SnapShot: Reconnecting the Past: Old Suspects, New Friends

A cold case rarely gives you straight lines. When a DNA phenotype produced a face that mirrored a name in our old files, we braced for a hard turn—and then discovered the man was working in law enforcement in a tiny eastern Oregon town. We tried to blend in with multiple unmarked cars, but there’s no subtle way to do surveillance where everyone knows every bumper. After a day of clumsy tails and close calls, we chose a quieter, harder path: knock, introduce ourselves, and ask for the truth.

That conversation changed everything. He listened, weighed the stakes, and offered a DNA sample that cleared him completely. The supposed match became a human being again, not just a photo overlay or a line on a report. Along the way, we met his best friend and saw a different side of the town—what it felt like to grow up there, how a violent crime ripples through tight streets and family routines, how communities hold that weight long after headlines fade. The science did its job by pointing us toward a door; empathy did its job by opening it.

Years later, he reached out. By chance, we were headed to Bend, Oregon, and we finally sat down for beers with him, his friend from the original contact, and another buddy. We traded stories, compared notes on the case’s impact, and remembered why this work matters beyond lab reports and case numbers. The moment felt full-circle: a lead that didn’t solve the murder still helped restore trust, reminded us that most people are decent, and left us with three new friends. Justice work needs facts, but it also needs heart—and sometimes the best outcome is clearing the innocent with respect and leaving the table with a deeper connection to the community we serve.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Case Snapshot And Setup
• 0:32 DNA Phenotyping Explained
• 2:05 A Cop Becomes The Lookalike
• 2:43 Small-Town Surveillance Fumbles
• 3:22 Door Knock, Interview, And Elimination
• 3:44 Full-Circle Reunion And Takeaway

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a Murders to Music snapshot. So I want to talk about the Barbara Tucker murder. And that was the cold case investigation that I solved. And if you listen to the podcast, uh, there's an episode on the Barbara Tucker murder, and I talk about all the details of it and how it got solved and ultimately what the outcome was. But during that investigation, something crazy happened, and I met some people. And there's a picture. Okay, so let me back up. So during the investigation, we were able to send a DNA sample of semen from the victim to a laboratory, and that laboratory was able to create a phenotype. And a phenotype tells us the hair color, eye color, freckles, skin tone, ethnic origin, all the stuff for our suspect or the donor of the sample, in this case, sperm donor. They also provide a picture. And the picture is what the person would look like at approximately 25 years of age, average weight, average height. And this is a lead generator. It gives us a place to go. We can look at this picture and say, is there anybody in the case file that looks or resembles this suspect or this phenotype photo? And if there is, we go talk to him. So as luck would have it, their phenotype comes out and we're looking through the case file, and there's a gentleman in that case file that looks just like the phenotype. And these phenotypes aren't generic, they're very unique. But the eye bones, the eye structure, the corners of the mouth, the nose, the side, everything looks just like it. I took the picture from our case file and I superimposed it on top of the phenotype and then changed the opacity from, you know, full opacity to zero. So basically I could see one picture fade in and out on top of the other. And I swear to goodness, it was this person. So now we have to do a workup or a profile on who this suspect is, because this suspect or person of interest hasn't really come to the top of my investigation. He was just named in the old investigation. So as we look into this guy, we determine that, yep, he's still alive, he's still kicking, he lives in eastern Oregon, and he's involved in law enforcement. So we're like, man, this throws a whole monkey wrench into the plan of going out and knocking and talking the suspect because this guy is now a cop, essentially. So we put our heads together and we decide we're going to go out to this small eastern Oregon town and we're going to do a surveillance. And that surveillance, so we bring six or seven cops out there, six or seven cop cars. I try to get the old junkie cars, but my sergeant wouldn't give them to us, so we had to drive all of our new detective rides. And we get out to this town where there's a population of about 400 people, and we stick out like a sore thumb. And we were able to find our guy and we follow him around and follow him up and down the streets. And but every time we turn around, we're bumping into another cop, and it's us. And so we're like, this guy's a cop, his head's on a swivel. It's it's tough to follow a cop in a cop's town. So we all go back to my city and we regroup, and then my partner and I decide, you know what? We're just gonna go out and interview the guy. We're gonna knock his door and talk to him and see where he's at. So we go out, we talk to him, we interview him. Ultimately, he decides to provide a DNA sample, and we're able to eliminate him as a suspect. He's not our guy. So we're thankful for that. But during that conversation, we had to meet him and we met his best friend at the time. And just meeting these people, law enforcement or not, they're just good human beings. They're just down-to-earth, hardworking, good humans. And it's rare that we got to run into these people in our field. And I remember telling the guy once we cleared him, dude, I would love to have a beer with you someday. Uh, and I'm buying. So, fast forward, it is now four years later, three, four years later. And he reaches out to us about three weeks ago, the the cop white guy. He reaches out to us about three weeks ago uh through my partner. And as luck would have it, I'm headed to Bend, Oregon. Uh now. I'm like literally recording this in Bend, you know. Um so a couple weeks after he reached out, I'm headed to Bend. And he agreed to come meet us. So last night, I got to meet with him, his best friend at the time, the other guy we contacted during the uh investigation, and then a third friend of theirs. And we got to sit down last night and have a beer together and reconnect and talk about the case, talk about what life was like growing up in that city during those years, talk about the impact that case and others had on the community. It was such a blessing and such a full circle moment for me to be able to reconnect, rekindle the conversation, and just be present in that moment. It was really cool. I think I've made three friends for life, they're amazing guys, and uh it wasn't very often that happened in my old world. You know, this world I'm in now, we definitely get a chance to meet more of those hardworking, blue-collar, down-to-earth people that literally just want to go and provide for their family and be there and support their family. In my old world, that didn't happen very often. So when it did happen, it stuck out. So I have now made three friends because of that investigation, and I was blessed last night to spend several hours with them sharing meals, appetizers, breaking bread, getting to know them and connecting them with them on a real human level. Never, never underestimate the opportunity that you're in right now, and the people that you contact and come in contact with, and the coworkers and the people you bump into on the street because you never know when they can be tomorrow's friend. That's what I learned from this encounter.