This time I found a short story about the death in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Jamie was from a prominent family that ran a well-known boot-and-saddlery business in Fort Worth. Flynn was a graduate assistant at Southern Methodist University in Dallas while working on a doctorate in psychology. She lived on a horse ranch in Fort Worth owned by her parents and commuted because she liked to be close to her horses. It was her life’s goal to open a counseling practice that incorporated riding as therapy. The story contained an interview with Flynn’s father, who lamented that his daughter had battled depression and alcoholism before straightening her life out and returning to school. He seemed proud of the fact that she had not had a relapse and that her blood screens in the autopsy were clean.
The story also quoted a traffic-accident investigator from the Dallas Police Department. Todd Whitney said he wouldn’t close the case until he was confident the death of Jamie Flynn was an accident.
“A young healthy woman with a lot going for her doesn’t just go off the road and down into a ravine and get her neck broken,” he said. “It may be purely an accident. She could have seen a deer or something and swerved. But there are no skid marks and no animal tracks. I wish I could tell her parents I have the answers, but I don’t. Not yet.”
I noted that there was nothing in the story about whether Jamie Flynn might have driven off the road on purpose in an attempt to disguise a suicide as an accident. It was not an uncommon occurrence. But if it had been considered, it was not publicly reported. There was such a stigma attached to suicide that most newspapers avoided it like the plague. It was only when public figures offed themselves that suicide stories were written.
I moved on for the moment from Jamie Flynn. I wanted to keep my momentum. I was certain that I was closing in on something and did not want to be delayed.
7
The last case I reviewed was the first mentioned on the causes-of-death message board. It had been posted with a short case summary. The death of thirty-two-year-old Mallory Yates in Fort Lauderdale was open and being treated as a homicide because, like the case in Dallas, there were incongruities about the supposed traffic accident that took her life. Histamine levels in some of the wounds to her body suggested that the injuries were postmortem and the accident was staged. But moving on from the post, I found no funeral notice or news story about the case. A second-tier search brought up a Facebook page that was publicly accessible and had been turned into a memorial page for Yates. There were dozens of messages posted by friends and family in the sixteen months since her death. I scrolled through them quickly, picking up bits and pieces of the dead woman’s history and updates on her case.
I learned that Mallory had grown up in Fort Lauderdale, had attended Catholic schools and gone to work in her family’s boat-rental business operating out of a marina called Bahia Mar. She had apparently not attended college after high school and, like Jamie Flynn in Fort Worth, lived alone in a home owned by her father. Her mother was deceased. Several of the Facebook posts were messages of condolence directed to her father in regard to losing both his wife and daughter in the space of two years.
A message posted three weeks after Mallory’s death caught my eye and brought my casual scroll through the page to a dead stop. Someone named Ed Yeagers posted a message of sympathy that identified Mallory as his third cousin and lamented that they were just getting acquainted when she was taken away. He said, “I was just getting to know you and wish there was more time. Profoundly sad to find family and then lose family in the same month.”
That sentiment could have come from the obituary for Charlotte Taggart. Finding family in this day and age usually meant DNA. There were heredity-analytics companies that used online data to search for family connections but DNA was the shortcut. I was now convinced that both Charlotte Taggart and Mallory Yates had been searching for connections through DNA heritage analysis. And so had Christina Portrero. The coincidence extended to three of the women and might include all four.
I spent the next twenty minutes running down social-media links to relatives and friends of Mallory Yates and Charlotte Taggart. I sent every one of them the same message asking if their loved one had submitted DNA to an analytics company and, if so, which one. Even before I finished I got an email response from Ed Yeagers.
Met her through GT23. It was only 6 weeks before she died so never got the chance to meet in person. Seemed like a really good girl. What a shame.
My adrenaline hit the floodgates. I had two confirmed cases that shared a rare cause of death and submission of DNA to GT23. I quickly went back to the story about Jamie Flynn in the Fort Worth paper and got the name of her father and the family business he ran, selling boots, belts, and equestrian products like saddles and reins. I googled the business, got a phone number for the main office, and called it. A woman answered and I asked for Walter Flynn.
“Can I ask what this is regarding?” she asked.
“His daughter Jamie,” I said.
Nobody likes to cause someone more grief than they already carry. I knew that I would do that with this phone call. But I also knew that if I was right about my instincts I might eventually be able to lessen that grief with answers.
A man picked up the call after a very brief hold.
“Walt Flynn, what can I do for you?”
He had a no-nonsense Texas drawl that I guessed went back generations. In my head I pictured the Marlboro Man in a white Stetson sitting on a horse, his chiseled features set in a frown. I chose my words carefully, not wanting him to dismiss me or grow angry.
“Mr. Flynn, I’m sorry to disturb you. I’m a reporter calling from Los Angeles and I’m working on a story about the unexplained deaths of several women.”
I waited. The bait had been thrown out. He would either bite or hang up on me.
“And this is about my daughter?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, it could be,” I said.
I didn’t fill the silence that followed. I started to hear a background noise, like running water.
“I’m listening,” he said.
“Sir, I don’t want to cause you any more grief than you’re already going through,” I said. “I am so sorry about the loss of your daughter. But can I speak frankly to you?”
“I’m still on the phone.”
“And off the record?”
“Isn’t that what I say to you?”
“What I mean is, I don’t want you to turn around and share this conversation with anyone apart from your wife. Is that okay?”
“It’s fine for now.”
“Okay, well, then I’ll just lay it out for you, sir. I’m looking at—I’m sorry, do we have a bad connection? I hear this back—”
“It’s raining. I stepped outside for privacy. I’ll put it on mute while you talk.”
The line went silent.
“Uh, okay, that’s fine,” I said. “So, I’m looking at four deaths of women aged twenty-two to forty-four across the country in the last year and a half where the cause of death was determined to be atlanto-occipital dislocation—AOD, as they call it. Two of the deaths, one here and one in Florida, have been classified as homicides. One is listed as accidental but I find it suspicious. And then the fourth, which is your daughter’s case, is officially classified as suspicious.”
Flynn took it off mute and I heard the rain before he spoke.
“And you’re saying these four are somehow linked?”
I could hear the disbelief creeping into his voice. I was going to lose him pretty quickly if I didn’t change that.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m looking for commonalities in the cases and the women. You could help if I could ask you a few questions. That is why I’m calling.”
He didn’t respond at first. I thought I heard the low rumble of thunder providing a bass line for the rain. Flynn finally replied.
“Ask your questions.”
“Okay. Before her death, had Jamie submitted her DNA to a genetic-analytics lab,
whether for hereditary or health analysis?”
Flynn had muted the call. There was only silence in reply. After a few moments I wondered if he had disconnected the call.
“Mr. Flynn?”
The rain came back.
“I’m here. The answer is she was just getting into that sort of stuff. But as far as I know, she had not gotten anything back. She said she wanted to incorporate it into her doctoral program somehow. She said that she was having everyone in one of her classes at the university do it. How does this connect to her death?”
“I don’t know yet. Do you happen to know what company your daughter submitted DNA to?”
“Some of the kids in her class, they’re scholarship kids. Money is tight. They went with the cheapest one. The one that charges twenty-three bucks for the test.”
“GT23.”
“That’s it. What does all of this mean?”
I almost didn’t hear his question. I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears. I now had a third confirmation. What were the odds that these three women who suffered the same kind of death had all sent their DNA to GT23?
“I don’t really know what it means yet, Mr. Flynn,” I said.
I had to guard against Flynn getting as excited over the connection in the cases as I was. I didn’t want him running to the Texas Rangers or the FBI with my story.
“Do the authorities know about this?” he asked.
“There is nothing to know about yet,” I said quickly. “When and if I have a solid link between the cases, I’ll go to them.”
“What about this DNA stuff you just asked about? Is that the connection?”
“I don’t know. It’s not confirmed yet. I don’t have enough to take to the authorities. It’s just one of a few things I’m looking at.”
I closed my eyes and listened to the rain. I knew it would come to this. Flynn’s daughter was dead and he had no answers, no explanations.
“I understand what you’re feeling, Mr. Flynn,” I said. “But we need to wait until—”
“How could you understand?” he said. “Do you have a daughter? Was she taken from you?”
A flashback memory hit me. A hand swinging at my face, me turning to deflect the blow. The diamond raking across my cheek.
“You’re right, sir, I shouldn’t have said that. I have no idea what kind of pain you carry. I just need a little bit more time to get further into this. I promise you I will stay in touch and keep you informed. If I come up with something solid you will be the first person I call. After that, we’ll go to the police, the FBI, everybody. Can you do that? Can you give me that time?”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. I can’t—we can’t—go to the FBI or anybody if we don’t have this nailed down. You don’t yell fire unless there’s a fire. You know what I mean?”
“How long?”
“A week, maybe.”
“And you’ll call me?”
“I’ll call you. That’s a promise.”
We exchanged cell numbers and he needed to hear my name again because he had missed it the first time. We then disconnected, with Flynn promising to sit tight until he heard from me at the end of a week.
My phone rang as soon as I put it back in its cradle. It was a woman named Kinsey Russell. She had been one of the posters in Charlotte Taggart’s online memorial book. I had found her on Instagram and sent her a private note.
“What kind of story are you doing?” she asked.
“To be honest, I’m not quite sure yet,” I said. “I know that your friend Charlotte’s death was listed as an accident but there are three other similar deaths of women that are not. I’m writing about those three and just want to check out Charlotte’s death to make sure something wasn’t missed.”
“I think it was murder. I’ve said that from the beginning.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she wouldn’t have gone out to those cliffs at night. And definitely not alone. But the police aren’t interested in finding out the truth. An accident looks better for them and the school than a murder.”
I had little knowledge of who Kinsey Russell was. She had written one of the messages directly to her dead friend.
“How did you know Charlotte?”
“From school. We had classes together.”
“So this was like a school party.”
“Yes, kids from school.”
“So how do you jump from her disappearing at the party to it being a murder at the cliffs?”
“Because I know she wouldn’t have gone out there by herself. She wouldn’t have gone out there at all. She was scared of heights. She always talked about all the bridges they have up there where she was from and being too scared even to drive over the Bay Bridge or the Golden Gate. She almost never went into San Francisco because of the bridges.”
I wasn’t sure that was convincing enough to declare the death a murder.
“Well … I’m going to look into it,” I said. “I’ve already started. Can I ask you a few other questions?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll help you any way I can because this isn’t right. I know something happened out there.”
“The obituary that ran in the paper up in Berkeley said she was survived by her family and several distant relatives she had discovered in the last year. Do you know what that meant, the part about distant relatives?”
“Yes, she did the DNA thing. We both did, except she was really into it and was tracing her family back to Ireland and Sweden.”
“You both did it. Which company did you use?”
“It’s called GT23. It’s not as well-known as the big ones, but it’s cheaper.”
There it was. I was four for four. Four AOD deaths, four victims who had turned their DNA over to GT23. There had to be a connection.
I asked Kinsey Russell a few follow-up questions but didn’t register their answers. I was moving on. I had momentum. I wanted to get off the phone and get to work. Finally, I thanked her for her help, said I would stay in touch, and ended the call.
I looked up after putting the phone down and saw Myron Levin looking over the half-wall of my cubicle. He was holding a mug of coffee with the FairWarning logo on it. The A in Warning was a red triangle with a lightning bolt through it. I was feeling the power of that bolt right now.
“Did you hear all of that?”
“Some of it. You have something?”
“Yeah, I got something big. I think.”
“Let’s go to the conference room.”
He pointed his cup toward the room.
“Not yet,” I said. “I need to make a few more calls, maybe go see somebody, then I’ll be ready to talk. You’re going to like it.”
“Okay,” Myron said. “Ready when you are.”
8
I pulled up everything I could on GT23 and immersed myself in the business of DNA analytics.
The piece that was most informative was a 2019 profile of the company published in Stanford Magazine as GT23 turned two years old and had just gone public, making its five founders extremely wealthy. It was an offshoot of an older company called GenoType23, which was founded two decades earlier by a group of Stanford University chemistry professors who pooled money to open a secure lab catering to law-enforcement agencies too small to fund their own labs to conduct forensic DNA analysis in criminal cases. The first company was initially successful and grew to have more than fifty court-certified technicians working and testifying in criminal cases across the western United States. But DNA became the panacea. It was increasingly being used around the world to solve crimes old and new, as well as to clear those wrongfully accused and convicted. As more and more police departments and law-enforcement agencies caught up technologically and opened their own forensic DNA labs or funded joint and regional labs, GenoType23 faced declining business and revenues and had to lay off staff.
As the company declined, a new area of social analytics emerged in the DNA field following the comp
letion of the human-genome project. Millions of people began seeking their ancestral and health histories. The founders retooled and opened GT23, a budget DNA analytics firm. There was a catch to the low cost, however. While the large forerunners in the field asked customers to volunteer their DNA anonymously for research, GT23 didn’t offer a choice. The low cost of analysis needed to be offset by making the collected samples and data available—still anonymously—to research facilities and biotech firms willing to pay for it.
The move was not without controversy, but the whole field was awash in privacy-and-security concerns. GT23’s founders weathered the questions with the basic explanation that submitting DNA to them was in fact volunteering it for research, and they proceeded to market. And the market responded. So much so that little more than a year later the founders decided to take their company public. The five founders rang the bell on the New York Stock Exchange as trading in their company opened—ironically or perhaps coincidentally—at twenty-three dollars a share. The founders became rich overnight.
I next came across a more recent article in Scientific American that carried the headline “Who Is Buying GT23’s DNA?” The article was a sidebar to a larger story that explored the ethical and privacy concerns in the freewheeling world of DNA analysis. The writer of the article had found a source inside GT23 and obtained a list of universities and biotech research facilities that bought DNA data from the company. These ranged from labs at Cambridge University in England to a biologist at MIT to a small private research lab in Irvine, California. The article said that DNA from GT23 participants—the company did not use the word customers—was being used in studies involving the genetics behind a variety of diseases and ailments, including alcoholism, obesity, insomnia, Parkinson’s, asthma, and many others.
The variety of studies that the data from GT23 contributed to and the good that might come from it—not to mention the potential profits to universities, Big Pharma, and companies producing wellness products—were staggering. The article identified a study at UCLA that dealt with appetite satiation and the genetic roots of obesity. A cosmetic company was using GT23 participants to study aging and skin wrinkling. A pharmaceutical company was researching why some people produce more earwax than others, while the lab in Irvine was studying the connection between genes and risky behaviors such as smoking, use of drugs, sex addiction, and even speeding while driving. All these studies aimed at understanding the causes of human maladies and developing drug and behavioral therapies that would treat or cure them.
Fair Warning - Jack McEvoy Series 03 (2020) Page 6