Fan Favorite: A Boat, A Fire and the Signature in the Ashes
America's Crime Lab
iHeartPodcasts and Kaleidoscope
4.8 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Emergency crews responding to a boat fire discovered human remains, but the case quickly went cold. For decades, investigators had no answers. Using advanced forensic DNA, Othram scientists were able to identify the victim and reveal the truth behind the fire, finally giving a family long-delayed closure.
America’s Crime Lab is a true crime podcast about how science solves cold cases, missing persons, and other unsolved cases. Hosted by journalist and clinical psychologist Elin Lantz Lesser, and powered by Othram’s forensic DNA lab, the show connects the science to the story, revealing what really happens in the lab and why it matters.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:04.1 | She said, Johnny. |
| 0:05.6 | The kids didn't come home last night. |
| 0:07.7 | Along the central Texas plains, teens are dying. |
| 0:12.2 | Suicides that don't make sense. |
| 0:14.7 | Strange accidents and brutal murders. |
| 0:18.4 | In what seems to be, a plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad. |
| 0:23.7 | Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people. |
| 0:27.0 | There are people out there that absolutely know what happened. |
| 0:29.8 | Listen to paper ghosts, the Texas teen murders, |
| 0:33.3 | launching November 5th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:52.8 | People are laying in a freezer for decades they've been sitting in the walking cooler at the medical examiner's office and it's just up and down up and down of bodies and bankers boxes and i i just think that we as society we we should send those people home, you know. |
| 1:14.3 | Ultimately, this effort, especially in unidentified human remains, is about people and human dignity. |
| 1:21.4 | I mean, bodies need to be returned to their families. |
| 1:30.3 | There's a silent epidemic in this country. |
| 1:33.3 | Every year, thousands of people die, and we have no idea who they are. |
| 1:38.2 | There's no identification found with the body. |
| 1:40.9 | No family to claim them. |
| 1:48.9 | The remains are often reduced to a box of bones and stored in a medical examiner's office. And the longer the human remains sit on the shelf, |
| 1:54.2 | the less likely it is that will ever know who they are. This is America's Crime Lab. I'm Alain |
| 2:00.2 | Lance Lesser. |
| 2:04.9 | Our producer, Catherine Fenalosa, is here. So, Catherine, what case do you have for me today? |
... |
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