Dr. Hanzlick,

My name is Ken Richards. My sister Judie Wilding went missing on April 1, 2000, from Montgomery, Alabama. I found two bodies on the Web site that I would like to investigate if one matches my sister. The case numbers are 04-1439 and 05-0066. Could you please check to see if one of the bodies matches?

You may or may not interact with victim’s family members much, I don’t know, but, I wantyou to know that your willingness to look into this matter means so much to me . . . you can’t imagine. I know it may not be her, but hope is an amazing feeling. I have spent years investigating her disappearance with nothing to show for it. Now there is an answer to look forward to.

Sadly, neither of the two remains was Judie. But the hope that the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Initiative (NamUs) gives people like Ken Richards cannot be overstated.

Developed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP), NamUs (www.namus.gov) is made up of two databases: one containing records on unidentified human remains, the other containing missing persons reports.

Currently, the unidentified decedent database is searchable. Next year, the missing persons database will be operable and will provide access nationally to clearinghouse capabilities for reporting, locating, and matching missing persons records to unidentified remains records. Within two years, NamUs will use matching formulas that continuously search for similarities between missing person and unidentified person records. What is precedent setting is that the NamUs databases are searchable not only by law enforcement, but by medical examiners, coroners, victim advocates, and families.

HOW BIG IS THE PROBLEM?
NamUs was created in response to the overwhelming need for a central reporting system for missing and unidentified persons cases. According to the first survey of the nation’s medical examiners (ME) and coroners, there were 13,486 unidentified human remains on record at the end of 2004.¹ In considering this figure, however, it should be noted that the recordkeeping varied greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; some, for example, have been keeping records on unidentified remains since the 1950s, others began keeping records only recently. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report also revealed that only half the ME and coroner offices surveyed had a policy for retaining records on unidentified human remains.²

Understanding the true extent of the problem is also hindered by the fact that many law enforcement agencies consider an adult missing person to be a low priority, because adults can have many reasons to “disappear.” Although all cases of missing children 18 years old and younger must be reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC), only a handful of states require law enforcement agencies to submit adult missing-person reports to NCIC. This results in inconsistent reporting: in some states, law enforcement submits adult missing persons cases to the FBI’s NCIC database; in other states, reports are not submitted to the FBI. ³

What we do know, thanks to the recent BJS survey, is that medical examiners and coroners handle approximately 4,400 unidentified human remains cases every year. Of those, approximately 1,000 remain unidentified after one year.

BRINGING THE MISSING HOME
In 2005, OJP brought people interested in solving the missing and unidentified persons problem to Philadelphia for a national strategy summit. Federal, state, and local law enforcement officials, medical examiners and coroners, forensic scientists, policymakers, victim advocates, and families attended the meeting. Soon thereafter, the Deputy Attorney General created the “National Missing Persons Task Force,” stating that the Justice Department would identify every available tool — and create others — to solve these difficult cases.

One of the greatest needs identified by the Missing Persons Task Force was to improve access to information on missing persons and unidentified decedents, particularly among victims’ families who have motivation to solve these cases. To meet that need, OJP’s Assistant Attorney General (AAG) Regina B. Schofield directed the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) —the research, development, and evaluation component of the Justice Department — to create NamUs.

On September 12, 2007, AAG Schofield hosted a Washington D.C. event to raise awareness about NamUs as a new resource for matching unidentified human remains with records of missing persons and to demonstrate the national database.

“Thousands of people, children and adults, vanish under suspicious circumstances every year,” Schofield said. “The remains of thousands more sit in coroners’ and medical examiners’ offices, waiting to be identified.”

Speaking directly to medical examiners and coroners at the event in Washington, D.C., she added: “Only by entering your unidentified decedents cases currently housed in your offices into the database will we be able to match those remains with missing persons records.”

To Todd Matthews, who was in the audience that day, Schofield’s words felt like a culmination of his life’s work.

“I’ve been waiting for something like this for two decades,” he said.

Now a spokesperson for the Doe Network (a volunteer group that tries to solve cold missing persons cases), Matthews was only 17 years old when a man (who later became his father-in-law) told him about finding a body many years earlier in the backwoods of Kentucky.

The decomposed remains were dubbed “Tent Girl” because she was wrapped in what looked like a carnival tent. Matthews was so moved by the story that he decided to find out who the woman was. His search, which lasted a decade, gained momentum when the Internet became a tool for investigating cold cases. Here is how Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Carol Smith described the end of Matthews’ search:⁴

One late night in 1998, he ran across a posting from an Arkansas woman who had been searching for her older sister, missing since 1968. With Matthews' help, the woman forwarded information about her sister to the forensic medical examiner for the state of Kentucky. DNA testing confirmed that Tent Girl was Barbara Ann Hack-man-Taylor, who had drifted from her family after marrying young.

Unbeknownst to her family, Hackman-Taylor had been living in Kentucky. She had a young daughter when she vanished from her restaurant job in Lexington. She had been married to a carnival worker. She was 24 years old.

Her husband, who has since died, was never questioned about the wife he never reported missing.

MISSING PERSONS DATABASE
Matthews now serves on a panel advising NIJ about the next phase of NamUs: creation of a missing persons database. This database — which NIJ is developing in partnership with the National Forensic Science Technology Center — is slated to be operable by September 2008. The general public, including families of missing persons, will be able to both enter and search for information.

Currently, the database contains information on all of the states: missing persons clearinghouses, medical examiner and coroner offices, victim assistance resources, and legislation related to missing persons and unidentified decedent investigations.

NIJ’s goal is to have the two NamUs databases — missing persons and unidentified human remains — simultaneously search against each other for matches by 2009. In addition to this ongoing development, NIJ is studying the impact of privacy laws on public access to missing and unidentified persons information.

UNIDENTIFIED DECEDENT DATABASE
Fully operable now, the second component of the NamUs system — the database containing records on unidentified human remains — was initially created by the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME). Ongoing development of the database — including encouraging officials in the 2,000 medical examiner and coroner offices around the country — is now a partnership among NIJ, NAME, and the National Center for Forensic Sciences.

To ensure that the database contains the highest quality, most reliable information, only MEs and coroners can enter data. However, anyone — including the general public —can search the database, although access to different levels of information varies.

Directors of state missing persons clearinghouses are preregistered and assigned a username and password to the system. Law enforcement officers must register (providing the name of the chief medical examiner or coroner in their jurisdiction) for full searching and viewing privileges. Registration takes a few minutes; verification of credentials may take several days. No registration is required for the general public.

Searches can be performed on a number of parameters, including demographics (age, race, sex, weight, height), body details (scars, tattoos, piercings, prior surgeries), clothing, hair and eye color, and date and age when last known alive. Search results list the date the body was found, the location, and the name and contact information of the medical examiner or coroner.

The public has access to identification photographs (if available), including digital images or facial reconstructions, sketches, or other computer-generated images. This also may include fingerprint cards, radiographs, and distinctive features of clothing and personal effects. Other case photos and records are available only to medical examiners, coroners, law enforcement officers, and state missing persons clearinghouse officials.

Another very important feature is that registered officials receive e-mail notification when case information is updated.

MOVING FORWARD WITH HOPE
Through NamUs, a diverse community of criminal justice professionals, medical examiners and coroners, victim advocates — and, importantly, the families of missing persons — now have a national resource. Still looking for his sister, Ken Richards is only one of these people.

Richards’ sister, Judie Wilding, was 55 years old when she disappeared in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 1, 2000. Richards said his big sister was trying to make a go of a pet-supply store, a natural extension of her life-long love of animals.

“I was about 12 or 13,” he said, “when the car in front of ours hit a rabbit. Judie scooped that wild rabbit up, took it to the vet, paid to have its leg set, nursed it back to health at home — then released it. She felt that every animal had a name.”

Richards knows that his sister is probably dead, and he believes he knows who killed her. Although the new NamUs database system doesn’t make that any easier to deal with, it does give him hope that, if her body is found — or if it sits right now in the office of a medical examiner or coroner — he can find her. And that, he added, would provide evidence in a homicide investigation gone cold.

“To give the public access to this information . . . I can’t even pick the right words to tell you what it means to maybe be able to find something,” he said.

References

1. “Medical Examiners and Coroners’ Offices, 2004,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, Matthew J. Hickman, Ph.D., Kristen A. Hughes, MPA, Kevin J. Strom, Ph.D., Jeri D. Ropero-Miller, Ph.D., DABFT RTI International, published June 2007 (www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/meco04.htm); see also “Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains: The Nation’s Silent Mass Disaster” (www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/journals/256/missing-persons.html).
2. The United States has a system of medical examiner (ME) and coroner offices, depending on jurisdiction. For purposes of this article, references to MEs are intended to encompass both systems.
3. The FBI’s NCIC database contains approximately 6,000 cases or approximately 15 percent of the unidentified human remains cases in the country.
4. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 6, 2005; accessed Aug. 29, 2007; see http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/243616_ maryforweb06.html.

David Hagy is the Acting Principal Deputy Director of the National Institute of Justice, where he oversees the research, development, and evaluation activities of the U.S. Department of Justice. Before coming to DOJ, he was the Director for Local Coordination at the Department of Homeland Security and spent nine years in local government in Houston and Harris County, Texas. Dr. Hagy holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Texas A&M University and a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in Political Science from Tulane University. He can be reached at (202) 307-6394.