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DNA and Missing Persons


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#1 Kathylene

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Posted 17 May 2007 - 10:01 AM

This is VERY important news for families of the missing!

FBI Announces New Program for DNA and Missing Persons

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...database_x.htm

FBI adds uses for its DNA database
Posted 5/30/2006 11:31 PM ET


By Richard Willing, USA TODAY

The FBI plans to use its national DNA database system to help identify not only criminals, but also missing persons and tens of thousands of unidentified bodies held by local coroners and medical examiners.
A new computer program planned for this fall will compare genetic profiles taken from unidentified bodies or body parts with DNA submitted by family members of missing persons. The plan takes advantage of the fact that biological relatives sometimes have similar, though not identical, DNA profiles. The FBI will look for near-matches.

The FBI's initiative comes as other branches of the Justice Department are launching programs to identify thousands of murder, accident and other victims identified only as John or Jane Doe.

The International Homicide Investigators Association, a group based in Fredericksburg, Va., that works to raise public awareness of the issue, estimates there are more than 40,000 unidentified dead nationally.

The DNA computer search plan was disclosed by the FBI earlier this month in Boston during a conference of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics. FBI laboratory officials later elaborated on it.

"We need to broaden our capability," said Thomas Callaghan, director of the FBI's national DNA database program. He said the FBI is in "a very good position" to identify remains through family members because of the agency's small but growing database of missing persons and unidentified remains, plus its experience in using computers to match DNA.

Since 1990, local, state and federal governments have collected DNA from convicted criminals and some people when they are arrested. The FBI's DNA database solves crimes by comparing those DNA profiles, which contain an individual's unique genetic code, to DNA extracted from blood, skin, semen and other tissue at crime scenes.

The national DNA system has about 3 million offender profiles and about 135,000 from the scenes of unsolved crimes. By contrast, the system holds fewer than 2,000 DNA samples from missing persons, their relatives and unidentified remains.

The FBI's ability to compare samples has been limited without a specialized computer search engine. To date, the FBI's system has scored only a handful of matches for missing persons and unidentified remains, Callaghan said.

The number of unidentified remains that can be searched by their DNA profiles should grow significantly as the FBI increases missing-persons testing at four recently opened regional labs.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics expects to soon complete its first comprehensive national count of unidentified dead. Last fall, the National Institute of Justice began paying the University of North Texas to perform DNA testing of unidentified remains for localities that lacked resources. Among the first: towns in Mississippi seeking to identify the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.

William Hagmaier of the homicide investigators group said coroners, medical examiners and sheriffs need to be encouraged to test unidentified bodies for DNA and to submit the profiles to the FBI.


[edited name=Kathylene date=1190860186][/edited]


#2 Kathylene

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Posted 17 May 2007 - 10:01 AM

http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs...NEWS/605310347

FBI hopes database reveals John and Jane Does

Computer program will identify bodies by finding relatives with similar DNA.


By Richard Willing
USA TODAY

The FBI plans to use its national DNA database system to help identify not only criminals, but also tens of thousands of unidentified bodies held by local coroners and medical examiners.

A new computer program planned for this fall will compare genetic profiles taken from unidentified bodies or body parts to DNA submitted by family members of missing persons. Biological relatives sometimes have similar, though not identical, DNA profiles. The FBI will look for near-matches.

The FBI's move comes as other branches of the Justice Department are launching programs to identify thousands of murder, accident and other victims identified only as John or Jane Doe. The International Homicide Investigators Association, based in Fredericksburg, Va., estimates there are more than 40,000 unidentified dead nationally.

Tom Van De Berg, deputy medical examiner with the Greene County medical examiner's office, said such cases are uncommon here. "We don't have any unidentified remains, currently ... We have probably one person a year that is initially unidentified."

But DNA sometimes can provide a name when no other clues exist, he said. "DNA can help even with skeletonized remains, so I think (the FBI plan) is a great thing."

Thomas Callaghan, director of the FBI's national DNA database program, said the bureau needs to broaden its capability. He said the FBI is in "a very good position" to identify remains through family members because of the agency's small but growing database of missing persons and unidentified remains, plus its experience in using computers to match DNA.

Since 1990, local, state and federal governments have collected DNA from convicted criminals and some people when they are arrested. The FBI's DNA database solves crimes by comparing those DNA profiles, which contain an individual's unique genetic code, to DNA from blood and other tissue at crime scenes.

The FBI's ability to compare samples has been limited without a specialized computer search engine. To date, the FBI's system has scored only a handful of matches for missing persons and unidentified remains, Callaghan said.

The number of unidentified remains that can be searched by their DNA profiles should grow significantly as the FBI increases missing-persons testing at recently opened regional labs.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics expects to complete soon its first comprehensive national count of unidentified dead. Last fall, the National Institute of Justice began paying the University of North Texas to perform DNA testing of unidentified remains for localities that lacked resources. Among the first: Mississippi towns seeking to identify hurricane victims.

"In the past, it was either pay to send it to a private lab or wait through almost a two-year backlog ... through the government lab in Jefferson City," said Van De Berg. "(FBI testing) will certainly take pressure off the state crime lab."

William Hagmaier of the homicide investigators group said coroners, medical examiners and sheriffs need to be encouraged to test unidentified bodies for DNA and to submit the profiles to the FBI.

#3 Kathylene

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Posted 17 May 2007 - 10:02 AM

NIJ Journal Issue No. 256, January 2007

NIJ Journal No. 256  January 2007

Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains: The Nation's Silent Mass Disaster

by Nancy Ritter

If you ask most Americans about a mass disaster, they're likely to think of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina, or the Southeast Asian tsunami. Very few people' including law enforcement officials' would think of the number of missing persons and unidentified human remains in our Nation as a crisis. It is, however, what experts call "a mass disaster over time."

The facts are sobering. On any given day, there are as many as 100,000 active missing persons cases in the United States. Every year, tens of thousands of people vanish under suspicious circumstances. Viewed over a 20-year period, the number of missing persons can be estimated in the hundreds of thousands.

Due in part to sheer volume, missing persons and unidentified human remains cases are a tremendous challenge to State and local law enforcement agencies. The workload for these agencies is staggering: More than 40,000 sets of human remains that cannot be identified through conventional means are held in the evidence rooms of medical examiners throughout the country.[1] But only 6,000 of these cases' 15 percent' have been entered into the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database.

Efforts to solve missing persons cases are further hindered because many cities and counties continue to bury unidentified remains without attempting to collect DNA samples. And many labs that are willing to make the effort may not be equipped to perform DNA analysis of human remains, especially when the samples are old or degraded.

Compounding this problem is the fact that many of the Nation's 17,000 law enforcement agencies don't know about their State's missing persons clearinghouse or the four Federal databases' NCIC, National Crime Information Center; CODIS(mp), Combined DNA Index System for Missing Persons; IAFIS, Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System; and ViCAP, Violent Criminal Apprehension Program' which can be invaluable tools in a missing person investigation. (See sidebar, "The Federal Databases and What They Do.") Even in jurisdictions that are familiar with the State and Federal databases, some officials say they have neither the time nor the resources to enter missing persons and unidentified human remains data into the systems.

Bridging the Gap

To help State and local jurisdictions address the country's "mass disaster over time," the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) has brought together some of the country's top criminal justice and forensic science experts. As part of the President's multiyear initiative to maximize the use of forensic DNA in solving crime, NIJ is making Federal resources available to State and local law enforcement officials to identify human remains and help solve missing persons cases.

NIJ's plan is multifaceted. It includes programs aimed at:

Training medical examiners, law enforcement officers, and victims' families on forensic DNA evidence.

Providing free testing of unidentified human remains and family reference samples.
Encouraging States' through proposed model legislation' to collect DNA samples before unidentified remains are disposed of and to analyze degraded and old biological samples.
Making DNA reference sample collection kits available, free of charge, to any jurisdiction in the country.

Increasing law enforcement's use of Federal databases to solve missing persons and unidentified human remains cases.

"CSI" Meets the Real World

Many of the people who go missing in the United States are victims of homicide. Although the conventional approach to locating a missing person is to initiate a criminal investigation into the disappearance, in many cases, the investigation begins at a different point' when human remains are found.

This is where the Center for Human Identification (CHI) steps in. Located at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, CHI is one of NIJ's largest and most exciting DNA projects. At CHI's laboratory in Ft. Worth, State and local law enforcement agencies can have nuclear and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) testing performed on skeletal remains and on missing persons' family and direct reference samples.[2] Experts at CHI's Laboratory for Forensic Anthropology, such as Harrell Gill-King, Ph.D., also perform anthropological examinations on unidentified human remains to determine manner and cause of death. All of this testing is free.

NIJ's funding of this revolutionary project means that every jurisdiction in the United States has access to one of the few laboratories in the country that can search mtDNA and short tandem repeat (STR)[3] profiles in the CODIS(mp) database.

It also means that Dereck Bachmann can finally stop looking for his sister.

Finally, Closure

Marci Bachmann was 16 when she ran away from her Vancouver, Washington home in May 1984. Although her remains were found a few months later' discovered in the woods near Deer Creek in Missoula, Montana' no one knew that the remains were hers.

For nearly two decades, Dereck, Marci's brother, searched newspapers and missing persons files and even hired a private investigator to find Marci. Finally, in 2004, a series of events brought him and his family the closure they were seeking.

It began when a cold case detective in Missoula heard about CHI. The detective sent a femur from the Deer Creek remains to the lab. There, scientists ran DNA tests on the bone fragments and uploaded the profile into the CODIS(mp) database. Meanwhile, in King County, Washington, authorities working on an unrelated murder case came across Marci's missing persons file. Detectives tracked down Marci's mother, obtained a DNA sample from her, and sent it to the CHI lab. When a database search indicated a potential match with the remains of the victim in the Deer Creek case, officials sent DNA from Marci's brother and father to CHI for further tests.

On April 6, 2006' more than 21 years after her body was unearthed from a shallow grave' Marci Bachmann was "found."[4]

Solving Cold Cases

When George Adams, program manager for CHI, is asked about cold hits like the Marci Bachmann case' where the DNA from unidentified remains matches the DNA from reference samples that have been sent to the lab without any apparent connection' he paraphrases Vernon Geberth from Practical Homicide Investigation: Tactics, Procedures, and Forensic Techniques. "Solving a cold case like Marci's is not a matter of chance or luck; it is, quite simply, a matter of design and protocol."

The "design" Adams refers to is the CODIS(mp) database. The "protocol" works like this: A person goes missing; if he or she is not found within 30 days, a family reference sample is obtained. The sample can take either of two forms' a DNA sample from a close relative (obtained by a simple, noninvasive cheek swab) or from a personal item belonging to the missing person (such as hair from a comb or saliva from a toothbrush). The sample is then sent to the lab, and the DNA is analyzed. The results or "profiles" are then loaded into the database.

Simultaneously, human remains found throughout the country are being sent to CHI's lab for analysis and uploading into the database. DNA profiles from missing persons or their families are compared with unidentified human remains in the CODIS(mp) database. "If we already have the family reference sample, we will get a match," Adams stated. No longer does solving a missing persons or unidentified human remains case have to depend on a "break in the investigation," he added, "because we now have the design and protocol of pure science."

Populating the Database: Sample Collection Kits

But the database will help solve cases only if profiles from DNA samples and recovered human remains are submitted for analysis and uploaded into the system. "We've seen a tremendous increase in the number of remains samples, but we really need to work on getting family reference samples," said Arthur Eisenberg, Ph.D., director of CHI and a member of NIJ's Missing Persons National Task Force. "If families don't send reference or biological samples' which at this stage must be collected by a law enforcement official' human remains cannot be identified."

To facilitate this process, NIJ has funded CHI's development of two DNA sample collection kits: one for family reference samples and the other for collecting and transporting human remains. Both kits are available free of charge to any police department, medical examiner, or coroner in the United States. As of July 2006, more than 4,000 family reference sample kits had been disseminated.

Getting the Word Out

Spreading the word about this free resource remains a challenge. Last June, the Washington State's Office of the Attorney General issued a bulletin encouraging local jurisdictions to send family reference samples to CHI, making Washington the first State to solicit samples on a statewide basis. Eisenberg said he has no doubt that as word of the CHI analysis and database spreads, it will come to be regarded not as a tool of last resort in missing persons and unidentified human remains cases, but rather as a primary investigative tool.

As of July 2006, CHI had received more than 680 unidentified human remains and more than 1,600 family reference samples. Importantly, the lab is in the final stages of being able to use robots, which will allow the number of DNA analyses to skyrocket: one robot, for example, will be able to analyze 17,800 DNA samples per year.

Five States' California, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas' have laws that focus on locating missing persons and identifying human remains. In 2005, NIJ brought together Federal, State, and local law enforcement officials, forensic scientists, victims advocates, legislators, and families of missing persons to draft model State legislation on the prompt collection, analysis, and dissemination of evidence to help solve these cases. (See www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/210740v2.pdf.) Seven States (Alabama, Arizona, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Ohio, and Washington) and the District of Columbia have introduced bills that use the proposed legislation as guidance. Also, legislators in Kansas and New Mexico are seeking to amend their existing laws.

Moving to Solve the Problem

In addition to prohibiting the cremation of unidentified remains, the model legislation would require that:

Law enforcement agencies accept every missing person report and share case information with State and regional authorities.

DNA samples be taken within 30 days of a missing person report and the individual's profile be added to national, State, and local databases.

Cases involving high-risk missing persons be assessed immediately (high-risk cases might include, for example, a possible stranger abduction or a person who requires medical attention or is mentally impaired).
DNA analysis be performed on all unidentified human remains.

Searching the Databases

One of the biggest challenges in missing persons and unidentified human remains cases is searching and correlating case information. The Missing Persons National Task Force is examining ways that Federal databases can share information to help solve these cases.

The challenge is significant. For example, NCIC contains more than 100,000 missing persons cases, but the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System contains only 47. NCIC contains just 15 percent of unidentified human remains cases, in part because it is so labor intensive to enter the data into the system. To encourage State and local law enforcement agencies' use of NCIC, the FBI published an updated version of the Missing Persons and Unidentified Persons data collection guides, which walk users through the process of comparing new and existing data on missing persons and unidentified human remains investigations. Electronic versions of the guides are available to law enforcement officials through the Law Enforcement Online (LEO) intranet.

ViCAP is another valuable tool available to State and local officials. It is also underused for several reasons. Because data entered into NCIC do not automatically populate the ViCAP database (which is also run by the FBI), many jurisdictions choose not to use it. And until recently, most of the Nation's medical examiners and coroners did not have access to ViCAP. This situation is changing, however, as the FBI negotiates memoranda of understanding with local jurisdictions that will give medical examiners and coroners access to the database. The FBI is also developing a DVD for law enforcement that explains how ViCAP works. And with help from the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division, ViCAP may soon be Web-enabled. Instead of having to enter case information via a CD-ROM, which is then mailed to CJIS for uploading, users would need only an Internet connection and an LEO account to enter case data directly into ViCAP.

Law Enforcement Training ... and More
In addition to funding CHI's work, NIJ administers a wide range of projects under the President's DNA Initiative. One major effort involves the training of police officers; prosecutors, defense counsel, and judges; forensic and medical specialists; victim service providers; and corrections, probation, and parole officers on the use of forensic DNA evidence. To date, NIJ has held two regional missing persons training conferences, and by the end of 2006, NIJ's missing persons training reached professionals from all 50 States. NIJ is also developing many types of electronic training tools' one recent release is Principles of Forensic DNA for Officers of the Court, an interactive, computer-based training program on the use of DNA evidence in the courtroom.

Other NIJ programs seek to eliminate the backlog of biological samples in murder, rape, and kidnapping cases in forensic laboratories across the country. Since 2004, NIJ has provided funding to State and local agencies to reduce casework and convicted offender backlogs. NIJ also supports the development of tools and technology for faster, less costly methods of DNA analysis, including ways to analyze smaller and more degraded biological samples.

And NIJ will continue to fund programs that enhance the use of DNA to solve crimes, protect the innocent, and identify missing persons.

The Federal Databases and What They Do

CODIS(mp) (Combined DNA Index System for Missing Persons): Also known as the National Missing Person DNA Database (NMPDD), CODIS(mp) is a database specifically designed to assemble data on missing persons and unidentified human remains cases. It was created in 2000 by the FBI using existing portions of the CODIS database. The searchable database includes information on nuclear and mitochondrial DNA obtained from unidentified remains, relatives of missing persons, and personal reference samples. Having both types of DNA profiles maximizes the potential for a successful identification.

IAFIS (Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System): Maintained by the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, this national fingerprint and criminal history database provides automated fingerprint search capabilities, latent search capability, electronic image storage, and electronic exchange of fingerprints and responses. Agencies may submit fingerprints electronically and will receive quick turnaround on analyses.

NCIC (National Crime Information Center): An information system maintained by the FBI and dedicated to serving and supporting Federal, State, and local criminal justice agencies.

ViCAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program): This nationwide data center is designed to collect, collate, and analyze information on crimes of violence, such as homicides, sexual assaults, kidnappings, and missing persons cases.

ONE FACE BEHIND NIJ'S WORK

Melody Reilly's brother, Shawn, was murdered in the summer of 2005. His body was dumped in a field in rural Bastrop County, Texas, and was extremely decomposed when found. A year later, the Center for Human Identification (CHI), at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, identified Shawn's body from his DNA. Here is the letter that Melody wrote to George Adams, of CHI, after the men who killed her brother were convicted.

"Dear Mr. Adams,

I just want to tell you how much your office's work means to me, my sisters, our husbands, children, and extended family. Also on behalf of our parents, who are no longer here; but I am sure they appreciate your efforts, as well.

My sister Michelle and I were in court during the trial last week, and it was so comforting to see the people who worked so hard to identify my brother's remains.

My brother, Shawn, was an amazing and special person who ended up in the company of the wrong, and the worst, people. What our family has gone through is almost the worst you can imagine' wondering where Shawn was, hoping the remains were not his. The only thing worse is the terrible thought of not knowing where my brother is now. I wish he was here next to me, laughing and smiling, but unfortunately that is no longer possible. What your office did to identify my brother and allow us to bring his remains home is something I can never repay or express enough gratitude for. It really scares me to think we could be in a completely different place right now.

We feel badly because we put so much pressure' sometimes daily' on Investigator Yarbrough to give us some answers from August through March, and he tried his best to keep us calm. I didn't realize how much work and time it takes to identify someone, and I am now happy that your office took every day and every minute they needed to get it done properly.

Please pass my thoughts on to those involved and let them know their work is important and invaluable. I am attaching a photo of Shawn so maybe you and they can have a nicer image of him.

Melody Reilly"

For More Information

For DNA sample testing kits and free testing of DNA samples, contact the Center for Human Identification at 1-800-763-3147, or visit DNA Identity Lab.
Information on improving the use of forensic DNA evidence throughout the Nation's criminal justice system can be found at The President's DNA Initiative.

An online training program for prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges, Principles of Forensic DNA for Officers of the Court, can be downloaded at DNA.gov: Principles of Forensic DNA for Officers of the Court. (See "Online DNA Training Targets Lawyers, Judges.")

An electronic version of the FBI's Missing Persons and Unidentified Persons data collection guide is available to law enforcement officials through the LEO Intranet at http://home.leo.gov/lesig/cjis/programs/ncic.

Notes

[1] The Bureau of Justice Statistics is finalizing a comprehensive census of the Nation's medical examiners and coroners. This study' expected to be published in early 2007' will examine data from 2,000 medical examiners and coroners and focus on the issue of unidentified human remains.

[2] Nuclear DNA is the genetic material inherited from both parents: half from the mother and half from the father. It is found in the nucleus of each cell and is unique to each individual (except in cases of identical twins). Nuclear DNA is a powerful identifier and has been used for forensic purposes for decades. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) which is found in the mitochondria of a cell, outside the nucleus is inherited solely from the mother and is not unique. Everyone in the same maternal line, for generations, will have the same mtDNA. Its use as a forensic tool in narrowing the pool of possible donors of a sample is a more recent development.

[3] Short tandem repeats (STRs) are short sequences of DNA nucleotides that are repeated numerous times. An individual genetic profile can be created by counting the number of repeats of the DNA sequence at a specific location on a chromosome. This repeat number varies greatly between individuals.

[4] According to authorities in Missoula, Marci Bachmann was murdered by Missoula serial killer Wayne Nance.

#4 Kelly

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Posted 21 May 2007 - 08:29 PM

http://hosted.ap.org...EMPLATE=DEFAULT

Authorities identify old remains, say victim was murdered
5/18/07

By JOHN KEKIS
Associated Press Writer

 
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) -- DNA testing has identified skeletal remains found three decades ago as those of a teenage girl from Syracuse, and authorities said Friday she probably was murdered.

Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said the remains discovered March 31, 1977 were recently identified by comparing DNA from the skeleton to DNA from the father, brother and maternal niece of 17-year-old Melody Rowe, who went to the store for her mother in September 1972 and never came back.
Rowe's body was found on Onondaga Indian Nation land just south of Syracuse and she was buried as "Jane Doe."

Assistant District Attorney Rick Trunfio said the case had always been listed on the agenda of the county Cold Case Task Force, and at a meeting in January 2005 authorities decided that exhuming the remains was the first step.

Judge Joseph Fahey ordered the body exhumed in October 2005 and a second autopsy was conducted while state police investigator Tim Kelly located relatives of the suspected victim. Experts at the University of North Texas Health Science Center developed a DNA profile from one of Rowe's femurs.

Although investigators have not been able to determine a cause of death, Fitzpatrick termed it suspicious and said Rowe probably was killed somewhere else. The district attorney declined to offer any details of where the body was originally found for fear of hindering the investigation.

"The skeletal remains don't reveal an obvious cause of death," Fitzpatrick said at a press conference. "Other than that, I'm going on 25 years as a homicide prosecutor. The pictures that I've seen of the body, where the body was discovered, how the body was concealed, lead me to believe that it certainly was not a natural death. This is not someone that died of natural causes in a remote area of the county. Someone wanted her not to be discovered."
Kelly described the victim as "limited and a little autistic with not many friends." Since the case is so old, authorities were asking for help from anyone who knew Rowe to come forward with information and call 315-455-2826.

"Is this a long shot? Sure," Fitzpatrick said. "Maybe somebody out there has kept this a secret for 30 years. It's been 35 years since Melody disappeared. We'd like to bring the killer to justice and bring some measure of peace to her family."

Fitzpatrick said Donald Sigsbee, a retired cabinetmaker from Madison, N.Y. who is serving 25 years to life in prison for the 1975 slaying of a 19-year-old college student, is a "person of interest" in the case.

Sigsbee was convicted three years ago of raping and murdering Regina Reynolds, a student at Morrisville State College who disappeared while hitchhiking Nov. 6, 1975. Her body was found 13 days later near Otisco Lake, 15 miles southwest of Syracuse. Authorities said she was stabbed in the heart.

Sigsbee, who got away with the crime for more than 28 years until investigators linked him to the case with DNA from a discarded drinking straw, also remains a suspect in at least two other cases from the 1970s involving missing coeds in upstate New York.
Melody Rowe's father now lives in Alaska and her brother, John Rowe Jr., resides in Fulton, N.Y. Her mother died in the early 1980s.
"We'd like to find out what happened," Kelly said. "We're very pleased we can find some closure at least."

Kelly Murphy, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org

Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.


#5 Kelly

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Posted 04 June 2007 - 06:30 AM

http://www.hometowna...07/06_03-50/TOP

Families hope DNA can settle missing persons cases

By HEATHER RAWLYK, Staff Writer

They are questions Cathy Gardner has asked herself constantly since her stepdaughter disappeared two years ago: Could she be one of the 57 bodies yet to be identified in the state of Maryland? Is it possible she is one of thousands of unidentified bodies in morgues throughout the country?


Next week, the family of Tracey Gardner will finally get a chance to see if their DNA matches that of a Jane Doe currently logged into the National Crime Information Center's DNA database. And dozens of other families will have the same opportunity.

The Maryland Task Force For The Missing and Unidentified, Adults & Children will collect family reference samples at the Maryland Inn in Annapolis Tuesday morning. Law enforcement officials from throughout the state will collect saliva swabs from relatives of missing persons - which will then be uploaded into the database.
The database will search automatically until a match is made, according to task force representatives. That means continuous investigation as more unidentified bodies are logged into the database every day.

Ms. Gardner's father, Richard, will submit his DNA at the event. It will be the first time a sample has been collected from the family since she went missing on March 6, 2005.

Ms. Gardner, then 32, had tickets to attend a Motley Crue concert in Washington, and was expected to meet friends there. She never showed up at the concert, and has not been seen since that day.
Cathy Gardner said her stepdaughter, who grew up in Pasadena, was last seen at her home in Rosedale. Her car was later found behind a Krispy Kreme store on Gov. Ritchie Highway in Glen Burnie. The case is being investigated as a homicide.

The Gardner family would have submitted their DNA in a heartbeat, if only they had been offered the chance by investigators.
Frustrated, Cathy Gardner joined other relatives of missing persons in Maryland to form the task force and take matters into their own hands.

"We just said, 'Look. We're at our wit's end,'" she said. "We put all our resources together. We've been meeting two to three times per month and split up what we needed to do for this (event)."
There are more than 200 missing men and women in Maryland, according to the Maryland Missing Persons Network. Sixteen of the missing are connected to Anne Arundel County.

With 57 unidentified bodies in Maryland, there is a chance that one of the missing could be a match, Mrs. Gardner said. "I think, 'Could she be one of the 57 laying in a box that has not been identified?'" she said. "...At least it would be closure. Then now we can move on and go 'OK, what happened?' "

Submitting the DNA of unidentified bodies and that of relatives of missing loved ones is extremely important, especially in cold cases, according to David Cordle, chief investigator for the State's Attorney's Office. "Across the United States there are tens of hundreds of unidentified remains sitting in various coroner's offices," he said. "That makes tens of thousands of opportunities to ID missing loved ones."

Mr. Cordle is the lead investigator in the case of Nancy Marleine Snow, who disappeared from her Annapolis home in November 1980. He has collected a DNA sample from Ms. Snow's daughter and plugged it into the database - but so far has not found a match.
But with Jane Does entered into the system daily, there is still a chance.

He hopes police agencies throughout the country will take advantage of the technology that is out there, and pull out boxes of bones that have been shelved for years, and upload samples.
Darlene Huntsman, of Millersville, has hope that submitting her DNA into the database will help find her family member, Bernadette Stevenson-Curruso. In 1986, the 23-year-old from Essex disappeared while driving her grandmother's Chevy Cavalier.

Mrs. Huntsman, a task force member, wishes police would have taken a sample years ago. "All of these things would have helped find my daughter a little sooner," she said.

Kelly Murphy, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org

Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.


#6 Kelly

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Posted 05 June 2007 - 10:09 PM

Dear Families, Supporters, and Friends of Project Jason,

We are pleased to announce that we have begun to provide law enforcement (LE) training by professional instructors, available in the form of audio files. These audio files can be accessed 24 hours a day on our website at http://www.projectja...g/training.html There is no charge to utilize this training.

We began our ongoing series with a 4-part program about DNA and CODIS as it pertains to solving missing persons cases. As you know, it is critical that LE make use of the available technologies and systems in place. Obtaining DNA samples from the family members of missing persons (or DNA from the missing persons themselves) in an attempt to match them to DNA from unidentified remains is one method of finding the answers about our missing loves ones, resolving cold cases, and solving crimes. 

Our guests for the DNA training are Dr. Arthur Eisenberg and George Adams from the Center for Human Identification (CHI) at North Texas University. Dr. Eisenberg pioneered much of today's DNA testing protocol and is one of the world's leading DNA scientists. "First and foremost, there never should be a human remain, a skeletal remain of anyone's loved one that would be buried or cremated without the retention of a DNA sample for analysis. If those samples are in CODIS, there's always a chance." Dr. Eisenberg stated.

George Adams is the LE liaison for the CHI, has many years of law enforcement experience and regularly conducts training for the CHI. "Once you enter a sample into CODIS, you're not working within your jurisdiction, you're working within the jurisdictions of everyone entering samples into CODIS", said George Adams. "You are bringing in so much power into your investigation. It is explosive. If we can get everyone to do this, these samples will be matched, they will be made, and the sooner we match them the sooner the law enforcement can identify who the perpetrator is, and take him off the streets."

More detailed biographies along with the audio training files can be found on the Law Enforcement Training page at http://www.projectja...g/training.html

Each audio segment is approximately 30 minutes long.


Topics covered in the DNA training modules:

History and types of DNA

Best practices for obtaining DNA samples

CODIS and State Databases

Importance of Chain of Custody

CHI Services

The nationwide crisis and the need for these processes to become standard procedure


While this information will be helpful for the families of the missing and organizations which serve them, the main goal is to disseminate this information to LE. You may feel free to forward this email to all interested persons.  For families of the missing and organizations which serve them, all 4 parts will be of interest, but there are several messages of hope and encouragement in the last section. Working together, we can accomplish so much. There is always hope!

If you have a missing loved one, and do not have either their DNA in CODIS or yours, Part II discusses steps for you, and then your LE, to take.

Quick technical tips for playing audio files:

Double-clicking on the audio file on the site will download it to your PC. It may begin to play nearly immediatetely, or may take several minutes to download, depending upon which audio players you have on your PC and how you have them set up.

You can also download the files to a MP-3 player or an IPOD. 

Note: Persons using dial-up internet may encounter difficulties in playing the files.

Direct links to the audio files:

Part I:http://www.projectja...gbyCHIPart1.mp3

Part II:
http://www.projectja...gbyCHIPart2.mp3

Part III:http://www.projectja...gbyCHIPart3.mp3

Part IV:http://www.projectja...gbyCHIPart4.mp3

Direct links for the biographies and CHI contact information for LE:http://www.projectja.../eisenberg.html
[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]http://www.projectjason.org/adams.html

We will add more LE training on a regular basis covering a variety of topics.

Please forward this notice to interested persons, including law enforcement, medical examiners, coroners, and other families of missing persons.

Kelly Jolkowski, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
http://www.projectjason.org
Free Online Counseling for Families of the Missing
http://www.projectja...l#healingHarbor


Kelly Murphy, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org

Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.


#7 Kelly

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Posted 09 June 2007 - 06:05 AM

http://www.amw.com/f...ail.cfm?id=1906

DNA Testing Helps Identify Victims, Missing Persons



For the families and friends of the 100,000 people missing in the United States each day, DNA testing offers hope in the quest to finding answers.

Unfortunately, the process of DNA testing, often used to match the DNA of a missing person to DNA from unidentified human remains, is not utilized to its fullest potential.

There are more than 40,000 unidentified human bodies at any given time in the US, but DNA samples are taken from only 15 percent of these human remains. The rest are burned or buried by medical examiners and coroners.




The Answers Are In the Evidence

Since January, 2003, the University of North Texas System Center for Human Identification has been hard at work in helping to ease the minds of missing persons' families and identifying victims via the costly and specialized process of mitochondrial DNA testing.

UNT's forensics laboratory is one of only three in the United States that test both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA testing is essential for identifying bodies when only bones or teeth are available, or in cases when analysis of a hair shaft of unknown origin is requested. The process is expensive, and only the California Department of Justice and FBI join UNT in the ranks of mitochondrial DNA testers.

Once a person is reported missing, a family member can report the case to a law enforcement officer, who can collect a reference DNA sample from the relative by swabbing the inside of his or her cheek. The sample is then shipped to a DNA testing facility like UNT.

"We send DNA collection kits to law enforcement agencies around the country, and only law officers can collect DNA samples and send them to us," says Stephen Gammon, Administrator of UNT's System Center for Human Identification.

Once a DNA sample reaches the laboratory, it is analyzed and entered into a database called CODIS, which also contains DNA samples taken from human remains. Right now, UNT is holding and analyzing about 1,000 human remains.

Large efforts are being made in order to make DNA testing easier and more commonly practiced. In 2003, President Bush pledged $1 billion to a 5 year DNA initiative, and in Texas, state law requires that family members of "high risk" missing persons provide DNA reference samples.





Making Progress in DNA Testing

The process of identifying human remains is extremely tedious. According to Gammon, there are currently 11 scientists working at UNT's DNA identification lab.

"It takes a long time, usually several months, for us to identify human remains, because the DNA in the human remains is often partially disintegrated. Sometimes, we aren't able to identify human remains because the person's family never submitted a reference sample," says Gammon.

There are other complications that lead to problems in the DNA identification system, particularly a lack of coordination among the four federal DNA databases, which include CODIS. These databases need to be streamlined and combined, in order to allow more DNA matches to be made. If a DNA sample from an unidentified body is entered into CODIS, and it matches the DNA from a sample entered into the National Crime Information Center database, the match will go undiscovered, because the two databases do not share information.

Despite flaws in the federal database system, DNA testing has been successful in many cases. To date, UNT forensics experts have made 93 positive identifications, five of which were cold hits. In addition, two murder convictions have been made as a result of positive identification.
 
Gammon says that one particularly notable case solved by the laboratory at UNT was that of Marcy Bachman, a runaway who was murdered by Wayne Nance and whose skeletal remains were discovered in Missoula, Mont. in 1984.


"Marcelle's parents sent us a reference sample, and after several months, we were able to match their DNA to the bones sent to us by the Missoula police," Gammon says.

Thanks to more funding, DNA testing can make great strides in helping the families of missing persons and keeping criminals off the streets.

Kelly Murphy, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org

Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.


#8 Linda

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Posted 10 June 2007 - 05:09 PM

USA TODAY

06/10/06

Bills would require DNA help in missing person cases

SALEM, Ore. - Their faces were everywhere - first on fliers passed out in their hometown, then on billboards and even on the cover of People Magazine and in constant rotation on CNN.

After months of searching, the bodies of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis, classmates and fellow dance squad members from Oregon City, were found in August 2002, buried in a sadistic neighbor's backyard. They would have graduated from high school this month.
Now their mothers have joined with other families across the nation who don't know if spouses and siblings are dead or alive to press for passage of laws requiring police to expand their searches in missing person cases.

Their proposal "which is under consideration by legislators in Oregon, Connecticut, Indiana and New Jersey "centers on the nearly 50,000 unidentified bodies that are held at morgues across the country while an estimated 105,000 missing persons cases remain open.

Under the bill, police would be directed to send DNA samples from bodies that remain unidentified after 30 days to a central laboratory, where they'd be entered into a national database for comparison to missing-persons cases. Families could submit their own DNA samples for loved ones who have been missing for more than a month.

Similar legislation is already in place in Colorado, Washington state and the District of Columbia, said Kelly Jolkowski, one of the founders of the Campaign for the Missing, whose 19-year-old son Jason disappeared without a trace three years ago from their home in Nebraska. Future campaigns are being organized in Missouri, New York, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, she said.
"How do I know some body in some morgue somewhere isn't my son, and they just didn't get the DNA from his body, so I will never know?" Jolkowski asked. "Families can go for years and maybe forever without an answer because these processes are not in place, and they should be."

Lending her name to the bill has made some painful memories flood back, said Lori Pond. In the earliest days of her daughter's disappearance, police thought 12-year-old Ashley Pond might be a runaway and she had to print her own fliers and hand them out on the streets of their hometown.

"There are times it brings up the loss of my daughter, but I am hoping for good to come out of all of this," Pond said.

Michelle Duffy, mother of 13-year-old Miranda Gaddis, said that in one way she and Pond were lucky, since their daughters' cases drew the national spotlight and, when the girls' bodies were found, positive identification took less than 24 hours.

Hundreds of other families never get the same kind of resolution, she said.
"If the kids wouldn't have disappeared in the same way, from the same place, no one would have cared," Duffy said. "If it weren't for Miranda disappearing, you never would have heard Ashley's name and that's sad."

Without identification, Jolkowski said, bodies may be buried in pauper's graves, or cremated, lost to a family forever.

#9 Kelly

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Posted 10 June 2007 - 09:56 PM

Note: This is the complete text of the AP article that ran in the USA Today and numerous other national media sources.

 
http://www.oregonliv...ocal&thispage=1
 
Bills would require DNA analysis of remains, missing persons
 
6/10/2007, 11:00 a.m. PDT
By JULIA SILVERMAN
The Associated Press

SALEM, Ore. - Their faces were everywhere - first on fliers passed out in their hometown, then on billboards and even on the cover of People Magazine and in constant rotation on CNN.

After months of searching, the bodies of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis, classmates and fellow dance squad members from Oregon City, were found in August 2002, buried in a sadistic neighbor's backyard. They would have graduated from high school this month.
Now their mothers have joined with other families across the nation who don't know if spouses and siblings are dead or alive to press for passage of laws requiring police to expand their searches in missing person cases.

Their proposal "which is under consideration by legislators in Oregon, Connecticut, Indiana and New Jersey "centers on the nearly 50,000 unidentified bodies that are held at morgues across the country while an estimated 105,000 missing persons cases remain open.

Under the bill, police would be directed to send DNA samples from bodies that remain unidentified after 30 days to a central laboratory, where they'd be entered into a national database for comparison to missing-persons cases. Families could submit their own DNA samples for loved ones who have been missing for more than a month.

Similar legislation is already in place in Colorado, Washington state and the District of Columbia, said Kelly Jolkowski, one of the founders of the Campaign for the Missing, whose 19-year-old son Jason disappeared without a trace three years ago from their home in Nebraska. Future campaigns are being organized in Missouri, New York, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, she said.
"How do I know some body in some morgue somewhere isn't my son, and they just didn't get the DNA from his body, so I will never know?" Jolkowski asked. "Families can go for years and maybe forever without an answer because these processes are not in place, and they should be."

Lending her name to the bill has made some painful memories flood back, said Lori Pond. In the earliest days of her daughter's disappearance, police thought 12-year-old Ashley Pond might be a runaway and she had to print her own fliers and hand them out on the streets of their hometown.

"There are times it brings up the loss of my daughter, but I am hoping for good to come out of all of this," Pond said.

Michelle Duffy, mother of 13-year-old Miranda Gaddis, said that in one way she and Pond were lucky, since their daughters' cases drew the national spotlight and, when the girls' bodies were found, positive identification took less than 24 hours.

Hundreds of other families never get the same kind of resolution, she said.
"If the kids wouldn't have disappeared in the same way, from the same place, no one would have cared," Duffy said. "If it weren't for Miranda disappearing, you never would have heard Ashley's name and that's sad."

Without identification, Jolkowski said, bodies may be buried in pauper's graves, or cremated, lost to a family forever.

In Oregon, local police worked with missing person advocates on the bill, said Kevin Campbell, the executive director of the Oregon Association of Chiefs of Police, tweaking it to soothe concerns that portions of it might be too proscriptive, or outside the reach of small rural agencies.

This past Tuesday, the day Oregon House members unanimously passed the bill, was the third anniversary of the day that 21-year-old Domingo Ramirez disappeared from his home in Southern Oregon, headed out on a camping trip. His dog was found, shot but still alive, and his car was recovered about 100 miles away, but there's been no sign of his remains.

His mother, Yvonne Company of Selma, has been searching for him ever since. She said her hope is that the new legislation would lead to the identification of his body, and perhaps, a subsequent conviction of his killers, via more DNA testing.

"So many things can come when they find the remains," she said. "This bill takes it so far. I can just hope."

Kelly Murphy, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org

Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.


#10 Kelly

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Posted 25 August 2007 - 07:20 AM

USA TODAY

06/10/06

Bills would require DNA help in missing person cases

MANSFIELD, La. -A forensic anthropologist and a cold case detective have unlocked the identity of a man whose bones were pulled from a landfill in 1979.

Twenty-year-old Victor Barajas of McAllen, Texas, had not been seen since December 1975 in Mansfield. His sister, then living in Leesville, reported him missing in January 1976.

Bossier Parish detectives gave the bones in 1982 to Mary Manhein, then a graduate student at Louisiana State University, hoping she could identify them. She did a facial reconstruction.

"Over the years we kept the remains and would re-evaluate them and just hope and pray that something would come up that we could identify him," said Manhein, now director of the LSU Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services Lab, called FACES.

She recently asked imaging specialist Eileen Barrow in March to update the facial reconstruction.

In April, DeSoto sheriff's Lt. Robert Davidson told Manhein and The Times of Shreveport that the reconstruction looked a bit like a photograph on the sheriff's office's new cold case Web site.

"He just saw it sitting on the table and asked if it could possibly be a Hispanic male. It reminded him of one of his cases," Manhein said. "That's the whole idea behind these facial reconstructions -to pique someone's memory."

Further work, including placing a picture in The (McAllen) Monitor newspaper, led to Barajas' brother and sister, who submitted DNA samples that matched those of the remains found in Mansfield.

Davidson said Barajas' nephew was ecstatic when told Monday that his uncle's remains had been identified.

"He said he couldn't believe we'd still be working on cases that old. He was real happy," Davidson said.

The remains had been found at the same time as those of Michael Norris Catlett, 27, who had come to Mansfield with Barajas and was reported missing from there in December 1975.

The case file shows that Catlett, whose remains were found in a different dump, was believed to be involved in a drug smuggling ring out of South Texas. Barajas was wanted by the FBI for probation violation, according to the reports.

It indicates that they brought $30,000 worth of marijuana from McAllen to Mansfield on Dec. 13, 1975.

Their green Dodge pickup truck -without marijuana -had been parked outside a south Shreveport store since Dec. 14, 1975.

Officers had it towed on New Year's Day 1976, after learning that it was connected to a missing person. In it, they found a little marijuana.

Kelly Murphy, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org

Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.


#11 Kelly

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Posted 30 August 2007 - 09:19 AM

http://newsblaze.com...S/Opinions.html

Remembering the Missing on International Day of the Disappeared

by Jeffrey Buenger
8/30/07

The issue of missing persons is of global concern. In Europe, there continue to be serious concerns regarding missing persons in the regions of Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, and parts of Georgia as well as in the former Yugoslavia and Cyprus. In the rest of the world, other places with high numbers of enforced disappearances include Sudan, Rwanda, Cambodia, Algeria, Nepal, the Philippines, Chile, Guatemala, Colombia, Argentina, Congo, and East Timor.

On 30 August, the International Day of the Disappeared, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) calls on all governments to provide answers to families on the fate and whereabouts of missing persons. Although authorities in some countries have established mechanisms to address the issue of enforced disappearances and others missing as a result of conflicts or human rights violations, the fate of tens of thousands remains unknown. There will be no peace for their families or those societies until the missing are found and justice is delivered.

The clear responsibility to provide answers regarding the fate of missing persons lies with the governments. Governments are responsible for preventing enforced disappearances. Where such disappearances have occurred, the governments are all the more responsible for determining the fate and whereabouts of those missing.

Bosnia and Herzegovina provides one such example. At the end of the conflict there were approximately 30,000 persons missing. The state government has, with ICMP assistance, adopted a Law on Missing Persons, which, along with clearly establishing the right of families to know the fate of their missing family members, also established the Fund for Support to Families of the Missing and provides a framework for protecting the social and economic rights of the families. Furthermore, the law established the Missing Persons Institute, a state institution responsible for the search, recovery and identification of missing persons regardless of ethnic, religious, or other background ? a process that had previously been undertaken by ethnically divided commissions on missing persons that were a hold-over from the war. Today, we estimate that around 13,000 persons needs to be located, recovered and identified.

Regionally, ICMP has encouraged the development of cross-boundary networking between associations of family members. Along with providing support to each other, these groups are continually lobbying for their rights, such as equal social benefits as are provided to families of veterans or fallen soldiers.

The identification of the missing is important not only to end the terrible uncertainty suffered by family members; it is exceedingly important at the societal level. Over the past decade, ICMP has developed a comprehensive system, encompassing technical assistance in forensics and law to identify the missing using a DNA-led process, bringing closure to individual family members and helping to create a more stable and lasting peace whilst promoting transparency in and the adherence to international law by authorities. Although the conflicts in the western Balkans ended 7 and 12 years ago, there are still over 2,000 missing persons from both the Republic of Croatia and Kosovo, and another 13,000 remaining to be found in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Given that approximately 40,000 persons were missing at the end of the hostilities, this is significant progress, but it is certainly not the end of the road.

Using DNA for identifications has become a matter of course in many parts of the world. At the technical level it often represents the only reliable means of identification. On a political level, DNA offers the significant benefit of scientific accuracy in identifications, thereby pre-empting the exploitation and manipulation of the missing persons issue. To date, ICMP has provided governments with DNA matches for 13,000 missing individuals, allowing the authorities to return mortal remains and adding to scientifically based societal truth and eventually justice.

Concurrently, governments must address the political and legal aspects of the missing persons issue, addressing the need to transition from a society of impunity to one governed by the rule of law.

Revisionism and the intentional misuse of emotional factors linked to identity and victimhood are the stock in trade of nationalists and indeed terrorists. Painstaking efforts to establish the truth, to restore identity, and to seek redress will ultimately prevent the manipulation of history which is the rallying point for new conflict and new horrors.

Kelly Murphy, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org

Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.


#12 Kelly

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Posted 02 September 2007 - 07:26 PM

http://www.state-jou...article/2488512

Sister seeks closure in man's mysterious death

By VINCE TWEDDELL
9/2/07

For more than two decades, Kathryn Soto wondered what had happened to her brother.

She hoped Billy Ray Weems was alive, but knew the odds of that being the case were slim.

Still, she pressed on with her quest to find him.

Finally, in May, she received the call for which she had been waiting, but not the one for which she had hoped. Her brother's remains " bones found in a ditch near a high school in Corpus Christi, Texas " had been identified.

"I accepted a long time ago he was dead," she said.
Now, Soto hopes that she can bring her brother's remains to Frankfort in order to give him what she terms a proper burial.
It all started when Weems, who was 30 at the time, turned up missing. Soto said in the summer of 1986 her brother, who was working in an antique shop, was supposed to head down to Mexico to hunt for antiques. It is unclear what happened to him. The only thing that is known is that his Volkswagen was found abandoned in the road in Alice, Texas.

She then traveled to the town where his car was found. There she showed a snapshot of him to locals, at restaurants and at the bus station. But there were no leads. After filing a report with officials in Austin, Soto came back to Frankfort empty-handed.

Soto said she last saw her brother a year before, in 1985, when Weems visited her and her two sons, one of them a newborn.
Years passed, and Soto got on with raising a family, while still hoping for a break. Sometimes, she would become obsessed with what had become of her brother. Then she'd drop it and try to move on, only to become obsessed again.

Distraught that no leads had turned up in 20 years since her brother had gone missing, Soto called Texas officials in May 2006 and pleaded that there must be something that could be done. She was told to submit a DNA sample.

She went to the Frankfort Police Department where detective Jeff Hulker took a DNA sample and then sent it to the University of North Texas Health Services Center in Fort Worth.

Her DNA sample was then matched up with samples of DNA from the Texas Missing Persons DNA Database, one of which included DNA derived from the unidentified bones found seven years earlier in a ditch near West Oso High School in Corpus Christi, Hulker said.
Nine months after Hulker had taken Soto's DNA sample, he called to tell her a match had been found.

"I nearly dropped the phone," Soto said. "I was in shock. Really total shock because I didn't expect to find him."

Soto had also reported Weems missing to Frankfort Police, and Hulker said detectives at the department had continually looked for matches of Soto's brother, either through unidentified persons reports on national computer systems or dental records. The detectives " beginning with Russell Givens, then Tom Gillion and finally Hulker " also made nationwide credit checks and driver's license checks "just to see if Weems came up," Hulker said.
"The big thing that really solved this was the DNA," he said.

The cause of Weems' death is not known and science may never be able to determine that. Soto, though, has found some peace that she finally knows where her brother is and she's thankful that the DNA was able to identify him.

"If it wasn't for that, I probably wouldn't have ever known," she said.

Soto grew up in Alabama but moved here shortly before Weems went missing. She's so adamant about bringing him back because other than her sons, Weems is the last of her family. "This is where me and my kids are going to be buried," she said. " I think of Frankfort as my home."

The task of transporting the remains is left for Soto. The first step, she said, is to get the birth certificate listed for her brother's remains to be changed from "John Doe' to Billy Ray Weems.

Next, she'll have to find a casket in which to transport the remains. She does not know the costs involved, but hopes she'll get some assistance from a Texas organization that assists the families of victims. It's another challenge, but Soto's determined.

"I'm going to get him here " you can bet on that " one way or another," she said.

Soto, 48, who works as a caregiver for former Circuit Judge and Supreme Court Justice Squire Williams, hopes her story offers hope for others in similar situations.

Although discovering that her brother was dead was not her desire, finding him offered closure.

"Unless you know for sure, there's always that question," she said.

Kelly Murphy, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org

Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.


#13 Linda

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Posted 07 September 2007 - 11:08 AM

http://www.theboston...718/detail.html

Missing U.S. Airman's Remains Found 64 Years Later

September 6, 2007

B-24D Plane Went Down Over Alaskan Wilderness

BOSTON -- The remains of a missing U.S. World War II airman have been found and identified, 64 years after he disappeared.

U.S. Department of Defense officials said the remains of 2nd Lt. Harold E. Hoskin, originally of Houlton, Maine, have been returned to his family and will be buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on Friday.

Hoskin was one of five U.S. Army Air Force crewmen on board a B-24D that departed Ladd Field in Fairbanks, Alaska, on a cold-weather test mission on Dec. 21, 1943. The aircraft never returned to base and it was not located in subsequent search attempts, defense officials said.

The following March, one of the crewmen, 1st Lt. Leon Crane, arrived at Ladd Field after spending more than two months in the Alaska wilderness.

He said that the plane had crashed after it lost an engine, and Crane and another crewmember, Master Sgt. Richard L. Pompeo, parachuted from the aircraft before it crashed. Crane did not know what happened to Pompeo after they bailed out, according to the Department of Defense.

In October 1944, Crane assisted a recovery team in locating the crash. They recovered the remains of two of the crewmen, 1st Lt. James B. Sibert and Staff Sgt. Ralph S. Wenz. Hoskin's remains were not found and it was concluded that he probably parachuted out of the aircraft before it crashed.

In 2004, the government received information from a National Park Service historian regarding a possible WWII crash site in the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, Alaska.

The site was excavated in 2006 and human remains and other non-biological material were recovered, including items worn by U.S. Army officers during WWII.

Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists also used mitochondrial DNA in the identification of Hoskin's remains.

Harold Hoskin had dreams of becoming a doctor and was attending Bates College when he learned Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. He left college and joined the Army a few months later in 1942.

After completing pilot training, Hoskin married his girlfriend, Mary, and the couple were awaiting the birth of their first child at the time of the crash. She was never able to discuss her husband's death and did not remarry for more than two decades. She died in 2004.

"Any time I ever asked her about it, she would cry," said Joann Goldstein, 63, of Punta Gorda, Fla., their daughter.

The investigation helped shed light on a chapter of Hoskin family history that was incomplete and seldom talked about after the war. At the urging of family members, Goldstein this summer went through the wartime letters from Hoskin that his wife had boxed up.

When asked what her mother would think of the coming burial ceremony, Goldstein said, "I think she would be honored that he's being honored."

#14 Kelly

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Posted 21 September 2007 - 09:22 AM

This is not the story of a missing person identified and is quite long, so we won't publish all of it, but let you read at the link. It is the story of an unearthed body of a boy who died in the 1800's and how DNA pinpointed his identity and found an ancestor:

http://www.washingto...er=emailarticle

Kelly Murphy, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org

Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.


#15 Kelly

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Posted 24 September 2007 - 07:58 AM

http://www.recordonl.../NEWS/709230343

Tracing the unknown dead: Database links DNA to bodies

By Doyle Murphy


Times Herald-Record
September 23, 2007

Middletown — Three years ago, city police hiked into the woods east of Dolson Avenue where a man sat alone on a make-shift recliner.

He was wearing blue jeans when they found him, blue jeans with a gray button-down shirt over a white shirt. Nearby were a pair of size 9 black sneakers and a fleece jacket with "Rockland County Grandparents Association" printed on it.

He'd been dead a long time, and if anyone knows his name, they've never come forward to say so.

EVERY YEAR, THOUSANDS DIE and join the ranks of the unidentified dead. A survey of nearly 2,000 medical examiners and coroners across the country found nearly 13,500 sets of unidentified human remains on record. There might be more because not everyone keeps the records the same way or at all, according to the survey released in June by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics. Some have estimated the number closer to 40,000.

"We refer to it as a mass disaster over time," said George Adams, program coordinator for the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas.

Adams knows why identification is important. He can hear it in the voices of those looking for lost relatives and read it in the e-mails sleep-deprived parents send him at 3 a.m. The family and friends of the missing seek answers. They depend on a mixture of investigators and scientists for the closure only information can bring, even if that gives them a body to bury.

The key to identification, Adams said, is feeding a national database called CODIS — the Combined DNA Index System. Once a profile is entered, the system can sift it through the database for possible matches. CODIS will continue to search every month automatically. But CODIS can only work if it has DNA samples to sort. To make a match, it needs two samples: one from the body and one that can positively identify the person. That second sample could come from the person or from a biological family member. Unfortunately, Adams said, there have been many cases in which someone has found a body but scientists couldn't identify it, because they didn't have that second sample.

"It's very, very simple, super simple," Adams said. "We need to get the family sample from anyone who has a missing person."

The family sample is one part of connecting the gap between the missing and the unidentified. Another is the sample from the body. That usually has to come from law enforcement, coroners or medical examiners. Sometimes, the sample never makes it to the lab.

"It's not unusual for a new sheriff to come in and say, 'Guess what I found in my evidence room; I found a skeleton,'" Adams said.

It's impossible to tell how many bodies and their DNA profiles have disappeared over the years into evidence lockers, the ground or cremation fires. Recent efforts have sought to change that.

The National Institute of Justice helps fund the Center for Identification and has opened federal resources, such as CODIS, to all jurisdictions across the country. The center even provides collection kits and analyzes them for free.

Adams said more agencies take advantage of the service as they learn how DNA analysis can focus or redirect investigations. Scientists at the center have discovered bodies thought to be women that are actually men and found dental records aren't always correct.

"Don't dispose of a body, don't bury a body unless you've saved an appropriate sample," Adams said.

NEW YORK AGENCIES use the New York state police laboratory in Albany for similar investigations. Mike Brownstein, identification officer for Middletown police, said little has changed in the collection processes on the ground, but the science in the laboratories has made DNA much easier to use in police work. For example, he can send smaller samples than before — important in cases where little is available.

There wasn't much tissue left on the man found in the woods east of Dolson. A Broadloom City employee found him in a place where homeless people had often walked or camped. Police said it looked like the man just sat down one day and never got up. Middletown detectives sent his femur to the state police lab to be entered in CODIS. Every month, the system searches his profile against those entered into the CODIS missing persons database. So far, the system hasn't identified the man.

The director at Calvary Cemetery in New Windsor recently looked up the man's plot for a reporter. Orange County Social Services Department paid the $1,600 to have the man cremated and buried. He lies below a covering of grass and earth, next to the ashes of another unidentified body. No marker says he's there. No relatives visit his grave. He's buried up on a hill close to the road, so he'll be easy to dig up if anyone ever learns his name.

Looking for someone?

Family members searching for a missing relative should submit a DNA sample for entry in the Combined DNA Index System, recommends George Adams, program coordinator for the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas. Laboratories such as the one at the University of North Texas can process the samples and submit them to CODIS, but they require the samples to come from agencies such as law enforcement or coroner. Adams recommends relatives of missing persons contact their local law enforcement agency.

Kelly Murphy, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org

Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.


#16 Kathylene

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Posted 26 September 2007 - 06:33 PM

http://seattlepi.nws..._remains26.html

Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Last updated 7:21 a.m. PT

Bodies of mom, baby found in '87 identified
DNA evidence solves part of the mystery as police look for father

By SCOTT GUTIERREZ, HECTOR CASTRO AND LISE OLSEN
SEATTLE P-I REPORTERS

A woman and child whose remains were discovered 20 years ago in three Northwest rivers have been identified from DNA samples submitted by relatives, the Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office reported Tuesday.

But police have been unable to find the victims' husband and father, who investigators now know disappeared about the time the victims were found.

Police were able to identify the bodies after relatives, including the woman's brother in Sydney, Australia, came forward after reading about the case in a Seattle P-I investigative report about unsolved deaths in Washington. The series, "Without a Trace," revealed flaws in how missing-persons and unidentified-body cases are handled and tracked.

A fisherman found Raj Narain's torso in the Lewis River south of Kelso on Sept. 11, 1987. A few days later, her legs were found in the Willamette River in Portland. That Sept. 24, a fisherman found the toddler's body -- clothed in a striped pink playsuit and cotton diaper -- floating in the Cowlitz River near the confluence with the Columbia River.

But the search continues for Ashok Kumar Narain, who has not been seen since several months after his wife, 24, and their 14-month-old daughter, Kamnee Koushal Narain, disappeared, the Sheriff's Office reported.

Detectives from the Sheriff's Office and police in Eugene, Ore., where the Fiji islanders were living in 1987, have been searching for Ashok Narain for a year, following potential leads in Washington, Oregon and California, said Chief Criminal Deputy Charlie Rosenzweig, one of the deputies who retrieved the bodies from the water. Investigators are uncertain if Narain is a victim or if he has knowledge of the slayings.

"We're hoping to locate him, and we're hoping when we do, it will help us answer more questions that we have," he said.

Authorities said Tuesday that several detectives exchanged the case over the years, each time trying to "breathe new life" into it. Then a relative came forward in April 2006. 

Raj Narain's brother, Jai "Bobby" Prasad, who resides in Sydney, saw the P-I story about the two unsolved deaths on a night in April 2006 and was struck by a forensic artist's sketch that recreated the infant girl's face. It resembled miniature portraits his sister had sent of his niece. He found a number for the Kelso Police Department, which also was investigating.

"The story was so amazing. There was a breakthrough coming in. I wasn't sleeping that night," he told the P-I.

Prasad said Tuesday he was looking for his sister, using Internet resources, faxes and phone calls, for several years.

"I started tracing the case in 2004," he said.

Raj Narain was a Fijian-born Indian from a family of 11.

The youngest of the family, she was the first to leave Fiji, in 1984.

The couple lived in an apartment in Eugene, and their daughter was born in June 1985. She sent letters to her brothers and audiotapes to her mother, who could not read or write. Then, the family stopped hearing from her. Her disappearance went unreported.

The victims likely were slain just a few days before they were discovered, Rosenzweig said Tuesday. When authorities were unable to identify them, they were buried in unmarked graves in a cemetery near Kelso.

Prasad, who has known about his sister's identification for months but did not discuss it before Tuesday at the police's request, is preparing a trip to the U.S. to exhume his sister's body, hold a brief ceremony and take her and her daughter home to her native Fiji.

However, Prasad said he has not gotten the letters from the authorities, the death certificate or other information that he needs to proceed from the Cowlitz County Coroner's Office.

Ashok Narain's brother, Robert Narayan of Woodland, Calif., also called Kelso police in 2006 and said his brother had been missing since April 1988 and that his brother's wife and daughter also had vanished, Rosenzweig said. Narayan said his call was prompted by his discovery in an Internet search of the article published by the P-I.

DNA evidence and samples obtained from the victims' relatives were sent to the University of North Texas, where forensic scientists were able to confirm the mother and daughter were related to Raj Narain's siblings, Rosenzweig said.

Detectives found several people named Ashok Narain during their search through three states, but none was the person detectives are looking for. They've interviewed friends and co-workers, looking for him, Rosenzweig said. He is now listed in the National Crime Information Center database as a missing person.

"We track him in the Eugene area through the spring of 1988, a few months after the murders. Then, all indications are that he disappeared and we really don't know why," Rosenzweig said.

#17 Kathylene

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Posted 27 September 2007 - 02:44 PM

http://seattlepi.nws..._remains26.html

Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Last updated 7:21 a.m. PT

Bodies of mom, baby found in '87 identified
DNA evidence solves part of the mystery as police look for father

By SCOTT GUTIERREZ, HECTOR CASTRO AND LISE OLSEN
SEATTLE P-I REPORTERS

A woman and child whose remains were discovered 20 years ago in three Northwest rivers have been identified from DNA samples submitted by relatives, the Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office reported Tuesday.

But police have been unable to find the victims' husband and father, who investigators now know disappeared about the time the victims were found.

Police were able to identify the bodies after relatives, including the woman's brother in Sydney, Australia, came forward after reading about the case in a Seattle P-I investigative report about unsolved deaths in Washington. The series, "Without a Trace," revealed flaws in how missing-persons and unidentified-body cases are handled and tracked.

A fisherman found Raj Narain's torso in the Lewis River south of Kelso on Sept. 11, 1987. A few days later, her legs were found in the Willamette River in Portland. That Sept. 24, a fisherman found the toddler's body -- clothed in a striped pink playsuit and cotton diaper -- floating in the Cowlitz River near the confluence with the Columbia River.

But the search continues for Ashok Kumar Narain, who has not been seen since several months after his wife, 24, and their 14-month-old daughter, Kamnee Koushal Narain, disappeared, the Sheriff's Office reported.

Detectives from the Sheriff's Office and police in Eugene, Ore., where the Fiji islanders were living in 1987, have been searching for Ashok Narain for a year, following potential leads in Washington, Oregon and California, said Chief Criminal Deputy Charlie Rosenzweig, one of the deputies who retrieved the bodies from the water. Investigators are uncertain if Narain is a victim or if he has knowledge of the slayings.

"We're hoping to locate him, and we're hoping when we do, it will help us answer more questions that we have," he said.

Authorities said Tuesday that several detectives exchanged the case over the years, each time trying to "breathe new life" into it. Then a relative came forward in April 2006. 

Raj Narain's brother, Jai "Bobby" Prasad, who resides in Sydney, saw the P-I story about the two unsolved deaths on a night in April 2006 and was struck by a forensic artist's sketch that recreated the infant girl's face. It resembled miniature portraits his sister had sent of his niece. He found a number for the Kelso Police Department, which also was investigating.

"The story was so amazing. There was a breakthrough coming in. I wasn't sleeping that night," he told the P-I.

Prasad said Tuesday he was looking for his sister, using Internet resources, faxes and phone calls, for several years.

"I started tracing the case in 2004," he said.

Raj Narain was a Fijian-born Indian from a family of 11.

The youngest of the family, she was the first to leave Fiji, in 1984.

The couple lived in an apartment in Eugene, and their daughter was born in June 1985. She sent letters to her brothers and audiotapes to her mother, who could not read or write. Then, the family stopped hearing from her. Her disappearance went unreported.

The victims likely were slain just a few days before they were discovered, Rosenzweig said Tuesday. When authorities were unable to identify them, they were buried in unmarked graves in a cemetery near Kelso.

Prasad, who has known about his sister's identification for months but did not discuss it before Tuesday at the police's request, is preparing a trip to the U.S. to exhume his sister's body, hold a brief ceremony and take her and her daughter home to her native Fiji.

However, Prasad said he has not gotten the letters from the authorities, the death certificate or other information that he needs to proceed from the Cowlitz County Coroner's Office.

Ashok Narain's brother, Robert Narayan of Woodland, Calif., also called Kelso police in 2006 and said his brother had been missing since April 1988 and that his brother's wife and daughter also had vanished, Rosenzweig said. Narayan said his call was prompted by his discovery in an Internet search of the article published by the P-I.

DNA evidence and samples obtained from the victims' relatives were sent to the University of North Texas, where forensic scientists were able to confirm the mother and daughter were related to Raj Narain's siblings, Rosenzweig said.

Detectives found several people named Ashok Narain during their search through three states, but none was the person detectives are looking for. They've interviewed friends and co-workers, looking for him, Rosenzweig said. He is now listed in the National Crime Information Center database as a missing person.

"We track him in the Eugene area through the spring of 1988, a few months after the murders. Then, all indications are that he disappeared and we really don't know why," Rosenzweig said.

#18 Kathylene

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Posted 09 October 2007 - 05:03 AM

http://www.forensicm...les.asp?pid=131

Identifying Degraded DNA 

 
By: Leonard Klevan and Lisa Lane Schade,  Issue: February/March, 2007


MiniSTR technology expected to solve more crimes through identification of highly-degraded DNA samples

In the past 20 years, DNA typing has enhanced the ability of the forensic scientist to characterize biological evidence and has greatly influenced the way the law enforcement community conducts criminal investigations. In particular, short tandem repeat (STR) analysis has made it possible to determine the source of DNA samples collected at a crime scene from a wide variety of materials. However, as powerful as current STR testing can be, it does have limits dictated by the quality and quantity of the biological evidence. For instance, in cases where a DNA sample is either highly-degraded, compromised by sample impurities, or present in trace amounts, STR analysis cannot be used to identify the contributor or to exclude those who may be falsely associated with the evidence.

Analyses that involve degraded or compromised DNA samples often result in dropout of the larger molecular weight loci resulting in partial or no results. To obtain the highest probative value possible from any sample analysis, and to maintain high discrimination power, it is important that the larger weight genetic markers successfully amplify. The loss of these larger STR loci reduces the power of identification, which can result in cases continuing to be unsolved.

Theory and empirical studies reveal that successful analysis of highly degraded DNA specimens, like those found at mass disaster and crime scenes, improves with smaller-sized PCR products. Therefore, an innovative approach was explored that exploits the ability to design primers that reside closer to the target STR (Figure 1). This miniSTR process reduces the size of amplicons, which increases the detection of DNA by focusing on smaller size fragments providing the best opportunity to obtain results from degraded DNA.

One of the first examples in which miniSTR technology was applied to forensic sample processing occurred over a decade ago by the Forensic Science Service. They used miniSTR analysis and time-of-flight mass spectrometry to detect and characterize STR loci in small fragments of DNA resulting from exposure to extreme heat. Their experience demonstrated that analysis using miniSTRs dramatically increases the sensitivity of DNA detection. Hellman1and others brought miniSTRs into the mainstream by converting the technology so that it would be compatible with current STR typing systems. MiniSTR primers were labeled with fluorescent dyes and the amplified products detected by capillary electrophoresis and laser excitation. Thereby, a practical miniSTR technology was created. Because of the ability to type very degraded samples, miniSTR technology can be expected to provide forensic scientists with another tool that captures genetic data from DNA samples of marginal and extremely low quality and quantity. Thus, a multitude of previously unsolvable human identity cases now will be able to be addressed.

LEGISLATIVE CHANGES INCREASE THE NEED FOR IMPROVED DNA TECHNOLOGY


Other influences, such as legislative changes, demonstrate the need for improved DNA technology. Currently, forty-four states require DNA collection from all felons, seven require DNA collection from felony arrests, and a few states have passed missing persons legislation that requires sample collection from unidentified remains for future DNA testing. Additionally, states including Washington State, are passing legislation that mandates that DNA testing is performed on all weapons used in a felony crime. These legislative initiatives are indicative of a trend that utilizes DNA more as an investigative tool and relies on the belief that DNA technologies will continue to improve sample detection.

MiniSTR technology offers the power to make identifications from what were once considered poor quality samples or those that required substantial manipulation. Perhaps even low copy number testing will become more robust. It is expected that laboratories will expand their analytical capacity to include miniSTR testing to routinely process low-level DNA samples. This will permit laboratories to upload more genetic information into local, state, and national databases, ultimately enabling law enforcement to solve more crimes.

RESOLVING MISSING PERSONS CASES

As director of one of only three labs in the United States dedicated to missing persons investigations, Dr. Arthur Eisenberg, Professor, Department of Pathology and Human Identification, and Director, University of North Texas System Center for Human Identification (UNTSCHI), believes that one of the greatest values provided by miniSTR technology will be that scientists can now obtain complete DNA profiles from greater numbers of unidentified human remains. He notes that it is estimated that over 100,000 missing persons cases are active at any one time, and about 40,000 unidentified skeletal remains are maintained by medical examiners, coroners, and law enforcement that need to be identified.

However, identifying human remains in missing persons cases presents a significant challenge to forensic scientists, who often must extract DNA from skeletal remains. Over time (that can be up to 30 or 40 years) and due to exposure to environmental insults, such as temperature extremes, humidity, or microbial activity, DNA is often severely damaged yielding less copies and shorter fragments available for STR analysis. Also, impurities such as humic acid found in soil, can contaminate the sample, inhibiting PCR amplification (Figure 2). These conditions make it difficult to obtain conclusive results and thus impact investigative efforts.

Dr. Eisenberg indicates that miniSTR technology performs more robustly with compromised samples, even those with known PCR inhibitors, than currently available STR technology in his laboratory. He further explains that forensic scientists will now be able to use miniSTR technology to analyze degraded DNA samples from human remains and make a true identification.

TAKING A NEW LOOK AT OLD CASES

MiniSTR technology will not only enable laboratories to process low-level and inhibited casework samples, but it will also make it possible for law enforcement to re-examine unsolved murder and sexual assault cases that have not been addressed for years.

According to Dr. Eisenberg, anthropological analysis of human remains indicates that a large percentage of missing persons are victims of murder or other violent crimes. However, it is often not possible for law enforcement to begin a murder investigation until a victim of the crime has been identified. Older cases, in which identification was not possible previously and where DNA samples are available, might now be reopened and tested using miniSTR technology.

LESS DROP OUTGREATER DISCRIMINATION

Collaborating with Applied Biosystems, Dr. Eisenberg has worked directly on the development and testing of the AmpFlSTRMiniFiler PCR Amplification Kit, the first commercially available 9-plex miniSTR kit. In an examination of 130 unidentified human skeletal remains ranging between 10 and 30 years old, Dr. Eisenberg found that, in over half of the samples, STR analysis only successfully amplified and detected 10 or less of the 13 core CODIS STR loci (Figure 3).

Dr. Eisenberg then used the kit to evaluate STR loci recovered from these degraded DNA samples, and, in every case, he obtained more genetic information from the miniSTR kit than from other STR analysis systems. In addition, when amplifying DNA from bone samples, Dr. Eisenberg found the sensitivity of the kit to be at least twice that of any other STR analysis system.

The University of North Texas System Center for Human Identification studies demonstrate the substantial advantages obtained by using the kit as an adjunct PCR amplification kit with currently available STR analysis kits (in this case: COfil-er, Profiler Plus, and Identifiler) to enhance the abilities of the forensic scientist to obtain a complete human identification profile.

CONCLUSION

Commercially available miniSTR kits will usher in a new era in forensic DNA science. Detecting DNA from trace samples, degraded samples, and/or samples that contain PCR inhibitors now can be analyzed where once such samples were thought to be of no forensic value. By providing forensic scientists a tool that obtains more genetic information from old or damaged DNA evidence, more cases will be solved. Using mini-STR technology, law enforcement can re-examine old cases that were previously closed. More profiles will be uploaded to DNA databases, more cases will be solved, and for many families, miniSTR technology will provide closure from loss of a loved one. MiniSTR technology is the latest progression in forensic DNA technology and will undoubtedly become mainstream in assisting in human identification. MiniSTR technology will not only enable laboratories to process low-level and inhibited casework samples, but it will also make it possible for law enforcement to re-examine unsolved murder and sexual assault cases that have not been addressed for years.

#19 Kelly

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Posted 26 October 2007 - 11:20 AM

http://www.dailyhome...d-7j25u3426.htm

DNA testing finally gives closure to family of missing man

By Chris Norwood
10-26-2007

After seven years, the family of Jack Dates of Renfroe will finally be able to say their last goodbyes and lay their loved one to rest.
The family will hold a memorial service Saturday at 11 a.m. at Terrys Metropolitan Mortuary, with the Rev. Vincent Dortch officiating.

Dates was 48 at the time he was last seen alive near his home on Wolf Pond Road on the morning of Jan. 8, 2000. According to his sister, Roberta Swain, he suffered from seizures, and had one shortly before his disappearance.

The search for Dates eventually involved more than 200 people from various emergency response agencies and private citizens, combing the sparsely populated but heavily wooded area near his home. The search yielded no sign of Dates.

The first real break in the case came when a dog in the area discovered a human skull in October 2000. Although investigators were confident the skull belonged to Dates, it was not until earlier this month that the identification could be confirmed through DNA testing.

The death certificate states Dates cause of death as accidental.

I just want to thank everyone who participated in the search, Swain said Thursday. People came from everywhere, and they really looked hard for him. I appreciate everyone who had a hand in that. I only regret that our mother never had a chance to find out what happened to her son. She passed three years ago in January. But for the rest of us, Im just glad we could get this much closure.

Part of the long delay may have been the gradual evolution of and advances in forensic technology. According to Talladega County Sheriffs Department investigator Barry Kimsey, Dates was identified using a method known as PCR tooth pulp testing, which probably was not available in Alabama in late 2000.

Lt. Mike Hubbard, chief investigator for the Sheriffs Department, said Dates remains were first sent to the state crime lab, but the initial tests were inconclusive, so they were sent to an FBI lab in Texas.

They did the PCR tooth pulp test there and sent the findings back to the state lab, where everything was wrapped up, Hubbard said.

The other aspect of the delay was the tremendous difficulty in running down relevant medical records.

We knew he had been in the Navy and had been treated at several Veterans Administration hospitals all over the country, and we knew he had broken his jaw in a car wreck. But when we tried to get the X-rays from the civilian hospital where he was treated for that, the records had been purged. And we ended up sending out subpoenas to VA hospitals everywhere. We just had continuous issues like that.

Still, Hubbard added, Im glad hes finally identified, and the family can get some closure and do what they need to do.

Kimsey agreed. Weve been in close touch with this family the whole time, he said. Not a single month went by that we havent spoken with them.

Kelly Murphy, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org

Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.


#20 Linda

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Posted 27 October 2007 - 11:51 AM

http://abclocal.go.c...d=5568496&ft=lg

DNA testing solves missing person case

August 14, 2007 -

Paula Ann Stewart disappeared from her Indiana home in 1980 and - until now- her family never knew for certain what happened.

In 1980, there was no DNA technology. When a body was found that could be Stewart's, her family identified the bathing suit top, which was similar to the one she was wearing when she disappeared. A few months ago, Stewart's sister called police and asked them to try again for something more definite.

"In 1980 I was 13 years old and when you're that age, you think you're going to have your sisters forever," said Sherry Vitaniemi, Stewart's sister.

On June 29, 1980, Stewart, 15, disappeared from her Hobart, Ind., home after a day on the beach with her boyfriend. Six months later, a body was found in a cornfield near 104th Avenue and Colorado. There was no way to identify her, so the body was buried in an anonymous grave in a Merriville cemetery.

"Without DNA, we would have had what we had back in 1980-- which was a missing person," said Lt. Leo Finnerty, Hobart Police Dept.

Police reopened the case a few months ago after Vitaniemi called them. The body was exhumed for DNA testing. Those results positively identified Stewart.

"I figured the worst that could happen-- is that it couldn't be her. It couldn't hurt to try. She was never forgotten," said Vitaniemi.

Identifying Stewart's body is only half of the mystery. Officials do not know what led to her disappearance. Further DNA testing is underway to try to determine the cause of death. Stephen Rettig was in charge of the case until he retired.

"There hasn't been a day go by since I started this case that I have not though of her and who did what to her, who was the despicable person who threw her onto the side of a road from a vehicle," said Rettig.

While the case is being reactivated, that no longer matters to Stewart's sister.

"I wanted her. That's all I've ever wanted. If her case is never solved, that's the least part of it. Knowing you've had them come home that is the biggest hurdle," said Vitaniemi.

After police identified Stewart, they immediately picked up someone for questioning. That individual was released pending further investigation. Detectives said they are talking to anyone who was connected with Stewart and are asking the public for help.

#21 Linda

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Posted 30 October 2007 - 12:47 PM

http://www.cumberlin...a/d8sjnjto0.txt

Authorities exhume unidentified pregnant woman slain in 1976

October 30, 2007


WEATHERLY, Pa. - Authorities on Tuesday exhumed the body of a pregnant woman whose dismembered remains were stuffed in suitcases and tossed over a bridge more than 30 years ago.

State police hope DNA will help them identify the woman, who was buried with her full-term fetus in a pauper's field in rural Carbon County.

"We knew this is one of the things we wanted to do, to apply today's technology," said Cpl. Thomas McAndrew, a state police detective who took over the case two years ago.

Workers used a backhoe, then dug by hand to make sure they didn't disturb the remains, which had been buried in a simple wooden box.

The woman, who was in her late teens or early 20s, was strangled, shot, dismembered and stuffed into three suitcases that were flung over a bridge along Interstate 80 near White Haven in December 1976. The killer was probably aiming for the Lehigh River, 300 feet below, but missed.

Two of the suitcases broke open on impact, spilling the victim's head and torso and her fetus. The third suitcase contained the woman's arms and legs. Her nose and ears had been cut off.

Though the victim was estimated to have been dead less than 24 hours, police had few solid leads, and the case grew cold.

"The baby was full term, a healthy female. If that would have happened today, we think we would have probably gotten a solid tip," said McAndrew. "But it was just a different era."

The woman's body was to be taken to a lab in Philipsburg, N.J., where it will be studied by Dr. Isadore Mihalakis, a forensic pathologist from Allentown. Two forensic dentists will examine her teeth, a forensic anthropologist her bones.



Her DNA will be run through a missing persons database, although McAndrew acknowledged a match is "a total, total longshot at this point" because a maternal relative of the victim would have had to submit a sample to the database.

Frank Bender, a well-known forensic artist from Philadelphia, is working on an updated sketch of the victim that police expect to release soon.

Police have also re-interviewed Kenneth Jumper, who was a teenager when he found the body along the banks of the Lehigh River.

"Whenever you open a cold case you want to start at the beginning. There wasn't any more beginning than talking to the guy who found her," said McAndrew's partner, Cpl. Shawn Williams. Jumper remembered every detail, "like he just found her yesterday," Williams said.

Police hope their renewed efforts will help them put a name to the woman they call "Beth Doe," and perhaps lead them to her killer.

"The first step in solving this murder is to identify the body," said Carbon County District Attorney Gary Dobias.




#22 Kelly

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Posted 27 November 2007 - 11:37 AM

http://www.cnn.com/2...iref=newssearch

Key West's dead raised to learn their secrets

11/26/07

By Rich Phillips
CNN

   
KEY WEST, Florida (CNN) -- At the historic Key West Cemetery, the remains of seven unknown souls were exhumed recently from a pauper's crypt.

No one said cutting through 20 years of concrete and silence would be easy. But it was a necessary step toward some day, possibly, giving names to the dead.

Members of the Monroe County Sheriff's Office in Florida collected DNA samples to be entered into the FBI's National Missing Persons DNA database.

The hope is that a family member might have voluntarily submitted DNA to the database, looking for a long-lost loved one. If so, an identification could be made, bringing peace to a family.

In all, there are 28 unidentified bodies buried in the Florida Keys.

Some of the bodies have been buried for more than a quarter of a century. Investigators already have determined that none of the deceased originally lived in the Florida Keys. Beyond that, it's anyone's guess.

"We have no starting place. We don't know who they are. We don't know who they were associated with," Sheriff Rick Roth said.

Medical examiner's officials took careful measures to insure the privacy of the deceased. At times, they raised blue tarps to prevent news organizations from photographing the remains as they were removed from the disintegrating caskets.

Once exhumed, the skeletal remains were taken to a private area where the DNA samples were collected.

"We're removing the skull, we're removing portions of the pelvis," explained Monroe County Medical Examiner Michael Hunter. "The skull is helpful in determining age, sex, and race; the pelvis is helpful in determining age."

Forensic investigators also are hoping to retrieve mitochondrial DNA, known as mtDNA, which is inherited from the mother. This type of DNA allows a sample to be compared with that of a mother, a brother or a sister, because all have the same mtDNA.

The skulls will be shipped to anthropologists in Florida and in the midwest for analysis and facial reconstruction.

One of the unidentified bodies was an infant's. Another belonged to a female suicide victim. "She was known around town as Cinnamon, but nobody knew her real name," said Det. Sgt. Patricia Dally, who's in charge of cold cases.

"A lot of the Keys people use nicknames or street names and you could know someone for 20 years and never really know their full name," she said.

The first body removed was that of a murder victim. His head and torso were found on different beaches during the summer of 1987.

Investigators call him "Barnacle Bill" after the barnacles found on his shoes. The medical examiner believed he was about 6 feet tall, possibly African-American, and was in his late 20s or early 30s.

Solving a murder case that old would be difficult at best, Roth said, especially in a transient area like the Florida Keys. "Very difficult. Twenty years old. The witnesses are gone. The people are gone," he said.

Mercedes Cruz has been looking for her daughter, Teresa, since 1974. She submitted her DNA to the FBI database in hopes of one day finding her. 

Teresa's body was not among the remains, but it was her case that prompted the Key West authorities to exhume the seven people and get their DNA into the system.

"There's hope. Without the DNA, I don't think anything can be done, to be honest," Cruz said.

Cruz last saw her 12-year-old daughter, Teresa Alfonso, on a Saturday in September, 33 years ago. She dropped Teresa and a friend, Cindy Gooding, off at the movies in Marathon, Florida.

It was the first time she'd let them go by themselves, she said. They were last seen leaving the theater, which today is used as a storage facility.

Cruz doesn't think her daughter is alive.

"I don't know what else to do," she said as tears brimmed. "I left it in God's hands. I've just got a feeling that I'm going to find her and I pray every single day, 'God, please, if she's with you, let me know, and if she's here, please let me find her before I leave," she said, wiping the tears from her eyes.

Nationwide, the FBI estimates that more than 60,000 remains are unidentified in the United States.

The FBI began the missing persons database in 2001. But it stores only 1,500 unidentified remains, and only about 3,600 relatives of missing persons have submitted DNA.

"I just simply think it's under-utilized because there's a lack of knowledge of the program," said Eric Pokorak, an FBI forensic examiner and the Missing Persons Program manager.

"We're trying to reach out to both family members and the local law enforcement community to make them [aware] of the service that's available to them."

The FBI says this lack of knowledge about the program is one of the main reasons why the database has had only three positive hits since its inception.

Mercedes Cruz says more families need to do this so they can put their own lives to rest.

"It was a cotton swab in the mouth, and they did it in my cheek ... No hurting. No nothing," she said.

After several hours of work, cemetery workers, police investigators and forensic examiners bowed their heads as they prepared to re-bury the dead.

Chaplain Steven Torrence of the Key West Police Department kneeled down and placed his hand on top of one of the caskets in the open crypt.

"We thank you for the generosity of those who are here," he said.

"We pray, oh God, that closure would be brought and that loved ones would be notified and people would be at peace."

Kelly Murphy, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org

Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.


#23 Kelly

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Posted 30 November 2007 - 03:36 PM

http://www.winknews..../11877376.html#

Families hope DNA will identify missing loved ones

By WINK News
Story Updated: Nov 27, 2007 at 11:47 PM EST

FORT WORTH, TEXAS- The University of North Texas Center for Human Identification is using the science of DNA in hopes of identifying more than 1,000 unidentified human remains from across the country.

In Florida, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement estimates there are more than 500 human remains yet to be named.

Medical examiners in Lee County hold on to tissues of the unidentified bodies in case DNA can one day be used to find a name.

But, DNA labs like the Center for Human Identification learn it can be a rough road with no family samples to compare against. In some cases, the individual was never reported missing.

Dr. Arthur Eisenberg, with the Center says, "There's this notion that adults have the right to go missing, if they want to fall of the face of this earth for whatever reason...not to contact their loved ones...that's they're right."

That is why the Center is urging families who have a missing loved one...or even one they have not heard from in awhile to send in a DNA sample. All they have to do is go to their local law enforcement agency. The Center for Human Identification says it will send the family reference sample kits at no charge to the agency or to the family.

George Adams, who works with the Center tells WINK News, "We don't know what's going to happen today, tomorrow, six years from now...ten years from now. Remains could be found and we need the family reference sample to compare."

The Fort Myers Police Department tells WINK News it is now working with the Center for Human Identification on other local cases.

"We're going all the way back to all of the missing persons cases, " said Sgt. Jennifer Soto, "The most recent case we did was Marjorie Phillips and that case is almost thirty years old."

Phillip's sister gave her DNA in September. WINK News was there as the sample was taken by a police detective. Phillips was last seen in 1976 going to a Fort Myers bank with her then boyfriend.

Another Southwest Florida family waiting for answers through DNA is.the family of Phillip Koss. He was last seen in the Sarasota area in 1995 and was known to have ties to Fort Myers.

We spoke to his mother Louise Morgan who lives in Sarasota. She says they were able to get her son's DNA through saliva left behind on envelopes and stamps from letters he sent to his grandmother in the early 1990's.

Morgan said, "Of course we hope that Phillip is still alive and we have hope that he is still living."

She tells us she just wants to know what happened to her son. His birthday was last week and she recently published an ad in the paper wishing him a Happy Birthday along with a new sketch showing what he may look like now at age 37.

Koss's DNA has been entered into a national DNA database. The same place where the DNA profiles of the Phillips and the eight skeletons found in Fort Myers were entered.

Each month the DNA samples are compared against hundreds of thousands of DNA profiles, waiting for a match. For the families though, it's waiting for closure.

For more information on how you can give your DNA sample, visit the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification web-site at:

http://www.unthumanid.org/

Kelly Murphy, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org

Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.


#24 Kelly

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Posted 11 December 2007 - 09:43 PM

My Note: Even though this young man was not found through DNA sampling, this is a good example of why it needs to be standard procedure.

http://www.azcentral...victor1208.html

Missing 'runaway' found 8 years later


Michael Kiefer
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 8, 2007 12:00 AM

Andy Rodriguez always expected his long-lost son, Victor, to walk through his front door and ask for forgiveness like the Prodigal Son.

Maybe he would even have children of his own that he'd want to introduce to his parents. Andy and his wife, Yolanda, in turn, would show him how much love he had left behind.

Victor disappeared in April 1999 at age 15, after he and his family quarreled over a girl he was seeing. Andy and Yolanda prayed for his return but never dared to think that he was dead. Besides, they told themselves, someone would have found him.

Andy Rodriguez, 42, works the information desk at the Maricopa County Superior Court's downtown complex. He knows his way around government databases, and for the past eight years, he has continuously prowled the Internet to check court and police records, births and deaths.

Once, a private investigator turned up a man with Victor's name and date of birth who was living in northern Arizona. But when Andy went to check, the man only spoke Spanish; Victor mostly spoke English. Not long ago, a visitor to the court asked Andy how to find the county Medical Examiner's Office. Unsure of the street address, Andy looked it up online.

On the ME's home page he saw a button marked "Unidentified Persons Search," and he shivered.

"I got really bad feelings," he said. "It was so bad that I said aloud, 'What am I going to find here?' "


A family dispute

Victor Ortiz was 3 when Andy and Yolanda married in 1986. He was Yolanda's only child by her first husband, but Andy raised him as his own, coaching him in baseball and basketball. Together, Andy and Yolanda had three more children, who range in age from 10 to 20. Victor's 24th birthday was this year.

He was a good kid, tall and athletic. In his freshman year at Maryvale High School, he played football, basketball and baseball and still managed to get good grades.

But then, in early 1999, he fell in love. Andy and Yolanda worried about how serious Victor had fallen for the girl. Yolanda told him to invite her to dinner and to Mass so that they could get to know her.

That April, Victor came home and told Yolanda that the girl's mother wanted to speak to her. When Yolanda called, she learned that the other mother had found a receipt from Planned Parenthood in the girl's possession. She had gone for a pregnancy test; she was just 13 or 14.

Andy and Yolanda were upset, too. In addition to being conservative Catholics, Andy didn't want his son to be a teen-pregnancy statistic.

"If you have a kid now, you aren't leaving him with us, you're taking care of him," he told Victor.

Andy and Yolanda asked Victor to cool the relationship.

Instead, Victor ran away, first to the girl's house and then to an uncle's house. Andy brought him home both times.

Then they had a heart-to-heart talk with Victor, and they felt they were back on track.

That weekend, Yolanda asked Victor to spend a few nights with his grandmother to help her around the house. On Friday night, Victor asked his grandmother if she would drive him to his girlfriend's house. She told him she'd take him the next day.

In the morning, when she went to wake him up, he was gone, his bed stuffed with clothes and pillows to look like he was still sleeping.


Awaiting a homecoming

Andy and Yolanda looked everywhere for Victor. They drove the streets and called every friend and relative. They went to the girl's house, but she hadn't seen him. No one had.

Yolanda filed a police report, and they waited to hear from Victor. Surely he'd be home for his sister's birthday, then Mother's Day, then Christmas.

They told themselves that he was angry with them over the girl, and they pretended to come to grips with it. But still they hoped that every holiday would be the one that brought him back.

"I've been praying for my son for eight years," Yolanda said. "But I've been praying for him to come home. I've been praying for him to be safe and to open his heart to know how much his family misses him. . . .

"All these years, we've had this in our heads that he just didn't want to come home. I think the worst I ever thought was he could be living in the streets."

Andy was angry. And in hindsight, he says the anger helped him sidestep the guilt he felt. Maybe he was too strict, he would think. Maybe he should have listened. Still, he kept looking. "He wasn't mad at us," he says now. He wasn't trying to stay away from us. He was gone."


Finding Victor

Three-quarters of unidentified bodies in U.S. morgues and cemeteries come from just four states, and Arizona is one of them. There were 569 collected in Arizona from 1980 to 2004, according to federal statistics.

The Unidentified Persons page on the Maricopa County Medical Examiner's Web site has nearly 200 listings dating to 1970.

Andy first entered a date to start the search, but the victim whose file came up closest to the day Victor disappeared seemed off-target: The deceased was described as 20 to 45 years old. Victor was 15.

Andy looked at several pages before he went back to check the photograph of that victim. The man's face was too wide to be Victor's, but the eyes caught Andy's attention.

They were Yolanda's eyes.

He looked at several other pages but kept going back to the photo with the haunting eyes.

That evening, Andy went looking for photographs of Victor, and the next day he compared them with the photo on the Web site. The eyebrows matched, and so did the hair line. Then, he read that the victim had a hairy mole on the back of one leg.

"I told my boss I had a medical emergency, and I went straight to the Medical Examiner's Office," he said.

When he finished there, he called Yolanda and told her not to go out to lunch. When they were together in her boss' private office, he said, "I found this Web site, and I was wondering what I would find. It's for the Medical Examiner's Office."

Yolanda jumped up to run out of the room.

"I really don't want to know," she said. "Don't tell me nothing."


A troubling end

Within days, Victor was positively identified from a thumb print taken at a school health fair.

They found that he was buried in a pauper's grave in Litchfield Park. Andy and Yolanda are still trying to obtain a death certificate so that they can start the process of moving his remains to a Catholic cemetery nearer to their house. Meanwhile, they put a wire fence border and flowers and a name plaque on the grave.

When they read the police report on Victor's death, they learned that he had not run away at all and was probably only sneaking out to see his girlfriend.

He was blocks from her house, walking up 35th Avenue in front of Carl T. Hayden High School just before midnight on April 25, 1999, when a car veered out of control and crashed into a bus-stop shelter.

Several witnesses stopped to check on the driver, but he bolted from his car and fled on foot. Minutes later, the witnesses realized a young man was crushed beneath the car.

He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center with massive injuries, and he died in surgery at 4:30 in the morning. He had no identification with him.

The driver of the car that hit him was caught almost immediately. Daniel Esquivel, then 22, had a blood-alcohol content that registered 0.205, more than twice the legal limit. He was in the country illegally and was initially charged with second-degree murder. However he was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

But no one went looking for the family of the dead boy. He had no ID, and, as Phoenix police sources theorize now, he appeared older than he really was, and so there was no apparent match to the runaway report.

So the police report ends with Esquivel's arrest. A brief note in the court record refers to the dead person as an apparent illegal immigrant and asks that his medical records be released.

When Yolanda first read the police report, she realized that Victor never knew what hit him.

"I read it over and over and over. There's a lot on the driver and the car . . . " she paused. "What hurt was that I didn't see anything in this report . . . there was nothing in there . . . ," she said.

It took three tries until she got it out.

"I don't see anything where they try to find his identity."

Kelly Murphy, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org

Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.


#25 Denise

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Posted 21 January 2008 - 10:04 AM

http://www.dailydemo...news/ci_8034208

Warm hearts, Cold cases
The District Attorney wants to revisit old murders, but manpower is only one obstacle in figuring out how.


By LUKE GIANNI
Article Created: 01/21/2008 09:10:30 AM PST

They found him dead under a sleeping bag on the east bank of the Elk Slough in Clarksburg. He'd been out there for months.
He was wearing a short-sleeved dark blue T-shirt with a large green "M" on the front.

His body was so severely decomposed, his race could not be determined.

Coroners put the young man's age between 25 and 35.

No one knows who he was or how he got near the slough.

The only thing investigators do know is someone plunged a knife into his heart and dumped him there.

Now, all that's left of the unidentified "Hispanic/Black/White" male is a clay depiction of his face reconstructed from his remains, which now sits on a shelf in the Yolo County Coroner's office - where it has been since 1999.

"I am sure his family is wondering where he is," said Yolo County Deputy Coroner Laurel Weeks.

This "John Doe" represents the worst-case scenario for homicide investigators.

It's challenging enough to find the perpetrator in a murder with little physical evidence, Meeks said. It's nearly impossible when you don't know who the victim was.

Without an identity, detectives have no starting point to begin their investigation. No friends, no associates, no family, none of the usual investigative entry points that usually shake out leads, Meeks said.

Until very recently, that's where most unidentified murder victims' stories end - without a face, without a name, and a family wondering why their relative stopped calling.

Enough is enough, Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig has said.

The DA's office is endeavoring to establish a first-of-its-kind cold case unit in the county that, utilizing new genetic technology, might offer hope to one day put a name to John Doe and other murder victims whose killers have, until now, escaped punishment.

Momentum on law's side

Reisig's mandate comes as national momentum has been building to improve missing person databases and DNA forensic resources in the country.

In California, voters approved Prop. 69, which took effect in June of 2004, that funds and permits the California Department of Justice to collect DNA samples from convicted and will eventually allow sampling from arrestees as well.

Since 2006, according to the DOJ, nearly a million samples have been collected and logged, which resulted in more than 4,000 query hits and have aided in more than 5,000 investigations.

Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Raven, who has been tasked with organizing the Yolo County cold case unit, said DNA forensic technology will breathe new life into the county's unsolved murder investigations.

"Back then, they got a blood sample and that's it," Raven said. "A lot of times, you just have some evidence that you can throw into the DNA databank and boom."

DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleic acid, which is a nucleic acid that contains genetic instructions for the development and functioning of all living organisms, including humans.

Everyone's DNA structure is unique and can be found in human samples of saliva, hair, blood and semen - common residuals left at crime scenes that in years past were often overlooked by investigators.

"What I envision is getting all the cold cases from all the different agencies and triage them and seeing which ones we can solve, which ones we might be able to solve and which ones go back on the shelf," Raven said.

Raven and other area law enforcement officials attended a conference in Arizona in September funded by President George W. Bush's "DNA Initiative" which, among other functions, provides grant funding for regional DNA forensics.

Cases need warm bodies

Raven said there are several challenges to overcome in order to setup a successful cold case unit in Yolo County.

The first is manpower.

In order to pursue the county's cold cases, the county will need a few warm bodies to heat up the trail, Raven said.

"I realize it's a resource issue," Raven said. "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We need dedicated investigators. The problem for us in a county like this with agencies that are small, is how can you take a body and dedicate it to that when you need it for the regular case load?" Raven said.

Raven said given the county's size, it wouldn't take much,

On the investigation side, one, maybe two detectives would be enough, said Sgt. Scott Smith of the Davis Police Department, as he poured over mounds of paperwork, charts and evidence booklets that are the city's cold cases files.

"I don't think anybody in the county has enough resources for cold cases," Smith said, as he squinted at a police-generated timeline of a young woman's last days before she disappeared two decades ago.

Her name was Theresa Dawn Clark, and she was last seen in Davis on the evening of Nov. 24, 1986 at an Alberston's supermarket. She was 28.

Her remains weren't discovered until March 1, 1987, by hikers in a field east of Davis.

Her killer, however, has yet to be found.

"That one is just nagging," Scott said. "And I think a lot of people in Davis in that era can associate with that."

Scott said the Davis PD had a detective assigned solely to the case and was making progress, but he recently died of throat cancer, leaving behind mountains of paperwork with no one to pick up the trail. And with no funding, he has yet to be replaced and Clark's killer continues to bask in the shadows of injustice.

"What did this mean?" Scott asked rhetorically as he pointed to the now-deceased investigator's notes. "Why was this important to him?" he asked again, holding Clark's checkbook. "We don't know what the significance of these are, but the officer knew."

Smith said the only chance they have of collaring Clark's killer is to have a dedicated, full-time investigator on the case.

"The key element is going to be funding," Smith said. "The only thing that stops us now is manpower and budget concerns. If we had an extra body, and that body was paid for, we would start focusing on these cases right now, but we don't have either at the moment."

Out of date

In addition to funding and manpower, the nation's missing persons and DNA databases will need to be integrated and vastly improved, law enforcement officials said.

Traditionally, the venerable National Crime Information Center, maintained by the FBI, was the original repository for the nation's criminal tracking information, including missing person reports.

However, many law enforcement officials and private advocates say the 40-year-old system is woefully incomplete.

"I've heard some people call it the silent scream," said Todd Matthews, Media Director for the "DOE Network", an online registry of missing persons.

Matthews is credited for solving the "Tent Girl" case after 10 years of his own personal investigation.

"Tent Girl" Barbara Hackman-Taylor was discovered dead in Kentucky in 1968 and went unidentified for more than 30 years before Matthews solved the case.

It was Matthews' father-in-law, who discovered the body while he was surveying well sites two years before Matthews was born.

Matthews now spends his days advocating for a mandated federal system that requires counties to report missing persons into a national database to be integrated with DNA profiles.

"Even though they have a valid police report, doesn't mean they report it in the NCIC," Matthews said. "Some call NCIC useless."

Matthews said the federal government has made headway in fixing the problem with the recent deployment of "The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System," which launched in July of 2007.

NamUs is a national online database of missing persons cross-referenced with reported unidentified decedents.

Although still in development, Matthews said it represents an enormous step forward in improving law enforcement's ability to match the dead with the missing.

In combination with burgeoning DNA forensics databases, Matthews said, NamUs will make for a formidable tool in bringing yesterday's murders under the full competency of tomorrow's technology.

"Meanwhile, you have so many family members out there with these cases unsolved," Raven said. "Some of them are very solvable. They have no peace basically, no measure of satisfaction at all."

Holes to make a mansion

Like Mathew Rocha, whose sister, Dolores Wulff, disappeared on the night of July 31, 1979 in Woodland and was never seen again.

Police immediately looked at her husband, Carl Wulff, who was the only person with her that night, as the prime suspect.

Rocha said he was certain Wulff killed her because of marital problems between the two.

Carl Wulff said in court, however, that Dolores left him and changed her identity.

But Rocha didn't buy his account of her just leaving in the middle of the night.

"She was scared of the dark," Rocha said. " All her clothes were there. Her car was there. Her medication was there. Nothing was missing."

"I never did find her. I think he buried her up in those hills somewhere."

Police could only find circumstantial evidence connecting Carl Wulff - a bit of her hair and blood along with one of her earrings in the trunk of his car.

"This was before we had use of DNA forensics," said Ron Heilaman, a Yolo County Sheriff's homicide investigator at the time assigned to the case. "He never said he didn't do it. He only said he didn't do anything wrong."

After eight years of investigation, including airplane surveillance, elaborate rouses and severe harassment from Rocha's family, the case was finally brought to trial.

But Yolo County Judge Donald Balding dismissed the case in 1985, ruling that too much time had elapsed from the time of Dolores' disappearance, violating Wulff's right to a fair and speedy trial.

Rocha's anguish, however, continued on as he tried in vein to find his sister, even luring Wulff away from his home to dig holes on his property.

"If I had a dollar for every hole we dug, I'd be talking to you from a mansion," Rocha said.

He never did find Dolores.

Carl Wulff died in San Diego in 2005 at the age 70. He never to admitted to anything.

Rocha said over the years he has gone through the emotional timeline from rage to forgiveness, putting his faith in God for ultimate justice.

"I believe in God," Rocha said. "I believe in reward and punishment. Only God can judge perfectly."

Although it won't be perfect, Raven said a cold case unit could go a long way in solving cases like Dolores Wulff and many others that are languishing in the county unsolved.

"Just because they happened 20 years ago doesn't mean these people are no longer suffering," Raven said. "Their suffering more because they haven't gotten any measure of satisfaction."

Meanwhile, Raven said, he will continue to work with county and city officials as well the state and federal government to fund this endeavor.







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