Hit Podcast Explores New Era of Forensic Investigation
Jason Moon '13, a reporter for New Hampshire Public Radio, is the creator and host of Bear Brook, a new podcast miniseries that follows a New Hampshire cold case, the investigation of which is changing the field of forensics.
Bear Brook, which has been downloaded over 1.1 million times, follows the strange case of the murder victims discovered at Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, New Hampshire, in 1985 and 2000.
The four victims, whose remains were found in two barrels in the woods of the park, have not been identified. However, advances in new forensic methods and genetic genealogy led to the arrest of their murderer in 2017. This groundbreaking technique, first pioneered on the Bear Brook case, also made possible the arrest of the Golden State Killer in April 2018.
Bear Brook, which explores both the case itself as well as the techniques used, is at its core, a "half true crime and half science story," said Moon in a New Hampshire Public Radio interview.
The New Yorker selected Bear Brook as one of the Best Podcasts of 2018 and praised the "remarkable skill and sensitivity" Moon displays reporting the highly complex mystery, which "spans several decades, characters, aliases, and states, and ends up forever changing how murders are solved."
Moon spoke with Concord Monitor about the privacy implications of genetic genealogy, which is "the process of analyzing data from thousands or millions of genetic samples to find similarities among people that indicate relationships."
Listen in on Bear Brook as the case evolves via the podcast's website or your favorite streaming platform.