fig out who our doe is. what if this is your family. you want to give them closure >> to us homicide detectives, it's way above our heads. >> i said, i think i know how we can do it. >> all of these people share some amount of dna with our unknown person. >> we thought, this is the family. this is it. >> surreal. it felt like somebody had just punched me in the stomach. >> it's a funny thing, isn't it? that it would be important to have a stone with your name on it. >> it is. it's written in stone. you're never forgotten. hello and welcome to "dateline." in many cold cases, the victim's family is desperate to find their loved one's killer. but who did he murder? that team haunted a small town until a team of tenacious strangers put a name with a face. here's keith morrison with the woman with no name. >> here is where they put her. her permanent home. >> nobody really knew anything about her. >> this little cemetery in east texas. one simple marker on her grave. and the name that wasn't a name. jane doe. >> it makes it personal, because you think, what if this is your family, what if this could be your friend? >> she. who was she, this impossible enigma. >> how is it that a young woman with disappear and die and no one can figure out who she is. >> the question that kept them glued to their computers. >> participating in something like this too can be almost consuming. it can really drain us. >> the obsession. >> i was hooked. i was absolutely hooked. >> this is where it began, october 29th, 2006, kyl kilgore texas. two men out shooting on oil lease property not too far from town. they smelled it first. then they saw it. something burning. looked like a mannequin. the men approached. what was that? and then, they recoiled. that was a young woman, dead and burning. >> you know, we have homicides just like the rest of the world, but you know, as going as far as trying to burn the body, it really struck fear in people around here. >> lieutenant eddie hope was still a sergeant back then. greg county sheriff's department. >> she had woodpiled underneath her and wood piled on top of her, and there was, i believe, a gas can lid there. >> wow. >> so it looked like somebody was trying to coffer their tracks. >> she was meant pob part of one big bonfire and just disappear forever. >> right. >> the officers who responded noted every detail they could, that she was young, late teens, early 20s, and that she was little, maybe 5'4", 100 pounds, she was wearing jeans, a pale shirt, the color lavender. $44 in her pocket. and this was unusual, baby teeth. she still had a few. >> she never lost 'em. and they said, that's highly unusual. >> that gave you something to work with, anyway. >> a little bit. >> other than that, the young woman was impossible to identify. she had been murdered, of that there was no doubt. her last moments had been very bad. is but, in most decide detectives, police burroed deep into the life of the victim, interviewed every family, find out about scorned lovers, her past mistakes. that's often how murders get solved. but in this case, none of it was possible. >> didn't have a clue. >> what could dwroum. >> nothing. if we got tips, ran them down, because we had no grounds to go on who this could be or where she came from. >> they ran her dna profile, didn't match any known person, known to them, anyway. but the autopsy reveaed semen and it did match someone, a known local sex offender. so they pulled him in and he admitted that he had sex that day with a woman he didn't know, but he didn't kill her. and he had an alibi, too. so that was that. >> we would get people off the internet that would say, hey, i think this might be and so so, and we would follow up on that and eventually rule it out. what we were thinking at the time is maybe she's not from around time, because nobody's missing her here. >> and so gregg county paid for a burial plot and for a little marker on the ground above her body. >> small headstone that just reads jane doe. there's no information we knew on her. >> and winter came. but they didn't give up. a texas ranger who sometimes worked with them said maybe he could help. >> and he was able to fly in an artist to try to reconstruct what our victim looked like in real life. >> and here it was. but it produced no leads. the county even made a clay model using an x-ray of the victim's skull, including those baby teeth, sent it around to local media. still, nothing. and detective work, it's unending drum that beats at all hours of the day and night. felonies, misdemeanors, the lot, demanding occasion. >> we get cases every day. we get three, four cases every day, sometimes more. >> they didn't forget her as they went about their work, but the young lady remained nameless, no matter how many trails they followed. >> it went on for years. that's basically all we had. >> a little bit here, a little bit there, but not much. >> and no solution. >> no solution, no name. >> then something unusual happened the little details, like her baby teeth, caught the eyes of amateur internet investigators on sites like reddit and web sleuths. and before too long, they began referring to the mystery woman with a kind of shorthand. it was the distinctive color of her short that did it. one of those armchair detectives took to calling her lavender. lavender doe. >> this was a case that was followed online very closely by many people. >> reporter: people like this guy and what happened after that? well, remember what we said about obsession? about obsession? >> a murder victim without a name and detectives without any clues, making this a very hard mystery to solve. but help is on the way. coming up -- >> i spent a lot of my spare time looking into missing persons cases -- >> i was impressed that people cared. >> cared and knew how to help. >> i said, i think i know how we can do it. and she said, bingo! all we need is dna. >> when "dateline" continues. da >> when "dateline" continues and longer-lasting relief than tylenol rapid release gels because advil targets pain at the source of inflammation. so for faster pain relief, advil the pain away. 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and so kevin called the greg county sheriff's department and found himself on the phone with the lead detective on lavender doe's case. lieutenant eddie hope. >> i was impressed that people cared. because we live in a world where everything's fast paced and a lot of people are worried about themselves and not others. >> and here was evidence that maybe they are interested in others. >> right. >> some other investigator might have blown off a guy like kevin. just another civilian with an internet connection and a theory. but kevin seemed to know what he was doing, and his internet skills, way beyond what lieutenant hope could do. and before long, although they didn't actually meet in person, they began acting almost like partners. >> we just flew together, you know, whatever he needed that he couldn't get, that i could get, law enforcement-wise, he would send it to me. >> to kind of mesh together these with its of information? >> yes. >> and two things happened. one, kevin realized that lavender doe was not one of the missing women he'd been looking for. and two, he got hooked on the case of the girl in the lavender shirt. but he kept hitting dead ends. he needed some specialized help. very specialized. >> i reached out to dna doe project to see if i might be able to come on as a volunteer. >> reporter: the dna doe project. a nonprofit founded by a former rocket scientist named colleen fitzpatrick and a novelist and genealogy enthusiast, margaret press. >> i barely knew what john and jane does meant, but i had been retired for about a year and came out back to the west coast to be near my daughter and grandchildren and to relax. >> reporter: it was winter 2017 when margaret, not the retiring type, was struck with an idea. she had already been deeply immersed in genealogy, helping adoptees find their birth parents. so -- >> if i can figure out jane doe's parents, we'll know who jane doe was. >> reporter: margaret's plan, obtain remains from jane and john does, re-test their dna, and upload the results to a public database where, maybe, that dna would be link them to some relative of the victim. >> so i had my recipe. and i reached out to colleen and i said, i think i know how we can do it. and she said, bingo! all we need is dna! oh, and i know a couple of people. >> reporter: at first, they paid for the dna tests with their own savings. and then they set up a nonprofit and started taking donations. and after just six months, they solved their first case. >> the mystery surrounding -- >> a few weeks later, another case made headlines around the world, showing the power of genealogy. >> police arresting a man they believe is a so-called golden state killer and the suspect, a former police officer, discovered using dna. >> that one did change the world, because that was a violent killer and that was a huge impact on the world -- on the community. >> sure. opened everybody's eyes. >> yep. >> and suddenly, colleen and margaret had company. >> genealogists came out of the woodwork. and i could see us as a very unique organization where law enforcement agencies could come to us with their bones and no money and we could bring in volunteer genealogists who were begging to help us. >> what you can bring to this process is a -- a crowdsourced investigation, like, you know, a bunch of bees forming a hive. and disparately, they're not going to do much, but altogether, they can really accomplish truly significant. >> right. exactly. >> kevin lord was one of those bees. he joined dna doe as a volunteer and then, others followed. kind of a mini hive, looking for the truth about a mystery woman they called lavender doe. >> coming up -- the bees get busy. >> we spend hours working together, talking to each other. >> oh, my gosh, did you see this? what about this? who's this guy? >> we're kind of the last resort. >> when "dateline" continues. resort >> when "dateline" continues it was a kind of obsession now. the determination to give her back her name. to identify the anonymous young woman murdered and set on fire and then buried here in longview, texas. god knows law enforcement had tried every trick in the investigative book. except for a new book, if you could call it that. the dna doe project. a bunch of amateurs, really. but committed, oh, yes. >> it's not that law enforcement has not tried. most of the cases that come to us were kind of the last resort. >> us, meaning a group of people, who had never actually met in person. who labored away in a kitchen or a bedroom or a basement. who knew each other only online. like lori gaffe, a former blackhawk helicopter pilot, who stumbled on a facebook posting about dna doe. >> i was completely enthralled. and me being me, had to know absolutely everything that there was about it. and i thought, i totally want to be a part of this. >> and was soon addicted. >> it will consume your life if you let it. i've been making an effort to kind of set limits. >> one hour turns into ten pretty quick, i would think, right? >> ten -- ten might be a slow day. this has become an obsession. >> reporter: then there was missy koskey, a self-described search angel, who had used genetic genealogy to find her biological father. >> what was that like, to find him? >> it was incredible. it was absolutely incredible. >> so she began helping other adoptees find their birth parents. and one day -- >> while i was helping an adoptee, that adoptee got a phone call from the dna doe project. and she was told that she was distantly related to a jane doe. i just got intrigued. and i said, can i talk to them? >> before long, missy was hooked, too. and the three, kevin, lori, and missy, formed a team. >> so you're like the three musketeers sitting there together? >> we spend hours working together, talking to each other, almost exclusively online. >> and we just get in there and blab all day long about, oh, my gosh, did you see this? where's this -- who's this guy, i can't find this -- whatever. >> back in gregg county, after more than a decade chasing leads on lavender doe, lieutenant hope understood that investigations have changed. >> genealogy, it's the way of the future. and to us homicide detectives, it's way above our heads, to be honest with you. >> so you welcomed their help? >> i did. >> and across the country, someone else had taken notice of the amateur investigators working with dna doe. >> i liked to write about how people, genealogists, are dealing with new advances in dna. >> reporter: sarah zhang is a staff writer for "the atlantic" magazine. >> i like the fact that kevin had been so invested in this case. >> passion like that was a story worth following. and she did. watching their process. for one thing, using the victim's skin or hair or blood to generate a dna profile, which they upload to a genealogy site called ged match. >> we get a whole list of dna matches back. and all of these people share some amount of dna with our unknown person. >> reporter: it's important to understand the volunteers work with public dna databases. >> and where does all of this dna material come from that we're able to look at? >> these are all people who have taken tests with companies like ancestry dna or 23 and me, the consumer test. >> and who have given access to others to view their results. that's a relatively tiny percentage of the population, so the odds of finding an exact match, vanishingly small. but -- >> just by the pure probabilities, we're often lucky enough to get a decent-nuch match. >> by decent match, he means a distant relative. someone who likely doesn't even know the victim. >> we kind of look for a match that's in the neighborhood of maybe a second or third cousin or so is a good starting point. >> a starting point to work backwards, and try to reconstruct branches of the family tree, by scouring the internet, mining every possible bit of information from birth certificates to death notices to marriage licenses to social media. where the heck do you find all of this stuff? i mean, you must spend hours and hours and hours and hours in front of a computer screen trying to find it? >> and lots of money. >> yep. >> the dna doe project made a new sketch, and they put it up online. they added a paypal button to ray money for that re-test of lavender doe's dna, and pretty soon, the online community that followed the lavender doe case answered the call. >> and within four days, the public had come through and completely funded the testing that we had to do. >> but before they could even get the test sent out, something very unexpected happened. >> i get a call from lieutenant hope at the sheriff's office saying that he has big news. >> what could that be? coming up -- >> that's why i wanted to get this off my chest. >> i just let him talk. he left no detail out. >> a break in the case and a frustrating discovery. >> we found that there were 27 first cousins. where are they? who are their children? are they alive? what can we find? >> when "dateline" continues. e d >> when "dateline" continues billy: one second, grandma. this guy is going to buy my car. okay? 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[♪♪] your skin is ever-changing, take care of it with gold bond's age renew formulations of 7 moisturizers and 3 vitamins. for all your skins, gold bond. introducing new advil targeted relief. the only topical pain reliever with 4 powerful pain-fighting ingredients that start working on contact to target tough pain at the source. for up to 8 hours of powerful relief. new advil targeted relief. stuck at the dmv, and i think i'm late on my car insurance. good thing the general gives you a break with flexible payment options. let's get you a break while you wait. what is this place? this is our dmvip. vending machine charcuterie? for a great low rate, go with the general. i'm richard lui with a news update. eight people including two children have been wounded at a mass shooting at a splash park in rochester hills, michigan. investigators say the gunman used an semiautomatic gun and he was later found dead due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound. and the search continues for a sheriff's county deputy who vanished last week