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Author Topic: NamUs - New Path To Restore Identities Of Missing  (Read 20804 times)
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Nut44x4
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« on: July 21, 2009, 09:15:27 AM »

I have not decided where to put this, but it goes here for now......

New Path To Restore Identities Of Missing
http://www.namus.gov/
Web Site Combines Details of Remains, Disappearances

By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Authorities in Virginia have identified the body of a teenager who went missing 14 years ago in their first success using a new nationwide database that seeks to put names on thousands of dead people who have gone unidentified, sometimes for decades.

Prosecutors in Maryland hope to use the same system to finally close a homicide case that has resulted in a mistrial and a hung jury.

The U.S. Department of Justice's National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, is an online tool aimed at naming the countless John and Jane Does whose remains have been shelved in the offices of medical examiners and police forensic labs across the country. It matches missing persons cases with the nameless bodies or skeletons.

Police, medical examiners, coroners and family members all have access to the database, and they try to take information from the years-old missing persons reports and match them to details from the dead bodies.

In the Virginia case, a detailed description of Toussaint Gumbs's body -- down to a scar on the 16-year-old's thigh -- was entered on the site. A volunteer surfing the Web flagged the similarities with reports of Toussaint's disappearance in Richmond. Using the latest DNA technology, officials helped confirm the teenager's death and finally gave his family an answer.

For Robert Gumbs, who was convinced that his son had gotten into drugs and run off with friends, the truth brought pain but also a chance to mourn.

"I just started screaming in my room," said Gumbs, who lives in New York and learned of his son's death in recent weeks. "I never thought that he was dead. The last words he said to me was, 'Pop, I'll be right back, because we have to talk.' "

Kristina Rose, acting director of the National Institute of Justice, said the potential for NamUs is extraordinary. "Instead of having this fragmented system where people go to coroners, to medical examiners, to law enforcement, we have everything in a central repository," she said. "People can participate in identifying their loved ones. They are the ones who are going to work late into the night to go through the case files."

Each year, about 4,400 sets of unidentified human remains turn up in parks, woods, abandoned houses and other places, according to a 2007 federal report. Although authorities quickly identify most of them, about 1,000 are still unknown a year later. Estimates of the total vary widely, from 13,500 to 40,000.

The Web site linking the rolls of the missing with the descriptions of the dead is growing daily as authorities and family members add entries. It is a sad catalogue of clues, some gruesome, some mundane. A woman who died in Rock Creek Park in February 2008 carried lip balm and a bag of wrapped hard candy in the pocket of her blue winter coat. A young man killed in a fiery 1983 car crash in Montgomery County had a mustache. In 1976, a woman's headless, fingerless body, naked and bound, washed up on an island in the Chesapeake Bay.

"There are mothers and fathers that, for years, wake up every day wanting to know what happened to their child. That's why we do this," said Arthur Eisenberg, co-director of the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification, which works to identify remains and provides free DNA testing to family members of the missing.

The database gives hope to people such as Darlene Huntsman, who has never stopped searching for her sister, Bernadette Caruso. One day in 1986, Caruso, among the more than 100,500 people reported missing nationwide as of this month, left her job at a Baltimore County jewelry store. The young mother has not been seen by her family since.

Huntsman painstakingly entered each known detail of her sister's disappearance in NamUs, knowing that any fact could be the one to trigger a match. Caruso probably wore her Mickey Mouse watch. She was dressed in a black tank dress, with a pink tank underneath, and pink flats. She left Eastpoint Mall about 5:05 p.m. that September evening.

Huntsman and other family members also gave genetic samples to be compared to those from bodies and skeletons. "It makes you feel like you are doing something for that person," Huntsman said. "You feel that she knows that you are still trying."

The concept of the database was born in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, when the challenges of matching missing people with human remains became clear. Medical examiners and coroners began to enter descriptions of unidentified remains in 2007, and there are now 5,225 in the database, including 273 from Maryland, Virginia and the District. This year, missing persons cases were added; there are 1,772 open cases.

This month, NamUs began automatically comparing profiles and sending alerts to law enforcement or families when a missing persons report bears similarities to unidentified remains. But so far, successes have largely come from family members of victims, or others, who scan the site.

Those possible matches are critical to forensic sleuths, who can then work to match facial features or dental records, said Kevin Whaley, a Virginia assistant chief medical examiner. At the same time, the latest DNA testing allows scientists to extract genetic material from bones and compare it to samples from surviving family members.

In Virginia, the Department of Forensic Science and the medical examiner's office have been awarded a $443,682 federal grant to help identify almost 100 sets of human remains stored by medical examiners in the state and investigate an additional 177 cases dating to the 1970s.

Brad Jenkins, a Department of Forensic Science analyst who worked on the Toussaint Gumbs case, said that by using mitochondrial DNA testing, scientists might be able to get answers where traditional genetic testing falls short. "We have bones and skeletons that are 10 or 20 years old," Jenkins said. "We can go back and revisit those cases."

NamUs might have provided an answer, and more evidence, for Anne Arundel authorities who twice have tried to prosecute a homicide case without the body of a 21-year-old man authorities say was killed in 2007. The first attempt ended in a mistrial, the second in a hung jury.

A forensic scientist looking at the database noticed that a partial skeleton found last year in Baltimore that had an orthopedic screw in the leg seemed to match a description of Michael Francis. Kristin Fleckenstein, a spokeswoman for the Anne Arundel state's attorney's office, said there are indications that the remains are Francis's but that her office is awaiting the results of DNA tests.

"We have taken this case to trial without a body, and we are prepared to do that again," Fleckenstein said. But she added that seeking a murder conviction without a body "does present a hurdle."

For Bernadette Caruso's family, July marks a sad milestone: She has been missing for as long as she had been with them. Caruso would have celebrated her 46th birthday July 2.

"We never thought it would take this long to find out what happened to her," Huntsman said. "We'd like to see her remains be found. We'd like to give her some justice."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/20/AR2009072003540.html?wprss=rss_metro
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« Reply #1 on: July 21, 2009, 09:16:22 AM »

From the link above........

The NamUs System
There are perhaps 40,000 sets of unidentified human remains held by medical examiners and coroners across the country, according to government estimates. A patchwork of record-keeping policies govern the related data.

With that in mind, the Justice Department has created the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), a searchable database of "unidentified decedents," in hopes of matching remains to missing persons, an estimated 100,000 of which exist in the U.S. at any given time.

The more information in a NamUs profile, the more likely a match can be made. NamUs has created a five-star rating system indicating how much information is in a file, a hint at how likely it might be that the remains can be identified. Information about the system for rating profiles of unidentified persons is below.

The Rating System

One-star listings include the location, date and condition of a found body (or body part).

Two-star entries require distinctive physical features, clothing or jewelry.

Three-star listings include fingerprint data, dental information or a facial photo (or artist's rendering).

Four-star ratings add a DNA profile to the information required for a three-star profile.

Entries with five stars include a recognizable face along with a photo, artist's rendering, fingerprint, DNA and dental information.
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« Reply #2 on: August 12, 2009, 01:06:02 PM »

FROM the Georgia Bureau of Investigations

Tri-State Crematory UID

Please be aware that these descriptions are the best non-medical descriptions of the remains that we can provide. In some cases, limited information is available regarding the remains. This is largely due to the degree of post mortem change. In some cases, certain findings are limited by the extent of remains recovered; as such, some descriptions are purposefully incomplete because no further information is available.

Not all remains lent themselves to a description and as a result, not all unidentified sets of remains are included in these descriptions. Such remains lacked any unique descriptive features to allow for identification. In these cases, no DNA match was made, therefore, unless additional DNA samples are submitted from their kin, these remains are not deemed identifiable.

Dates of death are estimates only, based on physical state of remains and recovery parameters. These should be considered as a guide only; if other identifying features are consistent with your loved one, then please make a note of this.

In all cases, for convenience in identifying sets of remains, remains have been separated out on believed race and sex. In all cases, please remember that certain features, especially race and sex, are scientific estimates. If the general description is consistent with a specific individual, except for race and/or sex, please note this information on the possible match form.

Scroll down to choose Unidentified remains descriptions: ....
http://gbi.georgia.gov/00/article/0,2086,67862954_119304464_88596314,00.html
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« Reply #3 on: October 05, 2009, 03:44:10 PM »

After 14 years, Richmond teen’s body identified

Published: October 3, 2009

In June 1995, Toussaint Gumbs' family reported the 16-year-old missing from his grandparents' home on Richmond's North Side.

Earlier that month, just a few blocks away in an alley behind the 3500 block of Missouri Avenue, police discovered the body of a young man who had been shot to death. Nearby, they found shell casings, but no identification.

The victim's face was recogniz able and the description of the body was similar to Gumbs, down to the scar on his upper left thigh that would eventually lead to his identification -- but not until this year.

A volunteer researcher using the National Institute of Justice's new online National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, NamUs, spotted the similarities and in March, DNA testing proved Gumbs was the victim.

Richmond police did not respond to requests for comment yesterday and Thursday about why they didn't draw the connection between the unidentified body and the missing-person report on Gumbs.

Gumbs' father, Robert Gumbs, 55, of New York was in a hospital a few months ago recovering from surgery when he learned his son had been dead for almost 14 years.

"I went off. They thought I was going to tear the place apart I was so angry," Gumbs said. "He was already cremated. I had always hoped that he would show up. If not for me, at least for his mother's sake."

The victim's mother, Hope Jennings, 49, of Charlotte, N.C., learned her son was dead two weeks ago when she called Robert Gumbs, her ex-husband.

"I was in shock. I was at work. I had to close my office door. I just started crying and he was shocked because he didn't know that I didn't know that they had identified him," Jennings said. "He apologized. He thought I knew."

The two want to know why police did not quickly identify their son as the June 6, 1995, homicide victim found lying face down in the alley.

. . .

The circumstances surrounding the missing-person report for Gumbs and its details are unclear.

Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Alexandria, which has been assisting in the search for Toussaint Gumbs since 1996, said it was his understanding that Gumbs' grandfather reported him missing to Richmond police June 9, 1995. But Jennings said she, not the grandfather, called in the missing-person report that day, and that she included information about the scar on his thigh from a childhood injury. His grandparents told police what clothes he was last seen wearing, Jennings said.

Some accounts of Gumbs' disappearance posted on various missing-person sites on the Internet said he was last seen June 9, 1995 -- which would have been three days after the slaying. Jennings said that from what she knows about the missing-person report, it "is all messed up. . . . They had me listed as 'Joy.'" instead of Hope. Jennings does not have a copy of the report, and police did not provide one.

Todd Matthews, a regional administrator for NamUs, said that while he does not know what happened in this case, there are times that "date reported missing" gets confused with "date last seen" and vice-versa in such reports.

An August 1995 story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that detailed the difficulty police have in identifying some murder victims included what is now known to be Gumbs' slaying.

Getting the identification verified often involves searching missing-person reports, police said at the time -- apparently months after a missing-person report was filed for Gumbs.

Jennings said Toussaint was not living at home with her in Richmond at the time he disappeared.

"We were going through the teenage thing. He didn't want to listen," she said. "He was between households. He'd get mad at me and go to his grandparents' house and he'd get mad at his grandparents and come back home."

She and Gumbs' father said that some of the boy's friends were "the wrong element." Jennings said Toussaint had been shot in the back during an attempted robbery just weeks before he was reported missing.

"I tried to get him to come back home at that point but he said, 'No, Ma, I'm all right. I'm going to my grandparents' house,'" she recalled.

Not long after that, she said her son's grandparents told her they had not seen him for two days. "I started calling'round to his friends and stuff to see if they saw him and nobody'd seen him. I called the police and filed a missing-persons report," she said.

In March 1996, eight months after his disappearance, Allen said Jennings contacted the missing children's center for help.

"It is really unfortunate for the family and his mom that it took so long," Allen said. "It's sad, but so many or these parents tell me the worst is the not knowing."

. . .

Crucial to the identification of Gumbs was NamUs, a new Web-based program aimed at matching missing-person cases with unidentified deceased people across the country.

The NamUs site gives authorities and the public access to two databases, one of unidentified deceased people and the other of missing people. Data ranging from vital statistics to tattoo details and dental records are included when available.

NamUs' Nashville-based Matthews said that last year, details about the unidentified Richmond homicide victim from June 6, 1995, were entered into the NamUs Web site.

Michele Money-Carson, a NamUs spokeswoman, said a volunteer searcher spotted the close dates between Gumbs' disappearance and the unidentified, 1995 Richmond homicide victim -- as well as the similar description of the two young men, including the scar on the thigh.

Allen said that in 2008, the missing children's center arranged through the University of North Texas's Center for Human Identification to have Jennings' DNA typed and entered into the FBI's Combined DNA Index System, CODIS.

He said that when the missing children's center learned of the possible match in Richmond identified by the volunteer searching NamUs, they contacted Virginia's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and learned that there was blood from the 1995 victim that could be used for DNA typing.

The University of North Texas also developed a profile for the unidentified body's blood and ran it through the CODIS database. On March 18, Allen's office was notified by the university that there was a "hit," or match, between Gumbs and his mother.

Gumbs' father was told an identification was made, but Jennings was not.

Now, 14 years later, Jennings said she believes it will be difficult to find out who killed her son. "In my heart, I just want to know why, why did he have to die? What was so great that you had to take his life?"

She was told her son's body was kept in cold storage by authorities and then cremated in 1999, his ashes spread on private property in West Virginia, as was the state practice at the time.

Ending the uncertainty has not been a relief for Jennings.

"Now that I know, it's like I'm grieving all over again. It's like added to the grief I've had for the last 14 years. I'm working through it as days go by and I know I want to do a memorial service for him," she said.

She said Toussaint Gumbs' story needs to be told -- maybe somebody will remember something and come forward with information to solve the crime.

In the meantime, she has some advice for parents: "Keep your children close. Know who their friends are and don't be afraid to be in their face and question them about what's going on in their lives, because it might save their lives."
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/crime/article/MISS03_20091002-222207/297097/
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« Reply #4 on: January 26, 2010, 12:35:27 AM »

hey nut, just noticed this board, maybe you can take a look at missing person below and see if it is a possible match to someone unidentified (deceased) in the riverside area. You were able to identify the man in cherry valley so that's why I am going to you.

Missing person link: http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/h/hernandez_adan.html
Sheriff-Coroner deceased unidentified link: http://www.riversidesheriff.org/coroner/unidentified/2006-06228.htm


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« Reply #5 on: January 26, 2010, 01:22:11 AM »

Here's another one
missing person link: http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/martinez_jose.html
unidentified person deceased link: http://www.riversidesheriff.org/coroner/unidentified/2008-05067.htm
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« Reply #6 on: January 26, 2010, 08:00:55 AM »

hey nut, just noticed this board, maybe you can take a look at missing person below and see if it is a possible match to someone unidentified (deceased) in the riverside area. You were able to identify the man in cherry valley so that's why I am going to you.

Missing person link: http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/h/hernandez_adan.html
Sheriff-Coroner deceased unidentified link: http://www.riversidesheriff.org/coroner/unidentified/2006-06228.htm


I will have to say no to a match here. The bone structure isn't the same. Also, Mr. Hernandez is 5'8" at 21 years of age which means he was probably still growing (my Son didn't stop growing until he was 24). Mr. Hernandez went missing in 1997...the Doe found in 2006 was 5'4" at date of death. I usually do not give much credence to height when I try to match because often ME's can only estimate height, but with this Doe being a fresh cadaver...it is probably accurate.
No match here, IMO.
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« Reply #7 on: January 26, 2010, 08:07:52 AM »

RE: the one above

The DOE was found July 8, 2008

Jose went missing in September of 2008

Although the reconstruction of Mr. Doe does resemble Jose in many ways...it could not possibly be him unless the dates are wrong. That is unlikely in such a recent case. Often times dates can be 'off', but usually that is in much older cases...such as decades old cases where memories fade and information was entered incorrectly.

IMO...this is not a match.
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« Reply #8 on: February 05, 2010, 11:58:26 AM »

After 22 years, Mo. family finds slain sister
By MARIA SUDEKUM FISHER, AP
2 hours ago

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The last time Stephanie Clack saw older sister Paula Beverly Davis they were sharing a pizza at a Kansas City-area restaurant and talking about getting tickets to a Bon Jovi concert.

Later that night, she heard from a friend that Davis had gone missing.

That was 22 years ago. Now, thanks to a television show, a Web site, and two little tattoos — one of a unicorn and another of a rose — Clack knows more: Her sister was strangled and her body dumped in Ohio. And the cast and crew of the "The Forgotten" — a TV show about amateur detectives who investigate the deaths of John and Jane Doe victims — have agreed to help pay to have her remains brought back to Missouri.

It's not the happy ending Clack once hoped for. But it's much more than she has had for the last two decades.

"My mother had a nervous breakdown after Paula went missing," Clack said Thursday. "We just never knew."

The story of what happened to 21-year-old Davis began unfolding for Clack in October when a relative called her after watching an episode of "The Forgotten" and seeing a public service announcement for the Web site NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. The Department of Justice recently launched the Web site that's a repository for unidentified remains and missing persons.

Clack, 36, punched in some of her sister's information and came up with about 10 possible matches.

"I was looking for characteristics she had that nobody else would know," she said. "Then I saw the one with the rose and the unicorn, and I knew we had found her."

"I was shaking and crying."

From there, Clack contacted authorities in Montgomery County in southwest Ohio. Davis' body had been found on an Interstate 70 entrance ramp on Aug. 10, 1987, two days after she and Clack, then 14, had shared that pizza. Davis had been strangled. A homicide investigation was opened then, but remains unsolved.

Davis' unidentified remains were buried in Montgomery County, in a grave with no name, no headstone. DNA testing has confirmed that the Jane Doe in Ohio was Paula Beverly Davis.

Clack and her sister Alice Beverly, 39, had searched other Web sites for clues about what happened to their sister and come up empty-handed.

Kevin Lothridge, CEO of the National Forensic Science Technology Center, which runs NamUs, said the information on Davis had been at the Montgomery County, Ohio, offices, but "nobody would have known to search there" because Davis went missing in Missouri.

"NamUs pulls all that together," he said.

After finding Davis, her family faced another task: bringing her remains back to Kansas City. Her relatives didn't know how they would afford an expected $5,000 to have the body exhumed, cremated, sent to Kansas City and buried. Clack, who lives in Lone Jack outside Kansas City, was recently laid off from a toy store and her husband is also unemployed.

Then she got a call from NamUs, saying that the cast and crew of "The Forgotten," including actor Christian Slater and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, had offered to help.

The family hopes to have Paula's remains buried in the Kansas City area this spring, near the graves of their mother and grandmother.

"She was taken from us, you know, and my mom went to her grave not knowing what happened to her daughter," Clack said. "Our biggest goal was to get her home, back with her family where she belongs."
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« Reply #9 on: February 10, 2010, 08:47:10 PM »

I think this might be a good resource to know about!!



http://www.aolnews.com/crime/article/after-22-years-tvs-the-forgotten-helps-family-find-missing-loved-one/19349942?ncid=webmaildl1



(Feb. 9) -- The ABC television show ''The Forgotten'' has helped a Missouri family locate the body of a missing loved one who disappeared more than two decades ago.

In October 2009, Stephanie Clack received a phone call from her aunt, telling her about a public service announcement she had seen while watching an episode of the fictional crime-solving series. The announcement was about the Justice Department's National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs). For the past 22 years, Clack had been wondering what happened to her sister, 21-year-old Paula Beverly Davis, a store clerk who disappeared in 1987.
Paula Beverly Davis appears in an undated portrait.
Courtesy of Stephanie Clack
Paula Beverly Davis, here in an undated portrait, vanished in August 1987 when she was 21. Her body was found in Ohio soon after, but it went unidentified until recently.

"The day after my aunt called, myself and my older sister, Alice Beverly, went online to see if we could find any information on the NamUs site," Clack said in an interview with AOL News. "Using the site's searchable database, we entered in my sister's age, race and the state she went missing from. There were no possible matches in the state of Missouri, so I removed that from the criteria and searched again. The second time, 10 possible matches were returned. Upon reading the description of an unidentified victim that was found in Ohio, I knew it was her."

The information that convinced Clack she had found her sister were two tattoos -- a rose tattoo and a unicorn tattoo -- that were listed on a Jane Doe profile for a murder victim. The tattoos were in the exact location of two tattoos she knew her sister had.

"After that, I contacted the investigating agency in Englewood, Ohio," Clack said. "It was a weekend, so I did not get a chance to talk to anyone. They told me to call back on Monday."

Englewood police detective Mike Lang said investigators had been trying to uncover Jane Doe's identity since he joined the division in 2000. "The last couple months of this puzzle coming together is pretty amazing," Lang said in an interview with AOL News. "We're happy after all these years to find out who she is and to put a smiling face to this woman who we've only seen dead for all these years."

The mystery into Davis' disappearance began in August 1987.

"I was only 14 at the time," Clack said. "On Aug. 8, 1987, my sister came over to my parents' house in Kansas City to do laundry. She did not live there and had a nearby apartment that she shared with a roommate. After doing her laundry, we went out for pizza. Both of us liked Bon Jovi, so we talked a lot about him and buying tickets to go see him. I remember it was kind of late when we got home. That was the last time I saw her."

About 3 a.m. the next day Clack's parents received a call from her roommate telling them she was missing.

"My parents went to her apartment," Clack said. "They found her photo ID, Social Security card -- everything but her. I remember going to the police department with my mom and giving them pictures and stuff. We suspected foul play from the beginning because it was not typical of my sister to take off without telling anyone. She would always call to let us know where she was. "

As the search for Davis heated up in Missouri, authorities in Ohio were also starting a search for an unknown killer who had dumped a body in Montgomery County, near the eastbound I-70 entrance ramp.

According to the coroner's office, the female victim had been dead for roughly 14 hours. She was partially nude and had no shoes. Other than her curly brown hair, the only other identifying characteristics were two fresh tattoos -- a rose and a unicorn on her upper breasts. The cause of death was listed as "ligature strangulation."

Without any knowledge of the victim's identity or any suspects, the Ohio case quickly went cold, and Jane Doe was laid to rest in a potter's field. She was not given a headstone and was labeled as Jane Doe No. 3.

The case might have gone unsolved had it not been for the public service announcement that was aired during the October 2009 episode of "The Forgotten," which is about a group of volunteers who attempt to identify nameless victims.

"After the police have given up, this group must first solve the puzzle of the victim's identity in order to then help catch the killer," reads an ABC press release from May 2009. "They work to give the deceased back their names, lest they become -- The Forgotten."

NamUs is a newly launched searchable indexing system that catalogs both missing persons and unidentified human remains. The system not only does automatic checks for matches; it also allows anyone with Internet access to search its databanks.

"NamUs allows law enforcement, medical examiners, families and the public to connect in ways not possible before," said Todd Matthews, regional system administrator for NamUs.

Thanks to the joint efforts of "The Forgotten" and NamUs, Clack was able to find a potential match in the system. When she was finally able to speak with authorities in Ohio, she was told they would need to make a positive identification, using DNA. Clack's father volunteered to be the donor, and the process began. It was not until December that Davis' family received official confirmation that Jane Doe No. 3 was their missing loved one.

"We kept quiet about it until now," Clack said. "The authorities wanted to get everything straight on their end."

As to how her sister ended up in Ohio, Clack said her family is clueless. "She didn't have a car or any connection to Ohio that we are aware of," she said. "We checked the locations on the map, and it's about an 11-hour drive. It is really weird. We don't know how she wound up there."

Lang and fellow Englewood police detective Alan Meade have reopened the homicide investigation into Davis' killing. According to Lang, authorities are trying to determine if there is a link between Davis' murder and Lorenzo Gilyard, a serial killer who was sentenced to life in prison in 2007 for the murder of six women in the Kansas City, Mo., area.

"There are certainly some striking similarities," Lang said. "What we are doing right now is reprocessing [evidence] from the crime scene to re-evaluate it and see if we have any biological evidence we can act on. A lot has changed in 22 years in forensic science."

Most of Gilyard's victims were strangled and dumped partially nude, without shoes. Lang said the apartment Davis shared with her roommate was located in the same area where some of Gilyard's victims were picked up and later dumped.

"We have nothing definitive linking [Gilyard] to it," Lang said. "The biggest thing for us is some stuff that's not being made public, as far as the condition of Paula when she was recovered that relates to the other victims. But there are some pretty strong similarities, as far as where she ended up, the timeline of the killings [and] the condition in which she was found."

Lang's department has been in touch with authorities in Missouri and says they have acknowledged the similarities in the killings.

"We're still waiting on results on some stuff to come back from the lab," Lang said. "When we get to that point, we'll talk to them and see what we can determine and where to go."

A 17-year law enforcement officer, Lang said Davis' case came across his desk many times over the years.

"I starting off as a dispatcher when I was in college and, even being in the dispatch center, we would get teletypes with possible identities for Jane Doe," Lang said. "When I went to the detective division in 2000, that case was passed from detective to detective. We knew we had a woman who was savagely murdered, but we had no idea who she was."

Lang credits the Internet with ultimately identifying Davis. He also said he feels that such identifications will become more common.

"Usually cases like this are solved thanks to advances in DNA, but in this case it is a little unusual because it was basically done via the Internet," Lang said. "So you could make the argument that thanks to the Internet and the way people are interconnected now and the way information is being put out there, these kinds of cases will become rarer and rarer as time goes on."

Paula Davis' sister is also grateful to the Internet. Her only regret now is that her mother is not alive to share in her joy.

"My mom had a breakdown when Paula went missing," Clack said. "She could not find her daughter, and then her mom passed away two years later. She went through depression and everything like that because she didn't know what happened. My mom later died and went to her grave still not knowing."

Meanwhile, Davis' family is faced with a new challenge. According to Clack, they have been told they need to raise roughly $3,000 to have her sister's remains exhumed and transported back to Missouri. Lang confirmed that the family is required to cover the costs.

"We checked to see if a local victim impact group would help us, but they said we did not qualify because the case was over two years old," Clack said. "I was laid off from work four days before Christmas, so we are not sure how we are going to pay for everything."

Clack was recently contacted by Mark Friedman, executive producer of "The Forgotten." According to Clack, Friedman has offered to help pay some of the expenses involved in bringing her sister home.

"I don't know how much they have sent, but I know Mark said that he sent an envelope off to our bank," Clack said, adding that her family plans to bury Davis in a Catholic cemetery next to her mother.

"We are very pleased that watching 'The Forgotten' helped lead to the identification of Paula Davis. The series focuses on this topic week to week, so it is very rewarding to help in this specific case for her family," Friedman told AOL News.

Christian Slater, the actor who plays Alex Donovan on "The Forgotten," also mentioned Davis' case during a Thursday appearance on "Lopez Tonight."

"To get the opportunity to do something on TV ... that actually can make a real, significant difference in people's lives and genuinely give them closure is huge," he said.

In addition to help from "The Forgotten," the South Carolina band Night Vision is holding a fundraiser in Aiken, S.C., on Feb 27. All proceeds will go to a memorial fund that has been set up in Davis' name.

"We are so thankful for all the help," Clack said. "Once this is all said and done, our next goal is to help others by raising awareness. If my aunt had not heard about that Web site, we may have never known what happened to my sister."
Filed under: Nation, Crime
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PUT ON YOUR BIG GIRL PANTIES AND GET OVER IT!  It's not about you or me.....It's about the Missing and the Murdered
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« Reply #10 on: February 11, 2010, 08:17:21 AM »

Thanks Sunny! I thought we had this somewhere in the missing threads, but I can't find it now. I'll set this to Sticky' 
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« Reply #11 on: February 11, 2010, 01:04:13 PM »

Nut44x4

The other thread is here under Missing Found Deceased:

http://scaredmonkeys.net/index.php?topic=5746.0

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« Reply #12 on: February 28, 2010, 10:13:00 AM »

Thanks!! Now I know that at least THIS TIME I am not losing my mind, lol.
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« Reply #13 on: February 28, 2010, 10:14:23 AM »

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

February 27, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

Naming a victim

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

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

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

Down to one

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No lack of cases

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/crime/internet-databases-help-police-solve-missing-persons-cases-571875.html?printArticle=y
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« Reply #14 on: March 07, 2010, 03:14:25 PM »

Database can crack missing person cases _ if used

March 7, 2010, 1:56PM

MINNEAPOLIS — A new online database promises to crack some of the nation's 100,000 missing persons cases and provide answers to desperate families, but only a fraction of law enforcement agencies are using it.

The clearinghouse, dubbed NamUs (Name Us), offers a quick way to check whether a missing loved one might be among the 40,000 sets of unidentified remains that languish at any given time with medical examiners across the country. NamUs is free, yet many law enforcement agencies still aren't aware of it, and others aren't convinced they should use their limited staff resources to participate.

Janice Smolinski hopes that changes — and soon. Her son, Billy, was 31 when he vanished five years ago. The Cheshire, Conn., woman fears he was murdered, his body hidden away.

She's now championing a bill in Congress, named "Billy's Law" after her son, that would set aside more funding and make other changes to encourage wider use of NamUs. Only about 1,100 of the nearly 17,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide are registered to use the system, even though it already has been hailed for solving 16 cases since it became fully operational last year.

"As these cases become more well known, as people learn about the successes of NamUs, more and more agencies are going to want to be part of it," said Kristina Rose, acting director of the National Institute of Justice at the Justice Department.

Before NamUs, families and investigators had to go through the slow process of checking with medical examiner's offices one by one. As the Smolinski family searched for clues to Billy's fate, they met a maze of federal, state and nonprofit missing person databases that weren't completely public and didn't share information well with each other.

NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, allows one-stop sleuthing for amateurs, families and police. Anyone can enter all the data they have on a missing person, including descriptions, photos, fingerprints, dental records and DNA. Medical examiners can enter the same data on unidentified bodies, and anyone can search the database for potential matches that warrant further investigation.

So far, about 6,200 sets of remains and nearly 2,800 missing people have been entered, said Kevin Lothridge, CEO of the National Forensic Science Technology Center in Largo, Fla., which runs NamUs for the Justice Department.

Detective Jim Shields of the Omaha, Neb., Police Department hadn't heard about NamUs until he saw a presentation at a conference in 2008. He then had a local volunteer associated with NamUs input his data on several missing people.

Among them was Luis Fernandez, who had been missing for nearly a year before his family went to police in 2008. Shields didn't have a lot on Fernandez, a known gang member who'd been in and out of jail — only gender, race, height, weight, age and some data on his tattoos.

It proved to be enough. Just a few weeks later, similarities were spotted with the unidentified remains of a homicide victim found in a farm field in Iowa in 2007. In January, a lab informed Shields it had a DNA match — and that he could break the news to Fernandez' family.

"I could say fairly certainly that this would never have been solved if not for NamUs," Shields said.

Some other recent successes:

_ Paula Beverly Davis, of the Kansas City, Mo., area, had been missing for 22 years until a relative saw a public service announcement on TV in October for NamUs and told her sister, who gave it a try. Among the 10 matches her sister found were a body dumped in Ohio in 1987 that had the same rose and unicorn tattoos as her sister. DNA tests confirmed the body was Davis.

_ Sonia Lente disappeared in 2002. Last June, an amateur cybersleuth with the Doe Network, a nationwide volunteer group that helps law enforcement solve cold cases, noticed similarities between Lente's description in NamUs and an unidentified body found near Albuquerque, N.M., in 2004. Dental records later established it was Lente.

Detective Stuart Somershoe of the Phoenix Police Department said his agency, which has over 500 open missing persons cases, just finished entering 100 cases into NamUs. He's hopeful his department can make a match.

"It's kind of time-consuming but I think it's a worthwhile program," Somershoe said.

NamUs grew out of a Justice Department task force working on the challenge of solving missing persons cases. One need that the task force identified was to give people who could help solve cases better access to database information.

"Billy's Law" sailed through the House late last month and is pending in the Senate, where supporters are confident it will easily pass.

The bill would authorize $10 million in grants annually that police, sheriffs, medical examiners and coroners could use to train people to use NamUs and to help cover the costs of entering data into the system. It would also authorize another $2.4 million a year to run the system and ensure permanent funding.

The bill would also link NamUs with a major FBI crime database that's now available only to law enforcement, partly because it contains sensitive information about ongoing investigations. That confidential data would be withheld from NamUs when necessary.

Billy Smolinski, of Waterbury, Conn., was last seen Aug. 24, 2004, when he asked a neighbor to look after his dog. His pickup truck was later found outside his home, though not where he usually parked it. His wallet and other belongings were still inside.

The Smolinski family first struggled to get police to take a missing adult case seriously. It took a long time for investigators to finally conclude Billy had been killed, perhaps as a result of a love triangle gone sour. The family put up reward posters, searched places where they thought his body might have been hidden and kept pressure on police.

Smolinski said she came to see how police were often overwhelmed, but to her NamUs is a "no-brainer."

"If they find remains I'm hopeful they'll identify him through NamUs," Smolinski said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/6901665.html
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« Reply #15 on: March 07, 2010, 04:51:04 PM »

Skip to comments.

Free online database can help solve missing person mysteries, if law enforcement will use it
Cox News ^ | 3-7-10 | STEVE KARNOWSKI, Associated Press Writer

Posted on Sunday, March 07, 2010 2:44:08 PM by cajuncow

MINNEAPOLIS (Associated Press) -- A new online database promises to crack some of the nation's 100,000 missing persons cases and provide answers to desperate families, but only a fraction of law enforcement agencies are using it.

The clearinghouse, dubbed NamUs (Name Us), offers a quick way to check whether a missing loved one might be among the 40,000 sets of unidentified remains that languish at any given time with medical examiners across the country. NamUs is free, yet many law enforcement agencies still aren't aware of it, and others aren't convinced they should use their limited staff resources to participate.


(Excerpt) Read more at ww2.cox.com ...
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« Reply #16 on: March 08, 2010, 11:01:35 AM »

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361037,00.asp

NamUs Missing Person Database Goes Unused by 93 Percent of Law Enforcement
03.07.10

by David Murphy

Since 2009, families and medical examiners have had access to a free online database that's designed to assist in the identification of more than 40,000 sets of unidentified remains across the country. Dubbed "NamUs," short for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, the program allows both parties to enter identifying characteristics of a missing person or unidentified body in the hopes that this information exchange will help match a face to a fate.

It's a grim consolation for those whose friends or families have been affected by violence or accidents. Nevertheless, the Associated Press reports that the free service has helped solved 16 cases since the cross-matching feature went live in July of last year. The numbers don't end there: the service is home to around 6,200 unidentified sets of remains, 2,800 missing people, and--according to The Crime Report--has been accessed (on the missing persons front) by more than 185,000 people as of January 2009.

What's the problem? According to the AP, only 1,100 of the nation's 17,000 law enforcement agencies, or 6.5 percent, are registered with the service. That's partly a publicity issue, as numerous law enforcement agencies simply don't know the service exists. Others are more leery about using limited resources to participate in the service.

That doesn't sit well with Janice Smolinski, sponsor of the "Billy's Law" bill that aims to encourage wider use of the NamUs system. If passed--it's already received House approval and remains pending in the Senate--the bill would generate $10 million in annual grants for law enforcement agencies to both train new users and help them resource the data entry process of adding new details to the system. The bill would also allow for an annual grant of $2.4 million to keep NamUS, as a whole, up-and-running.

As for how the system actually works, NamUs profiles are rated based on a one-to-five star system. A one-star profile contains scant details about a person: perhaps a name, or the location where they disappeared, but that's it. A five-star profile is the whole kit-and-caboodle, with a full swath of details and identifying characteristics, as well as a picture or rendering of a person's likely image.

According to The Crime Report, there's currently no mandate that forces law enforcement to database details about a 21-or-over missing adult. Billy's Law won't change that aspect of the system, but it will allow the database to link up with the National Crime Information Center Missing and Unidentified Person File database in hopes that this could increase the detail of NamUS profiles (or, conversely, fill out the system with more.) Similarly, law enforcement will be required to submit missing persons reports for children (21-and-under) to the NamUs database.

For Smolinski, the legislative victory would be bittersweet. She remains confident that the NamUs database will give her the details she needs to close her own case--that of her son, Billy, who went missing in Connecticut in 2004.

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« Reply #17 on: March 08, 2010, 03:18:52 PM »

NamUs Missing Person Database Goes Unused by 93 Percent of Law Enforcement

Yes.......and there is no excuse!!!
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« Reply #18 on: May 10, 2010, 07:48:13 AM »

NamUs helps solve missing-persons cases
Updated 4h 1m ago 

The words flashed on her computer late last year and tears instantly poured out.
More than two decades after her sister Paula Beverly Davis disappeared, Alice Beverly finally had found out what happened to her. The news came from a website known as NamUs, an acronym for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, which matches missing-person cases with unidentified human remains nationwide.

Even though she learned her missing sister had been murdered in 1987, Beverly says the news gave her some sense of closure.

"I just broke down crying instantly," she recalls. "It was like, 'We found her!' "

NamUs became fully operational last year and so far is credited with solving 17 cases, spokeswoman Michele Money-Carson says.

Davis vanished from Kansas City, Mo., in the summer of 1987. She was strangled, and her body left near a freeway outside Dayton, Ohio, hours after she was reported missing. But since no one in Ohio knew who she was, she was buried as a Jane Doe in an Ohio cemetery, Beverly says.

"We never gave up," Beverly says.

Davis' body will be exhumed from that cemetery today, another sister, Stephanie Clack, learned last week. She will be cremated in Ohio, and the sisters will bring her ashes back home to Missouri, Clack says.

The NamUs concept began with medical examiners, who called for a nationwide system in 2005 to provide a comprehensive site to help identify missing people, says Kevin Lothridge, CEO of the National Forensic Science Technology Center.

The Largo, Fla.-based center partners with the U.S. Department of Justice to operate the site under an agreement reached in 2007. It cost about $1.8 million to operate last year, Money-Carson says.

NamUs — at www.namus.gov— essentially has two sets of information. The first is known details of missing-person cases around the nation provided by law officers and relatives of the missing. The other is a database of unknown human remains in morgues across the country; details are entered by coroners and medical examiners.

It allows one-stop sleuthing for amateurs, families and police. Anyone can search and enter data they have on a missing person. Medical examiners can enter data on unidentified bodies, and anyone can search the database for potential matches, Money-Carson says.

In Las Vegas, Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy is among several coroners nationwide who worked on developing the system after a local site convinced him of its power to solve missing-person cases. In 2002, Clark County began posting details of unidentified bodies and human remains on its own website. Within hours, they had identified the first such case and eventually solved about 40 cases, he says.

Tips and leads came not only from relatives of victims, but also "armchair detectives," citizens who investigated cases on their own, he says. "I believe that the light of hope burns eternally bright," Murphy says. "We have 40 cases that indicate that it burns very bright."

"It's a great tool once people find out about it. Getting the word out is key," says Jim Shields, an Omaha police detective who learned about the site at a law enforcement conference. Shields recently worked with Iowa authorities to resolve the case of a missing person in Omaha whose remains were found outside of Des Moines.

A bill now in Congress could help fuel more use of the system. The legislation would authorize $10 million a year in grants for agencies to train employees to use NamUs and cover some data entry costs. It was passed by the House and is now in the Senate, says Francis Creighton, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.

Last October, Beverly and Clack were at home just outside Kansas City when they saw a NamUs public service announcement.

They logged on, and one of their searches resulted in 10 pages of records, she says. On the last page was case No. 985 — a description of their sister Paula Beverly Davis, including information about tattoos of a unicorn and a red rose.

"When we saw those tattoos, I knew," Beverly says.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-05-10-namus_N.htm?csp=34
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« Reply #19 on: May 12, 2010, 02:15:02 PM »

Tech Q&A with Kevin Lothridge of NamUs

NamUs is a free web-based tool that serves as a national repository for information on missing persons and unidentified remains

Nationwide, there are as many as 100,000 active missing persons cases at a given time — there may be as many as 40,000 human remains which presently are unidentified. On top of that, some 4,400 unidentified remains are found every year and more than a thousand of those remains continue to be unidentified after one year.

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) is a free web-based tool that serves as a national repository for information on missing persons and unidentified remains. It is designed to facilitate the work of the diverse community of individuals and organizations who investigate missing and unidentified persons and works across borders of states, counties, municipalities and precincts. NamUs is accessible to everyone, but geared to law enforcement, medical examiners/coroners, families of missing persons, and victim advocates — to assist in solving of missing and unidentified persons cases in the United States.

NamUs has been extensively covered by local and national media, with articles from CNN, the Associated Press, and others appearing online throughout the past 18 months. In fact, as recently as yesterday afternoon, an excellent item appeared in USA Today.  However, the offering continues to remain unknown to police officers and agencies.

A summary of some of NamUs’ success stories can be cases can be found online but we also wanted to learn more about this unique means of communication available to police agencies and officers. PoliceOne recently caught up with Kevin Lothridge, CEO of the National Forensic Science Technology Center, which runs NamUs.

PoliceOne: When and how was NamUs created?

Kevin Lothridge: In the spring of 2005, NIJ assembled Federal, State, and local law enforcement officials, medical examiners and coroners, forensic scientists, key policymakers, and victim advocates and families from around the country for a national strategy meeting in Philadelphia. The meeting, called the “Identifying the Missing Summit,” defined major challenges in investigating and solving missing persons and unidentified decedent cases. As a result of that summit, the Deputy Attorney General charged the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) with identifying every available tool—and creating others—to solve these cases. The National Missing Persons Task Force identified the need to improve access to database information by people who can help solve missing persons and unidentified decedent cases. NamUs was created to meet that need.

P1: Who can use NamUs and how is it accessed?

Lothridge: Anyone can access NamUs to search or track cases, print missing persons posters, find resources and even map out travel routes in an effort to locate a missing person.

Registered users get access to different system capabilities depending on their role. Law Enforcement—cops from to communications center personnel to detectives and even department commanders, can access large portions of the database, while the general public has a totally different level of access. Other authorized individuals like Medical Examiners, Coroners, Forensic Anthropologists, and Forensic Odontologists have the ability to access certain areas as well.

Users are verified by NamUs and, after registering, anyone can enter a missing persons case. All cases are verified prior to information being published. Users may also register on the unidentified side, but only medical examiner/coroners may enter cases.

You must submit a registration request online or by clicking the 'Register' button on the left navigation bar of the FindtheMissing.org website.

P1: What agencies or officers are already using NamUs?

Lothridge: Currently, more than 1,500 law enforcement personnel are using NamUs and there is representation in every state. There are many local, county and state law enforcement agencies using NamUs and the number is increasing. More than 280 new law enforcement users registered in a single week of March 2010. Recently, a partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) was established with NamUs to exchange case information.

NamUs has also added a coordinator position to provide case analysis and data exchange support for a partnership with the FBI Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP).

P1: What type of information is contained within each NamUs record?

Lothridge: Every case can contain a large variety of information about the missing or unidentified person. The more detailed the information, the stronger the case is for matching or other leads. Cases include basic demographic information, circumstances, locations, key dates (last seen, last known alive, etc.), medical information, clothing, accessories, transportation details, images and even tattoos. The system can also handle dental records, fingerprints and the status of DNA testing, all of which can create a very strong case record. Cases can be printed or emailed as a complete record.

P1: What does NamUs cost?  Said differently, how can this possibly be free?

Lothridge: The National Institute of Justice realizes the importance of solving the cases throughout the United States. NamUs is funded by the NIJ (Award #. 2007-IJ-CX-K023) and managed by the National Forensic Science Technology Center to be made available to law enforcement agencies at no cost. In addition to the system, assistance with case migration, forensic services and training are also available.

P1: Is there a set of system requirements to run NamUs?

Lothridge: NamUs is available to anyone who can access the Internet. There is no downloadable portion of the software, so it can be accessed from anywhere.

P1: What success have you experience with NamUs?

Lothridge: NamUs has aided in solving an average of a case per month since its launch in January 2009. The system has experienced significant growth in 17 months, and is achieving its goal — to provide answers and resolutions for missing and unidentified persons around the country.

One specific example of success comes from Officer Jim Shields from the Omaha Police Department. In July 2007, Luis Fernandez went missing in Omaha, Nebraska. Fernandez’s case was entered into NamUs in March 2009 after Officer Shields learned about NamUs at a University of North Texas Center for Human Identification conference. On April 6, 2009, a civilian contacted Officer Shields and alerted him of a possible match between Fernandez and an unidentified person in Iowa. Dental records were inconclusive, so family DNA reference samples were taken and on January 11, 2010, the unidentified person in Iowa was found to be Fernandez.

In this case, Officer Shields entered his missing person cases into NamUs in hopes of obtaining leads on some of his cold cases. Because a coroner in another state had also used the system on the unidentified remains side, the two agencies were able to close their cases.

P1: How does an officer get started using NamUs?

Lothridge: The simplest way to get started is to visit NamUs.gov and take a look at the system. Registration is simple and quick and will give officers access to additional tools. Free training is also available, via online pre-recorded training sessions. Watch these convenient overviews of how to register for NamUs, login, track cases, use advanced search, create a new missing persons case and enter case details.
http://www.policeone.com/police-products/communications/articles/2061217-Tech-Q-A-with-Kevin-Lothridge-of-NamUs/
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