What Happened to Grandpa?

The following program contains names, places, and events that have been anonymized or fictionalized for the purposes of protection and safety. The following program is provided for entertainment purposes only, and any commentary from the hosts are strictly conjecture and should not be held as making any definitive statements about the truth or identity of any particular individuals or circumstances. If you or a loved one are involved in an abusive relationship, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for support. Happy Dating Detectives Monday! Oh, this story is like nothing we've had! Today's episode, you guys, like dogfish to the max, but like throwback dogfish. This dogfish story starts in the year 1952. Yes, 1952. How about that? Starts in the year 1952. Ends now. And we're just now doing a podcast. Well, first of all, thank you to Taylor, who is going to meet her in a second. She's a listener and is our amazing guest today. And I'm excited for you all to hear her story because it's, yeah, it's a different perspective, but I, yeah, mind blowing. I don't even know what else to say. And then we also have people and time that it spans. Yeah. This episode also deals with adoption and adoption trauma, biological ancestry. And we talk a lot about the emotional side of that. So just be aware. And then we have another type of investigator that worked on this case. And he's going to come into play and talk to us a little later on in the story. So you'll have two for the price of one. What a Monday. Totally different kind of investigation. It's kind of cool. Yeah. I mean, we did this last episode, I guess. I love the idea of if you have a WTF moment throughout listening to the story. Yeah. What was your WTF moment? Yeah. We love that. Comment on Instagram, Dating Detectives Podcast, or Facebook, or TikTok, or on whatever platform you listen to. If they have a comment section, you get it. You know how to do this, but just write WTF moment. And then tell us when your brain exploded and when you were shocked the most, because I think that's fun. It's also different for everybody based on your experience. Some of you are like, no, I knew. I knew exactly what was going on because nothing's getting by me. And me over here is constantly just like, what? I was like, wait, what? Wait, hold on. Wait, what? I also should have mentioned, you can obviously comment all of your thoughts on our Patreon, which we love. Patreon is just, you get bonus episodes, two bonus episodes a month. It's only $5 a month. Or if you want to do the $9 tier, then you get everything on Patreon plus no ads. Whoa. But we just had book club. So thank you to those of you who came to our Patreon book club. And it was amazing. It's the best. So just join Patreon if you need a little more dating detectives in your life and I think you do. I think my fem tuition is telling me that you do and I trust her. I always trust her. Anything else before we hand it over to Taylor? I think we need to hand it over to Taylor. You guys hold on to your pants. Hi Taylor. Hi there. We have Taylor with us and she's going to share her journey with us. Taylor, will you please take us away on your journey? Well, it all starts with a phone call. I'm raising my grandson and he goes to school and I went to pick him up. And when I was sitting in line, my phone rang and it said a police station. And I'm like, Ooh, like on the caller ID. Yes. Okay. And you know, I'm trying to stay out of trouble. So I, what is the plan? What is the police station calling me for. So I answer it and I said, hello? And they're like, is this Taylor? And I'm like, yes. And she's like, well, I've been looking to talk to somebody in your family. And I'm like, okay. And she said, well, I believe I know what happened to your grandfather. And I was like, what? Okay, this is a scam. And my uncle happened to be in the room with her and he's like Taylor it's true she's got a story so I guess I should start from the beginning and tell you where it starts when I was growing up there was a huge family mystery as my grandpa disappeared and it happened in 1952 for most of my life I did not know anything about what happened to my grandfather. My grandmother did not have a husband with her. He wasn't around. And we weren't really, we weren't supposed to say anything. We weren't supposed to ask our dads. It was very mysterious. And so I don't know that we ever had a conversation about him disappearing until I was probably a teenager, maybe 12, 13. You know, you have to do family trees. And so we have this family tree and you can't put your grandpa on there because he's gone. But, you know, you hear bits and pieces from family members, and then you put it all together and realize that, you know, it's a painful story. So he disappeared. And it happened one Sunday. The family was getting ready to have breakfast. And, of course, a few of the kids were outside doing chores. And Grandpa, he said, well, you kids go in and get ready for breakfast. and I'm going to take the cows and put them in the backfield and I'll be in in about 20 minutes well 20 minutes came and passed and he never came back wow so of course there was a lot of land there so they were concerned that he fell or got hurt sometimes in the country there's old wells that nobody covered up or anything and so they were like well maybe he fell in that but he never came he never came back and they got police and neighbors and everything and walked the property and when they did they found nothing not any trace whatsoever it's gone he's just gone like okay vanished you know what so of course people were speculating and saying all kinds of stuff but nobody was really sure what happened to him and they put it in the paper they had all kinds of people talking and looking for him and they thought maybe he had amnesia and just all kinds of things that people were talking about. When my grandfather played cards, he played like every weekend and he was a good gambler and he won a lot of money. But there was a time when we thought maybe he owed somebody a lot of money, you know, maybe he didn't win. And so maybe somebody took him out because of that you know we thought sadly that could have been part of it or you know we thought he might have messed around with somebody's wife and somebody took him out you know my one uncle it's such a sad story but he was nine and he was one of the children that my grandpa said go in the house get ready for breakfast and i'll be back in 20 minutes and he always said that he wished as a child that he would have stayed or went walking with grandpa so he knew where he was and he carried that through years but yeah it was painful for years right he's so young how can he know anything else and my dad at five he used to have nightmares and I didn't hear that from my dad. I heard it from my aunt, but he had nightmares over and over and over for many years. But my grandmother had to go to work. And so she went, she worked a couple really hard jobs. She did some cleaning. She worked in a nursing home, you know, doing whatever she could to get by. And some of my uncles went, actually went to their older sisters to live because times were just really hard. And for as long as I can remember, my mom had always said, don't see anything. We couldn't watch Little House on the Prairie. Wait, I might not know. Why not? Is there something about a dad that disappears in Little House on the Prairie? My grandmother grew up Amish, and so she lived a very conservative life. When she married my grandpa, they kind of, what they call jump the fence. He was able to drive a car and do things like that. That's a term that they use here in Amish land, that when they jump the fence or they jerk over, that's what they call it. And so they lived conservative, but they had 13 children and they just lived on a farm. And my grandmother at the time, she was just home with all her kids. So as we got older, we had to ask a lot of questions my mom wouldn't even say anything she just would be like we don't need to discuss it and we would get our families together like for Christmas or whatever and the kids would always talk they'd be like what are we gonna do how are we gonna we need to do a seance and try to get grandpa you know because we're like the only way we're getting the truth we're like, I mean, the youngest kids, the last six kids, they were all men. So we figured out that my grandmother or that our parents, the moms got together and said, we need to tell the kids not to talk about it. So we all knew that we're not to talk about it. So we talked amongst ourselves and my grandmother had 52 grandchildren. Wow. Yes. So we had a big family, very big. And sometimes when we were all together, just talking back and forth or, you know, trying to figure out what none of our parents were talking. So we kind of made our own stuff up and we're like, somebody took him out. Somebody took him out. But it would kind of get exciting because it was something that we weren't allowed to talk about. And we would be really hush-hush when the parents came around. I often talk about how financial independence and financial education is such a huge part of freedom. And especially as women, it's so important to take ownership of that in a world where for a long time, women weren't even allowed to do that. That's why I really love Ava, because one part of finances that is sometimes difficult to understand is credit. You don't always realize how your credit can impact you for better and for worse until it's too late. And Ava makes it really easy to build your credit if you need to do that quickly. 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Thanks Skims for sponsoring this episode. So anyways, family just kept moving on and there got to be quite a few years, you know, and we all got older as kids and a couple times we'd get together and we're like, what in the world happened to him? Why has nobody done anything? You know? What happened to grandpa? It just really was crazy, you know? And I think it was important because it was a mystery and we all wanted it answered before our parents and even our grandmother at the time before they died. I really felt like no matter what the story end was, they need an answer. They need closure on it. So one of my cousins and I were like, you know what? We're going to go up to a police station. We're just going to ask them. It's an open case, right? It's still missing and we don't have an answer. So we went up to a police station and they took us back into this one office. And one of the police officers there, she's like, well, you know, we don't really have anything. have you talked to your aunts and uncles? I'm like, Oh God, we can't even talk to our dad. You know, what are you talking about? And she's like, when a new sheriff comes into town, they just get rid of all that stuff. So we don't have anything. We don't have any records. We don't have any report. I'm like, how could you not still have a report? And she's like, well, you know, new sheriff comes in town. They just get rid of all the old stuff. So we're like, okay. So we're walking out of the police station and I like to my cousin she looked at me and I go did you believe that she's like no and I said they don't get rid of stuff this is crazy so we went home we're like what we don't know where else to go there just really isn't anywhere to go you know so we both went our separate ways and each were trying to come up with ways to to find out information and it was about a year, almost exactly a year. And I decided I'm calling that police station again. And so I did. Unbeknownst to me, my aunt had called there as well. But when I called, they give me this detective and I said, I'd like to talk to somebody about my grandfather. And right away, he's like, are you one of the girls that came up here last year? Oh, what do they know? And I'm like, that's what we, I was like, what? Like, yes, I was. And I thought to myself, how would you remember that? I'm sure you got other stuff to do. And so I said, well, last time when I was there, they said you didn't have anything. And he said, well, you didn't talk to the right person. Oh. And I said, well, who am I talking to now? And so he said, are you related to so-and-so? And I said, I said, yes, that's my aunt. He said, well, she's coming up, whatever the day was, a few days later. And if you want to come up with her, you can look at the report that we have. And I was like, I'll be there. So I called some of my cousins and a couple of my aunts. And I said, meet us at the police station because we're going to see that report. Well, we all got there and walked in and he looked at me and I said, we're here to see that report and he goes I don't have enough room for all of you guys I said I thought it was like we can take your aunt and I said we don't care we'll sit out here in the foyer so we did we sat out there we covered the whole place and he brought the report out there now my unit was about I don't know four pages of paragraphs just typed up like an old report so everybody was reading it everybody was taking their turn reading it my one cousin was writing stuff down and we had been there I don't know half an hour 45 minutes here he comes are you guys done like no and he said finding information that you had well there was some stories that we had heard like you know just bits and pieces but what we noticed the most of that report was some people that they should have interviewed they did not interview so either like family members yeah like even my grandmother and so I'm like they never interviewed even her well we didn't know if they hadn't interviewed her or if they didn't have that part of the report there we thought maybe the some of the report was missing so he came out and I told him he came out the second time i said you know what how about i come get you when we're done but yeah we're we're still busy and i could tell he was getting a little anxious but he was kind of a pompous ass he said guess you should have brought a camera you could take a picture of it i was like you are so rude and i said also they wouldn't be we couldn't get copies of it it was crazy and so we just like i said my cousin wrote and she just wrote really fast and so anyways we all left there like why didn't they interview grandma why didn't they interview and then and just remind me how many years after his disappearance is this now many let's see probably 50 years okay and so we're like Weird, but they'd still be sketchy about it. Yes, very. I'm like, who are they protecting? It's so crazy. So in between that and this visit, I had relatives that were contacting the FBI, had wrote letters, had called, and they all got the same response. Like, well, you know, after he's 100 years old, then we can check, you know, we can check it. What? like you're kidding me I don't know have you ever heard that no yeah so we're like that that doesn't make sense but you know we didn't know where to go what to do with it it's like you know kind of FBI so again we just went home and we're like what is the big secret we know that that this police station is hiding something. We don't know what it is or who they're protecting. We didn't know if it was judges or sheriffs or what it was. But when my family and I were there at the police station and we were leaving, the front gal was so rude. And I asked her what her name was. And she told me and I said, thank you, because when I get channel 16 over here, I want them to know who they can be thanking because channel 16 is our local company TV station and I was serious so I did get a hold of him and they came in and did a story on him and we went out to the property they talked to my aunt and my uncle and so they didn't really like the fact that that happened, but they did call a meeting with two of my aunts, my husband at that time, and my cousin and her husband. So we all got in. This is the police department that calls this meeting. The current, at the time, current sheriff. So we went in and I thought, I don't know what they're going to do or what they're going to say, but we'll just see what they have to say. And so he started talking he said let me get my detective in here so he brings him in I had never met him he introduced himself and said hello to my aunts and they wanted to hear what the station had what they had done what they could do and that detective was so rude to my aunts I mean he just was like well I've heard all kinds of stories I even heard that he was picked up by aliens and I was furious because I'm like their job to find out yeah that's your job is like of course you hear theories I'm like he said it like it was a joke and I'm like you realize this is their father that you're talking about how inconsiderate I mean I was just I was beyond and my cousin's husband was like somebody's gonna go to jail tonight it's probably gonna be taylor but which you're like oh my god so we left there and felt nothing like this is useless you know talking to them is just really and even the channel 16 when they went they felt like there was definitely something they're hiding, but they couldn't figure it out, you know. And I said, they're protecting somebody, you know, who, who are they protecting? So I was talking to some people, older people that lived in the area and they had given me a list of names that used to play cards with my grandfather in the club. You know, it was kind of a secret area. And so I started- Grandma's favorite group of people. Yes, absolutely. And they were really some prominent people in the town. And so I started looking through and I found a son to one of the men on there. And he's an older gentleman. So I called him and I told him who I was and that I was looking to find out something about my grandfather, that I had heard that his dad played cards with my grandfather and that they knew each other. really well. And he goes, I don't know nothing. And I'm like, what? Wait, what? It's just all like, just like, very like he definitely knew who my grandfather was. And he said, I know nothing. So what you're saying is, you know, something. Yeah. So I said, I feel like I just read this book for book club. Like this feels like a murder mystery. It's crazy. I was trying to put the pressure on him And I said you know I just figured somebody might want to get something off their chest before they leave this earth you know because it apparently a big secret And he like nope don know anything So I was like, okay, dead end. And so the family was just at a standstill. We're like, you know, we're never going to know. We all just need to understand that this is a mystery that we're probably never going to know. and as hard as it was it just it was it just right here in the back of your mind like man you know what happened to him you could just drive yourself crazy thinking about it but I'm busy with my teenage boy and I just I'm like I need to quit you know just is we're done still had a big pile of stuff notes and pictures and stuff like that one reunion that we had we decided screw it we're going to bring him up we're going to take all these pictures we're going to take all this information and we'll see what the dads and the uncles and aunts what they say and actually they were very intrigued you know they wanted to know too yeah and and besides our dads, the youngest ones, the other older ones, they were like, yeah, what do you want to know? You know, we'll tell you about grandpa, you know, whatever. And we're like, what? Like, why was it such a hush hush thing for so long if they were actually okay? Yeah, I think these people know, what do they know? Yeah. Well, some people did think the older ones probably knew. I'm not sure on that. Because I saw, I mean, I had some conversations with my older aunts and they were in pain, you know? I mean, it makes sense that you just wouldn't want to trigger pain among the family. Right. But they were excited to see some of the pictures and some of the relatives had never seen any pictures of him. And so we took a bunch of copies and it was really something, you know? I think it might have healed some pain in a sense, but still no answers, no answers at all. And when you think about it, I mean, he left in 1952 at 46 years old. And that is just a long time to be living and reliving and all kinds of questions. You know, these kids have my dad and my aunts and uncles. I mean, they're just like reliving all this stuff. And even as they got older, even my dad now, he just doesn't want to talk about it. So we don't talk about it. Not to him. This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack, hydration, and coffee sponsor. IQ Bar, Protein Bars, IQ Mix, Hydration Mixes, and IQ Joe Mushroom Coffees are the delicious low sugar brain and body fuel you need to win your day. We love snacks here at The Dating Detectives. And once you start carrying IQ Bar's plant protein bars in your bag, you've got the smarter snack choice with plenty of plant protein, tons of fiber, and no added sugar. Also, all IQ Bar products are packed with clean, delicious ingredients that keep you physically and mentally fit. They have magnesium, lion's mane, and so much more. So if you're on a health kick or just generally interested in feeling your best, IQ bar is a great way to go. I'm a big rehydration pack person. 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You know, we just had to not focus on it every, I mean, because it got out of control. It can be very all-consuming. Yes, very consuming. So years and years pass, and we just accept that we probably will never know what happened. And so back to the phone call. I was sitting there, and I was in disbelief that someone would really know the answer. It was just like out of the blue. Like, I'm like, how can this be, you know? And I didn't want to get excited about it, but then I was like, well, what does she got to say? You know? And now that I know leading up to it, this is not a detective that you had met before. This is a completely new one. No, no, I did not know who she was. Okay. And how much time had passed since the, they had rudely passive aggressively nudged you out of their years. And she had nothing to, she wasn't there. She, she was actually in the service. So she actually said, Hey, you know, we'd like to come and talk to the family. Can you get people together? Well, my house is probably one of the bigger ones. So I said, yep, I'll get them together. So I got ahold of people and I said, look, I just received a call from a detective at the county and they know what happened to our grandfather. And they're like, well, what happened? I'm like, I don't know. I'm going to hear it when I hear it with you guys. Cause I wanted it to be, I'm sure if I would have asked her, she would have told me, but I wanted to hear it with everyone else, you know, the family. Yeah. Right. So I said, I don't know if I could have waited. I know. Well, when you know, it's really sensitive to everyone and you've all been fighting together to try to find the end. You want to all be together when you hear it. It's just, yeah, that's how I felt about it. So they're lucky to have you. So I told them, come to my house, be here by noon, because they're going to be here. and to make sure that you tell your siblings, whatever. We're trying to get a whole, we have a family Facebook page. So I had put it on there, but I started calling people because I wanted to make sure everybody heard. So they start showing up. Of course, we only had one uncle. He was in his 80s and he wanted to know what was going on with his dad. When he got here, they said that they would talk to him in private, it just out of courtesy because it was his father and they wanted him to hear it first. And so they went up to my grandson's room and his two daughters were with them and they told him what happened. When he came downstairs, we all had not heard what had happened, but we could see on his face that he was just in shock. So they started telling us and it was really amazing. to hear what people can do, you know? What happened to Grandpa? What happened to Grandpa? My grandfather, you know, up till this point, I have to say, we all thought he was murdered for his money. The night before he left, he had sold hogs and he had made a lot of money. He had cash on him. But when he left, he prepared nothing. He didn't take any clothes. He didn't take anything so we all thought somebody murdered him somebody did we just don't know who and you know oh he was murdered no no he was not actually he was discovered by DNA there was uh like that alive yes well he wasn't alive then but yes he was found because of his DNA so he was dead but he was not murdered right but he had passed away because he was older but yes but i'm gonna let randy explain that part of the story because he is a huge part of what our family is very grateful that he does what he does he's very good at it and he he's the one who opened this case wide open so now we have randy and randy is a genealogist and he's going to walk us through how he got involved in this case and he's going to tell us what happened to grandpa thank goodness important context before he jumps in stoltz is taylor's family name i know she's mentioned it i'm just reminding you it is anonymized but that will come up so stoltz taylor's family also we worked with Randy a lot before recording because genealogy and ancestry plays a huge part in this and it's confusing, quite frankly. So we'll definitely explain it for people that don't understand how it works, such as myself, but we'll also hit the main points as we go and, and make sure we make it very clear what happened to grandpa, because we're all dying to know. Okay, so Randy, who is Randy? Welcome, Randy. You need to tell us who you are, what your job is, and explain it for a layman. Yes, please. Because I don't fully understand what you do all the time. Hi, my name's Randy Davis. I'm an amateur genetic genealogist. I use DNA to sort people's family out. and it's not a job it's a not a hobby it's just what i do and i don't make any money on it i don't charge people anything to do this but in today's world we're finding that dna tests are very very popular statistics say about 10 of americans have tested and there's groups throughout social media because people get the results and they look at it and they go, who are all these? My rough guess is somewhere between one in 10 and one in seven people are not calling dad the right person. Oh my gosh. Wow. That's insane. You guys. There's hundreds of people that come on social media every day say, I just got my DNA results back and I don't know who these people are. I don't know who half of these people are. Oh, yeah. So how do they find you? I see these people on social media and privately I'll send them a message and say, if you're looking for some help, just explaining your DNA, getting to understand it, or going further and digging in. Well, you are an interesting kind of investigator because you, I mean, you are absolutely an investigator. I call myself a researchist because, you know. A researchist. That's what I call myself too when I'm on Instagram. So then how were you able to help Taylor? Take us through your whole story because you kind of found her. Well, to tell the story of Taylor and finding her grandfather, it all goes down to a lady named Clarissa. She was the hinge pin that made all this possible. If it wasn't for Clarissa looking for her parents, I definitely wouldn't have found him. Originally, I was contacted by a person that had pulled me in to help her on a couple of other cases. I think we'd done three or four together. So she had been in contact with a lady named Clarissa. And Clarissa had asked her to help her. So she called me and she says, I've got this case and I need some help on it. I said, okay. The person was named Clarissa. And gave me the basics because Clarissa was an adoptee searching for her parents. She was in her early 50s and I was sent access to her ancestry account. There's a log in where you can especially log in. You don't get access to their credit card details and stuff like that. You get to see their DNA. So I looked at that, and I thought, yeah, okay, let's have a go at this. And the tree was already started. I added into it. We got to looking at it a little more and more. And there were not that many DNA matches. There were some. There was like six significant ones that all kind of centered around this family named Stoltz. and there were some a couple were named Soltz Jamie and a Michael and then four others had you know there were descendants from the females in the line didn't carry that same surname but they were related to that surname they were related to the Soltz's and the two significant masses were like 550 and 580 centimorgans which was probably Clarissa's mother and this person's mother were first cousins and then the next generation down, the next generation down, they're called a first cousin once removed. Yeah, it's for centimorgans. When your parents are cousins, they're a child, you know, and you are first cousins. And that 550, 580 fit quite well with that. The amount of centimorgans that you share with some plot Are you saying centimorgans, like centimeter, but centimorgan? Correct. Okay. A gentleman named Morgan figured out how the science worked, and he called it a centimorgan. Good for Morgan. Centimorgan. Okay, cool, cool. All right, nice. So how many centimorgans do I share with my biological mom? 3,450. Period. Look at that. Randy knows his stuff. Wow. Closer to minus 10. 20. Okay. You and that sister will share about half of that. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less, because it's very random the way DNA is distributed from generation to generation, parent to child. Sure. It's not like, boom, you get exactly half, and it's this much. It doesn't work that way. Otherwise, you'll look identical to all your siblings. So the 515, the 580 persons were good to have. They were kind of close. And by looking at it, I was seeing that everybody was in this one family several generations down. and that these two people being first cousins once removed said that this was going back another generation where the links to clarissa would be the two gentlemen had their grandfather and his wife had 12 kids so i'm thinking like okay wow this clarissa is a descendant of one of these 12 kids. Maybe not a child, could be a grandchild. I wasn't too sure at that point. The one that was stacking up was that she was a little bit more distant. So it was working out, it was a bit slow. And the colleague from Florida informing that this probably wasn't her type of case, that this wasn't what she wanted to do. She's extremely good at going through records and building trees, but pulling heavy on the DNA side, which is really about all I could see that we had, if you don't know who you are, building a tree is almost impossible. You don't know anybody's name to put in there. Yeah, you need some kind of point of reference. Exactly. And until you've got that really solidly established, you're going nowhere to build a tree. It's really frustrating. I wasn't overly optimistic at that point. Due to the low amount of matches, you need more data. You know, you just got to get raw data and then mold it. There is. Different perspectives. So I needed more data. So there's various companies that do testing, that do the DNA testing. And some are very tight. They think, like, you get to see our results only. Others, like MyHeritage, you can send us your data. a raw DNA file that you had analyzed at ancestry.com or 23andMe and send it to us and we will show you who matches on that. So I told Clarissa, I said, this is what I'd like you to do. Download your raw DNA file and we'll upload it to MyHeritage and we'll see if there's any matches there. and all we're looking for is more data. We're on the scratch. And we did that. Two days later, she sends me a note. She says, oh, my heritage results are available. What do I do? Like, oh, that was quick. Good. I said, well, give me access. She gave me permissions to access her files, and it was just this big boom. There's this batch that's 936 centimeters. Wow. And that's huge. That's someone at Thanksgiving. Yeah, absolutely. Like, they're close. Yeah. So I was like, who is this? And, well, his name was Robin. She was about 60 to 65. The age is huge. You know, when you try to identify an unknown person, age is a big point. So this person with this amount of DNA at this age group cross-plotted the two, and I'm not coming up with it. I'm real confused. Who could this be? I looked, and she actually had a couple of the Stoltzes that were on MyHeritage, and she had a couple of them as matches. Like, what? She's a Stoltz. Who? wait so just why did that confuse because you'd already seen the name stoltz come up so seeing it here and seeing it there i wasn't sure who's kind of family anybody was on at this point i didn't know if stoltz was on her paternal or maternal side and equally i didn't know when i got to my heritage whether this 936 was on maternal or paternal and i i went to a website called dnapainter.com. And it's a series of genealogical tools that can be used. And one of them is called the Shared Centimorgan Project, where you enter in the amount of centimorgans, the 936, and it spits out. It's a probabilistic calculator, and it spits out that according to probability, what that relationship is. Now, there's a huge overlap in different relationships relationship sharing the same amount so first cousin a half aunt a half great aunt half uncle you know because it was the one that I knew it fell into the aunt part that was easy and given the 60 over Robin had older you know and the age I thought well all right let's let's plug this in and see what it says and it came by and said well you're on the borderline but it could be a half great aunt oh jeez i'm like all right i went back to my heritage and i looked again and i noticed this lady had a two-person tree started which a lot of people do people's parents names in after that they don't really know much else to put in and it says that the father's name was clifford okay so uh all right so who's Clifford. I didn't recognize his surname and that doesn't fit. I went back and searched all the matches. She had 40,000 matches on Ancestry and I searched Ancestry and that name did not come up. I'm like. And Clifford, his last name. Right. It's not Stoltz, right? Yeah. No, he was not a Stoltz. No, not at all. Okay. Just, I'm like, I don't even know where I would start if I was making a chart right now. So we're trying to keep it straight. I think I'm with you. And that's the fault is that you get this little bit here and this little bit here and you're not sure how they meld together. Do they set it all? Okay. All I could see was a, okay, we've got 936. Sometimes you're in a rabbit hole and you don't even realize it. Yeah. If the audience is confused right now, guys, that means you're normal. Right. everybody's confused and florissa's getting pretty frustrated she had started by opening up ancestry with kind of an expectation that it was just going to go here's mom and dad and doesn't work like that 40 000 people that she had didn't know one of them didn't recognize any names and she didn't understand centimorgans, so she was completely lost. Yeah. I went back to DNA Painter, thankfully, and there's a function in it called WATO. What are the odds? And it's a probabilistic calculator. Now, as investigators, you do phone and tracking the phone and the amount of signals and stuff that goes on. This works basically in the same way. you have towers that have signals of where the phone is to one power there's a strong signal to another tower is a smaller signal smaller signal means the phone is a farther distance away right and they draw circles from one tower the other tower where the two circles cross that's where the phone is if an auto does basically the same thing i plugged in the tree that had the various matches. And by doing that, the amount of DNA that she shared with each match, the farther away she was from the match, the smaller the centimorgans. And of course, the larger the number, the closer she was. I pulled this out and it spills out. She's a great niece for the 936. Boom. Okay. That's amazing. Hey guys, it's Hannah from the future. I'm going to jump in a few times during Randy's explanation to translate for the girls because we were confused and you might be as well. And that's OK. So I'll just recap things to make sure we're all on the same page. This is what we know thus far. Clarissa is looking for her parents. There is not a DNA match close enough to tell us who her biological parents are. The closest DNA match that there is is a woman named Robin. Robin, she's in her 60s, she lives in Florida, and that was what he was saying had a ton of the Morgan things, the centimorgans. Robin's father is Clifford, and he knows this not because we have Clifford DNA but just because Robin has shared her family tree somewhere He then used a probability calculator that genealogists use and Randy explained the probability calculator If you understood all of that you amazing and I am inspired by you. If you didn't understand that, you just need to know that it's accurate and that it told him Robin is Clarissa's great aunt. So now we'll head back to Randy because he's trying to figure out how could Clifford and Clarissa not be on any family tree together, not have any connection anywhere when Clarissa has this match with his daughter. My only thought was that perhaps of the 12 children, there was another child that, and I'm like, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. If she's a half-great aunt, she's not the granddaughter or great-granddaughter, the way we thought, because there's a half. There's a half relationship in there. somewhere there's a somebody else's involved oh so robin rob just for the names robin is clarissa's half great aunt is what you've learned correct the odds are saying that okay but you don't know how that really connects to cliff this is a probabilistic it's got a margin of error to it so is that no but is it worth a hint that i'm going to chase I'm like, yeah, it's something. Well, this is going on in the other, you know, I'm working three angles at the same time while I'm doing that with Clarissa, I find out that she has a name and her original birth certificate. And I'm like, Oh, Oh, when were you going to tell me this? Yeah. It feels relevant. I feel like you should have led with that. did you, you know, does all that matter? And I'm like, yeah, probably, you know. Yeah, yeah, that matters. So what does it say? It gave her mother's name and no father's name. Oh, okay. Or father's name, there was a blank on it, but it gave the mother's name. So I went chasing the surname for that, and her mother's name was Bernice, and I started chasing Bernice, I don't come up with nothing. And on another avenue, I'm talking to a couple of the Stoltzes online, where I have found them on Reddit, for one. And he's telling me about things that had happened in the family and how his great-grandfather had disappeared. Oh. What happened to Grandpa? What happened to grandpa? He had no idea. Nobody had any idea. No one knows. To move the cattle from one field to another was going to be back in 20 minutes. Never came home. And they never found hiding the hair of him. All sorts of rumors, a lot of speculation, different things. But he just disappeared. When you heard that, were you like, I need to crack this case? Or did you have confidence that you would? No. There has nothing to do with the DNA. You know, at that point, I didn't think. So, you know, I was like, yeah, all right. You know, that's interesting. And I then came across an adoption record for Bernice. Bernice being the mother of Clarissa. Right. And she was adopted as well. did she know that Melissa didn't know that I found that out in searching this I found it and she was born to a stoltz Bernice's a stoltz her mother was one of the 12 children oh my god Lanta so okay Melissa's grandmother was one of the 12 Stoltz children. And the children are the children of this disappeared grandfather, right? Yeah. No, no, no. We don't. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The disappeared grandfather, Ralph Stoltz, he had all these kids and then disappeared. So many kids. I just thought, you know, I think I need to have a beer here. This is getting serious. This is a lot. Okay, guys, I'm back to explain that because when I was first hearing this from Randy, I didn't quite understand the importance of this discovery. So just to spell it out, Randy just discovered that Clarissa's mom was actually adopted. And Clarissa's mom, whose name is Bernice, the biological last name she was born with is Stoltz. Who else is a Stoltz? Say it with me. Taylor. Very good. So there are two mysteries. The first is why is Stoltz coming up so much in Clarissa's DNA? He knows that she's tied to that family somehow, but he doesn't know who her mother is in the Stoltz family. That is solved with this because now we know that she was adopted and her biological name is Stoltz. The second mystery is how Robin and Clifford connect to the Stoltz's. We still don't know the answer to that, and we will get back to that. Okay, back to Randy. I then kind of parked the maternal side, and I'm looking at Robin, and I found a Clifford Jr. on Facebook. I take Clifford Jr.'s freshman high school photograph, and I overlay it with Clarissa's grandfather. Oh, he looks the same, doesn't he? And there was an extremely strong resemblance. Wow. just give me run through names one more time so clifford and clifford jr and ralph are all different people at this point in your story obviously clifford yeah in the story they were you know as far as the narrative went why i had all these different people the 936 fit perfectly for a child of ralph with another woman not with his wife of the 12 kids, but he had a child with no birth. Turns out, I had the conversation with Clifford Jr. I gave him a note on Facebook Messenger. Hey, can we talk? Yeah. I call him on Facebook Messenger, and I explained who I was and what was going on, and my suspicion was that his father's name, Clifford, who was used to be Ralph, and that he had left his family in Indiana and gone to Florida. In researching Clifford Sr., he didn't exist before 1952. Sr., he disappeared from Indiana. Yeah. Oh, my. So name change. He had a Social Security card application, 1952. Pre-52, no draft card. No census records, no birth certificate, just nothing. And I'm like, you were just before 1952 because you were busy playing Ralph. You were busy being Ralph. You walked and you started all over as Clifford. Had six kids. Oh my gosh. So Ralph and Clifford are the same person. And okay. So Ralph left in 1952. disappears and that's when Clifford is essentially born except he's already a grown adult that's crazy as Clifford and a junior Clifford Jr. is his fake name a junior to a fake name yeah and Clifford had a daughter and Ralph had a daughter both having the same name Clifford and Wells both had a junior son. Oh, bless. So there was these M.O.s that, dude, you deserve both to roll another one just like the other one. You know, he went back and just played the same game again. So Taylor's family thought he was murdered, and this whole time he just had another family in a different state. Yeah. Okay, guys, I know that was a huge discovery. Let's just quickly recap exactly how he knows that Clifford and Ralph are the same stinking person. Because we know Clarissa is a Stoltz and we found that her closest DNA match is Robin, who to our knowledge was not a Stoltz. And because we are seeing that Ralph Stoltz disappeared in 1952 and Clifford appeared in 1952, we can conclude that they are the same person. So Robin is technically a Stoltz too. Like crazy. So, okay. Wow. Wow. So what do you do with that? Do you tell Clifford Jr. right away? Because that's big information to share. I said, you know, this is possible. This is what I'm looking at. I said, what do you think? He says, I don't know. I said, why? He says, my dad didn't talk about his family or life or history or anything like that. He says, he never spoke about any of it. He said, I don't know anything about it. He said, so it's very, he was a bit of a realist. He said, it's very possible that that's exactly what happened. Oh my God. Yeah. I go back to it and I now realize that Ralph and Clifford are the same man. There were enough of the 12 children of Ralph that had their children or their grandchildren had tested that the only way that the amount that they shared and what they shared with Robin was that if she was their half-aunt great-aunt as well. So it wasn't just Clarissa's relationship. It was what those other relationships also added up into the same thing. I go back and I finalize Ralph is Clifford And I go back to Clifford Jr. and I say, you know, he's like, well, nothing surprises me. What ultimately we found out was that Clifford had also walked out and abandoned his wife and six kids. Yep. And, you know. The second wife. And there are probably six or eight different websites that do missing persons, like the DOE project, places like that. And Ralph was on there. And I knew that sitting on the Ralph story, people have a right to know what happened to Grandpa, what happened to Dad. He still had children that were still alive. And I went on the LaGrange County Sheriff's Department's webpage, page, found a lady detective, sent it to her, and I didn't hear about it. And it was, ooh, three months. And I get a note. Yeah, we're wondering, yeah, we're kind of looking at this, and maybe, you know, we're going to assemble some family and talk about it. You know, can you give me a call and walk me through it? So I called and basically went through everything as I done you and they tested one of the children ralph's children and ralph's children okay when that came indiana family yeah when that came back it showed that she was a half sister to Robin in Florida. Robin is the half-great-aunt. Yeah, the half-great-aunt. That's a completely different family. And she is a half-sister to her. They share the same father. Ralph and her are the same man. So now what? They then had a big ta-da, had all the news come in and family and stuff and the detective spilled all the beans and said, this is what we found. And it made numerous news agencies across Indiana. Got pictures from prints and videos from the newscasts and stuff of that. And they all, on they went. And did you have contact with the family? Obviously we're here talking to Taylor and you. Yeah, I had a message in the last couple of days with Taylor and you know my name because of her and I'm really happy because it's she's the epitome of why why you do this you know she is really the role model she's the poster child for it all this but she cares but it meant a lot to her you know and talking to her huge huge piece on her and to find this out I did have some communication with maybe three or four of her cousins that said, you know, thank you very much for finding this and all and appreciate it. And there we are. Wow. Okay. So that is the end of this episode's part with Randy, Randy's story as it pertains to Taylor's story. There was more to it that we did cut out a little bit because it was so complicated and it wasn't necessary for this part. However, we talk more about weird things that he found on this case and we had tons of other questions just about DNA and genealogy investigating, we're going to put it on Patreon is the point. There's going to be an extended Randy interview on Patreon if you're interested in that. I had so many questions. But now let's get back to how his findings impacted Taylor. And where we are in the story is that Taylor is now finding out everything you just found out. It's being shared with her by this detective. So here we were sitting all around my living room and my dining room and the detective. And she started out by saying that Grandpa took off. He went to Florida. Florida? He changed his name. He had six more children. What? Yes. Yes, he did. Everybody was just like, huh? Like, we're all kind of glancing around in disbelief. And she said he got a new social security card. And this was in August when he left. And they found his social security card had been changed in November. So he was pretty quick at it, you know, almost like he had it planned. It's really odd. but we all were just I mean I I felt pain for my dad because my my dad you know this is something that nobody wants to hear that your dad just took off yeah and didn't care anymore about you I mean it appeared that way anyways the kicker with this new family that he had so he had this fake name and he went down there and he had these six kids and they you know three boys they have the fake name yeah and the girls of course their names change when they get married but the boys one was named after him one of the aunts was named the same as my aunt up here no yes what what one of the boys was named the same as my uncle up here and so he was just like copying it's weird very weird family again and he that's weird he i i forgot to mention this but he actually was adopted and so his real name he named one of his kids and hold on he changed his name walk me through that what the second family had not only an aunt with the same name as up here so he had two kids with same name he had a son that had the same name as one of the ones up here and then one son was named with his biological name oh my god what yeah so he had a biological name then he had a name that you all knew him as and now he has a third identity name yeah yes what i know it's unbelievable it's just crazy you know when i listen to your guys's podcast i i'm like i think my grandpa was one of the first dogfish ever. A true dogfish. A dogfish OG. So do, what else did she tell you? And was there any contact with his new family? Well, she said that the family had just been told and our family was like, wow. You know, we had 70 plus years to know there was something. We didn't know what but we right we all had had a knowledge that there was something up but they had nothing they only knew him as one person they only knew him as oh my god and so this was like a huge shock to them now we have had communication with some on facebook which has been really great and our family wanted to give them a lot of space to yeah kind of talk amongst themselves and and everything i did make a paid process yes because it's a lot you know especially you're you're thinking i have a fake name i mean i the one the one son the oldest one was named after his fake name it's like you're a junior to you know to nothing nobody oh just really really sad so it was a few weeks but I did reach out to the son the oldest son and talked to him for about an hour and it was really interesting he told me about a fire that they had him and his sister were at school and this young 19 year old actually came to the house saw the fire came to the house my grandpa father was in a wheelchair he had had a stroke and they took him and this kid went in the house five times to save everybody from this fire and he got an award it was really something i got a copy of that the report or the story and it's really really something i'm not quite sure how we would have felt if he really knew what kind of a man my grandfather was but nevertheless he saved them all but my grandfather had had a stroke now he when I talked to the oldest son he said they weren't very close he he had actually left them and for a short period wait who your grandpa had left his family too yeah the family family yeah oh god and I'm not sure where he went or how they didn't know either how long he'd been gone but the oldest son he was like probably 10 and he said wow so your dad had less time with him than I did and I didn't have much time with him and it really hit you know that it's like how in the world men women they make these decisions not thinking or caring I don't know but they touched so many different lives and they put so much pain for so many and I'm sure my grandfather never thought this was ever going to come to life you know but it did and there's no getting around it it it's true so we connected that other family We would love to meet them. Meanwhile, I wasn't sure if my dad would want to. He's buried down in Florida. And so I found out where he was buried. I called the cemetery. I have yet to talk to them again. I told them that someday I would be able to tell them the story. But I couldn't tell them the story then because I didn't want it to get out and the other family not have enough time to process it. so they told me that he was buried there was a lot that was about eight people and it was a lot that people that couldn't afford burials or they would have that space for them so he's buried there there's no only they had a paper that was drawn out and has his wife's name on there and so she was the contact person and so they know that he's there but there's no marking so we can put one in there they just we just have to let them know and they'll mark it down and then we can take whatever marking you know oh my god now what marking do you put that is the thing i think honestly we'd have to put both names on there yeah respect of the other people for the perspective the family who knew him as something different yeah wow wow i think that's the only thing we can do but what about his his wife that he married after what's her story she has a story too i don't know all of the story i i did ask if she knew my grandfather when he was you know married appear with my grandmother. Like, was she the one who came and pick him up? And they didn't think that they did, but they did hear that my grandfather had other children. Oh, so like, maybe he said he had a previous, like, maybe he did say he had a previous marriage. I don't, I don't know. I don't know the details or, or if their mom just said, you know, hush us you know we don't talk about it now what was interesting this wife she actually came from Pennsylvania and she had a family out there of six children that she left and a marriage that she left she was allowed to disappear the same way or she just I think she got divorced and then she wasn't allowed to take the children. Went the typical path. Yes. But she never really, she didn't have a relationship with those children. And only one child came to Florida, I guess, to see them one time. And that was it. So she kind of had a backstory that, you know, was sounds pretty painful too. How? It's, you know, when I tell people the story, well, years ago, when I used say, if my grandpa came up missing, they're like, what? Like, how does he come up missing? I'm like, I don't know. It just happened. And I tell them as much as I knew. But now when I tell them the same people, guess what? We found out what happened to my grandpa. And he was a jerk. Wow. That is insane. Oh, my gosh. And they like what That is so crazy And my husband and I were at a funeral one time There was a lot of Amish people there And we were in line It took a while. And so we were introducing ourselves. And when I said my last name, they're like, we heard something about that. And I'm like, what? Because they were from Pennsylvania. They were like, you know, weren't from around here. And I'm like, you have? And they're like, oh, yeah. has that become a book have we we need to hear that that was in our our our youth newsletter or something like that I'm like oh my gosh this is the talk of the talk of the Amish gossip train it's crazy yeah it was crazy it was it should be a book it's really it's something I tell you it's crazy I have a question sure do you know why the police and the FBI were being so sketchy well yeah like i i believe we do but we don't have any copy the detective was meeting with the fbi they have had a a report of some sort and she was meeting with them to be able to give us a copy of it they won't let her what yeah what her the county said it's not their letter to give it's not their report to give so they're not able to give us a copy whose report is it to give yeah the fbi's i guess there is a thought that he was found years ago and didn't want to be found and i don't have anything to prove that i guess to answer your question i think they might be trying to protect the FBI. I was about to say they're protecting, they're covering. Maybe he bribed somebody or something. He may have, you know, he may have. Something. Maybe he did something. To have that many identities and get away with it for that long is kind of crazy. Yeah. I was going to ask, how do you, I don't even know, not that I'm interested, but like, where does one start with changing your social security? Where does somebody even begin? Obviously this was in the fifties, but like changing your social security number, erasing the paper trail. I don't even know how one does that. I don't even know where they start. Okay. If McKenzie doesn't know, then your grandpa's very smart. You know how sometimes you get customer service and it's like, depending on who you get determines what kind of outcome you're going to get for whatever your problem is with customer service. And I feel like it's something like that. Like if I go, sometimes I've gone to the DMV and they're like, oh, this is fine. And other times you're like, no, you need this, this, this and sometimes they're and I feel like they these are people who know how to they know they know who they can manipulate to get the information you know what I mean like it's have you ever seen catch me if you can and how he he knows what to say to who to get what he wants from whoever yeah and I think that probably is a really good point that my I'm sure that my grandfather knew just what to do how to do it and back then they didn't have all the double checks you know it was like right you could just walk in and say go in and say I lost my card and I need it so I can work so I can get food on the table or whatever the case was I mean nobody expects them to have a different name and have 12 other kids up and just crazy yeah you don't assume that Yeah. It makes sense that you said he sold hogs the night before and had a lot of cash on him. Yes. Maybe the men he was playing cards with helped in some capacity. It's possible. Oh, okay. Because you're dealing in shady people. You know shady people. Yes. Yes. They hang with the same crowd, don't they? What else? Are there any other puzzle pieces that you feel like have been put together for you? I think that just knowing the truth as painful as it is it's something that our family can put to rest it is a huge like what are you crazy are you kidding in fact that the detective she was like I know this is a lot and we were all just looking at each other like this is unbelievable I mean it is hard to swallow and we're all afterwards we're all sitting around we did talk to him randy it was all of randy i mean he did not have to to reach out to the detective so grateful that he did otherwise we'd still be you know thinking he got murdered you know yeah do you feel more relieved that he wasn't murdered or do you feel like you almost would have rather that than known the deception yeah i think the deception is worse because yeah if he would have been murdered you know would have it's sad may have been something he did but we could have accepted that but the fact that he took off 12 children plus grandchildren because at that time he had some to think that he just took off you know intentionally and purposefully like hurt all these people and left my grandmother to work like a slave I mean she really worked hard to try to keep things up you know and to know and to leave no legacy except for this one yeah right it's sad to me that she died without knowing did she ever remarry or oh no anyone no in that culture there was no doing that if you would have been murdered something that would have been different but no she would have never done that but it's not sad anyway but that adds another layer right knowing the impact it would have yeah yeah she she she was a pretty strict woman she had to be she you know she had these boys that were you know hellions you know they had nobody to control him and she was working it was pretty crazy i mean the stories that they tell is just unbelievable but good stories. I mean, they're all very loving, kind people. My family is, if nothing else, they are all good people. And so do you think it's the most affected by this? Like by this, do you think it's the, and do you stay in touch with like the new family or is there any? Yeah, we're on Facebook with each other, a lot of us. And so they'll have like their birthday or they'll show their grandkids or whatever. And we're always commenting and stuff like that. And we have, you know, discussed some of them still live in Florida, not all of them, but some of them. And we've discussed going down there and meeting and getting together and sharing some time together as a family. How would that feel to learn about him and the person he became? Like, is that something you're interested in or are you almost like, yeah, I got my closure? I don't think that they will really know much about his. right because he left them pretty young yeah and their their moms are gone so the only person I was able to talk to was the one that was named after him and he said that he was really a great person like he was really fun and he was loving and kind and in fact when he did leave the son told me he said I I wish you would have took me with him you know it was just that's how much yeah and so you know i'm sure that if he really was that kind of person you know he was he was adopted and maybe some of that you know i don't know if that caused some of his some of his decisions you know i don't know trauma but you know i think that back then a lot of people didn't get help that they needed if they did and didn't really think much about it you know they just moved on and it is devastating to so many people i mean what he what he has done hurt a lot of people you know yeah for many many years and my generation my my cousins we're we're all shocked about it but the pain isn't with us you know the pain the pain that we feel is pain for our parents you know they had like a press release and i wasn't able to be there because i had the flu but I had went over to see my dad prior to that because I wanted him to know before it went on and I said dad I just want to tell you that they're going to do a press release about grandpa and I just want to know ahead of time you know and he was like okay and that's all he said you know my brother had called after we found out after the meeting that my brother got a hold of my dad and told him he said well we just heard we know what happened to grandpa and so he told him and then my dad just told him that well just keep it up there I'll I'll talk to you when I get home but you know it was just a lot of pain a lot of pain oh man I'm so sorry That's terrible. That's hard to imagine. He was an OG dogfish for real. I know. I thought, what are they going to say? I don't know if they're going to want to hear this because it's such an old story. But I'm like, well, I think he is one of the first dogfish stories there is, you know. Well, that's what I was just going to say is how grateful I am to hear the story from your perspective, because I think we do hear a lot of stories of the immediate, usually a straight couple where we hear it immediately the impact on that person, which is obviously devastating. But we don't think a lot about how it impacts generations to come, whether in good and bad ways, because in some ways, this is your family's lore. This is what has kept some of you probably even closer knit than you might have been otherwise in a twisted sort of way. And it also makes you reevaluate your history and your, your, I just, like where you came from. You know, it just, this makes me think of so many, just what the aftermath, the ripple effect of a dogfish. So he had 19 children. Lord. One, one died when he was a baby, but yes, that's a lot of kids. I mean, and my husband said, well, you know, he left that family for a while. So maybe there's some more out there we just don't know about and you just don't know so true but if they get dna we'll know because can't get away from that yeah the dna never lies how do y'all feel about like the rise of 23andme and all of those like are you all about it or is it kind of weird knowing what it can reveal you know it's crazy how much you can find and people that study that and do it all the time and you know Randy he is amazing and the stuff that he uncovers and he doesn't just uncover something and go oh this is the way it is he does the research so you know you know that it's true and I'm grateful for that because we did definitely don't want to hear this story until we knew knew that it was you know and the detective was good about that she's like this is true you want to be confident about it we know this is true it's in black and white they had taken a dna she did her of my aunt and then once that came back it was already confirmed but it was better to have a sibling or his child and so that's it was awesome it was really really awesome i think it's a wonderful thing not for people that want to hide themselves or Yeah, sure. Not for the Golden State killer. But his whole spot was blown up from that. Yeah. So, yeah, I think it's it's amazing that people can find other family members. I mean, there are families out there that have found, you know, their own families. And it's just it's crazy. I love the fact that we're able to do that. Oh, man, it's true. There's so much information we have access to now. I know. Isn't that crazy how much information we have? I like to think it makes it harder to dogfish. Dogfish are still going to dogfish, but we're making it real harder. Yes, absolutely. Oh my gosh. Thank you for sharing it with us though, because I bet other people have experienced things like this, where they just find things out about their history that changes the way they look at their whole family. Yeah. And that's a weird feeling. I think that, you know, that was one part of me wanting to share because I'm sure my grandpa's not the only one out there doing that, you know, or had done it back in the day. And so if you have any idea of being able to use DNA, man, it works. We can't run from that. told you og dogfish oh like oh like to the point you have more than one name on your epitaph what's it called an epitaph a thing where you die your gravestone your epitaph yeah your gravestone crazy well let's talk about how many dogfish were dogfishing for years that we will never know about or maybe will start to know about with the popularity of DNA. And the internet. Because back then they didn't have the internet and they didn't have DNA. You could truly just walk out of your home, never come back and reinvent yourself. So I did a little digging specifically in Florida, but I'm sure it was very similar everywhere. Just because I was like, how do you change your social security number? How do you like, I don't know. I'm just intrigued by that process. and it's actually not that interesting because it's not that hard back then. Today, it would be hard, but they didn't have centralized identification records in Florida. You could really just like, you know, if you had a strong enough birth record document, even if it wasn't real, which I guess is probably today, but it didn't even have to be a birth certificate. It It could be like a baptism. It could be school records, whatever. Yeah. And then, yeah, you just, you can just, it's, I don't know. You can just find your own little set of documents and say one got lost or one got smudged and call it a day. And no one can prove or disprove anything. Like you could just say this is who you are. And back in the day, they had no choice but to be like, yep. Yeah. A lot of dogfish back then that we just didn't. Nobody had any way of figuring out. I actually, along these lines, might have a dogfish story of my own in my family. Mackenzie! I don't know. I got to talk to my mom and see if she'll let me share, but I think it would be interesting to know. I feel like in some ways it's not to this extent because I know in my family it's not, to my knowledge, not to this extent, but there are pieces of information that I found out because I was looking on Ancestry.com, you know like I didn't know my aunt was going by a nickname the whole time like little things like that and sometimes bigger things and today with with 23andMe and whatever it's like yes they're solving these big murders like the Golden State Killer or you you just mentioned Jack the Ripper but they're also changing individual lives with the way they're revealing stuff about your past I'm so curious now. Yeah, you have to report back. I'm going to ask my mama. I'm going to ask her. Okay. She's going to be like, no, but it's fine. We'll ask her. We can anonymize it. We do that really well. I mean, I guess if it's your story, people will figure it out. I'll be like, this is not my family's story. And then they'll know that it's not my family. You wrote. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'm already the black sheep. What are y'all going to do? Kick me out? This is crazy. So he up and left. The single mom, her grandma, is such a strong woman. And I'm thinking about that too, where it's like, that's who we would be talking to if this was happening today. Like we would have had her on. And now it's like, if Dated Detectives had existed back then, would she have had to put her head down so much and be so just plowing forward without dealing with it? I'm grateful that we live in a time with the dating detectives. Call me biased. I feel like we're finding out so much more information than we ever realized could ever be true with the, you know, how the up and comings of internet and DNA and genetics and all these things. It's incredible to me. And it's revealing how many people are going through stuff like this and you're not. Yeah. Only, you're not the only person or family or woman that's had a husband leave them. Like his second wife had the same thing. He left her too. I mean, it's pretty wild. But she, yeah, I almost want to like dedicate this episode to all of the women who had to deal with dogfish in silence over the, over history before there were advocates and people that- And before there were resources. Spoke up for them. Yeah. and resources to get to the bottom of it. Absolutely. And double dedication if you had 13 children because she just sounds like, the fact that she raised a group of people that are also wonderful despite this generational trauma. But that's a lot of therapy. Like all it takes is one person, all it takes is one person to deceive a group of others. And so many people can be hurt by that. That's a lot of therapy. Yeah, we talk about the initial impact of dogfish a lot, but we don't always talk about the generational trauma of it. And I wish we could get through to some of these people who don't think about those consequences before they make those decisions. And if we get through to even one, I guess we'll call that progress, but we don't think about it. man. The fact that he was able to find her family through this search for biological parents, Randy is so interesting to me. And it's like, he does what you do in a different way. Yeah. And so that's interesting because I was, I was actually just sharing with one of my friends, when you're looking for information, there's someone could look for five years for a biological parent, like someone who's adopted. I've had someone look for someone for like five years. for someone they're related to. And they couldn't find them, but it took me less than an hour. And that's because we underestimate how everyone is connected. Like you underestimate that your mom's brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews married into this family and how you just, you don't realize how the webs are very, very, very, very connected. And so when you can, especially with genetics, like there's no, that's, you can't deny that. So with me doing my investigation, I'm putting together pieces that may or may not be, and I have to find proof. And then if you're a geneticist, like, I'm sorry, his name is Randy, right? If you're a geneticist, like Randy, and you can find this information, like based on these connections, these physiological, like biological connections. Yeah. And there's no denying it. And so it's, oh man, crazy. it's so cool have you ever worked with a geneticist or somebody in that area for a case or not had no not not me personally but i'm sure if i'm sure there's overlap among oh absolutely there is and there's there are ways because it's still really young like it's not something that's easily done it can be done if you're a fan of paul holes paul holes is really great he's a true crime guy he's someone who talks a lot about dna and using dna to you know track down serial killers and stuff like that and yeah i think that there it's still as much as we talk about it we're like dna dna dna since like you know all these cases for the last 20 years but it's still not super super common for investigation especially for private investigation but for a family to be able to just go to like to have a geneticist find somebody that's not super common yet. Yeah. There's a whole conversation around it. Cause sometimes I think about it's such valuable information to have people's genetics in the wrong hands that can be really scary, but also I, I mean, it's like, I have nothing to hide and I assume authorities probably know most about me anyway. You know what I mean? Like I think over now that I'm the person they're really looking for but it's just I don't know it's just a whole interesting new world that we live in I want to hear if people have had experiences with DNA testing that have led them to information go to pad dogfish what have you experienced with that and have you have you have you are you the member of a family where someone in your family has not. Wow. Well, and also how do you then I'm sure how many people have had the conversation where they're like, Ooh, yeah, it's not my dad. Yeah. How do we bring this up to the fam? Like that? I see that happening on TikTok all the time. Just, I just see it being so traumatic for some, but if you have your own story, we'd love to hear it. You can email it to us, investigate at the dating detectives podcast.com and share with us what you're experiencing. And if you have questions, send them over. If you have, you know, comments for our guests, we would love to, to share them with her. Yeah. And nice, nice words to share with Taylor because she was so sweet. And also I just love the way she handled like at the end when she was like, yeah, I guess I am kind of the leader in the family. It's like, no kidding. And I would follow you anywhere. So we always try to pass along kind messages to our guests. Cause this is the reason we are able that have a show because people are so brave and want their story to help you guys. So thank you for submitting. And whether we read it on Patreon or on an episode, it's a huge, huge thing for a lot of people. So thank you. Oh, this was a very different story for us. Yeah, it's pretty different, but it's still interesting. And I'm excited that we got to that. I'm excited that Taylor trusted us to share that because I know there were some stuff that there was some stuff you guys that She did not want recorded and I don't blame her. And so it's still very vulnerable for her. Like some people think, oh, this is old, this is whatever, but this is very intense for her. So thank you for listening. Thank you for your support for our guest. And that is a reminder that if you're hesitant to share a story, we do anonymize everything. We work with a legal team and we are with you every step of the way. Our producer, Molly's amazing. And we just, you know, whatever you're comfortable sharing about your story, we always are respectful of that. So we really are always ready for you when you're ready for us. Yeah. And thank you for being here. And as always, trust your Femme tuition. .