Original subtitles

Moore: My work often leads me to dark places ‐‐

violent crime, murder, and the pain left behind.

But when I meet people like Carla Brooks,

who triumphed over a terrifying ordeal,

I'm reminded of people's inherent strength and goodness.

This is all new for me,

and it's also uncharted territory

for the police and for the courts.

Not long after I met Carla,

my techniques ‐‐ and it felt like my entire career ‐‐

were about to be put on trial.

I'm CeCe Moore.

For years, genealogy was my hobby,

and then it became my career.

Soon, I realized

that the techniques I developed to reunite families

could also be used to identify killers.

Now my team and I

help the police hunt violent criminals.

I'm a new kind of detective.

‐‐ Captions by VITAC ‐‐

♪♪

When I first joined forces with Parabon in April 2018,

people were thinking about genetic genealogy

as a tool for a cold case.

But it only took a couple weeks for things to change

when I first received a new opportunity

to really extend the boundaries

of what genetic genealogy could accomplish.

That was the Carla Brooks case.

Carla Brooks was 79 years old.

She's lived in St. George, a town in Southern Utah,

for most of her adult life.

I married Karl Brooks after we'd gone together for a year,

and that would've been in 1965.

I was his queen, and we never argued.

He'd just say, "Everything will be okay."

So, that's the way it was.

Miller: Karl died in 2015,

and since then, Carla had been living at their home

in St. George alone.

We never had any trouble up here

in our little quiet neighborhood.

But then when this happened,

it was, um...

[ Clicks tongue ] It was really horrific.

On April 17th in 2018,

I was in bed, I was asleep, and it was dark,

and there was just a night‐light in my room.

And a fellow came into my home,

and, uh, he rubbed my shoulder.

And just 'cause I was asleep, I thought, "Well, that's Karl."

But I turned around, and it wasn't.

And he put a rag in my mouth.

And then he clenched it like this

and whipped me around with my neck

this way and that way and this way.

And I fought, and I fought like a tiger,

but I didn't win.

After he had gone,

I was so overwhelmed with it and so hurt...

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

...and I cried.

I just couldn't believe it.

I had been raped.

Wilson: Our police department has 11 detectives,

and each of those detectives is assigned a certain area.

There's sex crimes, there's people crimes.

I cover property crime ‐‐ thefts, burglaries.

But on the week of April 17, 2018,

I was on call.

And about 1:30 in the morning, I was contacted

to come in and process a scene

and to conduct an interview of the victim.

A sexual assault on a, uh, elderly female,

to me, was extremely different.

And I thought,

how would my own grandmother feel

sitting down with a detective

and describing in ‐‐ in full detail a sexual assault?

Brooks: They asked me what color his hair was,

how tall he was, how he got in.

Wilson: Carla said that he was a white male

and had dirty blond or dark curly hair

and possibly in his 30s.

She suspected that he came in through the sliding glass door.

This door, right here.

He came through this door, right here.

I can't lock that door

because it kind of goes at an angle,

so I can't lift it up to put the lock on it

'cause it's so heavy.

Wilson: After we interviewed Carla,

we drove Carla to the emergency room

where a sexual assault kit was administered.

Moore: When I heard the details of the case,

I just couldn't imagine

my mother, who's the same age, being in that position.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

Wilson: The crime scene was rather simple

because there wasn't a lot to process.

We documented that room with photographs,

and we fingerprinted all the entryways,

looking for any additional evidence,

and we didn't locate any.

Once we were finished processing the area,

we left with one major piece of evidence,

and it was the DNA evidence left by the suspect.

In Carla's bed, police found a large semen stain.

Wilson: We bagged the sheets as evidence,

and we reached out to our Utah State crime lab.

They were able to build the DNA profile,

and they submitted that into CODIS.

We had to wait a few weeks to get that information,

but we were hitting any and every kind of lead that we had.

We conducted a canvass of her neighborhood.

We focused on people who had surveillance systems

or doorbell surveillance cameras

in hopes that we would catch a glimpse

of any suspicious activity.

But we weren't able to establish any type of suspect.

Miller: In today's world, you usually see crimes

that might have more of an electronic trail.

Maybe there's surveillance video,

maybe there were cellphone records, something like that.

And in this case, that just wasn't there.

I was surprised that they had so little other evidence

outside the DNA.

Wilson: But I was still pretty hopeful

that we would get a good hit off of CODIS.

Miller: This is a very egregious crime,

and it seemed like someone

who might have a criminal history in the past.

But they got the results back, and there wasn't a match.

Moore: CODIS is only as good as what's been uploaded to it.

According to some studies,

CODIS is biased toward minorities,

and people of African American or Latin American descent

are disproportionately represented in the database.

According to the 2010 Census records,

St. George is over 80% white,

or, as I would define it,

of primarily Northwestern European ancestry.

Wilson: Three weeks after the attack, we've exhausted all leads.

I just had already made up my mind

that they'll never find him.

But what worried me was that he would come back.

And he knew exactly where she was.

Wilson: He was still out there, so there is more people at risk

wherever this guy went.

We needed to catch him as soon as we could.

So, we had to do something different,

and so I started googling DNA.

I thought if genetic DNA technology can be used

to solve cases that happened 30 years ago,

why can't it be used on a case that happened three weeks ago?

It was definitely out‐of‐the‐box thinking.

So, I really started looking into genetic genealogy,

and I came across and got in touch with CeCe Moore.

Moore: This was not someone who had been in contact with Parabon,

so when Detective Wilson reached out to me directly,

that was a first,

and it felt very, very different.

This was not a cold case at all.

I had no idea that it would be CeCe's first hot case.

I was working on exclusively cold cases.

I knew that an active case would be even more intense,

but it felt extremely urgent,

and it was a heavy burden

knowing that this person was still out there

and could strike again at any time.

Moore: When Detective Wilson wrote to me,

I immediately responded,

because I was really interested in the possibility

of such an active case.

If active cases utilized genetic genealogy going forward,

thousands of cases could come in to Parabon

in the coming months and years.

And that is really exciting to me.

So, I knew it was a big deal

because this case could have a significant impact

on the future of investigative genetic genealogy.

So, I decided I wanted to learn

everything there was to learn about this particular case.

Hi. Hi. How are you?

Good. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

I was kind of thinking that we were going to

have this wrapped up in a week or two. Mm‐hmm.

And when we got zero results from CODIS... Mm‐hmm.

...it kind of scared me a little bit,

like, this ‐‐ I don't want this to go cold. Yeah.

And, you know, honestly, I was getting desperate,

and, uh, I was surfing the Internet

for any type of DNA information.

And I was like, "Who's CeCe Moore?"

Mm‐hmm. And I got to looking into what you did.

It was pretty impressive.

It was unusual for someone... Yeah.

...to reach out to me directly versus through Parabon.

Well, Carla's incident, in my opinion,

is everybody's worst nightmare.

Did you know Carla before?

No, but the case perked the community up.

She was a schoolteacher for 30‐plus years, maybe?

Yeah, she seems very beloved.

Did Carla inspire you?

She sounds like she was a very unusual survivor.

Oh, absolutely.

It was clear that the person that Carla is

made this have a profound effect

both on Detective Wilson and the greater community.

Brooks: I came to teach in St. George in 1964,

and then we built this home in '71.

And it was wonderful for the children

because there's all kinds of kids up here,

and we had great friends.

But it's changed so much.

Once Karl wasn't here, it was very difficult.

I've been through lots of things,

but when this happened,

that's a whole different situation.

[ Voice breaking ] But my mother taught me when I was young

to love everybody.

So, I just said, "Well, if somebody

goes through what I had to go through,

then maybe I can help them."

News 4 Utah's Lauren Matthias spoke with a woman

who says the attack changed her outlook on life.

As Carla Brooks explains it...

Miller: Days after the attack,

Carla was spending her time doing activism.

Matthias: Carla says she wants

to help other survivors.

She donated $5,000

to The Dove Center,

a shelter for women in Southern Utah,

as well as The Children's Justice Center in St. George.

Carla is continuing to raise money

to help organizations that help survivors of sexual assault.

You can...

Moore: Carla, from the beginning,

she had come forward,

and I knew who I was doing this for.

That's very unusual in a rape case,

that I would know who the victim was.

For Carla, her driving force throughout her whole life

had been helping other people,

and that just continued,

even as a survivor

of sexual assault.

I can imagine

for someone like Carla, who's elderly,

from a tight‐knit religious community,

that it would be especially difficult

to have to report a crime like this.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

Wilson: When this happened, people would tell her,

"Hey, you don't need to tell anybody about this.

You don't need to talk about it."

I think, in a small place,

you think, "Oh, I can't say anything," you know?

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

But if you know something's wrong,

if you're trying to make something better,

there can't be any fear in doing it.

She's strong ‐‐ very strong.

Huge example to ‐‐ to survivors.

It was a top priority case, for me and for my department.

And, uh, I think it was a top priority

for the community, as well.

I could understand why the community was so motivated

to find her attacker, hold him accountable,

and also to protect her.

I absolutely wanted to help identify this suspect

for Detective Wilson and for Carla.

Greytak: And so that was a decision we had to make

was do we want to prioritize this

above people who have been waiting,

and we had this whole queue of analyses

that we needed to do on all of these cold cases.

But CeCe was looking at the details of this case and said,

"If we can find him now, let's do it.

Let's figure out who that person is as soon as possible

before they can do it again."

There were dozens of cases waiting for my attention,

but we decided to push it to the very top of the pile,

no matter how difficult it is and no matter how long it took.

Using genetic genealogy

for the first time in an active case

is historic.

And I was excited about how it could impact

the future of crime solving.

But I was also involved in another historic event

that could have an even bigger impact.

In the summer of 2019,

the very first case that I ever worked on for law enforcement

was going to trial.

Last year, I worked on

the Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg

double homicide in Washington State.

It had been over 30 years since they had been murdered.

Reporter: The investigation moved to this area

beneath the High Bridge near Monroe.

That's where the body

matching the description of 20‐year‐old Jay Cook

was discovered yesterday.

Cook and 18‐year‐old Tanya Van Cuylenborg

were first reported missing November 19th,

when they failed to return home to Victoria, B. C.,

from a trip to Seattle.

Tanya's body was found

alongside a rural road, near Mount Vernon.

In 1987, Jay and Tanya were murdered,

and investigators tried everything they could

to identify their killer.

But very quickly,

over a matter of only a couple hours,

the genetic genealogy pointed me

right toward William Earl Talbott II.

His DNA matched the DNA

found at the crime scene 30 years earlier,

and the police department arrested him.

He denied having anything to do with it and pled not guilty.

The Talbott trial was incredibly important

for the future of this revolution of crime fighting.

We had had some convictions already

on cases that I had worked,

but they were all through guilty pleas.

There had been no precedent set,

so this was the first time

where a judge and a jury were going to weigh in.

I knew that the outcome could potentially dictate

the future of genetic genealogy in law enforcement

and thus my work for people like Carla.

So, a lot was at stake.

Everything was on the line.

♪♪

Moore: It's very important to see the outcome of these cases...

[ Light switch clicks ]

...because I get emotionally invested in them.

This is some raw footage

of the William Earl Talbott II trial

that I was able to get access to since I didn't get to be there.

Bailiff: ...Linda C. Krese presiding. Good morning.

Very nice ‐‐ a female judge.

Reporter: A landmark trial opened today in Washington State.

The trail was cold for three decades,

then police mined a public genealogy database

and found a suspect.

It's the first time this controversial forensics technique

will be tested in court.

The trial is expected to set a precedent

on the use of family tree forensics

in police investigations.

The first case that I worked on

was the first case that went to a jury trial.

Even though the Golden State Killer suspect was arrested

before William Earl Talbott,

the William Earl Talbott II case made it to trial first.

If it hadn't been for genetic genealogy,

we wouldn't be standing here today.

Moore: There were lots of eyes on the William Earl Talbott II trial

because the future of investigative genetic genealogy

relied on the outcome.

Baldock: In the fall of 2018,

I was assigned to prosecute the case

against William Talbott.

Frankly, it was the first time I had even heard about

genetic genealogy as a new forensic tool.

I started thinking about some of the potential legal issues

surrounding the use of genetic genealogy,

and one of the most obvious ones is thinking about it

from a legal‐privacy point of view.

Was the way that the police got to Mr. Talbott

a violation of his right to privacy?

Was uploading this crime scene profile

to a public DNA database,

identifying relatives and family members

through the genealogy process

somehow overreaching by law enforcement?

People are wary of having that kind of data exposed.

So, our goal was to make sure

that genetic genealogy was presented

as really just another lead

like the many others the police had gotten before.

Moore: I was scheduled to testify as an expert witness

in the Talbott trial.

But at the 11th hour,

I was informed that they had decided

I did not need to be a witness.

We reached an agreement with the defense

to allow a detective, Jim Scharf,

to talk about the work that Parabon and CeCe Moore had done,

including the results implicating Mr. Talbott.

Moore: It's disappointing to not be part of this historic trial

and get to be up there with the families

and Detective Scharf in person.

Harleman: A genetic genealogist was able to determine

who contributed that DNA.

One question you will not have

is who was responsible for those extremely violent murders

of Jay and Tanya.

And that could only be one person, and it's Mr. Talbott.

Reporter: Talbott's lawyer told the jury

the presence of DNA does not mean his client is a killer.

Genetic genealogy, that you heard briefly about here,

the prosecutor said

it's a good tool for catching perpetrators,

which is inaccurate.

It's ‐‐ It's a good tool for giving prosecutors insight

into who left particular biological evidence.

Whether that person was the perpetrator or not,

other evidence would need to show that.

Moore: If there was any type of negative ruling

regarding the genetic genealogy use,

if the judge disallowed it in this case,

this could make or break what we're doing.

I want to be able to provide answers

to the victims and their families.

Even if it's a very cold case,

it always feels like a race against time.

But this was even one more step, because with Carla Brooks' case,

now it was potentially a life‐or‐death situation.

I felt a lot of pressure

knowing that this person was out there

and potentially still active.

So, I wanted to get that DNA processing

as quickly as possible so I could jump right in.

The only hurdle that we had with this

is the funding.

But we ran it up the chain, and we got it approved.

I was able to go to the crime lab up in Salt Lake City

and pick up the sample,

and I overnighted the sample to Parabon.

Armentrout: Most of the cases

that were being analyzed for genetic genealogy

are decades old.

This was a completely new thing.

We pride ourselves in innovating around here,

but it was particularly exciting

because this was our first active genetic genealogy case.

There was a definite urgency,

not just with CeCe, but with all of us involved.

Moore: I really felt like

if I didn't find him in the next couple days,

there was a good chance that he could strike again.

Moore: On the weekend of July 6, 2018,

I received the matches from GEDmatch,

and I didn't want to wait another hour

to try to help identify Carla's attacker.

So, our call rate was really strong in this case.

It was 98.4%.

Now, why is it different?

This is an active case,

so this is a fresh DNA sample.

There was a grouping of matches,

and that is our first genetic network.

And the match at the top was about 185 centimorgans.

They're possibly second cousins with this unknown suspect.

Couple other possibilities.

Every generation, the shared amount of DNA

is halved approximately.

If they're second cousins, they shared great grandparents,

so I'm gonna make sure I have the tree

going back to great grandparents.

And there was a second grouping of matches

who shared DNA with the unknown suspect,

but they don't share DNA

with the first genetic network matches.

This is genetic network #2 ‐‐

the different branches of the family tree.

My top match is only sharing

about 70 centimorgans with this unknown suspect,

so maybe a third cousin.

So I'm gonna make sure I have the tree going back

to great‐great grandparents.

So, now what do I have to do?

I got to build their family trees, right?

Trying to find their common ancestor.

The common ancestral couple for genetic network #1

was Charles Morris and Elizabeth Margaret Hanna.

Charles Morris was born in 1875 in Boston, Massachusetts.

He not only had three degrees from Harvard

and he practiced law,

he even worked as secretary

of the Woodrow Wilson Businessmen's Committee

for the League of Nations.

And so, this was a well‐established family.

They had seven children, six who lived to adulthood.

So, for genetic network #2, the common ancestors

were Amos Holdeman and Nancy Yoder,

married about 1829 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania,

which, by the way, I have ancestors from.

They were both in the Mennonite community.

They had nine children, all of whom lived to adulthood.

So, that's a pretty big family.

Next, what I have to do is start building forward in time,

doing that reverse genealogy.

Coming down from the common ancestors

and building forward is much more time‐intensive.

Those trees just get huge.

Somehow, those two genetic networks I had identified

had to come together and triangulate

in order for me to find Carla's attacker.

I was concerned on this case

that that was going to be really challenging.

And I kind of hit a brick wall.

And I'm just working and working and working and working

to try to get that little glimmer of hope,

that little glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel,

and I don't even stop to eat.

So if I didn't have Lennart putting food in front of me,

I just wouldn't eat for a few days,

which is the way I used to be.

I'd be a lot thinner. [ Laughs ]

I ended up with two genetic networks,

but there was a third aspect

that was really important, as well,

and that is that I was seeing lots of matches

that had full Puerto Rican backgrounds,

and I thought, "Oh, how interesting."

It's certainly a clue

because the unknown suspect had to have

some Puerto Rican ancestry.

So that means

that a descendant is going to have to marry

or at least have a child with someone

with a Latin American surname.

So, when I follow this hypothesis,

in the first genetic network, I found that Charles Morris Jr.

married Dorothy Grace Rivera.

Aha!

That's promising.

Dorothy's father is William Rivera,

born in Puerto Rico.

Hallelujah.

So, now that I found the Puerto Rican ancestry,

I can eliminate the rest of the family tree

for genetic network #1

and focus in on that one branch.

But there's always snags ‐‐

always, always, always, always snags.

[ Laughs ]

This family was based on the East Coast,

they were apparently pretty happy where they were,

so they weren't coming west.

And I needed to find a family

that somehow ended up at least near St. George.

I couldn't find them, so I really needed to have

that second genetic network

point me in the right direction.

And I run into a great‐grandson of Amos and Nancy Holdeman

who dies in St. George in 1973.

Ah‐ha‐ha! Finally! Finally.

His name is George Monnett.

I know that the suspect has to be descended from him,

and he also has to be descended from genetic network #1,

through Charles Jr. and his wife, Dorothy Rivera.

George Monnett ‐‐ his grandson is about the right age

to be the parent of our suspect.

Who are his grandsons?

Do they marry someone from the Morris family?

So, I find a granddaughter of Charles Morris Jr.

and his wife, Dorothy Rivera,

who has the same first name as the wife

of one of the grandsons of George Monnett.

And I start thinking,

"What if this is the same person?"

And she is indeed that granddaughter.

So, she had gotten from the East Coast

all the way over to St. George,

married George Monnett's grandson,

and they had a family of eight children ‐‐

four boys and four girls.

So, what this meant was my genetic networks

had all converged at this one family that had four sons.

When all the pieces come together

and it's in the right location, it can't be a coincidence.

The unknown suspect had to be one of these four brothers.

Moore: The weekend of July 6, 2018, I barely got any sleep.

But in the end,

I knew that it had to be one of the Monnett brothers

that was Carla's attacker.

Wilson: On July 9th, we were contacted by Parabon,

and we were gonna have a conference with CeCe Moore.

I was amazed. It's happening so quickly.

When I was able to provide these leads

to Detective Wilson and his team,

it was the biggest relief to date.

We were looking at four possible strong suspects.

The Monnett brothers, they all grew up here.

Miller: The oldest brother was Spencer Monnett.

The police find out that Spencer has a warrant here in Utah.

Wilson: It's a small traffic warrant, no big deal.

So I decided to give him a call,

and he informed me that he forgot all about that

and was more than willing and cooperative

to get it taken care of.

Moore: Detective Wilson informed me

that Spencer Monnett was scheduled

to come into the police department,

so I was on pins and needles.

Miller: On July 28th, Spencer showed up

to the St. George Police Department.

When I get to the office,

Spencer's in the interview room with my sergeant.

Hey, Josh.

Hey. Spencer. How are ya?

How you doing, man? Good.

Wilson: I had a warrant for his DNA,

and I was ready to take that from him.

Spencer is not a person who has been in trouble before.

He has no criminal history.

But still, we didn't know what was gonna happen.

Married, single, divorced?

[ Laughs ]

Oh.

Oh, man.

I was...

[ Smacks lips ]

He provided us a full confession.

My jaw was on the ground.

I didn't expect that at all.

He wasn't doing so good,

and he was making some wrong choices in life.

I collected his DNA,

and we sent that to the crime lab for verification,

and it came back as a match.

There was no doubt that we had identified Carla's attacker

and that she was now safe.

And I was really happy to hear

that Spencer took responsibility for what he did.

Over a matter of only a couple of weeks,

he was stopped before he hurt anyone else.

Randall: Tight fit.

I think he was ready to have this off his shoulders.

Spencer was charged with rape,

object rape, burglary, and assault.

♪♪

Wilson: We booked him into the jail on July 28, 2018.

I went over to Carla's house.

Brooks: He knocked at the door,

and I thought, "Oh, he's just gonna come in

to see if I'm doing okay."

But he came right into my house, and he had tears in his eyes.

She's looking at me like, "Why are you crying?"

And he said, "We caught him."

I was so grateful.

[ Voice breaking ] I knelt down and thanked my Heavenly Father

that they had caught him.

It was a great feeling to sit there

and just look at her face and...

feel pressure leave her body.

It was unbelievable.

Moore: It was clear that genetic genealogy

could be extremely powerful and effective in an active case.

We were able to provide Carla and her family

answers very quickly.

It's a good example of how we can avoid

letting violent criminals go free for years or decades,

like they have traditionally in these cold cases.

However, at the time I was working the Carla Brooks case,

a judge and jury had not yet ruled

on the use of genetic genealogy for law‐enforcement purposes,

and a lot was riding on how things were gonna go

in the Talbott Trial.

Reporter: Every day during this double‐murder trial,

Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook's family members

sat in the public gallery.

During the trial,

the prosecution presented evidence

pointing to William Talbott as the killer.

Moore: We know his DNA is a match.

There's no question that genetic genealogy

led to the contributor of that crime‐scene DNA,

but it's up to the jury to decide

whether there is enough evidence to convict.

Is there still room for reasonable doubt?

Reporter: Attorneys making their closing arguments Tuesday,

but the defense saying nothing other than DNA

connects Talbott to the couple.

If you are sitting here thinking,

"Where is the other forensic evidence?",

your answer is "not guilty."

It's a cloud of dots to begin with,

but when you follow the dots, you end up with a picture.

And that's really the approach

that I encourage you to take in this case

and find the defendant guilty as charged.

When a jury goes away to deliberate on a case,

it is nerve‐racking.

Cohen: A first‐of‐its‐kind trial is now in the jury's hands.

Jury deliberations begin in the morning.

One attorney telling me they should have a verdict

by week's end,

though it could take much longer.

Moore: It was very difficult for me to imagine what they were thinking,

what they were going to decide in the end.

I didn't think this was necessarily a sure thing,

so I was nervous.

[ Indistinct talking on television ]

There was a lot of eyes on this trial, waiting for the outcome.

Baldock: The jury deliberated for about a day and a half.

I didn't really know what to expect.

Moore: Maybe the jury would decide

there wasn't enough evidence to convict.

The jury returned with a verdict on June the 28th.

Moore: This is the family.

These are the people that I am most concerned about.

I am sure they are extremely nervous right now.

After 31 years ‐‐ 31 years of waiting.

The State of Washington vs. William Earl Talbott II,

Verdict Form One.

We, the jury, find the defendant,

William Earl Talbott II,

guilty of the crime of first‐degree murder...

♪♪

Moore: It ‐‐ You know, it is impossible to put into words.

Everybody here followed the trial closely.

It's an important milestone

because now we have a conviction by jury.

As important as it is that there was a conviction on a case

where investigative genetic genealogy

was successfully applied,

it's even more important that this family has a resolution.

I'm John Van Cuylenborg.

I'm Tanya Van Cuylenborg's older brother.

Our family's very grateful for all of the people

that helped bring this to fruition.

CeCe Moore moved this case forward very quickly.

Steve Armentrout and Parabon,

all of whom contributed very significantly.

And really, you know, their core value

in that genetic genealogy community

is about helping families,

and I think that's what you've seen them do today.

Now, this one trial doesn't put all of the questions

about investigative genetic genealogy to rest.

There are other upcoming trials

that may handle it in a different way,

so this is not the final word.

Baldock: There will be an appeal,

and so a lot of the issues that came up at trial

will be tested then.

Whether the case is submitted

to the Supreme Court for appeal after that

won't be decided for several more years.

There will be challenges, we can be certain of that,

but we're very confident

that genetic genealogy as a practice

is going to survive.

Moore: I anticipate that the outcome of this trial

means that there will be many more cases

that will utilize genetic genealogy going forward,

and we should be able to bring answers

to thousands of victims and their families,

just like Carla.

Brooks: Spencer, he admitted to it,

but then the next thing sets in.

What's gonna happen now?

Judge: I'm calling the case of

the State vs. Spencer Glenn Monnett.

Moore: Months later, when Spencer had his sentencing,

Carla and her family all attended.

Spencer pleaded guilty on February 28th.

Carla also spoke at that sentencing hearing.

I'm Carla Brooks.

Spencer, I'm glad

that I couldn't see your face that night...

so I can look at you today with no fear.

I also want to say for you, and for me...

[ Sniffles ] ...that I forgive you.

Moore: Carla's such an amazing person

that she publicly forgave Spencer.

I can't imagine what that must have been like.

I have wanted to meet Carla Brooks

for a very long time.

I was really looking forward to the opportunity.

I hear it from so many sexual‐assault victims ‐‐

how ashamed they are, how guilty they feel.

I think Carla is such a great role model

to show that you don't need to feel that way.

Hello. Hi. I'm CeCe.

Oh, come on in!

When I got your case, I felt a lot of pressure

because I was afraid that he might strike again.

I knew you were ‐‐ That's what I was afraid of.

Right. But Josh was the main one

that talked with me,

and he's been so good.

He just never forgot me.

When he came in, he said, "We found him."

I just went into shock.

Because there's been so many people

who never get to find out.

Did you feel safer after that, then?

Totally safer.

Really? Totally safer.

It's amazing that you were able

to forgive Spencer for what he did. Well, thanks. Thank you.

Right. Says a lot about you.

You can forgive, but you don't forget.

♪♪

Moore: Carla was at a place in her life

where you wouldn't expect somebody

to kind of reinvent themselves.

But yet, at 79, she wasn't done.

She was willing to make a choice that helped others

rather than thinking of herself.

We can still make a difference in the world

and fulfill ourselves

and make our families proud of us.

♪♪

You see it? Yeah. See that one?

I've been really lucky that my family's been so supportive.

My son hasn't always gotten as much attention from me

as maybe he would like or I would like to give him.

And so, there's definitely been sacrifices

that my family has had to make and that I've had to make.

You can see Jupiter, and Saturn's right over there.

Uh‐huh. And there's the one under Jupiter

which is, like, Antares or something.

He still knows he's the center of my world,

but I finally feel like I'm living my life's purpose

because I'm able to use genetic genealogy

to bring answers to victims and their families

and to make society a safer place.

[ Nicky speaking indistinctly ]

Genetic genealogy was never intended to be a career.

I could never have envisioned it leading me here,

but yet I somehow ended up here.

It's been an incredible journey so far,

and I don't think that's going to stop.

But who knows what the future will hold

for me, for my family, for my career,

and for genetic genealogy.

♪♪