The already-effective Cold Case Unit out of the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office is hoping to continue their success as they now expand their scope to include all missing persons in the last 50 years.
Bristol County (Massachusetts) District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III made the announcement late last week.
“Although DAs don’t normally get involved in missing persons cases, Quinn saw a deficiency in the fact that there is no statewide or countywide missing persons database,” an office representative said in a statement. “He decided to use [the] Cold Case Unit to solve that deficiency.”
Currently, the Missing Persons project has 19 people listed on its website, the youngest being 15 years old at the time of his disappearance in February 2016.
The “coldest” case is Andrew Dabbs, who was last seen on Oct. 10, 1981. He is a fugitive on the FBI’s Most Wanted list after being indicted for the murder of his girlfriend. The alleged murder took place in a car, with Dabbs pushing the victim’s body out of the moving vehicle and fleeing the state, possibly to Florida.
Dabbs is described as a Black man, 5’11” and 180 lbs., with brown hair, brown eyes and a large freckle on his nose. He also has a prominent vertical scar on his right forearm, as well as large burn scars on his upper left arm. Dabbs would be 79 years old today.
“We are trying to locate each and every one of these missing persons in order to bring some closure to families and friends who have been searching for their loved ones for years. It is also likely that in some of these cases, people have gone missing as a result of foul play and criminal conduct. At the heart of our mission is bringing justice to victims,” said Quinn.
The DA said the Cold Case Unit will employ the latest forensic DNA technologies, including genetic genealogy and other state-of-the-art tools to assist the new project.
“Ongoing efforts are being undertaken to not only identify unidentified bodies but also to develop a DNA profile for missing persons so that it can be used, even many years later, to assist in identifying a missing person,” said Quinn.
The Missing Persons project is connected to the Unidentified Bodies Project—launched by Quinn in April of this year. As part of that initiative, the Cold Case Unit is actively working to identify every unidentified body or skeletal remains that have been discovered in the last 40 years. In all the cases, the traditional methods of fingerprints or dental records have not yielded results.
The Unidentified Project currently has 12 cases under review, ranging from human skulls found in 2010, 2019 and 2021 to the remains of two baby boys found in 1983 and 1985.
Thus far, the Cold Case Unit has worked with the FBI, NamUs, the University of North Texas for Human Identification, The Doe Project, Season of Justice and Othram on the Unidentified Project, and Quinn said the unit will leverage at least those partnerships for the new Missing Persons project as well.