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[Kelly]

http://hosted.ap.org...LTAM&SECTION=US

Mar 30, 12:47 AM EDT

Amateur Sleuths Name Anonymous Dead

By HELEN O'NEILL
AP Special Correspondent

LIVINGSTON, Tenn. (AP) -- Four days a week Todd Matthews earns $11.50 an hour working for an automotive parts supplier. He punches in at 4:15 a.m., punches out nearly 11 hours later, then drives half a mile to his little beige house on a hill where, in the distance, he can glimpse the Appalachian mountains.

He spends the next seven to eight hours at his desk, beneath shelves lined with miniature plastic skulls, immersed in a very different world.

Their faces seem to float from his computer - morgue photographs, artist sketches, forensic reconstructions - thousands of dead eyes staring from endless Web sites as though crying out for recognition. John and Jane and Baby "Does" whose nameless bodies have never been identified.

His wife, Lori, complains that Matthews spends more time with the dead than he does with the living, including his two sons, Dillan, 16, and Devin, 6.

You need a hobby, she says, or a goal.

I have a goal, he replies, though he describes it as a "calling".

He wants to give "Does" back their names.

His obsession began two decades ago, when Lori told him about the unidentified young woman wrapped in canvas whose body her father had stumbled on in Georgetown, Ky., in 1968. She had reddish brown hair and a gap-toothed smile. And no one knew her name.

So locals blessed her with one. They buried her under an apple tree with a pink granite tombstone engraved with the words "Tent Girl."

At 37, Matthews is a sensitive soul who has always felt an affinity for the dead, perhaps because two of his siblings died just after birth. Matthews still chokes up when he visits the graves of Gregory Kenneth and Sue Ann. But at least he knows where they are buried.

Tent Girl haunted him. Who were her siblings? What was her name?

Matthews began searching library records and police reports, not even sure what he was seeking. He scraped together the money to buy a computer. He started scouring message boards on the nascent Internet.

In the process, Matthews discovered something extraordinary. All over the country, people just like him were gingerly tapping into the new technology, creating a movement - a network of amateur sleuths as curious and impassioned as Matthews.

Today the Doe Network has volunteers and chapters in every state. Bank managers and waitresses, factory workers and farmers, computer technicians and grandmothers, all believing that with enough time and effort, modern technology can solve the mysteries of the missing dead.

Increasingly, they are succeeding.

The unnamed dead are everywhere - buried in unmarked graves, tagged in county morgues, dumped in rivers and under bridges, interred in potter's fields and all manner of makeshift tombs. There are more than 40,000 unnamed bodies in the U.S., according to national law enforcement reports, and about 100,000 people formally listed as missing.

The premise of the Doe Network is simple. If the correct information - dental records, DNA, police reports, photographs - is properly entered into the right databases, many of the unidentified can be matched with the missing. Law enforcement agencies and medical examiners offices simply don't have the time or manpower. Using the Internet and other tools, volunteers can do the job.

And so, in the suburbs of Chicago, bank executive Barbara Lamacki spends her nights searching for clues that might identify toddler Johnny "Dupage" Doe, whose body was wrapped in a blue laundry bag and dumped in the woods of rural Dupage County, Ill., in 2005.

In Kettering, Ohio, Rocky Wells, a 47-year-old manager of a package delivery company, scoots his teenage daughters from the living room computer and scours the Internet for anything that might crack the case of the red-haired Jane Doe found strangled near Route 55 in 1981. "Buckskin Girl," she was called, because of the cowboy-style suede jacket she was wearing when she was found.

And in Penn Hills, Pa., Nancy Monahan, 54, who creates floor displays for a discount chain, says her "real job" begins in the evening when she returns to her creaky yellow house and her black cat, Maxine, turns on her computer and starts sleuthing.

Monahan's cases include that of "Beth Doe", a young pregnant woman strangled, shot and dismembered, her remains stuffed into three suitcases and flung off a bridge along Interstate 80 near White Haven in December 1976. And "Homestead Doe," whose mummified body was found in an abandoned railroad tunnel in Pittsburgh in 2000. Her toenails were painted silver.

Monahan was so moved that last year she sought out the tunnel, climbed down the embankment and offered a silent prayer for the young woman whose life ended in such a pitiful place.

"It's like they become family," Monahan says. "You feel a responsibility to bring them home."

The stories of Doe Network members are as individual as the cases they are trying to solve. Bobby Lingoes got involved through his connection with law enforcement - he's a civilian dispatcher with the Quincy, Mass., police department. Traycie Sherwood of Richmond, Mo., joined when her adoptive mother died and she went on line searching for her birth mother. Daphne Owings, a 45-year-old mother of two in Mount Pleasant, S.C., needed something to take her mind off the war when her husband was sent to Iraq. Carol Ceiliki of Whitehall, Pa., was searching for her ex-husband.

And Laura Allen Hood of Fort Smith, Ark., was searching for her brother.

For years, Hood refused to speak about Tony, who vanished without a trace in 1978 while visiting friends in Oklahoma. He was 16, two years older than his sister. Her parents tried to shelter the family from the pain, tried to make life for his siblings as normal as possible. But, she says, "it never leaves your mind."

Hood describes years of false sightings and false hope - stalking someone in a car because he looked like Tony, picking up hitchhikers who bore a resemblance, her mother wrapping a Christmas present year after year for the son who never came home.

It wasn't until 2004, when Hood's own son became a teenager that she decided to find her brother once and for all. Trolling the Internet she discovered the Doe Network. Sifting through its vast indexes, she found new reason to hope.

For the first time in her life, Hood e-mailed a stranger - Matthews in Tennessee: "Can you help me find my brother?" she pleaded.

Matthews responded with a series of questions. Was the case filed as missing with the National Crime Information Center, an FBI clearinghouse? Did she have dental records or relevant medical information? Had the family submitted DNA to law enforcement?

Finally, Matthews asked for a photograph of Hood's brother, which he forwarded to one of the professional forensic artists who donate time to the network.

Nothing prepared Hood for the black-and-white image that filled her computer screen a few weeks later. Gone was the long hair and devil-may-care grin. Smiling, ghost-like, but yet so very real - the artist's depiction of a middle-aged Tony.

Hood stared at the image, her mind racing. Was he alive? Dead? Did she really want to know?

Four years later, Tony Allen has still not been found. There have been a number of false matches, though, and each narrows the search. Hood says she feels a new sense of certainty that someday, someone will click on a mouse and find a connection.

Matches can be triggered by a single detail - a tattoo, a piece of clothing, a broken bone. It's just a question of the right person spotting the right piece of information and piecing together the puzzle. The process can be tedious and frustrating; months or even years of endless late-night clicking on a dizzying array of sites can often lead nowhere.

And it can take its toll. Lori Matthews once left her husband for six months because of his obsession with Tent Girl. "He didn't talk about anything else," she said. "It wasn't normal."

They reconciled after Matthews agreed to limit the amount of time - and money - he spent on "Does."

Still, Matthews and others say the rewards of cracking a case make the time worthwhile. The Doe Network claims to have assisted in solving more than 40 cases and ruling out hundreds more.

Successes are not entirely joyous, says Kylen Johnson, a 38-year-old computer technician from Clarksburg, Md. "On the one hand, you are giving families the information they have been searching for. On the other, you are extinguishing all hope that their missing loved one will be found alive."

Johnson tells of a Kentucky woman who had been searching for her ex-husband for 18 years. The woman described a tattoo on his shoulder - the initials "RGJ." Johnson, with other Doe volunteers, was able to track down a John Doe with identical markings in Vermont.

Johnson still marvels at how grateful the woman was at the other end of the phone. And at how strange it felt, that someone would thank her for finding out their husband had been murdered.

"Nothing you find can be any worse than something that has already gone through your mind," says Mary Weir of Palmer, Alaska, describing the sickening moment when she spotted an artist's rendition of her 18-year-old daughter's face on the Network.

Samantha Bonnell had been missing for 19 months. She was killed while running across a California highway in 2005, and buried in an unmarked grave - Jane Doe 17-05.

"Her name wasn't Jane Doe," Weir said, her words punctuated by sobs.

"She was Samantha, my Samantha and she had curly red hair and green eyes and freckles on her face. And she was a real person and she was loved. She wasn't just a number. She was funny and maddening and she wrote her first resume at 10 - for a baby-sitting job! And she read Shakespeare for fun. And she was just bigger and brighter than the rest of us, and the world is worse off for not having her."

Bonnell's remains were exhumed last year. She was buried in her native Oregon beneath a headstone carved with her name.

Today her mother actively lobbies the state government to pass legislation (Project Jason's Campaign for the Missing) making it easier to file missing-persons reports for people 18 and over - some local authorities are slow to pursue missing adults, saying they have every right to go missing - and mandating DNA samples be taken from family members within 30 days of a report being filed. Several states already have such laws and many others are considering them.

"I don't care who you are," Weir says, "to be buried with no name implies that your life didn't matter, that you were just discarded like trash. I wanted better for my daughter - and for all the other missing people out there."

"They do God's work," says Mark Czworniak, 50, a veteran homicide detective in Chicago.

He first encountered the Doe Network when he was approached by Lamacki, the Chicago bank executive, about potential matches. Unlike some officers, Czworniak has no hesitation about working with civilian volunteers, especially those willing to devote endless hours to cold cases that he cannot get to.

Czworniak says there are hundreds of "Does" in the department files. He is assigned five, including a tall, thirtysomething man found at the Navy Pier in 2003. Czworniak hopes that the man's height will help Lamacki or another Network volunteer eventually make an identification.

"She's like a little bloodhound," says Czworniak, who exchanges e-mails with Lamacki on cases every week and has introduced her to other detectives. "She has the wherewithal and interest and time and she searches these sites I'm not even aware of."

Such praise was rare in the early days of the network, when overeager members were more likely to be derided as "Doe nuts" by police and medical examiners. That changed partly as the organization imposed stricter rules on who could join and developed a system of area directors, researchers and media representatives. Now a potential "solve" is rigorously vetted - and voted on - by a 16-member panel, and potential matches are submitted to law enforcement agencies only by designated members.

In another sign of the network's influence, Matthews was asked to serve on a government task force involved in creating the first national online data bank for missing and unidentified.

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, NamUS, launched last year, is made up of two databases, one for the missing and one for the unidentified. The goal is to have medical examiners and law enforcement agencies around the country constantly update information on both sites. Next year the sites will be linked and made available for public searching.

No one believes NamUS will put the Doe Network out of business - there will always be a need for people with their expertise to make the necessary connections.

And so, families of the missing will no doubt continue to rely on people like Todd Matthews.

At his house in Livingston, Matthews has built a little nook next to the living room - his "Doe office," he calls it. His desk is laden with pictures of dead bodies. He says he gets many e-mails about cases every week. Every night he scrolls down the lists, searching for new information:

Unidentified White Female. Wore a necklace of silver beads and three small turquoise stones, one resembling a bird. Found in a Calendonia cornfield in New York state in 1979. ...

Unidentified White female. Strawberry blonde hair and 12 infant teeth. Wearing a pink and white dress that buttoned in the back and a disposable diaper. Found Jackson County, Miss. 1982. ...

Unidentified Black Female. Gunshot wound to the skull. Found next to highway ramp in Campbell County, Tenn., in 1998...

The last case is close to Matthews' heart. Sally, he named her, after a Campbell County police officer entrusted him with her skull in 2001.

The police didn't have the time or means to pay for a clay reconstruction, and so - with the approval of the local coroner - Matthews took the skull to a Doe Network forensic artist. A picture of the reconstructed head was placed on the Network site. The skull sat on Matthews' desk for over a year, and even Lori, who was at first so horrified she couldn't look at it, grew fond of Sally. She remains unidentified.

But even Sally cannot take the place of the first Doe, the one who changed Matthews' life. He still regularly drives to Kentucky, to a lonely plot in Georgetown to visit her.

"She's family now," he says.

Standing by her grave, he tells of the night in 1998 when, scouring chat rooms for the missing, he stumbled upon a message from Rosemary Westbrook of Benton, Ark.

Westbrook sought information about her sister, Bobbie, who was 24 when she went missing 30 years earlier. Bobbie had married a man who worked in a carnival, and she was last seen in Lexington. She had reddish brown hair and a gap-toothed smile.

Over and over Matthews stared at the message. And in his heart he knew.

Lori, he cried, racing into the bedroom and shaking awake his wife

"I've found her. I found Tent Girl."

E-mails were exchanged. Phone calls were made. When Matthews received a photograph of Westbrook's sister, he had no doubt. She looked just like the forensic artist's portrait sketched years earlier - the one engraved on Tent Girl's headstone, the one that had obsessed him for years.

Weeks later the remains were exhumed. The match was confirmed by DNA.

"It was the best peace of mind in the world," Westbrook says. "What Todd did for our family ... I can't describe it ... I don't have the words. Just to have a grave to visit means everything when you have been wondering for so long."

The family decided to re-inter Bobbie in the place that had been her resting spot for so many years. Beneath the stone etched "Tent Girl" they placed a small gray one engraved with her real name, the name that Matthews had restored.

She was Barbara Ann Hackmann, now and for eternity.

[Jenn]

http://kaaltv.com/ar...shtml?cat=10217

Tuesday, December 23, 2008   

Posted at: 12/22/2008 06:38:03 PM

By: David Springer

Blue Earth's Mystery Jane Doe


(ABC 6 NEWS) -- Nearly 30 years after she was murdered outside of Blue Earth, the mystery of “Jane Doe” is still just that, a mystery.

Authorities know who killed her, but they still have no idea who she was.

“She was somebody's, somewhere. I'm getting choked up; I apologize.”

Debi Anderson of Blue Earth was talking about the town's 28-year-old mystery known as the case of Jane Doe.

A mystery she's been trying to solve for years. 

“It's the right think to do, and I don't want to believe that humans are disposable.”

On May 30th, 1980, Jane Doe's badly decomposing body was discovered by a farmer in a dredge ditch just off of I-90, about 5 miles east of Blue Earth.

“The farmer just stopped on the edge of the road to see how the culvert looked or the waterway and saw her laying down in there.”

Nine years later, former Minnesota State Trooper Robert Nelson, confessed to the murder.

He's currently serving time in a Texas prison, but nearly three decades after her death, Jane Doe's identity is still unknown.

Deputy Sheriff Scott Adams inherited Jane Doe's huge case file two and a half years ago.

“Everybody deserves a name. If we can find her family, they deserve to know what's happened to her.”

If you search for the Blue Earth cold case on the Internet, you'll find a website dedicated to the case maintained by Debi Anderson.

“Well, I get messages probably. Well, it goes in spurts.”

She created the site so that all the case information could be available to the public.

It also includes a forensic artist's sketch of what she might have looked like.

Anderson visits her gravestone every once in a while and prays that after 28 years someone, somewhere is still looking for her.

“I don't know what the chances are. We have to do it. If I were looking for my daughter, I would want somebody to do that for me.

[Jenn]

http://www.daytondai...309boyxweb.html

Boy X now has a name and identity

By Jim DeBrosse
Staff Writer

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

DAYTON — Almost 35 years after his bound and beaten body was found along a railroad embankment in Dayton, the youth known only as Boy X now has a name and an identity, thanks to the persistence of his sister and the intuition of his aunt.

DNA tests have confirmed that the youth is Jimmy Dean Johnson, then age 14 and a runaway from a Cincinnati home for troubled children, his sister Rosie Johnson said Tuesday, Feb. 3.

Johnson, 55, who lives in Boaz, Ala., first thought the youth might be her long-missing younger brother after she saw a Dayton Daily News story about the case last year posted on a national Web site for missing and abused children. She contacted the newspaper, who put her in touch with the Miami Valley Regional Crime Lab.

Johnson said the crime lab told her Monday, Feb. 2, that DNA testing had confirmed the youth's identity. Crime lab officials, however, would not comment Tuesday.

It wasn't the first time that someone from the youth's family had approached local officials about their suspicions. Soon after the May 20, 1974 discovery of Johnson's nude and bound body, his aunt, Susan Zuern of Dayton, read the original article in the Dayton Daily News and believed it might be Jimmy Dean, who had lived with her family briefly in Cincinnati the year before.

Zuern took a photo of the youth to the Montgomery County Coroner's office. "They said they would get back to her, but they never did," said Zuern's daughter Ruby Simpkins, who lives in Dayton.

Jimmy Dean Johnson was one of six boys and two girls, including Rosie, who were placed in foster care in Cincinnati during the 1960s and 1970s because their mother, who suffered from severe epilepsy, couldn't care properly for the children, Rosie Johnson said.

Three of the siblings — Rosie, Jimmy Dean and an older brother Wayne — lived for about a year with Zuern's family in Cincinnati.

Cousin Esther Zuern said she remembered the youth "as a sweet boy. He wasn't rowdy or mean or anything like most kids in foster care. He followed me around like a little brother."

Cousin Ruby Simpkins said Jimmy Dean was small for his age and looked much younger than his age. She said she didn't know who would have wanted to harm him.

When Susan Zuern divorced in 1973 and moved to Dayton, Jimmy Dean and his two siblings were all placed again in foster homes. Soon after, Jimmy Dean was labeled "a behavior problem" and sent to a children's facility at Longview State mental hospital in Cincinnati, Rosie Johnson said.

Jimmy Dean soon ran away from the facility but officials there did not report him missing, Rose Johnson said. "In those days, I was told, they didn't bother."

She said her younger brother was a victim of the foster care system.

"Jimmy Dean was taken from foster home to foster home since he was 2 years old," she said. "You don't belong anywhere, you don't belong to anybody. There are probably still foster kids out there today running away and they're missing and no one cares. But they're people, too. They're human, and they need a little patience and time and understanding."

[Jenn]

http://www.chron.com...es/6249267.html

FBI will join search for missing in Mexico
Officials agree to let agency take DNA samples from unclaimed bodies in Mexican morgue

By TODD BENSMAN CHRONICLE NEWS SERVICE
Feb. 5, 2009, 9:49PM

Mexican prosecutors in Tamaulipas have agreed to allow FBI technicians to collect DNA from the remains of more than 100 unidentified bodies, a task that could end uncertainty for families whose loved ones remain missing in Mexico.

Once all the samples are collected — along with DNA from relatives in the U.S. — the FBI will examine them in Washington, D.C., for matches in its DNA database.

“We’ve got to find a way to resolve this,” said John A. Johnson, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s McAllen office. “I mean, these are American citizens. If your loved one’s been missing for four years, for God’s sake, that’s a long time, a very long time.”

On Jan. 2, 2003, Laredo resident Sergio Ortiz told his wife he was off to meet a prospective client across the river in Nuevo Laredo and would be back in an hour. The 49-year-old former deputy sheriff was working as a private investigator on traffic accidents and divorce cases.

“I’m still waiting,” said his wife, Daniella. So are dozens of other families in South Texas.

Sergio Ortiz was one of the first on a list that has grown longer by the year, now filled with the names of American citizens missing and believed kidnapped in Mexico.

His wife, along with the families of some 30 missing Texans in Laredo, banded together to form a group called “Laredo’s Missing” to pressure public officials on both sides of the border to find their relatives.

The FBI reports 75 open cases involving kidnappings of Americans in Mexico from Texas to California. The McAllen FBI office, which is responsible for the area from Brownsville to Del Rio, reports 35 Americans have gone missing since 2003.

The unidentified bodies have been buried in unmarked graves in Mexico, although hair and tissue samples, fingerprints and detailed photographs of each victim were taken before burial and stored in prosecutors’ offices in Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo.
Coming up empty

So far, South Texas appears to be the only area where any such DNA testing is occurring, FBI officials say.

Johnson said he came up with the idea after running every possible lead and coming up empty. “If we can’t get them back safely, the next best thing is to bring the body home,” he said.

Tamaulipas State Attorney General Jaime Rodriguez Inurrigarro said helping the FBI is the right thing to do.

“We’re doing our best to collaborate with the U.S. authorities — first, to find the missing and, secondly, to investigate who is responsible and punish those who are,” Rodriguez said.

Officials say finding a DNA match is probably a long shot.

The stepdaughter of William Slemaker, founder of Laredo’s Missing, was kidnapped with another young Laredo woman four years ago. His family provided a blood sample to the FBI.

“I’m still hoping they find our loved ones alive,” he said.

Daniella Ortiz provided the FBI with hair samples taken from her missing husband’s brush.

[Jenn]

http://www.detnews.c...0366/1409/METRO

Friday, February 6, 2009

John Doe named at last
Man found dead behind Target was Brian Keith Rice

Christine Ferretti / The Detroit News

TAYLOR -- In the heat of last summer, police had a mystery on their hands. They found a man's body. That was about it. No identification. No witnesses. No solid clues.

The body, found behind a Target store on Pardee in August, was badly decomposed, making the face difficult to identify and fingerprints impossible to retrieve.

Weeks passed. More than 50 potential leads ran cold. Taylor cops checked missing persons databases, circulated photos, a sketch and even turned national -- enlisting America's Most Wanted to post the man's description on its Web site. They were stumped.

At the same time, less than 20 miles away, a Westland man had launched a search of his own for the quiet, unattached brother who hadn't been seen or heard from in weeks. He tacked up posters at work, the library and area bookstores. No one called.

Unknowingly, all along police and this family were looking for the same man, who -- as it turned out -- died of natural causes, authorities believe. And it would be months before the two sides crossed paths.

Why and how it took Taylor police so long to crack one of its toughest cases is a testament to the clues and luck that must line up for these mysteries to be solved. The outcome represents hope for the other 3,900 missing persons in Michigan: Sometimes the narrowest odds can result in closure.

"Usually within a week, we have a body identified even with tough circumstances," said Taylor Police Detective Don Farago. "This was definitely unique."

Police had at least a dozen families turn up to find lost relatives. Investigators followed and ruled out multiple leads.

"People showed up believing it was one of their family members. They would give a name, date of birth ... the height, weight and color of hair," Farago said. "In all the cases, the person turned up after a day or so."

After two months, they released to the media an enhanced photograph of the man taken from a Meijer surveillance camera. It caught the eye of a co-worker who finally convinced Carl Rice to contact Taylor police. He hadn't seen his brother since leaving on a 10-day European vacation Aug. 16.

The hunch gave both sides the break they'd been waiting for -- a positive ID that gave John Doe a name: Brian Keith Rice.

But how could someone go missing for months with no one noticing?

In Rice's case, family said his lifestyle made it easy.

He was single. No kids, no car, no criminal record. Four years ago, he lost his job at a fast-food restaurant and would go on late-night walks and not return home for days -- and he'd gone missing before.

"He's been known to take off," said Karol Rice of Pinckney, Brian Rice's sister-in-law. "It was very natural."

Two years ago, the 49-year-old was evicted from his Dearborn apartment and didn't tell anyone. His cell phone was cut off and 45 days passed without a word.

When he resurfaced, he moved in with his brother, Carl Rice. He rode the bus daily in search of work and when his brother, an Army reserve member, was deployed he handled the household bills.

After returning from vacation in late August, Carl Rice wasn't immediately concerned to find the daily newspapers piled up outside the door of the apartment he shared with his older brother. The fully stocked fridge, $100 in spending money still on the bed where he'd left it and blinking answering machine weren't necessarily worrisome either.

"I figured he decided to try and make it on his own," said Carl Rice, one of Brian Rice's three brothers. "He had his own key and came and went as he pleased."

By the next day, he had second thoughts.

Maybe he was in the hospital in a coma. Maybe it was a concussion or amnesia. Or he was mugged.

"I had no true clue where he was at, what was going on or what happened (to him)," Carl Rice said. "I was worried."

He filed a police report in Westland and began tacking up posters.

Around the same time, he caught "blips" of news reports about a John Doe found in a 15-acre wooded area behind a Target store in Taylor.

He never heard the description police put out, but when an enhanced video was released in early October a work acquaintance did.

The John Doe was about 50. He was about 5 feet 10 inches and 205 pounds. He had dark, collar-length hair. He was wearing tan cargo pants, brown leather work boots, a tan canvas jacket with red material at the waist and wrists and a long-sleeved burgundy colored button-down shirt. He had a black baseball cap and prescription glasses.

Investigators also recovered a receipt from a nearby Meijer store. He was captured on the store's surveillance video. Police pulled and broadcast the footage.

Armed with the new details, the persistent co-worker finally brought Carl Rice in. He contacted police Oct. 20. They showed him the tape.

"I recognized my brother right away. I knew it was him," Carl Rice said.

"I said, 'if that's John Doe, that's my brother.' "

The John Doe was wearing the clothes Rice had bought his brother and the Toledo bar hat he'd let him borrow.

"A lot of things had pointed to it being his brother," Farago said. "We needed to confirm with hard physical evidence. We were unable to do it with fingerprints and needed to obtain dental (records)."

Cops turned to the military -- Brian Rice had participated in basic training in 1980. They sent a request on Nov. 7 and waited. The dental records came Dec. 12. It was a match.

The body was signed over to the family.

"I was sad, but relieved," Carl Rice said. "It's more gut-wrenching not to know, than to know."

The medical examiner ruled Brian Rice's cause of death as undetermined but believed it was related to a heart condition.

They may never know what unfolded prior to Rice's death, but are comforted to have found him.

"We put it to bed," he said. "We know he's passed and have to go on with our lives."

[Jenn]

http://www.valleycen....aspx?id=257410

FBI collecting DNA in Mexico to match to missing Americans 

Monday, February 09, 2009 at 9:45 a.m.

DNA samples from Mexico may help authorities identify some missing Americans.

The FBI is going to collect DNA from more than a hundred unidentified bodies found in Mexico.

The agency said it hopes to match at least some of the bodies to Americans who went missing there.

An agency spokesperson said the samples could help solve at least 35 open cases of missing Americans from Brownsville to Del Rio.

[Jenn]

http://www.post-gaze...3/950645-85.stm

National site helps ID remains, find the lost
Public has access on the Web to government records of missing people, the nameless dead

Sunday, February 22, 2009

By Michael A. Fuoco, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The new Web site NamUs.gov, for National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, shows the page for missing Pittsburgher Lonnett Jackson.

For nearly a decade, the remains of a female homicide victim discovered in Wilkinsburg have been stored in the Allegheny County morgue, awaiting what she had in life but lost in death -- an identity.

The mummified remains of another unidentified woman were found in Homestead in 2000; the cause of her death was undetermined. The body of a third woman, the victim of a drug overdose, was discovered in the Allegheny River near the Fox Chapel Yacht Club in 2003.

Those three mysteries are among the 40,000 cases of unidentified human remains that are stored in the offices of the nation's medical examiners and coroners. Just as sobering: on any given day there are as many as 100,000 active missing person cases in the United States.

To deal with what it has termed a national "mass disaster over time," the National Institute of Justice has developed two new databases to more efficiently match information about unidentified remains to missing persons.

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, known by the acronym "NamUs" -- available on the Internet at www.namus.gov -- is the first national repository for records about missing persons and unidentified dead people, including both the Unidentified Decedents Database and the Missing Persons Database.

Also unique to the system is the access it grants to the general public, which NIJ views as a valuable asset in helping to solve cases. By entering characteristics such as sex, race, distinct body features and dental information, anyone can search the Unidentified Decedents Database, where information is entered by medical examiners and coroners.

And the Missing Persons Database contains information that, once verified, can be entered by anyone. The site also provides links to state clearinghouses, medical examiners and coroners, victim assistance groups and pertinent legislation.

The unidentified remains database has been online since 2007; the missing persons site has been up since January. NIJ is now working on software that would automatically search each database for matches.

Nationally, there are now 1,354 missing person cases in the system. Pennsylvania has 25 open missing person cases in the system -- 12 men and 13 women.

Those numbers will grow exponentially as more cases are added by law enforcement agencies, clearinghouses and the public, said Richard Mac-Knight, NamUs regional system administrator responsible for Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C.

The oldest missing person case listed for Pennsylvania is that of Curtis Eutsey, of Mount Pleasant, who was 18 when he was last known to be alive on Jan. 1, 1992. Today, he would be 35. According to his case listing, "Curtis left his girlfriend's residence with two unknown individuals."

The only other Western Pennsylvania case currently listed is that of Lonnett Jackson, 46, who was last seen on April 11, 2006, "at approximately 11 a.m. at her residence in the vicinity of the 5100 block of Chaplain Way in Hazelwood." Also in the listing: Ms. Jackson has a medical condition and needs medication.

Ed Strimlan, chief forensic investigator for the Allegheny County medical examiner's office, said the county's three cases of unidentified remains have been included for years in other national databases. About six months ago, the office also entered those cases into NamUs.

The results surprised him.

"We got about 10 to 15 calls from multiple states about different possibilities. None of them panned out, but at least we were able to [exclude them]."

Some queries came from law enforcement agencies. Others came from citizens who volunteer their time to groups like the Doe Network, an Internet-based volunteer clearinghouse of missing persons and unidentified bodies. Because the public, including families of the missing and other advocates, has access to NamUs, he said, there is great potential for increased success in identification.

Joni Lapeyrouse, of Pensacola, Fla., couldn't agree more.

"Allowing average people to get on there is going to take a load off police officers who don't have time to go and search for every cold case," she said. "Lord knows I've done enough searching on the Internet."

For years she's been trying to find out what happened to her aunt, former Erie resident Nellie Florence Cornman Flickinger.

In March 1979, at age 30, Ms. Flickinger left for California with a man to get her troubled life together, promising she'd return for her five children, ages 6 to 12. She was never heard from again.

In July 2007, Ms. Lapeyrouse contacted the Doe Network, which the next day reported a possible match with unidentified female skeletal remains discovered in 1982 in a drainage ditch northwest of Sacramento. In addition to hair color, height and age, the biggest match between her aunt and the remains was a metal plate screwed into bones of the right leg.

The remains are now at the University of North Texas Center For Human Identification in Fort Worth, which is seeking to extract DNA from a femur and tooth in hopes of matching it to DNA provided by Ms. Flickinger's relatives.

On Thursday, after learning about NamUs and surfing the sites, Ms. Lapeyrouse asked Erie police to help her enter Ms. Flickinger's case into the missing person database.

In the meantime, she searched NamUs's unidentified remains database using her aunt's physical characteristics and found a potential match in Arizona. She contacted the law enforcement agency involved in the case but learned that woman's DNA didn't match anything in another national database, where that of her aunt's relatives also is stored.

Still, NamUs is a godsend because it provides the public with the opportunity to help search for answers to such painful mysteries and does so in an efficient way.

That is the goal, NamUs's Mr. MacKnight said.

"It's very important for the loved ones of missing persons. They can't start the grieving process until they know what happened," he said. "Even if it's years later and the body of their loved one is located, it lets them begin the grieving process."

First published on February 22, 2009 at 12:00 am

[Jenn]

http://www.google.co...yDj8dwD9BOROSO0

Police determine teen missing since 1954 was slain

By AMANDA LEE MYERS (AP) – 17 minutes ago

PHOENIX — A murdered young woman buried as Jane Doe in Colorado 55 years ago. An Arizona family puzzled and saddened as Dorothy Gay Howard's disappearance stretched into decades.

It took a historian, a detective and a determined family member to make the connection after more than a half century that these two people were one and the same.

Howard's younger sister, Marlene Howard Ashman, the last surviving member of the immediate family, was relieved last month when authorities announced the identification.

"It was just complete and utter shock," said Ashman, who lives in Mena, Ark., but spoke to The Associated Press from Newport, N.C., where she was visiting her daughter.

"All these 55 years, I guess I learned as a child to put it in an abstract form so I could deal with it; it's easier to accept," Ashman said.

But the younger sister is grappling with the fact that Howard was murdered and is aching to know who killed her.

"Now that I know, it isn't so much that she died, but the horrible death," she said.

Boulder County Sheriff's Detective Steve Ainsworth, the lead investigator in the case, said Howard died of blunt-force trauma. She couldn't be identified because her body was found a week after she was killed, and animals had gotten to her face and fingers.

At the time, the mystery made headlines across Colorado, and Boulder residents raised enough money to buy her a gravestone, which read "Jane Doe — April 1954 — Age About 20 Years."

Boulder County sheriff's officials have credited historian Silvia Pettem with encouraging them to renew efforts to identify Jane Doe. Pettem became interested in the woman and her story after visiting the cemetery in the 1990s and writing the book "Someone's Daughter, In Search of Justice for Jane Doe."

Meanwhile, Howard's grandniece Michelle Marie Fowler decided to contact Ainsworth after reading an article about Jane Doe and suspecting for years that Howard had been killed.

Ainsworth asked Ashman to provide a DNA sample, and the family learned Oct. 23 that Ashman and Jane Doe were related.

Ainsworth said it was gratifying to tell Howard's family what had happened to her, but he now has a new focus.

"We know who she is, but there's still another mystery and that may be the biggest mystery of all, and that's who did it," Ainsworth said.

He said his gut tells him it was serial killer Harvey Glatman, who was executed in 1959 in California. Glatman, who confessed to killing three women, had served time in a Colorado state prison for violent assaults on women, including one about a quarter of a mile from where Howard's body was found.

Because of marks on her body, evidence at the scene and a passing reference Glatman made to a California police detective, Ainsworth's theory is that Glatman hit Howard with his car as she tried to get away. Now, Ainsworth just has to prove it.

Ashman said all she wants is justice for her sister.

She said Howard was extremely strong-willed and lived quite a life in her 18 years, including marrying twice. "Once she decided on a course, it would take heaven and earth to stop her," Ashman said.

Petite and attractive with blond hair, Howard was the oldest of three sisters born in the Texas Panhandle. The girls' parents moved the family to Phoenix in 1942 for "greener pastures."

Howard married her first husband at age 15 with her parents' permission, but she got divorced and remarried unbeknownst to her family, Ashman said. The family found out about the second marriage years after Howard disappeared.

Howard was working as a live-in nanny in Phoenix the last her family heard from her; they reported her missing when she didn't show up to take one of her sisters to the movies.

Because Howard was so willful and had run away from home once before, Ashman said the family thought she just didn't want to see them again. "We always waited to hear from her," she said.

Ashman still has a letter that her sister wrote to her parents soon before she disappeared.

"She just said, 'Here's some money to help out,'" Ashman said. "She signed it, 'Love always, Dot.'"

[Denise Harrison]

read more here http://www.lasvegass...espect-victims/

Cold cases go online, with respect for victims

Editor's Note: This is an older article from early 2008, but the information remains relevant and crucial to the cause of missing persons.

By Abigail Goldman
Sunday, Feb. 10, 2008 | 2 a.m.

An unsolved case, 27 years cold, sits on Clark County death investigator Rick Jones’ desk. He flips through it every day, and sometimes on the weekend, because he can’t shake two simple facts: Jane “Arroyo Grande” Doe makes him think of his own daughter, just as someone out there must still be thinking of Jane “Arroyo Grande” Doe.

The popular estimate is that there are 40,000 unidentified human remains in the United States. Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy, like many experts, will tell you this number is conservative.

Buried or laid out in a coroner’s industrial cooler like unclaimed luggage, Clark County’s 162 unidentified dead are lost in a slow slipping from the earth, followed by the haunting of families that have no idea — the gnawing of not knowing.

[Jenn]

http://www.news10.ne...d=71837&catid=2

12-Year-Old Sacramento Murder Mystery Reopened

C. Johnson  December 15, 2009

SACRAMENTO COUNTY, CA - After 12 years, Sacramento County sheriff's detectives now know the identity of a man whose body was found in a field along Garden Highway in 1997. They hope that information will lead them to learning who is responsible for G. Steven Yager's death.

Yager's remains were located in the 4300 block of Garden Hgihway on June 14, 1997, said Sgt. Tim Curran, spokesman for the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department. At the time, the condition of Yager's body precluded identification and the case remain unsolved, Curran said.

But then, Curran said a cold case detective recently compared a missing person report filed on Yager including a DNA sample from him and that of DNA evidence collected from the body. A DNA analysis revealed the unidentified man was Yager, Curran said.

Yager, 47, lived in the area of Fulton Avenue and Marconi Avenue at the time of his death, according to investigators. He was known to frequent nearby pool halls and cardrooms.

When detectives first investigated the 1997 case, Curran said there was a report of a car leaving the area where Yager was discovered. The car was described as possibly a 1969-1973 Chrysler New Yorker or similar type vehicle, with two-tone paint. The car's was light blue and the top was darker blue (see photo accompanying this story).

Anyone with information about this case is urged to call detectives at (916) 874-5057 or Crime Alert at (916) 443-HELP. Or, send a text message tip by texting to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter SACTIP followed by the tip information. Tipsters can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a reward of up to $1,000.

[Kelly]

http://gothamist.com..._named.phpently Named A John Doe


Missing Man's Body Accidently Named A John Doe

Things aren't looking so good for the Medical Examiner's office. Back in 2002 a 27-year-old named Richard Massey disappeared in New York. According to the NY Post, the computer programmer had just moved here from England, reportedly started acting "bizarrely" and was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital. Allegedly, in prior weeks, he was scared someone was going to hurt him. He checked himself out of the hospital on December 19th, and was never seen again.

Three months later his body was found floating in the East River, but the ME's office didn't inform his family, who had put out a search for him. Instead, they buried his body at a potter's field on Hart Island, and didn't inform Massey's family until October 2008. For some reason, upon discovering his body he was marked a John Doe — despite there being a missing persons report filed.

The family has now filed a lawsuit, seeking unspecified damages and accusing the city, police and medical examiners of negligence. Their lawyer states, "There was a breakdown in communication between the ME and the NYPD." Indeed.

[Jenn]

http://news.bostonhe...position=recent

Suit: Man buried in NYC as John Doe despite search

By Associated Press
Thursday, January 7, 2010 - Added 22h ago

NEW YORK - Richard Massey’s devoted family tried desperately to find him after he disappeared shortly before Christmas 2002.

The British computer programmer’s relatives say they quickly reported him missing and gave police such identifying information as his dental records. They even held a news conference in hopes of eliciting tips.

But after Massey’s body was found in a river in March 2003, authorities buried him as an unknown man in a city cemetery — where he remained unidentified for more than five years, his mother says in a lawsuit. The truth didn’t emerge until a family lawyer traced his body to a city morgue, another family attorney said.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, accuses the city, police and medical examiners of negligence and depriving Margaret Massey of the right to bury her son. It seeks unspecified damages.

Richard Massey’s sister, Katie, told a newspaper that police had suggested her brother might simply have gone on vacation.

"My mother’s worst nightmare was that he would end up unidentified and buried on his own," she told the Yorkshire Post in 2008. "We were told that would not happen, but it did."

Police referred calls to the city Law Department, where spokeswoman Connie Pankratz said Wednesday that Massey’s "death was tragic and we will carefully review the matter." The medical examiners’ office declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Massey was 27 and was working for an investment firm in New York when he vanished after being released from a hospital on Dec. 19, 2002. He apparently had suffered some emotional problems, said James Modzelewski, a lawyer for Margaret Massey.

The Doncaster, England-based family talked to the missing man’s friends and tried to track him through his credit cards, Modzelewski said. His relatives made a public plea for information at a July 2003 press conference — unaware his body had already been pulled from the Hudson River, autopsied and buried, according to the family.

The information Massey’s family gave police apparently wasn’t matched to his body until 2008, when another attorney made inquiries as part of the process of seeking a legal declaration of his death, Modzelewski said. DNA tests confirmed Massey’s identity, he said.

Massey was exhumed, and his remains were buried in Doncaster, a town in South Yorkshire, in 2008.

It’s unclear how he died, medical examiner’s spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said Wednesday.

The lawsuit comes less than a year after another missing person, 16-year-old Tiana Rice, was found to have been dead and in a city morgue for a month while her family looked for her. She had died of an asthma attack she suffered while being raped.

Tiana initially was mistakenly identified from another person’s driver’s license, which was found near her body in an abandoned home. An anthropologist later realized her body didn’t match the age of the person on the driver’s license.

[Jenn]

http://www2.wjbf.com...one_home/55500/

Family Needs Community Help To Bring Missing Loved One Home

By Barclay Bishop  | WJBF News Channel 6 Anchor/Reporter
Published: February 1, 2010 Updated: February 2, 2010


North Augusta, SC—

Shelley Craft, Paula Davis’ cousin: “Strangled, and her body was just thrown out along Interstate 75.”

Paula Beverly Davis was 22 when she went missing from her hometown, in Missouri, in 1989. Her cousin, Shelley Craft says the family always searched, but had no luck…until October of last year, when Paula’s sister watched a show called ‘The Forgotten’.

Craft: “At the end of this show, they always name this website, and it’s NAMUS.gov is the website. And so, she went to that website and just started searching, and basically went back to the date, of when she came up missing.”

A picture of Paula’s body is what they found…her name? Jane Doe. She was found in Ohio, 14 hours from where she went missing. Investigators put Paula’s body in a bag, in a wooden box, and buried her in an Ohio cemetery, surrounded by other Jane and John Doe’s.

Craft: “She was really never given a proper funeral, or burial arrangements. And, even where she’s located, they will not allow for a marker to even be put there with her name on it.”

Paula’s mother was buried and in Missouri, and the rest of the family who now live in Aiken, want Paula by her side, but it will cost thousands to get her there, something they say they don’t have. So, they’re reaching out for help through a fundraiser. They’ll have music, food and an auction.

Craft: “I hope that people here in our area, will connect with our situation, and just see this as a way to help, maybe somebody else.”

While Paula has been found, her family says closure won’t happen until Paula rests in peace.

Craft: “Just to finally give her a name and bring her back. Where now you know our grandmother, and her mother are both, you know buried.  She can, you know be back home with them and have her name back.“

The fundraiser will be Saturday, February 27th at the Aiken VFW Post 5877. Doors open at 5pm. There’s also a memorial fund in Paula’s name. You can send a monetary donation to:

Paula E. Davis Beverly, Memorial Fund, U S Bank
1599 NE Douglas Street
Lees Summit, MO 64086

[Jenn]

http://www.krdo.com/....asp?S=11963564

CSPD Links Bones with 1996 Missing Person Case

Posted: Feb 10, 2010 11:32 AM Updated: Feb 10, 2010 12:03 PM



COLORADO SPRINGS - CSPD investigators have discovered that the human remains found last year belong to a man from a 1996 missing person case.

DNA results matched Thomas "Richard" Saulsbury of Colorado Springs.  Saulsbury was 49 years old at the time of his disappearance/death. At this time, the cause and manner of death has not been determined by the El Paso County Coroners Office.

On March 18, 2009 CSPD was sent to 2120 Cheyenne Canyon Road regarding the discovery of some bones.  Personnel from the City of Colorado Springs Stormwater Enterprise were conducting a routine cleaning of a storm sewer catch basin at that location when they spotted to human remains.

Detectives from the Violent Crimes/Homicide Unit as well as investigators from the El Paso County Coroners Office then began the recovery of the skeletal remains.

Members of the El Paso County Coroners Office coordinated the preparation of a forensic "bust" with facial features.  It was planned that this bust would be made public, and could perhaps lead to the identification of the individual.  Once completed, detectives from the Violent Crimes/Homicide Unit viewed the bust.  Detective Derek Graham, a tenured Homicide Detective since July of 1995, believed he recognized the bust from a missing persons case that was initiated in July of 1996.  Further delving occurred, and in January of this year, the remains were positively identified through DNA as Thomas "Richard" Saulsbury of Colorado Springs.  Mr. Saulsbury was 49 years old at the time of his disappearance/death.

The investigation is continuing, and anyone with information regarding this inquiry is urged to contact the Colorado Springs Police Department at 719.444.7000.

[Jenn]

http://www2.tbo.com/...est/news-metro/

Pinellas homicide victims exhumed decades later to find who they were

By MARK  DOUGLAS  | News Channel 8
Published: February 10, 2010

ST. PETERSBURG - A team of police investigators, forensic specialists and scientists from the University of South Florida has begun the grim task of exhuming the remains of three homicide victims buried in pauper's graves decades ago.

A backhoe began the process this morning by scooping out the first layer of dirt at Memorial Park Cemetery, on 54th Avenue North near 49th Street north of St. Petersburg.

Now, USF anthropology students are loading 5-gallon buckets with dirt they are hand-digging from graves and sifting for human remains, much as they would at research site.

Investigators hope DNA samples from the remains will help identify all three individuals – known only as John or Jane Doe – and in one case, lead to an arrest.

"We have an obligation to all victims to identify them and notify their families," said St. Petersburg cold-case investigator Brenda Stevenson.

Once investigators recover the remains, a team from the Pinellas Medical Examiner's Office will extract DNA samples for submission to a national crime database for possible matches.

Partial profiles of all three victims already exist in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System database, which catalogs unidentified remains and missing persons, but DNA could provide a crucial link.

The oldest of the three cases dates to 1969 and involves a 25-year-old woman. The killing came to be known as "The Trunk Murder."

Retired St. Petersburg police Detective Bill Carlyle remembers it well because police discovered the woman's body in a steamer trunk behind the since-demolished Oyster Bar restaurant along 34th Street South.

She had been strangled. It was Halloween.

"Someone said it might be a prank," Carlyle recalled. "But it was real."

Carlyle, 83, said he was here when they put the woman in her grave, and he wanted to be here when they removed her, 41 years later.

He's conferring with Stevenson on details that might not be in police records from so long ago.

He believes there's a good chance DNA might solve the case.

Carlyle said if investigators can figure out who the woman was, the knowledge might lead them to her killer or killers. He said he believes she was murdered to keep her quiet about something she knew.

Another of the three cases dates to 1973, when a teenager from the Carolinas, perhaps 14 to 17 years old and reportedly named Maria, was shoved into the path of a moving car. She had been in town only a few weeks.

The third unmarked grave holds the remains of a man in his 30s. He was one of two men shot to death in a motel, but police were never able to identify him.

USF anthropologist Erin Kimmerle spent Friday with her graduate students mapping the unmarked graves with ground-penetrating radar so they would know where to start digging today.

The condition of the remains adds to the difficulty because only one body was buried inside a protective vault and all three were placed in fiberboard coffins, according to cemetery managers.

"We are expecting skeletal remains," Kimmerle said.

News crews covering the exhumation are kept at a distance and from time to time, when new evidence is found, someone holds up a blue tarp to block the view.

The work is a precision process, Kimmerle said, because grave sites in this section of Memorial Park Cemetery are only 6 inches apart

Said Kimmerle, "We don't want to disturb the burials next to where we're interested in."

[Jenn]

http://www.tampabay....umation/1072166

Retired police detective haunted by unsolved murder watches exhumation

By Andy Boyle, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Thursday, February 11, 2010


A woman’s body was found in this steamer trunk on Halloween of 1969 near the parking lot of a restaurant.


ST. PETERSBURG — It was Halloween 1969. Payday for St. Petersburg police Sgt. Bill Carlisle. His police chief joked they needed some excitement, maybe a bank robbery.

Instead they were called to the scene of a gruesome murder that has haunted Carlisle to this day and drew him to a chilly St. Petersburg cemetery Wednesday morning.

Carlisle watched as a new set of investigators worked to exhume the body of a woman in her 30s found dead that Halloween day in 1969 in a steamer trunk near the parking lot of the Oyster Bar Restaurant. The rope used to strangle her was still around her neck.

Carlisle and his detectives interviewed scores of people, checked with luggage manufacturers and talked to the FBI. Seven missing women matched the body's description, but the case was never closed and the woman never identified.

It is one of three unsolved homicides with unidentified victims that cold case investigators are now determined to crack.

So, as Carlisle watched, investigators and a team from the University of South Florida spent Wednesday morning exhuming the bodies from Memorial Park Cemetery. They hope to match the DNA from the bodies with the families of missing people nationwide.

Carlisle, 83 and long retired, saw the body put in the ground. He wanted to see it come out.

"It still haunts me," he said. "I dream about it. Believe me."

• • •

In June 1973, a teenage girl from the Carolinas reportedly named Marie was involved in an altercation with a man who pushed her into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Marie died on impact. The man was charged with manslaughter, the charges were dropped and the criminal case was closed.

Marie's real name was never discovered.

In April 1980, two men were shot to death in Room 15 at the Siesta Motel. Neither man had identification, but one was later identified. The second, a white man in his 30s, was never identified.

Kyle Coy "Cowboy" Watson was charged with murder. He was shot to death a few months later outside Knoxville, Tenn. Case closed.

The teenage girl, the man in the motel and the woman in the trunk were buried in plots next to a sprawling tree. No headstones marked their graves.

Now they were being dug up from their potter's field. Maybe they would soon be reburied with names.

• • •

Brenda Stevenson, a civilian investigator who works with homicide detectives, said examining the bodies brings some closure to families, if not justice.

In 2008, Stevenson discovered the identity of a body found in 1989 using DNA. She said they have an obligation to the victim's families to let them know what happened to their missing loved ones.

"How do you go 20, 30, 40 years without knowing what happened to your daughter or son?" Stevenson said.

John Bunnell, the cemetery's general manager, agreed to exhume the bodies at the cemetery's expense, and Erin Kimmerle, a USF forensic anthropologist, helped police and the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner's Office unearth the bodies Wednesday. Some of Kimmerle's students assisted.

• • •

As police, professors and students dug and sifted through dirt, Carlisle stood nearby watching.

After his 20 years with the St. Petersburg Police Department, he retired and taught at the police academy for 16 years. Some of his former students were at the exhumation and thanked him for showing up.

He used the steamer trunk case as a teaching tool at the academy. It showed that you can have the what, where, when, why and how, and it still doesn't matter much without the who.

After glancing at all of the new tools unavailable 40 years ago, he had one thought: "I just hope it works."

[Jenn]

http://www.northjers...e-old_case.html

Cresskill woman's identified remains help close a decade-old case

Friday, February 5, 2010 Last updated: Saturday February 6, 2010, 3:16 PM
BY KAREN SUDOL The Record



Body parts found in 2000 have been identified as the remains of a Cresskill woman who vanished after leaving home 10-years-ago today, helping to bring closure to a family that has wondered what became of her.

The identification of Yeon Sook Choi took so long because the technology was not available until recently to conduct the sophisticated DNA testing needed. Choi’s torso and leg was found in a Kill Van Kull dock in Bayonne.

“It’s certainly been difficult for the past 10 years not knowing where she was and whether she was alive or deceased,” said her 28-year-old son, Woo Jin Choi. “It does provide closure, but it’s bittersweet. It’s still a loss of a loved one.”

Cresskill Detective Sgt. Norman Saunders, who has handled the case since 2002, said he felt relieved for the family.

“It’s still not going to take away their pain but at least they know where she is,” he said.

The Northern Regional Medical Examiner’s Office determined in mid-December that remains discovered in the water at Brady’s Dock in Bayonne were Choi’s. This came after the FBI had conducted tests that showed the DNA from the remains were consistent with the DNA of Choi’s children, Saunders said.

Her cause of death will likely never be determined, Saunders said.

Woo Jin Choi said, “Not knowing exactly what happened will always be there, but we can finally move on knowing that she is safe and at peace in heaven.”

The family will hold a memorial service for Choi Saturday at the Church of the Madonna in Fort Lee — on the 10-year anniversary of her disappearance.

Choi left her Union Avenue apartment shortly after sunrise on Feb. 6, 2000, leaving behind her wallet with all of her identification and even her coat.

She had been depressed in the weeks leading up to her disappearance, saying her life had little meaning since her children were grown. The family had also been plagued by financial problems, which contributed to the depression, police had said.

The day before she disappeared, Choi, 47, had become incoherent and seemed to withdraw from reality, her daughter Vivian told The Record at the time. The daughter attempted to take her mother to the hospital but she wouldn’t go.

The following morning the married mother of three, whose nickname was Claire, was gone when Vivian Choi got out of bed shortly after 6 a.m.

The family initially thought she went for her daily walk but became concerned by that night when she hadn’t returned and contacted Cresskill police.

Searches for the 5-foot, 100-pound woman with dark hair and freckles were conducted including of area hospitals, the cliffs of the Palisades, and buses and taxi services. A Web site had been established to help locate her. Fliers with her picture were circulated. Every lead was pursued, Saunders said.

“I know a couple of times they got leads where someone claimed they saw her in the city,” Saunders said. “They definitely followed up and it just went cold.”

The remains were discovered floating in the water in August 2000. The clothing — blue sweatpants, nude-colored pantyhose, a black sweatshirt and a white sneaker — was snagged on a spike of one of the dock’s pilings.

In March, 2002, Cresskill police received notification from the state police that the remains might be linked to their missing persons case, Saunders said.

Saunders then asked Choi’s children to examine pictures of the clothing to determine if they could have been their mother’s. He said the children were 75 to 80 percent positive the clothing belonged to their mother.

Afterward, he pursued DNA testing.

He contacted several agencies to conduct the testing. The state police was not equipped at the time to perform a DNA test on the remains, Saunders learned.

Every few months, he said he would make calls inquiring about DNA testing. In the meantime, he also investigated tips from people who said they had seen Choi, but the reports turned out to be false.

In the fall of 2006, he contacted the FBI crime laboratory in Quantico, Va., which agreed to do the test but said it would take some time because the lab was backlogged with cases. The FBI office in Newark then coordinated, he said.

Saunders obtained DNA samples from the children and sent them to the FBI in February 2007. The skeletal remains were sent for analysis in June 2008, he said.

In November 2009, the FBI notified Saunders that the results showed the DNA from the remains was consistent with the children’s DNA.

The Northern Regional Medical Examiner’s Office identified the remains of Choi on Dec. 16, said Rachel Goemaat, spokeswoman for that office.

Woo Jin Choi said the family wished to express their thanks to the Cresskill police department.

“We understand the Cresskill police department was trying their best to help us,” he said. “However the waiting process was extremely difficult for our family.”

[Jenn]

http://www.todaysthv...=100455&catid=2

Cold case: Remains unidentified in the state crime lab

by Ashley Blackstone    March 4, 2010

In this week's Arkansas Cold Case, Today's THV is exploring putting a name to the unidentified. There are dozens of remains sitting at the State Crime Lab. Some were found more than 30 years ago. But who are they?


They are the forgotten. They're skeletons, the remnants of possible crimes or tragic accidents.

"I think if we have 10 that is too many," says crime lab Executive Director Kermit Channell.

They are snapshots of clues; clothing, tattoos, teeth and reconstructed faces.

Channell says, "The hard thing is going backwards in time to identify individuals."

Channell says there are no limits to solving a mystery. "You have to know that you have done everything in your power to make sure they are identified."

Today's THV first learned about the 107 unidentified remains after a viewer told us about NamUs.gov. Its data is entered by the crime lab. It lists unidentified persons across the country including in Arkansas. You can also find case history like when and where they the remains were found, a clothing description and dental information.

Last October, we brought you Pamela Golden's story. She disappeared from Little Rock in 1993. Her body was never found. But Golden's sister, Rita Hall, recently gave her DNA to see if it matches any of the remains at the crime lab.

Hall says, "I know exactly what she had on that day. If I saw it today, I would know."

While she waits, Channell is calling on the state's coroners and law enforcement agencies to do what they can to collect DNA from those whose loved ones are missing.

"If you have a family member that is missing and your DNA is not in that codus missing person database then there is not going to be that connection to solve that case or identify that individual."

In the last two years, the state crime lab received funding to launch this program and make sure every detail about these cases gets in the NamUs database. So far, they've solved two.

"As long as laboratories are diligent in putting the samples in and putting the samples into NamUs, I think this program itself is going to have a dramatic impact across the country," Channell says.

And for Hall and other family members of missing people, unidentified remains represent possible evidence in homicide cases.

Channell's ultimate goal is to give them back their names and give their families peace.

Our series airs every Wednesday. Its part of our continuing effort to shed light on the state's countless unsolved murders and missing persons cases.

If you have a story you would like us to look into, e-mail us at news@todaysthv.com. You can also read more about the cases we have covered by checking out our Arkansas Cold Case webpage.

[Jenn]

http://www.wfie.com/....asp?S=12064061

Cold Case: Body identified after 11 years

Posted: Mar 01, 2010 3:10 PM EST Updated: Mar 01, 2010 5:39 PM EST
Posted by Rachel Folz

DAVIESS CO., KY (WFIE) - Medical investigators identify one of three men left underwater in a van for 10 years in Daviess County near Utica.

The body of James Sandy Woodard was identified on Monday.

The coroner said Woodard died from head trauma and had a gunshot wound to the arm.

The coroner said the I.D. was made through DNA.

"It's a long process but DNA at this point with the forensics is the ID we can get," Daviess County Coroner Bob Howe said. "Dental records of course are always good but we were not able to locate them."

Back in October of 2008, investigators found the skeletal remains of three people inside a van in a lake near Utica, KY.

They say the van had been submerged in the lake for 10 years.

Woodard, who was 25 when he went missing, was last seen in a van with Bryan Raley and Bill Gross in November 1998.

All three disappeared in 1998.

Shortly after their disappearance, police busted one of the largest meth labs in Daviess County history and arrested 31-year-old Brian Terry.

Police dug up a portion of Terry's property in December of 1998 after cadaver dogs picked up the scent of human remains, but found nothing.

Terry was sentenced in 2000 to 12.5 years in prison on drug related charges.

The coroner said he is awaiting more DNA testing before positively identifying the other two people recovered in the van.

All three suffered fatal gunshot wounds.

Read more about this story in the www.14wfie.com archives.

See more unsolved crimes in WFIE's unsolved crimes database.

[Jenn]

http://www.daytondai...ses-571875.html

Internet databases help police solve missing persons cases
Public’s searches of databases help authorities identify victims.

By Doug Page, Staff Writer  10:22 PM Saturday, February 27, 2010

ENGLEWOOD — Over the past 12 months, the Miami Valley Regional Crime Lab has cleared four missing persons cases — two in Montgomery County and one each in Warren and Preble counties — through the public’s searches of Internet databases.

“Families of the missing never give up,” said Ken Betz, crime lab director. “The Internet has really assisted us.”

The launching in January 2009 of NamUs.gov shows what a potent crime fighter electronic connectivity can be. The database includes information on more than 6,000 unidentified remains and more than 2,000 missing persons.

Before NamUs.gov, “everybody had their own local database,” said Kevin Lothridge, CEO of the National Forensic Science Technology Center in Largo, Fla. The center manages the NamUs — the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System — Web site for the Department of Justice.

“Now there is one place where law enforcement and the public can look at the data,” Lothridge said. “It’s like having a million eyes looking at your case.”

Naming a victim

For 22 years, Englewood police had been trying to identify a woman whose body had been dumped along Interstate 70 in August 1987.

A public service announcement for NamUs at the end of the television drama “The Forgotten” caught the eye of a Kansas City, Mo., family. A family member went online and found a description of her sister’s distinctive tattoos linked to Englewood’s Jane Doe. She called Englewood police.

Sgt. Mike Lang then called the crime lab to begin the process of DNA identification. Early this month, the crime lab officially confirmed the woman’s name as Paula Beverly Davis.

Down to one

The Miami Valley Regional Crime Lab is down to one John Doe: the skeletal remains discovered April 10, 2006, in the 300 block of West Paul Laurence Dunbar Street in Dayton. Case 06-1200 was entered into NamUs last week. The remains are those of black man between 40 and 60 years old. He may have lived a hard life. There are signs of a old broken wrist and ribs. He was plagued by arthritis and was missing seven teeth.

The case log continues with a detailed description of the clothes found at the scene.

Those are the types of details that solve cases, said Lothridge. “The leads come from the data.”

Lang said Englewood police never stopped searching for the identity of the woman dumped next to the interstate.

“Every year, we’d get tips, but they all came up dry,” he said. He recalled it was not unusual to get teletype requests from other departments around the nation, sometimes on a weekly basis.

But police could never put the right eyes on what they knew about the woman. With NamUs, “We now have databases that talk to each other,” said Betz.

NamUs is two databases — one for unidentified remains, the other for missing persons.

When a new Jane Doe is entered into the unidentified remains database, the details are checked against the missing persons database. For instance, an unidentified female body found in New York City might have a pink pig tattoo on her ankle. That detail would be compared to the missing persons database to see if any pink pigs turn up. If so, authorities can look closer.

In June, a member of the public searching NamUs noticed a number of similarities between a woman missing since 2002 and a Jane Doe found two years later outside of Albuquerque, N.M. Authorities had attempted to link the two cases through DNA in 2005, but the tests were not conclusive. After the citizen contacted NamUs about the similarities, a forensic odontologist helped police identify the remains as that of Sonia Lente.

No lack of cases

As of Friday, Feb. 26, NamUs had 6,242 unidentified men and women listed on its database. That number goes up daily.

Estimates are that 4,400 unidentified remains are found every year. Of those, around 1,000 remain unknowns a year later.

Best guess is at least 44,000 cases nationwide await identification. With each identification, public awareness grows, said Lothridge, and that can only help reduce the backlog.

“The public is genuinely helping,” he said. “And as families discover the fate of loved ones, they become believers in what we do and promote the idea.”

The family of Paula Beverly Davis still doesn’t know who killed her. But they have an opportunity that didn’t exist just a month ago. The family hopes to move her remains from a potters field grave in Westmont Cemetery back to Kansas City, where she’ll be reburied next to her mother.

[Jenn]

http://www.switched....-lacks-a-crowd/

NamUs' Site Crowdsources Missing Persons, But Lacks a Crowd

by Caleb Johnson — Mar 8th 2010 at 5:20PM

When a person goes missing, closure is one comfort that families seek. Unfortunately, it's not easy to solve a missing person case, but a new online database could change the process.

According to an Associated Press report, a government site called NamUs (Name Us) could help identify the 40,000 sets of unidentified remains in the U.S. -- if only law-enforcement agencies will get on board. Despite the fact that the site has helped to solve 16 missing person cases since last year, only about 1,100 of the country's nearly 17,000 law-enforcement agencies use the database.

In order for NamUs to do its job, law-enforcement officials register for the service and then upload all the information they have on unidentified remains. Then, anybody can go to the site and enter information they have on a missing person. It could be a photograph, dental records, or a DNA sample. If any of the information matches, the proper law-enforcement agency will be notified so the investigation can continue.

As of now, about 6,200 sets of remains and nearly 2,800 missing people have been entered onto the site. But Janice Smolinski, whose son Billy went missing five years ago, is pushing a bill in Congress that would provide more funding for the site and give it more publicity. With her efforts and cooperative crowdsourcing, maybe those numbers will increase this year, and a few more families will find some small comfort.

[Kelly]

http://www.aolnews.c...ictims/19402295


Forensic Artist Gives Faces to Unidentified Victims

David Lohr Contributor
AOL News

(March 17) -- A forensic artist from Michigan has given faces to two unidentified men who are believed to be the victims of a serial killer.

Barbara Martin Bailey, a certified forensic artist who has been doing reconstructions for the past 40 years, has completed sketches of two unidentified males who were found in Newton County, Indiana, over 20 years ago.

Bailey is a 30-year veteran of the Oakland County Sheriff's Office in Michigan and a six-year volunteer with Project EDAN (Everyone Deserves a Name), an organization made up of forensic artists who donate their time to making facial reconstructions for law enforcement agencies who either cannot afford or do not have access to a forensic artist.
Forensic artist gives faces to unidentified victims of a serial killer

"Each case is different, so you try to get as much info as you can," Bailey told AOL News. "I will look at the police incident report, crime scene photos, the medical examiner's report, anthropological reports, etc. I'll take anything and everything I can get my hands on and then I weigh all this information together to get an idea of who the individual was."

The unidentified victims were among four bodies that were found buried in shallow graves at an abandoned farm in Newton County in October 1983. Each of the victims was discovered in varying states of decomposition, indicating they had not been buried at the same time. During autopsy, it was revealed that each had been stabbed multiple times. One of them had been decapitated.

Using dental records, authorities were able to identify two of the victims as 22-year-old Michael Bauer and 19-year-old John Bartlett.

Convicted murderer and confessed serial killer Larry Eyler allegedly admitted to killing one of the John Does in July 1983.

In 1986, Eyler was found guilty and sentenced to death for murdering and dismembering a 15-year-old homeless boy. During sentencing, Judge Joseph Urso called Eyler an "evil person" and said he "deserved to die." Not long after receiving the sentence, Eyler became ill and was diagnosed with AIDS. Before dying in 1994, he confessed to committing nearly two dozen murders in Indiana and Illinois.

Forensic pathologists believe that one of the John Does, whom they refer to as "Adam," was a black male, 16 or 17 years old, approximately 6 feet tall and 180 pounds.

"Larry, in his confession, said 'Adam' was picked up in mid-July 1983 near Terre Haute," Newton County Coroner Scott McCord told jconline.com. "He said he picked up a black male in his late teens or early 20s ... who was hitchhiking."

The second John Doe, nicknamed "Brad," was a white male, 18-28 years old, 5-feet-11 inches to 6-feet-1 inches tall and weighing about 180 pounds.

When McCord was named county coroner in 2009, he made it his personal mission to identify Adam and Brad. As a result, he reached out to Project EDAN and asked for their assistance.

Bailey used the case files on the Does and photographs of the skulls to help her get started with the drawings.

"I put those pictures on top of a light box and I place a clear acetate sheet on top of that," she said. "I then take a permanent marker and mark out where the skull is and all the bones and then I mark out the tissue depth area, based upon the height and weight and other information I was given."

Bailey says that she uses an FBI photo facial catalog to help guide her when marking out an unknown subject's facial features.

"I use tissue depth charts to get parameters, because there are specific charts that are based on gender, age and race," Bailey said. "For example, if the coroner has been able to provide information on the victim's weight or the size, you can make a fair guess as to how much flesh is going to be on this person and you can pick the correct tissue depth chart. A tall, skinny man is not going to have a little, short, round, cherubic face. You also work with hairstyles that are typical of the area and time frame.

"Each skull is different and has its own mapping, so when you look at that skull, you can see a lot of things about that person – whether they had good teeth or bad teeth, what kind of lifestyle they lived -- if they were a substance abuser or a perfect specimen of health. A lot of times people will pick clothing and hairstyles based on how they want to be perceived by others."

Using all of this combined information, Bailey is able to mark out the types of facial features that are most common or prevalent to the victim. After making those markings, she places a sheet of drawing paper on top of the light box and begins her sketch.

"It does not take long before you can start to see the face coming at you, as you start developing the cheek bones and the chin," Bailey said. "If it is an older person, the tip of the nose is going to droop slightly, the chin will appear chunkier and there will be lines and creases. Nobody ages the same, so a lot of that is based on the individual's health."

It remains yet to be seen if the two Does in this case will ultimately be identified, but Bailey has seen a lot of success as a forensic artist. She does not keep track of the exact number of cases she has helped solve, but says there are many, including one in which they were able to identify an individual before she even finished completing the sketch.

"It is very rewarding," Bailey said. "If nothing else, I can give them back their faces and the hope for a name. I hate to think that we are burying people as John and Jane Doe."