35 replies to this topic

[Jenn]

http://www.morningjo...s/mj2567492.txt

Missing persons case solved: Beloved son, Javier, finally coming home

Published: Thursday, April 08, 2010 By MEGAN ROZSA

LORAIN — “Everybody loves Javier,” a father said lovingly of his son who had been missing for six long years. “He was just a smiling, jovial, warm, friendly person.”

Former Lorain Councilman Rigoberto Reveron and his wife, Judy, learned Tuesday that their son’s body had been found in a New York City river shortly after he was reported missing, Jan. 13, 2004, but only recently identified. He was 27 years old and worked at Myers University in Cleveland. It is reported that he purchased a one-way plane ticket for New York City and made the flight on Jan. 13, 2004.

Rigo Reveron said he and his wife were in Central Michigan Tuesday when the Rev. William A. Thaden, of Sacred Heart Chapel, called to tell them about Javier.

“Our pastor from Sacred Heart called, but I ignored it the first time,” Rigo Reveron said. “But then he was persistent and called again. We talked about game scores and then I said, ‘Father, are you calling about Javier?’”

Javier’s body was recovered from the East River in New York on May 3, 2004, only four months after he had been reported missing. The Reverons said they had no idea, until Tuesday, that his body had been found.

Javier was buried in a New York cemetery as “John Doe.” Recent improvements in DNA testing led the New York Medical Examiner’s Office to send Javier’s DNA to a laboratory in Texas, his father said. It came back as a match on Monday.

“I was somewhat angry, but understandably — there was no way to match the body to Javier,” Rigo Reveron said of knowing how long ago his son’s body was found. He added that Javier’s body had been in the water for several weeks and was badly decomposed. A Superman tattoo on Javier’s shoulder had washed away and his face was no longer recognizable, he said.

In the six years it took to find Javier, Judy and Rigo Reveron said they never lost hope that someday he would call or come home.

“Every day we would wake up and wonder where he is. Is he in a mental hospital? Is he begging on the streets?” Javier’s father said. “There was a ray of light, a hope that he might call or we’ll see him in the news or a friend in New York would tell me he was there.”

Judy Reveron said her hope and faith kept her going day after day while her youngest son was gone.

“When I heard it was him, I was in disbelief. It’s something that I never wanted to hear,” she said. “But I always had hope and faith. When you have faith, you have everything.”

She added that her son’s mental illness sometimes made life difficult for him, but he never let it stand in his way.

“He was a really healthy-minded person,” she said. “When you have a mental illness, it’s hard. He needed to take his medicine.”

It was reported that Reveron was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2000. At the time of his disappearance, he had stopped taking his medication for roughly one year. His mother shared a story that stood out in her memory about how kind her son was.

“He was gathering up a bunch of apples and I said, ‘What are you going to do with all those apples?’” Judy Reveron said with a smile. “He said, ‘I’m going to give them to (DJ) Joey, that guy who stands on the corner of East 28th Street’ (and Elyria Avenue). I asked him why and he said, ‘Maybe he’s hungry.’ ... That’s how kind Javier was.’”

Javier’s parents said his body will be brought home, but they didn’t know how soon. Once he is home, he will have a proper Christian burial, they said.

Javier’s father said it wasn’t the news he and his wife wanted to hear, but at least now the family has closure.

“The Journal doesn’t have enough pages to say all the wonderful things about Javier,” his mother said. “He will be remembered as a wonderful human being. A loving person. He was friends to everybody.”

[Jenn]

http://www.chron.com...ontent=My Yahoo

Family finally knows peace, 23 years later
Woman vanished in 1986, and the case had gone cold, but her brother just couldn’t forget

By CINDY GEORGE April 11, 2010, 12:26PM

He's the brother who wouldn't stop calling.

For more than two decades, Darryl Phillips hounded the Houston Police Department and Harris County Medical Examiner's Office about his missing sister.

Phillips finally got some peace on Saturday when he helped lay to rest Angela Faye Phillips, nearly 24 years after she went missing.

The 20-year-old left her south Houston home one September morning in 1986 to catch the bus for a job interview. Loved ones never saw her again.

The loss left an unshakable impression on Darryl, then 18, who promised his now-deceased mother that he would never stop searching for the baby girl of the family.

“My mom died not knowing where her daughter was,” he said. “I wanted to make sure she was found and given a proper burial.”

The young woman known as “Angie Faye” was an athletic tomboy known for winning neighborhood foot races against both girls and boys. She was a prankster who loved to laugh.

Debra Hale Knox, the oldest of the Phillips siblings, said she last spoke to her sister around 1 p.m. the day of the interview.

“A lot of times when folks are missing and they are of age, it's always assumed that they've run away,” Knox said. “But she always called and let somebody know where she was. She had no reason to get up and disappear.”

Four siblings searched the next day, but turned up nothing. Three days after Angela vanished, authorities recovered the remains of a young black female in the 5800 block of Foster on Houston's south side.

At the time, authorities didn't connect the dots.

“It's been a tremendous strain not knowing. I think that back then, had we found out that was my sister, I think we'd have been too distraught. … Only in the last couple of years have I been able to talk about it without breaking down,” Knox said. “At that time, getting even with somebody certainly wasn't beneath us.”

Knox added that she believes her mother grieved until her death in 1989.

In the intervening decades, Angela's determined younger brother kept asking about missing persons, so-called unknowns and Jane Does.
Buried without a name

Darryl Phillips was among the earliest volunteers to join Texas Equusearch, and even traveled to Aruba in 2005 to help look for Natalee Holloway, the Alabama teen who vanished during a high school graduation trip to the Caribbean country.

On the flight back, he mentioned his missing sister to HPD detectives, who vowed to help. Since then, the reopened police investigation, coupled with initiative from forensic anthropologist Sharon Derrick in the medical examiner's office, connected Angela to the remains of an unidentified black female long-since buried without a name at a county cemetery.

In December, the medical examiner's office called Phillips about a possible match to relatives' DNA. Last month, Angela's remains were positively identified.

“It's the same body that they buried and it's the same body that they went back and got,” Darryl Phillips said. “That never changed, but I don't fault nobody but the criminals.”

Last week, the Phillips family gathered at the site where Angela's remains were found and Texas Equusearch erected a wooden memorial cross.

Saturday's heavy clouds seemed to release tears as the celebration of Angela's life began. Two Texas Equusearch trucks parked just outside the church vestibule. An iridescent cotton-candy-pink casket adorned with fresh flowers brought Angela back to the sanctuary of the Sugar Valley Missionary Baptist Church. After all this time, there remained unexpressed emotion unleashed by stirring gospel music and reflections about a young woman they never forgot.

‘There needs to be justice'

“I waited 23 years for this day,” Darryl Phillips told the packed pews. “No matter how long you wait, God answers prayer.”

The experience taught Darryl Phillips to appreciate people while they're living. He even awarded plaques during the service to those who helped bring his family closure, including Derrick.

The mystery is only half solved, the 41-year-old said. Angela's case has been reclassified from missing person to homicide.

“There's forgiveness, but there needs to be justice,” Phillips said. “My passion and dream is to bring some justice. I won't stop until it's done.”

[Jenn]

http://albany.kval.c...an-missing-1974

Sheriff: Remains belong to woman missing since 1974

Mon, 2010-04-12 16:02 From a press release

Linn County Sheriff Tim Mueller reports that his detectives have recently matched a skull discovered in 1979 with the victim of a car crash that occurred in 1974.

The victim's family was notified of the identification on March 30, 2010.

The victim, Samilla Stewart of Sweet Home, was last seen approximately 8:30 pm on December 13, 1974 when she took her brother lunch at his workplace in Cascadia. She was 36 years old. Three days later her vehicle, a 1960 Chevrolet Impala, was found in the Santiam River at Moose Creek and Highway 20 in Cascadia. Both the Oregon State Police and the Linn County Sheriff's Office responded to the area and searched for Samilla. She was not found.

Investigators at the time suspected that Samilla's car had slid off the road and landed in the water.

In April 1975, the Sheriff's Office and OSP searched again on land and by boat from the area of Moose Creek to the head of Foster Reservoir. Samilla was not located.

On April 29, 1979, two men fishing at Canyon Creek and the South Santiam River found a skull in sand about six to eight feet from the water and about a mile and a half downstream from where Samilla's vehicle had gone into the river. Another search was conducted but nothing was found. Detectives attempted to get dental records for Samilla to identify the skull as being her remains. No records were found because her dental office had purged its records.

In 2008, two of Samilla's children provided DNA samples to detectives so that they could once again try and match the skull to Samilla. The skull was sent away for an anthropology analysis and eventually went to the University of North Texas, National Missing Persons Program. In March 2010, the Sheriff's Office was notified that the skull had been confirmed as the remains of Samilla Stewart.

Aasum Funeral Home in Albany will be handling arrangements.

[Jenn]

http://www.washingto...s-91079164.html

Police identified Jane Doe; now they want killers

By: Scott McCabe Examiner Staff Writer April 19, 2010



The District detectives last year figured out the identity of their only unidentified cold case victim, but they still are looking for information to solve her 1990 slaying.

For 19 years, police didn't have a clue as to the identity of a woman whose body was found in a trash bin behind an apartment in the Riggs Park area. On Aug. 12, 1990, a person scavenging saw her legs sticking out in the back parking lot of 5120 Sargent Road NE and initially thought she was a mannequin.

Had she not been spotted there, police said, she likely would have ended up in a landfill, never to be seen again.

DNA and fingerprint tests failed to identify the woman and she was known simply as Jane Doe. But detectives got a break last year from the Department of Homeland Security's Biometric Support Center.

Authorities there ran the U.S. immigration database of nearly 100 million fingerprints against a new Department of Justice missing-persons database and got a match: D.C.'s Jane Doe was Audrey Palmer, a 26-year-old mother of two from Bermuda who went missing in 1990.

Palmer's fingerprints were taken in 1989 when she was arrested in Brooklyn, N.Y. D.C. cold case detectives discovered that sometime after her arrest, Palmer left New York with some men from the D.C. area.

The last time anyone heard from Palmer was when she sent a birthday present to one of her children in August 1990.

D.C.'s Chief Medical Examiner ruled that Palmer's death was homicide due to asphyxia by smothering, a stab wound to the neck, and blunt force injuries to the head and face.

The brutal nature of the case suggested that there could have been multiple perpetrators involved. Police would like to find out the identities of the men who traveled with her from New York.

Palmer was clad in torn bleached denim jeans over shorts, and a black T-shirt with flowers that said, "Voo Doo Beach Body Glove."

She was 5 feet 2 inches and 108 pounds, with cropped hair. She was black with a light to medium complexion.

Anyone with information on the case can contact police at the new tip line at 888-919-2776 or through a text messaging number: 50-411.

[Jenn]

http://www.chron.com...an/6971875.html

More than 20 years later, family still in pain
They want justice in killing of man who had gone missing

By MOISES MENDOZA HOUSTON CHRONICLE April 22, 2010, 10:30PM

After 24-year-old Darrell Wayne Cade disappeared from the Montgomery County Fairgrounds in March 1988, his family held onto a sliver of hope that he was alive.

They believed they saw him on Montgomery County street corners. In church. At restaurants.

One day, his sister Mary Sanchez even raced after a car, thinking she saw her brother inside.

Twenty-two years later, they had to accept the inevitable. Detectives this year identified his remains, found in a forested area in 1989, through DNA analysis.

For Cade's family, the discovery gave closure of sorts. Still, more than two decades after the murder, their pain is as raw as ever.

They want his killer found and justice served.

“I want to know why this happened,” said Virginia Rojero, 55, one of Cade's sisters. “My brother was a good man.”

Cade, who lived in Conroe, was a bear of a guy with a fun-loving streak. He liked to swim, swig cold beers and bring family members together for massive parties.

He wasn't much into school, but Cade was a top-notch mechanic, taking apart and putting together bicycles and eventually graduating into fixing up motorcycles, cars and trucks.

Cade also was tough. The youngest of five siblings, he always stuck up for his big sisters.

Not long before he disappeared, he severely injured his neck diving into a lake but waited a week before going to the doctor.

His toughness and love for family made his disappearance all the more baffling.

After he didn't return home, family members called the Sheriff's Office.

Deputies searched the area and talked to friends who said they dropped him off at the fairgrounds to meet someone.

Family members did their own search near the fairgrounds but found nothing.
Case was buried

As the years passed and they couldn't find leads, the Sheriff's Office lost interest. The detectives who were working it died. The case file, which was never computerized, became buried amid loads of paperwork.

Meanwhile, Cade's relatives felt they had nowhere to turn. Everything began to unravel.

Cade's father cried almost every day. He died of cirrhosis of the liver after years of drinking.

Other family members struggled with alcohol. They stopped meeting for family get-togethers like they had when Cade was alive.

Cade's mother, Lois, suffered mostly in silence, starting to smile again only after finding religion in 1999.

“I was just hoping we'd find him alive somewhere,” said Lois Cade, now 75. “But I knew he might already be gone.”

In 2008, Sheriff's Office Detective Thomas Duroy got a phone call from the Department of Public Safety.

“Any update on the Darrell Cade case?” asked the voice on the other end.

Duroy, a member of the Sheriff's Office's cold case squad, hadn't heard of Cade before.

He and his partner found the file and set about re-investigating. They got DNA from Cade's relatives and started comparing it to bodies that had never been identified.

In January this year, they got a hit. The remains of a man found 21 years earlier had been identified as Darrell Cade.

Cade had been found in a remote, forested area just a few miles away from his disappearance. Personal items, such as a wallet, were missing.

It was clear he had been killed.

Sanchez remembered detectives telling her that her brother had been identified. She gathered the family together to tell them the news.

This spring they finally had a memorial service.

‘We need information'

Detectives followed a few leads, but time and again the trail went dry.

Cade had only a few minor scrapes with the police, Duroy said. He wasn't known to be involved in drugs or violence.

“From what we can tell he was just your average guy who went to work when there was work to be had,” Duroy said.

So why would someone kill him?

“Someone may know something; relationships may change,” the detective said. “We need information that people are now willing to share with us.”

Recently, Cade's family sat outside Rojero's home in Willis, talking about what might have been.

They wept as they remembered Cade's dreams for the future — how he would have been a great father. How he would have kept the family together.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office is seeking information regarding the slaying of Darrell Cade 22 years ago. If you have information, call detectives at 281-297-6507 or Montgomery County Crime Stoppers at 800-392-7867. Tips can remain anonymous.

[Kelly]

http://www.thepittsb...143/detail.html


Bones In Westmoreland Woods Are Missing Teen From Early '90s
Men Digging For Scrap Metal Find Skeletal Remains In Mount Pleasant Brush

POSTED: 11:39 am EDT May 28, 2010



Bones found in a wooded area of Mt. Pleasant Township, Westmoreland County, have been identified as a young man who disappeared 20 years ago, and state police have arrested a suspect on a charge of homicide.

Paperwork filed with the county identifies the skeletal remains as those of Curtis Douglas Eutsey, of Mt. Pleasant Township. Eutsey wasn't reported missing until 1992, but was last seen in 1990 at age 18 when he left his girlfriend's house with two unidentified men.

Police confirmed that they have arrested Robert Daniels, 42, of Greensburg, on a charge of criminal homicide. State troopers spent hours Friday searching Daniels' home, which he shares with his wife and three children.

"I do believe my dad is innocent," Taija Daniels said. "I'm sure he had no idea what was going on. I don't believe he knew, and I think he was set up."

Police have not said how Eutsey died or what evidence led them to identify Robert Daniels as a suspect. Details of the police report have been sealed because authorities say they need to protect their investigation.

"Anyone who has any information in this case, regarding any details, any specifics or anything they think might be of assistance to the state police, I urge you to please call us," Trooper Stephen Limani said.

Channel 4 Action News' Jennifer Miele reported that Robert Daniels and Eutsey knew each other because Eutsey was dating one of the man's relatives.

Daniels' daughter said her father remembers giving Eutsey a ride and dropping him off but knows nothing about the young man's death.

Leo Monholland said he and his friend were digging for scrap metal on April 1 in Mt. Pleasant Township, and they thought it may have been a joke when they saw a bone sticking out of some boots along Misty Meadows Road.

"We dug up a little farther up, and there were two ribs," Monholland said. "I dropped my stick and I said, 'I don't know about this,' and he was like, 'Gotta be sure.' We dug a little bit more, so that's when we found the corner of skull and I was like, yeah, there's nothing else that could be."

The men called police, who, along with the county coroner and a Mercyhurst College forensics team, were able to determine that the bones were human. Eventually, the remains were identified as Eutsey.

The desolate area is heavily covered with brush and woods, and the bones were found under a very large rock that investigators believe helped hide the remains for a long time.

"The individual has been there at least four or five years, possibly longer. Other than that, it appears to be a full-sized adult," Coroner Ken Bacha said when the bones were discovered.

Eutsey's mother, Beatrice, said she knew he was probably dead all these years, but it did not keep her from praying for him and hoping that he had just left and started a new life for himself.

"I thought he maybe went away someplace -- to Florida or somewhere," Beatrice Eutsey said.

The Eutseys said Curtis enjoyed growing up on a farm and was a happy, energetic child. They're looking forward to getting his remains for a proper burial.

"I want justice," Beatrice Eutsey said. "There's no reason to kill anybody like that."

[Jenn]

http://www.onntv.com...hy.html?sid=102

Police ID Woman's Remains 14 Years After Disappearance

Tuesday,  June 29, 2010 8:52 PM
Updated: Wednesday,  June 30, 2010 9:39 AM

DAYTON, Ohio — A Dayton woman disappeared 14 years ago and, on Tuesday, she became the victim of a homicide investigation.

Her name is Connie McCarthy, and she vanished in 1996, ONN's Stephanie Mennecke reported.

In December, the remains of McCarthy, 54, were found on Wyoming Street in Dayton after police received a new piece of information.

"I think it would be hard for (the family) especially since it was back in '96 when it happened," said neighbor Kristy Murphy. "It would be rough for the police to come up with anything since it was so long ago."

It's been almost seven months since the body was found, and Dayton police just recently identified McCarthy.

Detectives said identifying the body is one of many steps needed before an arrest can be made.

Since the person of interest in this case has not been charged, officials have been tight-lipped.

Dayton police Detective Patricia Tackett said that the investigation is ongoing and when it's complete, it will be in the hands of the grand jury.

ONN has also learned that Assistant Prosecutor Robert Deschler with the Violent Crimes Bureau will be handling the case.

"It's a shock to me," said neighbor Justin Shawhan. "It's probably a case I've heard of years ago, but never expected somebody to find a body a few blocks away from where I live."

"For something like that to happen over there, yeah it was pretty shocking," Murphy said. "I couldn't imagine if that was one of my family members, that's a long time."

Police would not comment on when they expect an arrest to be made.

[Jenn]

http://www.ennisdail...ews.php?id=5343

12 years later, body ID’d

Nick Todaro, Editor  07-07-2010

Nearly 12 years after their discovery, authorities have finally identified a set of human remains found near U.S. 287 near the unincorporated community of Sardis west of Waxahachie.

Lt. Jason Westmoreland, head of criminal investigations for the Ellis County Sheriff’s Office, said the case began when deputies were alerted to the presence of a human skeleton near railroad tracks in the vicinity of U.S. 287 and Odom Road. The remains have, after bone sample testing at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, been identified as those of missing Kennedale resident Jacob W. Whitt, who was 22 at the time of his disappearance. The case was ruled a suicide by the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office.

The remains were unidentified for 11 years, Westmoreland said, and Sheriff Johnny Brown has been behind efforts to reopen and solve “cold cases” within the department since assuming office.

[Kelly]

http://www.tulsaworl...A1_Tegasm293685

ME unit created to identify bodies
The goal is matching unidentified remains with missing people.


By NICOLE MARSHALL World Staff Writer
Published: 7/18/2010  2:27 AM
Last Modified: 7/18/2010  6:05 AM

The state Medical Examiner's Office has created an Unidentified Remains Unit in an effort to identify about 100 people who have been found dead in Oklahoma.

Many of the remains are skeletal andincomplete and were discovered during the last several decades.

"We decided since we have so many cases that it would be good to put one person in charge of this and see if we can get some of these cases completed," said Cherokee Ballard, medicolegal executive administrator for the Medical Examiner's Office.

In May 2009, the Tulsa World published a series of stories about the lack of a uniform state and nationwide system to match unidentified remains with missing people. Without such a system, many families never learned that their missing loved ones had died.

In response to questions from the Tulsa World, the Medical Examiner's Office determined that it had 125 cases of unidentified remains at that time. Ballard also said then that the agency was working to catalog all unidentified remains and enter them in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, known as NAMUS.

By the time the unit was formed at the beginning of this year, 25 cases had been closed, and the list was down to 100, she said. Investigator H.L. Christensen has completed another eight cases since then, Ballard said.

Assigning a full-time investigator to the cases is a step toward creating a uniform statewide process to identify remains and match them with people who have been reported missing, she said.

In
addition to working with NAMUS, the agency is now coordinating with the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification in Fort Worth, which specializes in forensic DNA analysis for human identification.

The center conducts DNA testing that potentially could match unidentified remains with the missing at no cost to law enforcement officers and medical examiners.

Ballard said the Medical Examiner's Office also is working with the law enforcement agencies where the remains were found.

"It is a priority for us, and I think it is a great step and something that highlights the hard work that our agency is doing," Ballard said.

On any given day, as many as 100,000 missing-person cases are active in the United States, National Institute of Justice statistics show. More than 40,000 sets of human remains that cannot be identified through conventional means are held in medical examiners' evidence rooms across the country.

But according to the National Institute of Justice, information on only 15 percent of those remains has been entered into the FBI's database.

In Oklahoma, the law does not require that law enforcement officers obtain DNA samples from family members of the missing or that unidentified remains at the state Medical Examiner's Office be tested. In most cases, it's up to the agency.

Texas led the way in the country by passing a law that requires law enforcement to request family reference samples within 30 days of a high-risk missing-person report. Those profiles, as well as the DNA from unidentified remains, must be entered in the state's clearinghouse.

In Tulsa, detectives have worked to find the families of the long-term missing to collect their DNA. The DNA profiles they already have are in the national database. Police believe there is a chance that in some cases the remains of those reported missing have been found and taken to a medical examiner's office.

[Kelly]

http://www.wavy.com/...missing-persons

Reconstructed faces of missing persons

Updated: Friday, 22 Apr 2011, 7:15 PM EDT
Published : Friday, 22 Apr 2011, 7:15 PM EDT

HAMPTON ROADS, Va. (WAVY) - Within the Virginia Medical Examiner's Office, there are more than 200 unidentified people. Using state-of-the-art technology, WAVY.com got a look at the reconstructed faces of three of those missing people found in Hampton Roads.

"People always talk about having skeletons in their closets. Well, I'm here to tell you, I have 220 skeletons in my closet, literally," said Dr. Leah Bush, Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia.

Bush is trying to identify three of those skeletons. Using what the FBI refers to as "facial approximations" software, investigators are able to reconstruct the faces of what was once nothing more than a bare skull producing life-like clay models from the skeletal remains of missing persons.

"They use some digital media to scan the skull. They make a reproduction of the skull with a plastic model. Then actually apply the clay to that model," said Bush.

One of the models is a facial approximation of a young man found more than six years ago in a wooded area of Accomack County.

"Just outside the town of Painter over on the Eastern Shore. This was a wooded area directly behind a labor camp. Typically this labor camp only is filled from April to about October," said Lt. Gerald Goga with the Accomack Sheriff's Office.

Using the latest DNA analysis technology, investigators can tell us more about the man than just how he looked.

"From the forensic evidence that's been determined, this individual appears to be 17 to 23 years of age and of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity," said Larry Hill with the Virginia Department of Health.

The second man's remains were found in August of 1996 at an abandoned cinder block factory on Randolph Street in Portsmouth.

"The remains are of an African American male between 17 to 23 years old," said Hill.

The third face was reconstructed from the remains of a woman found in April of 1992 in Newport News.

"And this individual was found April 7, 1992 adjacent to a warehouse at 231 Enterprise Drive," said Hill.

The woman is believed to have been between 35 and 50 years old at the time of her death.

The Medical Examiner's Office set up a number to call anyone has information that might identify the three missing persons. That number is (757) 683-8366.

There is also a special website for families of missing persons at www.namus.gov .

[Jenn]

http://azstarnet.com...08f7fb72cd.html

Missing 30 years, victim was right here
Unidentified remains stored in ME's office for decades.

Jeanne Overstreet disappeared nearly 30 years ago.

April 14, 2012 12:00 am  •  Kimberly Matas Arizona Daily Star

The 19-year-old hotel maid was planning to meet a friend downtown for lunch on Sept. 3, 1982, but she never showed up.

With no leads, her case turned cold.

A DNA sample given by her sister in 2004 was run though a national missing-person database but came to nothing.

This week, however, Overstreet's family got word that their daughter's remains had been found. They'd been in storage at the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office for the last 29 years.

"It's a complete miracle. It's just amazing," said Overstreet's sister, Jackie Dugan, of Benson.

"The remains were found in 1983, but we didn't have the DNA back then and because her records had been lost, they didn't know who she was," she said. "The medical examiner in Tucson had her remains all this time."

At the time Dugan submitted her DNA sample to law enforcement, her sister's DNA hadn't yet been collected.

In August 2010, using grant money, Bruce Anderson, forensic anthropologist for the ME's office, began submitting DNA samples for testing from unidentified skeletal remains found in Southern Arizona.

Most of the 800 or so samples submitted to date are from remains found in the last decade, which coincided with a major influx of undocumented border crossers. Almost 100 other individuals discovered in the 1970s, '80s and early '90s are more likely unidentified U.S. citizens, said Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Gregory Hess.

Last September, a little more than a year after Anderson submitted the sample that would turn out to be from Overstreet, her parents, Barbara Pike and John Overstreet, had their DNA samples collected for a national missing-persons database. The family got a telephone call Tuesday telling them a match was found.

"Jeanne was the first success story, if you can call it that, taking a very old case and using new technologies to figure out who she was," Anderson said.

"It is the best part of my job. Any time we're successful in finding out who a Jane Doe is, I can feel good about what I do," he said, noting that his elation is always tempered by the knowledge that his discovery will be the worst news the family of a missing loved one can receive.

In 1983, 14 months after Overstreet disappeared, a Pinal County sheriff's deputy found skeletal remains just off the shoulder of Florence Highway about five miles north of Oracle Junction 14. They were given to Walter Birkby, Pima County's forensic anthropologist at the time. His analysis of the remains were thorough, but he could not determine a cause of death. Included in Birkby's report was a detailed dental chart he'd drawn up based on the remains.

This week Anderson re-examined the remains before giving them to the family for cremation, and confirmed Birkby's findings.

Though Dugan is relieved her sister's remains have been identified, she harbors bitterness that the connection wasn't made decades earlier. Soon after Overstreet's disappearance, Dugan said she gave Tucson Police Department investigators her sister's dental records to use as comparison if remains were found. Those records never got to the Medical Examiner's Office, and Overstreet's missing-persons file seems to have disappeared altogether, said Dugan. After the family was told of the DNA match this week, a TPD representative asked Dugan for copies of any police records they may have retained.

"I didn't know not to give originals back then," Dugan said. "I couldn't get her dental records replaced, and if the dental records hadn't been lost they might have identified her in '83.

"There's some anger that they had her this long. All this time we've looked."

TPD did not respond to several calls and emails Thursday and Friday about the Overstreet case.

On the day she disappeared, the petite Overstreet, a 1981 graduate of Santa Rita High School, left her midtown home around noon to hitchhike downtown and meet her boyfriend for lunch. She never made it to the restaurant.

Overstreet still had a paycheck waiting for her at the hotel where she worked. She had planned to use the money to make a final payment on a car she was buying so she wouldn't have to hitchhike anymore, Dugan said.

"My mom never gave up hope that she was alive," Dugan said. "This hit my mom so hard. She was in complete denial. We all, after some time, said, 'Something happened to her. She's not with us anymore.' But we always had that little bit of hope. We'd see somebody who looked like her, a blond girl, and just couldn't help but look.

"Right now the emotions are very up and down. We now at least know where she is. That's going to be very helpful, but there's still always going to be the question of what happened," Dugan said.

"I don't know that we'll ever get an answer to that, but I'm relieved - and I think my family is, too - that we now know where she is and we can put her to rest."

Memorial is planned for Monday

A memorial for Jeanne Overstreet is planned for 10:30 a.m. Monday at Pantano Riding Stables, 4450 S. Houghton Road.

"My sister loved horses. While she was growing up she had a collection of different types of (toy) horses," her sister, Jackie Dugan, said.

After learning earlier this week that her sister's remains had been identified after 30 years, she drove past the stables and decided it was the perfect setting at which to honor her sister.

"It's in remembrance of her, for her to be at peace. She's home now," Dugan said.

The family asks that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (www.missingkids.com).

Central resource center is at your disposal

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) is a centralized repository and resource center for the records of missing persons and unidentified human remains.

NamUs, a program run by the U.S. Department of Justice, is a free, online system that can be searched by medical examiners, coroners, law enforcement officials and the general public from all over the country in hopes of resolving these cases. For family members of the missing, that means the ability to print missing-persons posters, receive free DNA testing for comparison to unidentified remains in the FBI's CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) database, and access links to the offices of law enforcement agencies and medical examiners as well as victims assistance groups.

Go to www.namus.gov for more information.