Hi, blood money listeners. This was one of the wildest cases I've ever covered this week.

And I'm not just talking about cases involving con artists, although she did steal a lot of money,

but just the mystery itself and especially that disarticulated foot that washed up on the beach.

I've done a little bit deeper dive into the possibility that there could have been fake DNA.

And to be honest, I'm thinking now that looks like a more remote possibility.

I went back and read the paper that was published in the journal Forensic Science International

Genetics.

And what they actually said was that scientists were able to fabricate

blood and saliva samples. Remember, Melissa was identified by a saliva sample on a toothbrush.

The scientists were able to manipulate that DNA, but the main way that they did it was by taking a

tiny sample and making more of it. So they created

a larger sample from something small. The paper explained that if there was a scientist who had access

to a DNA profile of someone from a database, they can construct a sample of DNA that will match

that profile without actually having any real tissue from

that person. However, what this would mean is that it would be the scientist or the person testing

the foot who would be able to manipulate the DNA. So Melissa would have had to have some inside help

or the chain of custody of the evidence would have had to be

really compromised for that to be a possibility. The only other possibility I can think of is that

Melissa or someone connected to her, as I said in the episode, somehow sourced a cadaver and then got

some of that DNA and put it on the toothbrush. I think that could be a

possibility, but I think it's extremely remote. This case also really explored the phenomenon,

which I find fascinating, of these shoes that are washing up without bodies. There is a fascinating

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