry degree. Forensic science degrees at the time, I don’t think they were there or they were just starting. So I had the option in high school to take typing, not keyboard or whatever they call it now, but typing classes where you use the typewriter. And instead of taking that, I took physics class. So it was classes like that, where I knew if I could get a better understanding with biology and chemistry and physics, the classes I was going to have to take in college, that it would give me a firmer basis upon which to develop my educational skills. It was entertaining because I did have a little bit too much fun when I moved to college. So that was an indication in and of itself, but it definitely… It was a good thing that I had prepared in high school for these tougher classes.

Laura Sudkamp:

The chemistry classes that you have to take, and I do have a chemistry degree, they send you through general chemistry and organic chemistry. Well, those classes, it’s two semesters for each one with labs and those classes are taken by all the pre-med folks. And so they’re trying to weed a lot of them out. And so they are very tough courses. It was not fun. P-Chem, physical chemistry, I absolutely hated, but I did get through that. But my basic, when I knew this is what I wanted to do, I went and looked to see what the degree requirements were. And for biology, just so you know, if you’re going to do DNA, you have to have molecular biology. Yes, also biochemistry, statistics, and cell biology.

David Lyons:

I’m out.

Laura Sudkamp:

Genetics, that was the one.

Wendy Lyons:

I’m still hanging on to the Explorer program. I want to hear about that traffic. That’s right up my alley.

David Lyons:

No, it’s not. And anyway, yeah, I always tell people that I took a police administration back in the 80s, because they had no math and it was, hey that’s for me. Hey, no math. I’m good for that. I didn’t have to pick that up until later.

Laura Sudkamp:

For chemistry, you have to go all the way through calculus four.

David Lyons:

Da, da, da. But all kidding aside, because we’re going to have people listening right now and I’m guaranteeing you, they’re interested in the forensics field for all the right reasons. Is this still a path that you would start to suggest people start to anchor into look at?

Laura Sudkamp:

Definitely.

David Lyons:

Good, because I think that’s practical advice is that if you want that dream to come true, you have to start laying that groundwork pretty early on that. Well, good deal. And what school did you go to? Where’d you get your degrees?

Laura Sudkamp:

I’m also from the University of Kentucky.

David Lyons:

Oh, because when you said party and I thought that was Eastern Kentucky University. Exactly.

Wendy Lyons:

Honey, only because you went there.

David Lyons:

Exactly. And yeah, I have some memories of that. Not many, but some. But anyway, yeah, that’s good. Well, go cats for sure. Go cats. So you get your education and tell us a little bit more about how your career started and where’d your first land.

Laura Sudkamp:

So when I first started, I was still at the university. I knew I wanted to go into forensics and arranged an internship. And that was where they were doing DNA or starting up DNA. Lucy Davis went to the FBI for six weeks. I helped out in serology during that six weeks. But when she came back, I basically was there, started in January and went through August of just helping them set things up, getting the DNA extracted. That was by the old method, RFLP. Did a lot of DNA extractions and then handed them off to Lucy and Larry and let them run them. Back in that day, he would run them through… It was a radioactive marker basically that you would end up putting on x-ray film. And then you had to go stick the x-ray film in the freezer. And we would go run to UK to the marque center and put them in the freezer for six weeks. And then you got to pull them back out after six weeks. And then you knew whether or not your run even worked. It took forever.

David Lyons:

I was going to say, how’d you get that done in 20 minutes on TV? I’m sitting there trying to do the math. And again, I’m not strong in it. That’s what I think people don’t understand is the history of it. And that, unfortunately, it’s not like the 20 minute commercial break conference and CSI and stuff like that. Real quick, let’s back up. Who’s Lucy and who’s Larry? Because we’ve we’ve used their names. We need to give him credit for who they are.

Laura Sudkamp:

Lucy Davis was the forensic biologist that went to the FBI and brought DNA into Kentucky. And then Larry Aires was the supervisor over that section and another serologist DNA analyst. And he was one of the first trained under Lucy to assist in working in cases.

David Lyons:

Are they still at the lab?

Laura Sudkamp:

No. Larry retired a long time ago and Lucy now still lives in Kentucky. She went away various states. She was in West Virginia for a while, but she does a lot of consulting. She’s independent.

David Lyons:

Good for her.

Laura Sudkamp:

So she’s still in the field.

David Lyons:

Good. Yeah, it’d be hard to leave it because I think, Marcie, you said the variety of the things actually practicing that instead of doing research, is that just getting those nitty ready details that nobody else has. Yes. And we talk before we start recording on some of the cases that we probably crossed paths on or whether we knew it or not, when I would send stuff up to the lab. Tell me more of it. I think you moved into supervision at some point. When did that happen?

Laura Sudkamp:

That happened in 1998. So I started in ’89 and then 1998, I promoted into supervisor over a research project that went through HIDA, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area that was West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee. It was a three state. And the goal was to do, we called it the signature laboratory to look at, let’s say you had a huge semi full of marijuana. Where was it grown? Could you look at the chemical composition of the plant and figure out where it was grown? I started that project, but I promoted up within a year and a half shortly after into the purchasing and the grant writing.

Wendy Lyons:

And they were trying to do DNA on the marijuana. Right?

Laura Sudkamp:

They did. And Dr. Margaret Sanger actually has a patent through Texas State Police where we did patent the DNA from the marijuana.

David Lyons:

And what was the purpose of the DNA in the marijuana, same thing for location or-

Laura Sudkamp:

Trying to see whether or not you could track families back, but we didn’t get that far. Connecticut, I think ended up taking on the research. The HIDA program got cut back on in funding and decided science is expensive. So that stepped back, I think after three years.

David Lyons:

And I never knew that too. Pretty fascinating, pretty fascinating. And a whole nother aspect of DNA that I hadn’t thought about before. So you’re still in supervision. In supervision, Laura, do you still get to actually play? Do you still get to get into the lab and do cool things?

Laura Sudkamp:

Not very often. When new technologies coming along, a lot of times I’ll go take a look at it and go play, but I haven’t worked a case since 2000, 2002, somewhere in there.

David Lyons:

Miss it?

Laura Sudkamp:

I do sometimes. It’s nice just to be able to pull. I would love to be able to pull 10 cases, sample them, put them back, write them up and be done, actually accomplish something.

David Lyons:

Yeah. That’s a neat perspective. Well, both of y’all too, because we’ve talked about it and you’re from the Kentucky State Police Crime Laboratory. This is important because in the episodes that we’ve aired so far, I’m thinking virtually every episode, a detective talked about the lab and the importance of it and how good the lab is. Just got to be honest. I mean, I’m just going to be a spoiler on that. I think the relationship’s always been pretty good. Tell us about the KSP crime lab, where it’s at, locations, and just more about what they do. What do they offer?

Laura Sudkamp:

There are six labs across the state. I always have to do this. Western Kentucky is Madisonville, then Louisville, then Cold Spring up in Campbell County, Ashland, London, and Frankfurt. Frankfurt is the only full service laboratory. So we offer all of the disciplines, which are the forensic biology case work, the forensic biology, which is the DNA database, trace, which could be arson, GSR, poisons, hairs, fibers. They’re huge on everything that they do. The firearm section. Then you have the solid dose drug section where they’re looking at the actual drug themselves. And then the toxicology section, that works mostly DUI cases, but if you’ve got a drug facilitated sexual assault, they get samples from that. Or if there was some other fight or assault, they will get sometimes samples from other types of cases and homicide cases.

David Lyons:

That’s what I was going to ask if they did the homicide cases.

Laura Sudkamp:

Yes. If somebody needs to know if somebody was on something, they end up with it.

David Lyons:

Have y’all always worked in Frankfurt or have you been to the other labs and done any work there?

Laura Sudkamp:

I’ve always been in Frankfurt.

Marcie Adkins:

I have always been in Frankfurt as well, but I was technical leader over at the serology labs and I would go visit and I did a stint also where I was working with a new analyst at the Northern Laboratory so that they could maintain their accreditation for a while, few years back.

David Lyons:

Pretty cool. So you got to travel a little bit with that. Well, good deal on the technology end of it. Then what kind of law enforcement agencies do y’all work with? Who can bring things to the lab and ask for services, analysis of materials and whatever, who all can do that?

Laura Sudkamp:

We accept requests from all law enforcement agencies in Kentucky. So in any given year, there are like almost 450 law enforcement agencies in Kentucky. We probably get evidence from 380 to 400 of those each year. We get in over 50,000 submissions a year. Majority of those are about 30 to 40,000… About 30,000 are drug based, about 9,000 are going to be DUI related. And then it breaks down from there. Biology runs about 2000 cases a year. Firearms runs probably five to 700 traces, about 500. So they’re much smaller. Most of it is drugs and toxins. So when we get backlogged in those areas, that’s when the courts really start screaming at us because it blocks their whole docket up. And I lost track of what the question was.

David Lyons:

Oh, just who can bring things to the lab.

Laura Sudkamp:

We also will accept evidence from prosecution defense, even if it’s an ex parte order where we’re not allowed to disclose to anyone that the request has come through. What we tend to do is take a request form and have them list the three items they want tested, but also to include some other items. So that defense really doesn’t or the prosecutor doesn’t really know what it is that defense is honing on because it’s a law enforcement agency that has the evidence. So it’s got to come in and they don’t have to disclose those lab results or what they’re doing to the prosecution. So they try to hide it as best they can. So they will bring it in. We’ll have it submitted by law enforcement and then we will work it. It’s locked down. So the prosecutors can’t see it. Law enforcement can’t see the results either.

David Lyons:

Something I never knew, never knew. I thought that they always had to go to an independent lab or facility, which I guess they still do.

Laura Sudkamp:

They still do a lot because they still think that we’re more biased toward prosecution just because that’s the bulk of the work that we do it for. But I guess sometimes when I really show them that there are a lot of times we tell law enforcement, sorry, but you got the wrong person. Or we clear a lot of people that are accused of something. We are objective and we are not just working for the prosecution and they’re slowly coming over that. And some judges actually will insist that they ask the lab if they can do it before they go off to find an expensive vendor lab that can do it.

David Lyons:

I guess it’s expensive. And then plus the credentials of whoever’s coming in, because we may get to that hopefully is to talk about what it takes to be… You mentioned something Marcie about competency and I’d like to come back to that at some point, what that means and how you get there, because you can’t just usually March in and say, well, I work for a lab and I say this, I’m sure it’s much more than that, but I never knew that they actually got that to… Especially the quiet nature of the way that comes in. Never knew that, but it makes sense. Do you have anything?

Wendy Lyons:

I was just wondering what is the turnaround time? Once you start processing, I know you said that they get irritated because it takes a long time. What typically is the turnaround time once you start on that particular DNA or whatever testing you’re doing?

Laura Sudkamp:

Right now, from the time that you submit a case for drugs, it’ll be turned around in about 30 to 60 days. In toxicology, it’s about 60 to 90, depending on if you need alcohol and then drugs. And if you need the drugs, how many are in there? A lot of people don’t take just one drug. They’re taking three or four drugs with or without the alcohol. So that actually takes… It’s not just one test. You have to do a test per drug type.

Laura Sudkamp:

So again, that’s a little bit 60 to 90 days on those. Trace, it just really depends on the type of analysis it is. If it is an arson case, usually you can get that out in 30 days or less. If it’s a gunshot residue, we have a backup in that area. We had the instrument go down one time. It took us forever to get it repaired and it backed us up almost a year on those. And they’re working through it. I see the look on your face. When we have biology right now, it is running an average of 11 months, but it’s closer if it’s positive to really being about 14 months to get the lab results back.

Wendy Lyons:

Wow. And I’m guessing they probably have no idea when they submit that maybe a year from now, you’ll get your things back.

Laura Sudkamp:

Yes. And that’s largely because of the backlog and we had pay issues where we had constant turnover. So you’d get people in, you’d get them trained. And that was a year and a half, two years to get people up and trained and independently working cases. They’d get a year or two in and they’d be gone. So at one point we had, if you looked back over five years, we had a 36 to 40% turnover rate.

David Lyons:

Where did they go?

Laura Sudkamp:

Other labs.

David Lyons:

Locally? Or did they haul across the country to bigger markets?

Laura Sudkamp:

Everywhere. Everywhere. So we train them and we just hand them off to make more money somewhere else.

David Lyons:

That’s good to know. Because if you’re going to get in this field, you got to kind sense what the market is and what that means if you have to relocate or go somewhere else. And at the Lexton Police Department back years ago, we were a farm team before we got some pay equity. We would grab somebody. You still remember this because and you were there, Marcie, at the same timeframe is we’d train them, put them out. And then Jaytown an hour west would start them at maybe I guess $15,000 more a year. And they were taking the good ones. You’ve always got somebody leaves that you hold the door for. Well, they weren’t taking those. They were the good ones. So I hate hearing that. And then the pressure it puts. The pressure.

Marcie Adkins:

There is good news. As of July 1st, we just got a substantial pay raise finally.

David Lyons:

Congratulations.

Marcie Adkins:

Thank you.

David Lyons:

Good deal.

Laura Sudkamp:

Thanks to the legislature.

Marcie Adkins:

Thanks to the legislature.

David Lyons:

Good.

Marcie Adkins:

Exactly

David Lyons:

Fantastic.

Marcie Adkins:

So hopefully, we will have better retention going forward and we’re also bringing on a… We’re basically flipping the section. Historically you would bring in evidence and we would test it for… We’d do the serology testing first. We would look for the blood, the semen, the saliva. We would swab for touch. And then once we had that, we would write the report as to what we found, that item one contains blood and then it would go on. It would get into the DNA line. And that serology part right now is taking the bulk of our backlog right now as far as time. We are flipping it. We are getting ready probably by the end of the year, the beginning of next year to do what we call direct to DNA where this sample comes in and with sexual assault kit or a blood sample, we’re going to run it for DNA first, get a profile, and then we’ll go back and figure out was that blood or semen or whatever. That becomes the second step.

Marcie Adkins:

That way you’ve got your DNA right away, know whether or not it matches your suspect or if it hits to somebody in the database. And then it also speeds up a lot of other processes, because there’ll be a lot of cases where we won’t need to do the serology side of it. So that drops a lot of our workload. So the hope is that if we can bring it online by the end of this year, the beginning of next year, give it a year to work through our backlog, that hopefully we are flipping cases out in 90 days or less, at least for the DNA portion.

David Lyons:

Did that take in advance in technology to… Because when you’re talking about putting it online, that makes me think that what’s changed to make that feasible? Because then coming from the old days, waiting hunting, man waiting in the cost. Again, people don’t understand that when we’re talking about how long you had to wait, when you’re talking about taking things to a freezer, all that was very real. Have there been changes and advances in the technology of analyzing this stuff that have picked up the pace to make that even possible, to put it in the front?

Laura Sudkamp:

We purchased some instruments that are we call them Cadillacs. It’s just kind of our code word for them. They basically send the samples through a robotic extraction process. And I believe they’ll also do the amplification.

Marcie Adkins:

Yes, the instruments you’re talking about. So we use robotics already. It’s just that there’s a lot of human intervention between each step. These Cadillacs that she’s referring to, there’s less human intervention. So they’ll be able to handle most of the process without us having to go in there and move it from one robot to another. But it’s interesting that you bring this up because the technology has changed so much over even just the 22 years I’ve been working there. It’s like I think sometimes people look at people like us who may have a few gray hairs and they think, well that person’s going to be resistant to change. Well, in the field of DNA, all we’ve ever known is change and it’s constantly progressing and getting more sensitive and improving. And it’s just been amazing to watch it all.

David Lyons:

From my vantage point, it was. And I don’t think we were doing it when I left, but we’re coming to the point where everybody in the PD have to have DNA exemplars on file, just like our fingerprints. The old thing of, oh, by the way, that was your fingerprint on the victim’s wallet. That’s stupid stuff, and all kidding aside is that if that sensitivity continues like that, is that you’re going to have to have that. Because I would foresee respirators being part of a crime scene thing, not just booties and type X suits and violence anymore is that if you go in and cough. I mean, is it unlikely to say that there’ll be a point where you could pick up my DNA from sneezing or coughing in a scene? Is that something?

Marcie Adkins:

Oh, yeah. We could definitely get your DNA from you coughing or sneezing at a scene now. And just to give you an example. So any profile that we generate, anytime there’s extra DNA present, I always compare it against myself because I’m the examiner and I’m handling it so I could contaminate it. So this is just one of the many checks that we do. When I have a foreign profile, I check it against myself. I check it against other people in the laboratory. And this is just routine. So if an officer, we do request now, if people are willing to give an elimination sample for our staff database, an officer database, we take them now and we can compare them. And that is really just to say, okay, that’s not the real killer. We know who that came from, so that it isn’t used against you in court.

David Lyons:

Oh, for sure. You’re heading things off. It won’t even… Yeah, I like that. You probably won’t even get asked if they see that in a file.

Laura Sudkamp:

It’s also important because sometimes we get a profile and it doesn’t match anybody at the lab. It doesn’t match your victim. And we think that’s the bad guy. So we throw them in the database to go see and it ends up it’s… And they may find or develop another suspect, but say, no, he’s in the database already or something, but it’s not because we’ve put in as a profile that they assume is the bad guy. And it’s really the law enforcement officer. Doesn’t go anywhere. Doesn’t get anything.

Marcie Adkins:

Or this sometimes happens where you have blood at a scene and you put it into CODIS and you find out… Or for example, semen from a victim and turns out that was her boyfriend’s semen. But he’s also a convicted offender, but he’s not the one accused of raping her. So we get some surprises every once in a while.

David Lyons:

Yeah.But they’re clarifying.

Marcie Adkins:

Yes.

David Lyons:

There was a time you couldn’t get that. That’d be grateful.

Marcie Adkins:

And when that happens, if that is known to come from a consensual partner, it comes back out of CODIS.

David Lyons:

I gotcha. That’s good to know.

Marcie Adkins:

Because we can only put the crime scene samples in there.

David Lyons:

So can you talk about a little bit DNA? If we looked at the history of DNA and if we could put it down to a handful of watershed moments, what would that look like chronology wise? What have been maybe the four or five big things that have happened in the last few decades? Can it be reduced to that amount?

Marcie Adkins:

Well, DNA was discovered in 1953 by Watson and Crick.

David Lyons:

Gotcha.

Marcie Adkins:

You don’t want to go back that far, do you?

David Lyons:

No, but I think the listeners are going to… Because it’s a good conversation to have because one is learning about the history of it, I think is important because I’m already thinking, where I’m going is like mitochondria. Okay. And then again, the Star Trek-y thing of touch DNA bullshit, that kind of a thing. So that is good to know. And again, maybe we can talk about what can happen with it and what can’t, because it becomes a beast of its own out in the community to where people have I think unrealistic expectations of it. I’ve always worried that I think sometimes we may be cultivating jurors that believe when they walk in the courtroom that if that’s not there, the crime didn’t occur and that’s a dangerous thing. So I think we can do that, but were there major advances after it’s 1953 discovery that kind of moved the ball forward?

Marcie Adkins:

Well, from the forensic perspective, it all started in the 80s. So in the 80s, they discovered this technology called RFLP, which stands for restriction, fragment, length, polymorphism. And that is the traditional DNA fingerprint. So that started over in UK. They were using it to solve a murder. And they literally went around and collected samples from every man in the town to try to match up this DNA. And it kind of snowballed from there. And then RFLP came to the states and Lucy Davis went up to the FBI to learn how to bring it into our lab. And then so RFLP took a lot of sample and a lot of cases just don’t have that much sample. So we weren’t doing DNA on a lot of cases back then, because it would take a quarter size stain of blood. And you just don’t have that at a lot of scenes. So PCR came online. That was the next big, big thing. PCR revolutionized everything. So you can take now this tiny little amounts of blood and get full profiles from that.

David Lyons:

How’s that work? What’s PCR stand for?

Marcie Adkins:

PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction. And I think of it… Well, when I go to court, I explain it like a Xerox machine. We’re looking at specific locations on the DNA, DNA that doesn’t really code for anything. It’s in the junk DNA. So it’s not going to tell your insurance that you might have certain diseases in your family lineage, anything like that. It’s just really just different numbers in the junk DNA, different repeat units. So we look at these locations on the DNA and we use it kind of like a Xerox machine. We’re making millions of copies of those locations. And when it started, when we first brought it in house, we were looking at 13 locations and now we’re looking at 24.

David Lyons:

So pretty neat stuff. So RFLP, PCR. Just about covering the alphabet, we’re getting close. What was next after that?

Marcie Adkins:

Well, that takes us up to current modern day.

David Lyons:

Gotcha.

Marcie Adkins:

Biggest change though was the addition of the robotics where everything used to be… You were pipetting, doing the centrifuge. Everything was by hand one by one. With the robots, we developed 96 well plates that they were dealing with. When I was doing DNA with RFLP, we were working with eight and 16 samples. Now they’re dealing with 96 well plates that it’s samples, but it’s also different controls that are in there in, blanks. So it lets them handle more and more. And then with it being on the robotics, as they work on the robotics, the analyst has time to go do either pull more samples or go do data interpretation of some of the other samples. The more hands off they are, the more time they have to do other work with the cases.

Marcie Adkins:

One of the best things about the robots when the robots came online is that it gave us such a higher quality DNA extract as well. And I’ll give you one example. I had this case that I worked shortly after the robots came online. And when I’m talk about, we have robots at every step now. This one is the extraction robot. It was a child abuse case from somewhere out in Western Kentucky. And they surmised that the child had been beaten against the fireplace. And so they had gone in with some luminol because you couldn’t see the blood and they had collected some swabs and these swabs were black. So with my old extraction method, I probably would not have been able to get a profile simply because there would’ve been too many other things in the extract that would’ve been inhibiting the reaction, but with the robots, I got a very clean extract and I got a profile and it matched.

David Lyons:

Incredible.

Marcie Adkins:

So that’s one of my favorite things about the robots.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, I was going to ask, you’ve mentioned the GSR and different DNA testing and this type thing. So I’m guessing you might get in a semen sample or you all may get a bloody gun or a bloody knife. Is that right? You just get various types of things to examine at your lab, correct?

Marcie Adkins:

Yes. Yes. I have a window that overlooks the front parking lot and there have been times… There was one time one of the agencies pulled up and next thing I know there’s a bed frame coming through the parking lot.

Wendy Lyons:

Hey, you know there’s more to the story. So go download the next episode, like the true crime fan that you are.

David Lyons:

The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims, so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded, and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at murderpolicepodcast.com, which is our website. And it has show notes for imagery and audio and video files related to the cases you’re going to hear. We are also on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube, which has closed caption available for those that are hearing impaired. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us a five star review on Apple podcast or wherever you download your podcast from. Subscribe to the Murder Police Podcast and set your player to automatically download new episodes, so you get the new ones as soon as they drop. And please tell your friends.

David Lyons:

Lock it down, Judy.

---

Forensics with Laura Sudkamp & Marci Adkins Part 2 of 3

Speaker 1:

Warning, the podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder, and adult language. Listener discretion is advised.

David Lyons:

Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast. Forensics with Laura Sudkamp and Marcie Adkins, part two of three.

Wendy Lyons:

Is that right? You just get various types of things to examine at your lab, correct?

Laura Sudkamp:

Yes, yes. I have a window that overlooks the front parking lot, and there have been times. There was one time one of the agencies pulled up and next thing I know there’s a bed frame coming through the parking lot. I met them at the front door like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! We don’t have room to store that.” And they’re like, “We think that’s blood.” And I’m like, “Okay, get a swab.”

David Lyons:

That’s funny.

Laura Sudkamp:

You didn’t need to bring in the bed. Education moment right there for them. But we do get a little bit of everything. To tell you the truth, we moved into a house in 1995, and I had a six-month-old and a two-year-old, let’s go that way. And there was a baseball bat in the basement, just sitting in a room down there.

Laura Sudkamp:

I went and got my husband said, “No, you’re going to have to get that out of the house. I’ve seen too many of them used in the wrong way.” It’s weird things like that that just hit you the wrong way, and just a bat left behind sitting in a room. I’m like, “No, we’re done.”

Wendy Lyons:

Did you test it?

Laura Sudkamp:

Nope. [inaudible 00:02:10] garbage. Get rid of it.

David Lyons:

I’m seeing Laura shake up a bottle of luminol turning out the lights.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, I have to ask, I often wonder when you get these things like your bloody knife or your bloody bat with hair on it or whatever may be on it, is there that moment that you all sat there and just see in your head what likely happened with this instrument before you examine it?

Laura Sudkamp:

It’s a fortunate position that we’re in, where we have a very detached view of the crime. So I feel like sometimes we forget the violence that happened beforehand. We’re just focused on identifying the body fluid, doing the DNA. And I think that that’s a good thing because you want your science to be objective, but it’s also a benefit probably to our mental health because from the flip side of it, I just can’t understand how an officer can deal with the trauma of victims all the time and not take some trauma home themselves. I switched from DNA because of that. They wanted me to hire in and go into the biology section. I was like, “I can’t. You have diapers with semen in them.” Cases like that. And I want to have children, and I don’t want to go home angry all the time. That little temper of mine, I don’t want to go home angry, and I don’t want to be an overprotective parent. So I went to drugs. Is it a drug or not a drug? A lot easier.

David Lyons:

There’s a dark world out there that fortunately people are not privy to. I’ve always told people that probably the only time you would really see it is if you sat a month on a grand jury. And I’ve met people who have done a month on a grand jury. And when they come out, their eyes are just open wider than they’ve ever seen. Because when you say something as simple as semen in a diaper, and you start to process that, yes, that’s extremely disturbing. Because we all know what those things really are about.

Wendy Lyons:

I think that would work me over worse than the hair on the baseball bat. You know the ball bat or the gun or the knife, it’s bad, and it resulted in someone’s death, likely. But the semen in the diaper or like you mentioned, Marcie, the child that was beaten in Western Kentucky. People, I don’t know they don’t want to think of it, they don’t think of it, or maybe it just makes you feel better to pretend it doesn’t happen.

Laura Sudkamp:

All of the above, I think.

David Lyons:

Yeah. And we sanitize things. People, if they get charged with rape first, and then they plead and it comes down to sexual misconduct, and we’ve got all these… I’ve always said that those words, I think sanitize it for people. And I’m not suggesting people should go out and seek this stuff and get boned up on it, because it’s horrible. But it’s an interesting perspective you all have.

David Lyons:

And two, the objectivity is important, is having to separate yourself from that and not let the emotion override you because I know when I was in the unit, one of the things that you had to really be on guard for, and sometimes we’d bring new people and you had to watch carefully, is when a kid was involved. Because I saw imaginations really start to click quicker than they should have been. And you have to check that, or you’ll make huge mistakes because the emotional roller coaster that that takes you on a ride for is incredible.

David Lyons:

But the same thing is going in and watching an autopsy is on the one hand, if you think about what’s going on and you’re paying attention, that’s rough. But if you go in there like you all do, and the whole thing is a process to get to an answer and to get to the truth, that’s how you handle it. I think you have to structure yourself up. So that’s an interesting perspective. And again, people don’t want to get in the field. This is the kind of thing to know, not to distract them from getting in the field, but these are the realities of it.

Wendy Lyons:

Now is that evidence presented to you all or have you all ever gone out and collected it yourself? As far as at the crime scene.

Laura Sudkamp:

We don’t typically respond to crime scenes, but there are times that we do. If there are multiple fatalities, or it’s just a really complex scene, and law enforcement needs our help, yes, we will go. But we really screen them. We had one where KSP Post called and asked us to come, and they had told us that the body was removed. So we had a really squeamish analyst, great note taker, can go in, can go help, but was not expecting the body to be there. And the body was still there. And law enforcement was not happy with us. And we said, “No, she was willing to come help and do whatever, but that was without a body.” So I had to back up, but that was a very gruesome homicide. So I don’t blame her either.

Wendy Lyons:

What was she there to do absent a body? What was her job to do there that day?

Laura Sudkamp:

Basically when we go in, we’re going in and we’re looking at the scene, and you’re going to have people with hands on, trying to figure out exactly what we’re going to collect, what we’re not, and what will be available. So just because there’s evidence at a scene, doesn’t mean we’re going to analyze it. We’re going to analyze items from the scene that answer a question that matters. So if I have a bullet hole in me, and there’s blood on my shirt, whose blood is that? It’s mine. Do we need to test it? No. Is there possibly that there was a fight and maybe somebody else’s bleeding, and there’s blood in a different spot, then maybe. So we have to consider what all that evidence is. So we generally will have what I call the note taker. Somebody that’s kind of putting around behind that’s documenting what was there, why we chose something over something else, who collected what, that type of information

David Lyons:

Do you have regular conversations with investigators and law enforcement? Do you have huddles and communications? Because to get to those things and prioritize those, you’d have to know enough about the case to make that call.

Laura Sudkamp:

We do what we can to encourage them to call before. We have established what we call the case acceptance policy, where we limit, like on a homicide case, we’re going to say, pick those 10 items that you think are going to help your investigation. Pick those first 10. If we don’t get anything, then we’ll move to the next 10. But a lot of times in the past, they used to just pick everything up, throw it in a box and say, “You guys figure it out.” That called for a lot of questions with, “Okay, what is all this? And where is it going?” But now with the case acceptance, they’re better at picking out what they think they need analyzed. They will sometimes call in advance and ask, “Hey, I’ve got all this. What are my best 10?”

Laura Sudkamp:

But we still get some where there’s only five or six pieces of evidence. And they’re pretty clear on the case details. And then sometimes we do it with our lab techs. Sometimes the analysts will do it, and they’ll pick up the phone and call and ask more information. How is this blood smear… You find blood in the bathroom. Where do you go when you cut your hand? I go in my bathroom and go get a bandaid. So blood in a bathroom is not always going to be related to a crime. So you just told me that you found blood in the bathroom. Tell me how you think it’s related to the crime. They will call and ask that detail. Where was this Pepsi can found? We had a case in a university where someone was sexually assaulted and they collected condoms from all over and stuck them all in one bag too. But it was, “Hey, which one of these was actually in the room?”

Laura Sudkamp:

Yeah, and that goes back to the fact that the DNA database is governed by the FBI. And they have a very specific set of rules that all labs have to follow to enter their evidence. And part of that is, there has to be clearly documented connection to the crime. So if we just go around and collect all the cigarette butts from a parking lot, what’s the likelihood that those are going to be related to this robbery? What makes you think this cigarette butt is related? And it’s usually because a witness saw them smoking in that area or they have some surveillance footage. It usually comes back to something like that. But we have to document that in order to put the profile into CODIS and to search it.

David Lyons:

And that’s a good safeguard. And again, there’s one of the things I think that people in the community sometimes are confused on, is you’ll hear people say, “Well, they’ve got your DNA.” They’re tracking all of our DNA. Well, in the United States, most of us even in the law enforcement end or in the analytical world would probably even argue, “No, I don’t want everybody in there.” So that’s a good thing to know too, is that there’s a threshold before your sample gets entered into that. The only people really getting all your information is Facebook. But that’s a good threshold to know that people can take a little bit of comfort in, maybe.

Wendy Lyons:

So with your evidence, where do you all store that? If you’re working on a knife, let’s say, and you haven’t finished today, do you all have a specialized area that you store it? It’s locked. What’s that like?

Laura Sudkamp:

Well, the entire laboratory is very secure. And so there’s badge entry on every door so that a drug chemist wouldn’t necessarily be able to enter the biology section and vice versa. And that’s just part of the security. Likewise we have, if I am working on, say, a knife, and I haven’t finished it, I have a personal locker that I can lock. And only myself and my supervisor has a key to. I can put it in there overnight, and then I can pull it out the next day and finish what I need to do with it.

Laura Sudkamp:

And that goes for all types of testing, every analyst has a secured locker. Some of them don’t even give their supervisor a key. If we need to get in, we have to break the lock. Doesn’t happen very often, but it has happened, just so they can get on the stand and say, “Nobody had access to that piece of evidence except myself.”

Wendy Lyons:

Probably more so with-

Laura Sudkamp:

Drugs

David Lyons:

Is that what we call the chain of custody?

Laura Sudkamp:

Yes.

David Lyons:

Part of it. Exactly, I think we’ve talked about that before and how important that is because once somebody gets a peak, once they kind of pull that back, the whole thing gets kind of tough at that. So that’s good to know too.

Laura Sudkamp:

We have a barcoded system and basically if piece evidence comes into the lab, the evidence technicians are going to sign for it. Document the date and time that it came in, who they received it from. They’re going to get a signature from that person. Then they’re going to put it in a storage location. They’re going to transfer it to the section or to the analyst to sign. And then again, that is a marked, scanned transaction in our management system. And then if I hand it off to Marcie, it gets transferred in, we call it the beast, our laboratory information management system. It stands for barcoded evidence and statistical tracking, the beast. And it is a beast.

David Lyons:

Is that where investigators go to get the results of the lab work?

Laura Sudkamp:

It is. They have a different interface than we do, but they can go in there and download the reports and see the status of their case and everything.

David Lyons:

Pretty cool, because I just-

Wendy Lyons:

I apologize.

David Lyons:

No, go.

Wendy Lyons:

How are those assigned, these cases? How do we know if you get the knife or you get the knife? How’s that determined what each piece is assigned to, whom it is assigned to?

Marcie Adkins:

It depends on the section. So in my section, we just try to work them in the order they came in. And so I’ll be ready to extract again, and I’ll go to the folder that has all the property crimes, because that’s what I’ve been focusing on for the last few years. And I will take the oldest property crimes, and I will organize them into an extraction set and take it on.

Laura Sudkamp:

When I first started, I was hired through a grant for my drug chemist position. Ray Larson arranged for it. I was to work all Lexington cases. So in that situation Lexington case would come in, David Flanery come bring me evidence. And I got them all. And some sections are still that way, whether it was grant based or just, “Hey, I’m always going to do Owensboro cases or Bowling Green or I get Ashland PD. Sometimes they’ll break it out that way in sections, but it really does just depend on which section and which of the laboratories.

David Lyons:

Does the lab keep the evidence after you’ve analyzed it? Do y’all store it or does it go back to where it came from?

Laura Sudkamp:

It goes back to where it came from. We do not have storage facilities. I don’t have enough room for analysts right now, let alone storing everybody’s evidence. So it goes back. There’s some evidence, especially with DNA, that you cannot destroy before at trial. So we stick stickers all over it if we can that says, “Do not destroy this. You know need to look at this statute before you even think about it.”

David Lyons:

Oh, yeah, for sure. Accidents happen. So maybe the stickers will prevent that from happening.

Wendy Lyons:

They can’t be storing that stuff, especially when they’re getting bed frames and bed rails in. There’s no room for that.

Laura Sudkamp:

Car doors and car seats.

David Lyons:

Oh, that’s hilarious. Because I remember our forensics people on some of my cases cutting pieces out of a house, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t send you the baseboards. I’m pretty sure.

Marcie Adkins:

Well, we’ve had floorboards, whole big pieces of plywood, safes. It is just entertaining sometimes to go in the evidence room and see what’s what’s there.

David Lyons:

Too funny. How about the drug part? Because we’ve talked a little bit about DNA and everything, but how much of a drug do they have to send? For example, if I go to a house and I take out a marijuana grow in somebody’s attic and let’s just say it’s got 300 plants, do they bring 300 plants to Laura? Or how do they do that?

Laura Sudkamp:

We prefer not. Basically, your charge is going to be, if it’s over five plants, that’s where it becomes a felony. So 300’s obviously over that. I would encourage them to bring 10 plants, just to show that we had more than five. Take pictures of the rest. If it’s large bundles of marijuana, you’re really looking at eight ounce, five pounds, and 10 pounds as your cutoffs. And even with the heroin and the meth and whatnot now, you’re looking at two gram and four gram cutoffs. So if you’ve got five kilos, I’m going to test each one, but I don’t need to necessarily test everything in every case. Once you reach that threshold, you’ve proven the charge.

David Lyons:

Have there been changes in the types of drugs and the amounts of drugs or how many times that you’re asked to analyze drugs based on changing laws or people’s changing attitudes on drugs? For example, marijuana, has that decreased or anything based on the changing tide?

Laura Sudkamp:

There are some prosecutors that just don’t bother with marijuana anymore. So a lot of those agencies have stopped submitting the marijuana. There are still a lot. We still get a lot of marijuana in. There’s still a lot of trafficking that goes on. There are still a lot of people that think that hemp’s legal, so I can have a bag of hemp in my purse. Well, no. Plant material, even if it’s hemp, is not legal. You can’t have the plant material itself unless you’re the farmer or the processor. So we still get a lot of that. We have gotten a lot more of the fentanyls, all the different synthetics are coming up. Methamphetamine is king in Kentucky. If you look at all the items that we tested last year, I believe 51% of those items were methamphetamine. All the other drugs combined made the other 49%.

David Lyons:

Before I left, and just for the record, I’ve been gone by a year and a half. I know that there had been a shift to the opioid problem. And a lot of effort was poured into that federally and locally funding wise and everything, which was great. But I know that we were pretty careful to talk to the people, the powers to be, let them know that, “Hey, it’s a different economy, and you can hit something pretty hard.” And meth was what we were seeing in Lexington starting to creep back up again. Is that you hit it hard, they’re going to go to another product. Well, I think the efforts on the opioid problem were justifiable. You got to be ready for that next thing. And it will probably be meth again, probably be meth. Do you get a lot of tests based on overdose deaths and things like that? As far as the tox part of it, how many of those do you think you get a year?

Laura Sudkamp:

So we only do the anti-mortem the pre-death. So those are going to be DUI or some other investigation. The toxicology for the medical examiner’s office is actually a contract lab. So we don’t see that, but we know the medical examiner in Frankfurt, their office is above us and we see the number of overdose deaths that come through. There’s a bunch.

David Lyons:

How specific can you get, even on the DUI side? How far can you break that down in somebody’s blood to identify different drugs?

Laura Sudkamp:

It’s pretty good. The hard part is when these new synthetics come out, they’re new, and you don’t know how the body metabolizes them. You have to go through and do these validations. You got to figure out what the drug is. In the drug section, if you have a white powder, you can keep analyzing that white powder and figure out what it is. When you are working with toxicology and drugs in the blood, if you’re talking one or two nanograms, that’s like taking a spoon full of sugar and sprinkling it on a football field and getting it all back. So you’re doing that search and then you’re trying to get enough to look at, and then you’re trying to figure out what it is. And so the toxicology part is mostly on the synthetic and the newer drugs, is done by vendor labs because they’ve got the money and the resources to do the research.

Laura Sudkamp:

And it’s kind of a competition to see which one can, “Hey, we do this many synthetics now, and send your sample to us, and you got a better chance that we’ll identify it.” So we are slower on that because we don’t have the money for that research. And it is possible. But even, you send something off, you can send it to one vendor and they’ll have a panel of drugs they look for, and they’ll catch it. But the other vendor, they have six other things in there. It’s kind of like a menu, and you may or may not hit it.

David Lyons:

And it’s always changed. So you’re facing that. Well, let’s move a little bit too, when we talk about the field of forensics and what you all do. You analyze this evidence, you make the reports and everything. Do you ever have to go to court?

Marcie Adkins:

Yes. So I would say it really comes in waves. I may not testify at all for six months, but then I might have three subpoenas in one week. I would say on average, and this is going to differ, once again, based on the section you’re in, because the people in drugs and toxicology, they go a lot more often. But for me, probably averages out to about once a month over my whole career. And yeah, just depends.

David Lyons:

How about you, Laura?

Laura Sudkamp:

When I was a drug chemist, part of it was probably because I was pregnant and the jury’s always sympathetic with the pregnant witness. And so the defense doesn’t go after you too hard. But I testified in a four day, it was Labor Day weekend, so it was only a four day week. I testified 16 times.

Marcie Adkins:

Oh my goodness.

Wendy Lyons:

Good Lord, were you home at all or did you just-

Laura Sudkamp:

Not much.

Wendy Lyons:

… stay at the courthouse?

Laura Sudkamp:

And at one point I was between, I think I had to go from Lincoln County. I had to go from Fayette, federal court to Fayette circuit court. Then I had to go to, I want to say it was Lincoln County, but it could have been Harrisburg. And when I was trying to get there, a on country road, got stuck behind a mobile home that got stuck under a tree, and they were having to cut it. So the judge called me on the phone.

Wendy Lyons:

You’re making Kentucky sound bad.

Laura Sudkamp:

Now this was back in, it was either 1993 or 1995, because that’s when my kids were born.

David Lyons:

In Kentucky, when somebody says they’re moving, they’re moving.

Laura Sudkamp:

Yes. But I had to end up testifying on the phone for Fayette County because I was going to be late when I was in, whether it was Lincoln or Mercer. Just because it was so back to back. But drug chemists do testify probably closer to once a week or two to three times a month. And then toxicologists, they tend to go to court a lot. They get subpoenaed a lot and then they just sit there and watch everybody plead out. So it’s a complete waste of their time. That bothers me when judges and prosecutors are complaining that it’s taking us a while to get their cases out. And yet, they have no problem making that person sit in court a day or two a week and never testify.

David Lyons:

And so that happens to y’all too.

Laura Sudkamp:

Yes.

David Lyons:

Yeah. Because two things I caught from all of that is that one, I missed my shot. I should have had a maternity gown, and I’d have been left alone on the stand. That obviously. And then the other thing too is, that’s another thing people don’t understand from the outside because TV never shows that is sitting and waiting and then sometimes the afterthought. “Oh, actually, we didn’t need you.”

David Lyons:

“Well, a phone call would’ve been great.” Yeah, so you’re not the only ones. If I had a dollar for every time that happened, it would’ve been amazing where, “We didn’t need you.” Or another thing for us, I don’t think it happened to you all, but some of the less than credible defense attorneys, a lot of times would find a new officer just to share this with you all at a preliminary hearing and find them in the hall and go up and talk to them and everything.

David Lyons:

And then they’d come back and they’d say, “Hey, guess what? They don’t need you. Go ahead and go home.” And then the officer would leave. And then of course, the judge would be paging him or calling him and everything. And it was just one of the shiesty things to do back in the day. And of course, after that, if you were that attorney, nobody spoke to you in the hall after that. You were done and whatnot, but good times.

David Lyons:

So that’s another thing too, so if people want to get in this field, that’s something they need to be prepared for, is that they’re going to have to testify. Now, to testify in your field, and I knew we’d come back to this. Is there a process that when Marcie or Laura comes and swears in and sits in there, is there a process that the court recognizes who you are and what you do and gives you credibility based on that? How’s that look? How do you get to that point?

Marcie Adkins:

Well, yes, so they introduce us. They call us in, and they have us give our name and where we work. But I don’t think that Kentucky really moves to recognize the witness as an expert anymore. Not in most counties.

Laura Sudkamp:

They do more on the chemistry side, where you have to give, like she said, where you work, what your education is, what degree you have, and then what training you underwent at the lab or outside the lab. Then they basically will accept you as an expert or not.

Marcie Adkins:

I guess not formally. They don’t say, “Will I move to enter this person as an expert?” But the fact that you were allowed to continue testifying, it’s implied.

David Lyons:

Yeah, there we go. And that’s why I was getting at, is that there has to be some credentialing on that. And again, if you don’t pass that, then I guess you don’t get called or you don’t get to stay on the stand or whatever. That’s an interesting thing too. So we’ve got that, that we know we’ve got to testify. You ever had a bad experience in testimony, in cross-examined? Has anybody ever gotten rough with you or anything?

Marcie Adkins:

Has there been anyone who hasn’t had a bad experience?

Laura Sudkamp:

Yeah, not many. With drugs and tox, it’s not as difficult. A lot of times you just get up, you give your credentials, they ask you if you’ve ever seen this, recognizes evidence. Have you ever seen it? You point out your lab number initials. They ask you what you did with the sample. You tell them what test you did. And you tell them what the conclusion is. Defense will get up. And their question is, “Did you know my defendant? Do you know anything about this defendant?” Simple questions like that, and then they’re down. So a lot of times you were waiting for an hour, hour and a half, get on the stand, and it’s 15 minutes, and you’re right back off. So it’s not so bad.

Marcie Adkins:

But yeah, with violent crimes. So this is going to cover the DNA section, serology, firearms, and trace, anybody who typically passes evidence around in those cases, it can be very adversarial and it seems like the less that they have, the more adversarial they can be. And it can be very stressful.

David Lyons:

How do you approach that? What kind of mindset do you have? And especially after experience, knowing that you’re going to sit down, and that that’s coming, what do you do? Again, people that they need to know if you’re going to get in this field, that this is there and it’s the reality of the game. What are some of the things that you’ve done over the years to get maybe used to that or prepare for that or to handle that?

Marcie Adkins:

Well, first of all, in our training, we train people because you don’t have to just present your evidence. You have to say it in a way that people who aren’t scientists can understand. So we want to get them thinking about that and able to verbalize that way. So we set them up to know just court procedures, so that they know what they’re getting into when they go into court. So we start there in training.

Marcie Adkins:

Before a trial, hopefully you’ve talked to the prosecutor. I like to give them a list of questions to follow, which is just basically, what is DNA? What kind of testing do you do? And the build up to the actual results, to give the jury a little bit of background. I also go through my report and my notes and I refresh my memory. And I think the biggest thing for me is because you can get so nervous is that I just have to remember that this is not about me. I’m not on trial. This is about going in there and presenting evidence, whether it be just being your best, whether it be for the victims in the courtroom or for the defendant who may have been wrongfully accused.

David Lyons:

Good advice.

Laura Sudkamp:

And always when I start getting that anxious feeling, it’s like, just calm down. You’re just trying to explain to the jury and answer for the jury what these questions are. They can be trying to provoke something out of you, but you just stick to science. You stick to what you know. You do not extend into any area that you’re not an expert in. As a drug chemist, if they asked me, “Hey, could you have gotten DNA off of these bags?”

Laura Sudkamp:

“I have no idea. I’m not a DNA analyst.” You just don’t reach into any other section of the laboratory. You answer only what you’re allowed to do.

David Lyons:

Stay in that swim lane then. Right? For sure. And I guess that’s a tactic is to try to bait you out of that lane. They did it with us quite a bit too. Good stuff on that. So people need to be ready for the idea that they’re going to have to go to court and testify. Let’s talk more about, because I know we’ve got people listening. If somebody was interested in forensics, again, we’ll start with Marcie and come over to Laura. What would you tell them to do, especially at a young age, to discern that, to kind of come to that and then what kind of preparation can they make to move into the field?

Wendy Lyons:

Hey, there’s more to the story. So go download the next episode like the true crime fan that you are.

David Lyons:

The Murder Police podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded, and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform as well as at murderpolicepodcast.com, which is our website. And it has show notes for imagery and audio and video files related to the cases you’re going to hear.

David Lyons:

We are also on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube, which has closed caption available for those that are hearing impaired. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us a five star review on Apple Podcast or wherever you download your podcast from. Subscribe to the Murder Police podcast and set your player to automatically download new episodes. So you get the new ones as soon as they drop. And please tell your friends. Lock it down, Judy.

---

Forensics with Laura Sudkamp & Marci Adkins Part 3 of 3

Wendy Lyons:

Warning. The podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder, and adult language. Listener discretion is advised.

David Lyons:

Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast, Forensics, with Laura Sudkamp and Marcie Adkins. Part 3 of 3.

David Lyons:

If somebody was interested in forensics, again, we’ll start with Marcie and then over to Laura, what would you tell them to do, especially at a young age, to discern that, to kind of come to that, and then what kind of preparation can they make to move into the field?

Laura Sudkamp:

Okay, well, first of all, grades are important, so don’t blow off school. Grades aren’t everything, but I can remember a time when we had so many applications that we were literally having to whittle it down by cutting off at GPA. Now, we don’t really have to do that anymore. That was one time out of all the times we’ve done interviews, but grades do matter.

Laura Sudkamp:

Also, I think as the forensic field has grown, it’s like every college wants to throw together a forensic science degree. Really do your research if you want to go get a forensic science degree and make sure they’re accredited. But more so, you don’t have to have a forensic science degree to come into this field. You need a biology degree to go into the biology part, or you need a chemistry degree to go into the chemistry part, but you don’t have to have something based in forensic science. So I think it’s good to have something else so that you have other avenues you can go if forensics doesn’t work out for you.

David Lyons:

Fantastic advice. Because I tell people that all the time in law enforcement, you don’t have to have criminal justice degrees, and there’s plenty of other things that you can get into. I like what you’re talking about is that the plan B, is that I try to encourage people all the time when they’re younger is that I know that you want this, it’s probably in your bones you want to go do this, but things can change. The environment can change. You may get a boss that doesn’t like you, or you don’t like your boss, or you could have an event in your field, kind of coming back to the ball bat, and at some point you could face burnout. So what does plan B look like? Not being too narrow.

David Lyons:

Let me ask you this, because you talked about grades matter, is there any kind of a background that’s processed, especially maybe at a KSP lab? Do any labs look at your background to see. If you’re going to be testifying, that’s a big deal. Should people be paying attention to their social media, to things like that?

Laura Sudkamp:

We will go through a background. They’ll do a criminal background check on you. We have a sergeant or a lieutenant, sometimes a trooper will do it for us, but they actually will get on the phone with all your references. We have one that will drive by your house, stop by your neighbors, go have a chat. So they really do look into you. They do look at your social media, especially if you’ve got any drug issues and you’ve not hesitated to put them out there, which surprises me, but it’s there. A lot of other laboratories across the country actually have you go through a polygraph process. We don’t do that at this stage. They do with the troopers, but not with the civilians. So yeah, you’ve got to keep a pretty clean nose.

Marcie Adkins:

Nose.

David Lyons:

Walk at the foot of the cross, right?

Laura Sudkamp:

I can remember one round of interviews we were doing, we actually had a pretty well qualified candidate and we went to her Facebook page, because one of the other interview panelists, they love to go check people’s Facebook page and kind of sniff them out that way. But she had a very angsty bio on her Facebook and it really just made us think, she is not going to play well with others, and we all work together very closely.

Laura Sudkamp:

We’re also looking for people who are qualified, that have the science background, and who are going to play well with others.

David Lyons:

It’s a team. That’s one thing I remember from my day working with y’all, Laura, when I was in the unit, is you felt that when you walked in the room, and it was neat. I think that’s why the communication works so well. So I can understand you’re on a little boat on a long trip and you better have the right people on that crew for sure or it can be awful.

Laura Sudkamp:

Yes.

David Lyons:

That’s good for people to know for sure, is that it’s like anything else. If you want this thing, you better work toward it. I used to tell people all the time that if you’re doing any of this goofy crap, stop now, because it’s not fatal yet, but if you continue on. I used to tell kids when I taught NC at colleges, is that, just everything. Watch who you run around with. Watch who you get in a car with. Because there can be something happening one time that could really set this far back or destroy the opportunity.

David Lyons:

Well, let’s talk about this, because I think that’s good, because a lot of people. Let’s talk about some cool wins. Again, we don’t have to get into detail and everything. Can you remember any of the instances that you had, where you had results that came back that tied things up real well, that you got that ah moment? That’s either in DNA or in drugs or anything like that. Maybe even too some exonerations. Those are important to talk about the objectivity. So, you got any war stories that you can share?

Laura Sudkamp:

Oh gosh, I have a lot to draw from. I can think of a case here in Lexington where, his name is Andrea Clay. He is the defendant. It has been adjudicated, it has been through appeals process, so I can talk about this. But Bill Brislin was the detective on that case, and that could take up a whole other podcast.

David Lyons:

With a lot of tissue, because he cries a lot. But go ahead.

Laura Sudkamp:

But that was interesting. This man was known to prey on young black women, and he started out as an alleged rapist and then progressed to a convicted murderer. I remember Lexington didn’t feel safe with this person out there.

Laura Sudkamp:

They brought in this particular case and we were asked to rush it. So we had her fingernails, and, incidentally, she was also, among other things, she was choked. She was strangled. So I can remember the profile coming off the instrument and watching it. One of the things we look at, one of the locations is the sex determinant. So females have two X chromosomes, males have an X and a Y. As soon as I saw that Y come off, I knew that we would be able to do something with that. We were able to get that reported out very quickly and get him picked up.

David Lyons:

That’s incredible. Again, when you talk about the importance of this work, you hit a good point. There’s a sense of security for an entire community. I know we focus on the victims and the advocacy and everything, but the ripple effect, or the force multiplier, is that when you have that boogeyman crime, because I’ve watched it for years, the entire community will be on the edge of their seat, reasonably, for that. But what a cool thing to be able to have a role in that, to lay that down and make it work. That’s incredible. That had to feel neat when that rolled off and you saw that. Had to feel.

Laura Sudkamp:

Well, that was one of those challenging testimonies.

David Lyons:

How’d that go? Is there anything that stuck out that got thrown at you that made it rough?

Laura Sudkamp:

Well, I mean, that was the longest testimony I ever had. It was over three hours, and there was just a lot of, I was belittled a bit. But that’s part of it.

David Lyons:

They didn’t have much, probably. You made a good point. The less you got, then let’s go after the piano player. I think that’s usually what I used to see too, is the ridiculousness of that is that the only thing left is character assault. Of course they’re battling for one person on a jury. They just need one. It’s amazing. So what’s some other cool wins like that? Because that’s phenomenal.

Marcie Adkins:

I’m more likely to think of the ones that we haven’t solved, that are still pending. Those are what haunt me.

David Lyons:

Yeah. And it’s our goal here shortly to start doing unsolveds. We haven’t done any yet, but I think, one, the victims and their families and their friends, they need a place to talk about who that person was. Then the awareness is that you can’t let these things die, because whoever did it, it’s always been my opinion, that they get a lot of strength with time, and the less that it’s talked about it gets more behind them. But every now and then it’s good to keep floating at out there, because it’s like quail hunting. You can run them out of the bush sometimes. So we’ll be doing something, so if you’ve got ideas on some that really are speaking to you, both of you. Let us know and we’ll bring you back and bring the investigators in and we’ll go ahead and talk to the family members and get that on the record with them too.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, and I think also with those cold cases that we’re talking about doing, you never know who may be one of our listeners that knows something, as it was in the Trent DiGiuro case we worked. Not a listener, but a person who knew something about that case that finally that person just had to tell, and that’s how that case got solved.

Wendy Lyons:

So maybe there’s a listener out there who knows something about a cold case, that’s been keeping it close to their chest, but it’s been eating them up and they just want to finally let it go.

David Lyons:

Can you think of any victims right off the top of your head, Laura, that come to mind over the years?

Laura Sudkamp:

There’s all the Bardstown ones.

David Lyons:

Those are incredible. Incredible.

Marcie Adkins:

There’s the death, that case that was a post 12 Shelbyville case. That one’s always haunted me. There’s just a bunch.

Laura Sudkamp:

I’m thinking of that older couple up in Northern Kentucky, too.

Marcie Adkins:

The Stevens case. Yes.

David Lyons:

Talk about that. Who is it, The Golden State Killer? Talking about different things that are coming up. Have y’all done any of that genealogy, or what do they call it, familial DNA [inaudible 00:11:03]?

Marcie Adkins:

There’s two different things, yes.

Laura Sudkamp:

That is way outside of our wheelhouse.

David Lyons:

I gotcha.

Laura Sudkamp:

I only know enough to be dangerous. So they’re looking at different locations on the DNA and their somehow using ancestry to trace it back.

David Lyons:

Which is phenomenal.

Laura Sudkamp:

Yes. I mean, it’s fascinating.

Marcie Adkins:

But they’re using a whole different processing. They wouldn’t use even our reagent, our chemicals. They’re using a whole different process to do that testing.

Laura Sudkamp:

I think they’re using SNPs a lot, and SNPs is another DNA acronym that stands for single nucleotide polymorphism. So that’s a lot of what they’re using with the ancestral stuff.

David Lyons:

It’s just neat. I listened to another podcast last year that kind of hit the periphery of it, but there was a case, and I can’t remember where it was, but the way I heard it and the way it sounded to me is kind of like cell phone tracking, is that they may not get you down to a pinpoint, but they can kind of get your family tree into it. I remember in this case that they were able to say that they believed that the male suspect, based on the family, could be located either in one part of Indiana or a county in Kentucky. I’m like, “at least you’re kind of going through the haystack,” which, as an investigator, could really potentially move you on. So it’s just a fascinating turn in the industry again. Is there anything you came here that you felt strongly about to get out?

Marcie Adkins:

A lot of times somebody will say, you talk about how much you enjoy it and would do it again and it’s a good career, and you’ve kind of brought up some of the things that you have to think about. Well, I will tell you that I have pulled so many dead bodies out of burned vehicles, working with the MEs office that I could not teach. I could not take my children to learn how to drive. Even now I let my husband drive me, but he knows, don’t tailgate or I’ll bite. But I couldn’t take them. I could take them on the back street in the neighborhood, but to get out on the main road. There’s the guy that was in the pickup truck that a drunk driver hit him head on and he got his legs stuck under and he burned to death with everybody watching. That one was miserable.

Marcie Adkins:

At one time I got the call at 3:00 AM, “There’s been an accident. There’s three bodies in the car. Can we bring them to the lab and have them pulled out?” So I go and it’s unusual because there are three or four deputy coroners there, there’s three troopers there. Normally I only have one. There’s two fire trucks. So I knew something was up when I went in, but I go in and I roll the doors up, tell them where they can drop the car. They drop the car. I have to walk around it to go sign it in and get all the details on it and get signatures, and as I’m walking around it, I can see the top half of the bodies are burned, but the bottoms are intact, and I looked at them and I said, “Those are teenage legs. Where was this wreck? What part of Franklin County?” It was Franklin County. “Which part?” Then they told me and I was like, “Time out, stop.” My neighbors-

Laura Sudkamp:

You go to make some calls?

Marcie Adkins:

Yeah. I need to know. “I don’t want to know who this is. My neighbor down the street, their son, my son, they’re all that age, and one of them drives a car just like this, so I’m walking away.” I went home.

Marcie Adkins:

You always have to take a shower after those, because the car and the blood and everything are all over you and got in the shower, and then I got out and I’m like, “Okay, I can deal with this.” So I called and said, “Who is it?” They told me, and it was three kids that my kids had grown up with. But it wasn’t the neighbor down the street, but one of them Emily was supposed to go to prom with.

David Lyons:

Too close to home.

Marcie Adkins:

Too close to home. That one will always live with me. But there’s a lot of death you have to deal with. More from a management perspective as far as having to deal with the bodies coming in and working with the ME’s office. But you do run into it. It does. There are things that will always haunt me.

Wendy Lyons:

What is tour role that they would bring those bodies there? What do they want you to do?

Marcie Adkins:

Well, we had the way the facility set up the ME’s office doesn’t have a garage bay, so I they’d bring it in one to secure it or two, they couldn’t pull them out on scene because it was either they couldn’t, the car was too hot or it was one they just had to get the car gone. Or there were too many people looking to be able to pull out pieces, parts. So they would call the lab and then I would come in, lock it down. Then sometimes we would have the fire department there, get the jaws of life to pop it open right at that time or arrange for it in the morning. So I was kind of the arranger for the ME’s office, between the coroner and the fire department.

Wendy Lyons:

Did you have to do any DNA, maybe teeth or whatever to see who burned victims might be?

Marcie Adkins:

Sometimes when we did the calm air 51, that we were some DNA we had to do on that 51 91. There are times that yes, we will have samples taken, but usually we will wait till the body’s upstairs and have a biologist go up and help. The MEs generally will learn from us as we go. So they know what it is that we want and they will do it, send it with the detective boy. T.

Laura Sudkamp:

Hat was a very somber couple of weeks. Wasn’t it? Yes.

David Lyons:

51 91. Yes. For the listeners that there was a horrific plane crash here at Lexington.

Marcie Adkins:

They set up some refrigerated semis behind the lab just to hold all of the bodies. Most of them were intact, but there was a few body parts that we did DNA on to be sure that they were released with the right, the correct.

David Lyons:

So sad. From people in our community. When you talk about Lexington for people that aren’t here is a little over 300,000 now and when 50, 49 people died. If I remember correctly, the one survivor was a pilot and you’re still in a small town because it’s hard to meet somebody that didn’t have one or two degree separation of somebody on that plane.

Marcie Adkins:

My mom and dad were supposed to be on it and they missed it.

David Lyons:

Oh Lord.

Laura Sudkamp:

Oh my goodness. I didn’t know that.

Marcie Adkins:

Well, I shouldn’t say they missed it. They had chosen the day before that they backed it up to take a later flight. They switched.

Laura Sudkamp:

Well, one of our DNA analysts, her brother-in-law was on that flight and died that day.

David Lyons:

It’s really hard to find somebody that doesn’t have a very close nexus to it. I remember I was still at the PD and I ran the overnight detail on that. It was a completely surreal, surreal, it’s very sad.

Marcie Adkins:

One of the coroners had a family member on there.

David Lyons:

Again, there’s another piece of where this forensic thing goes that’s different than what you see. There’s a plane crash and now you’re involved on and the importance of that, like you said, Marcie is the idea that you just get that right. You know that when you have something that traumatic for that family, getting that right, to be able to say affirmatively, that means so much to somebody that’s struggling with that. You and I probably can’t process that right now, but the idea that these things go together for somebody to put that at rest is incredibly important.

Wendy Lyons:

Marcie, Laura, thank you all so much for coming and thank you all for what you do. I think our listeners, I can’t speak for, but for myself, you’ve opened my eyes. There’s a lot of things that both of you all have talked about that I really didn’t realize was being tested or that you all do. I think people know that’s out there, but you don’t think that there’s people out there who have to do that. So thank you all for what you do and thank you also for coming and sharing your stories and your careers with us. We really do appreciate that and we thank you again for sharing your stories and being here with us.

Marcie Adkins:

My pleasure. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Laura Sudkamp:

Yeah. Thanks for having us.

David Lyons:

Come back. I think that we’ve had some conversations about some future topics that people will be interested in hearing. Lastly, I’ll finish up too with the idea that one thing I pulled from this and hoping that the listeners do is the role in victim advocacy that you all play, that it’s centered around this, in that search for the truth. It we’ve talked about exonerating, exculpatory evidence and everything, but at the heart of it is representing somebody that can’t speak for themselves or is being silenced by the weight of the crime that they were a victim of. You all do a fantastic job with that. So thank you all very much.

Marcie Adkins:

Thank you.

David Lyons:

The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims. So their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite apple or Android podcast platform as well as at murderpolicepodcast.com, which is our website. It has show notes for imagery and audio and video files related to the cases you’re going to hear. We are also on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube, which has closed caption available for those that are hearing impaired. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us a five star review on Apple Podcast or wherever you download your podcast from. Subscribe to the Murder Police Podcast and set your player to automatically download new episodes. So you get the new ones as soon as they drop. Please tell your friends. Lock it down, Judy.