BY DAVID OVALLE
The Miami Herald

August 18, 2002

When gardeners found a skeleton in the thick weeds of a vacant Miami lot last month, the remains were taken to the Miami-Dade medical examiner's office. Today, the bones lie in the morgue's cooler, waiting for a forensic scientist from the University of Florida to start putting together a picture of what the person might have looked like in life.

That image may soon be seen by thousands on the Internet.

A newspaper story about the skeleton drew the attention of Fort Lauderdale resident Yvonne Jansen, one of the volunteers who operate the Doe Network (DoeNetwork.org), a nonprofit website that tries to match unidentified remains with missing people. It is the most high-profile website dedicated to helping identify nameless bodies, with more than 100 volunteers in the United States, Europe and Canada.

It features about 400 profiles of nameless bodies, including 60 found in Florida, which ranks second behind Texas. The South, including Florida, is a hot spot for reports of unidentified bodies, organizers say.

Unidentified bodies are ''the bottom of the food chain in terms of police activity,'' said Jerry Nance, a case manager for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

MOSTLY `FORGOTTEN'

''The Doe Network is probably the most comprehensive Internet site for unidentified bodies,'' Nance said. ``Every now and then, a missing person tugs at the heartstrings of a community. But the majority of the time, they are kind of forgotten about.''

The Doe Network serves as an alternative to a missing-person report, because many police agencies, including Miami-Dade and Broward County, do not post missing-person information or unidentified-body reports online.

On any given day, there are just under 100,000 people in the active missing-persons federal database, according to the FBI. While missing-people reports are common on law enforcement and other websites, few sites are like the Doe Network in including profiles of unidentified bodies.

''The Internet brings the world closer. You have to have a good way to communicate,'' said Todd Matthews, the Doe Network's media director, who is based in Tennessee. ``And you can't share info about missing people if you don't have anyone to talk to.''

The cases featured on the website, both unidentified bodies and missing people, span decades. There's the worn skeleton of a woman found in 1976 in the shrubs of Grassy Key. And the body of a man found floating in a Boca Raton canal in 1987. He had Spanish-language cassettes tucked in his shirt pocket and a bullet lodged in his head.

For the families of those missing, the Web has provided an invaluable way to scour the nation for clues. Any nugget of information helps, any tidbit a possible link.

Jansen, now the website's Florida director, found the site last year through an online friend whose stepdaughter had disappeared. Soon, Jansen was hooked, drawn by the lonely legacy of unidentified bodies. When one of Jansen's own friends disappeared from Fort Lauderdale in January, the site took on new importance.

''A lot of these people searching have maybe lost a loved one that way or a friend's child turned up missing,'' said Charles E. Holt, a recently retired Miami-Dade police forensic artist who volunteers his skills to the Doe Network. ``It stays with them and they want to help.''

Sometimes, those searches can border on self-proclaimed obsession. Take the case of ''Tent Girl,'' a Jane Doe found wrapped in a plastic tent on a rural roadside in Kentucky in 1968. Matthews heard about the case in 1987 and spent more than a decade pouring over missing-person reports before posting her information on the Web in 1992.

He admits it took a toll on his personal life. But then a woman who stumbled upon the posting e-mailed Matthews, saying she thought it was her sister. In 1998, after the state medical examiner exhumed the body, DNA results confirmed "Tent Girl" was Barbara Hackman Taylor, a Kentucky woman missing since 1967.

Of course, successful matchups are rare. Since the website went up in 1999 and was subsequently reorganized last year, only four unknown bodies have been directly identified. But Matthews and others say sparking activity in identifying bodies is just as important as tangible success.

But the police are sometimes a little more skeptical.

''Sometime [law enforcement officials] are reluctant to deal with civilians,'' Holt said. ``Maybe they don't have the expertise, but they have the energy. If these people find something that is a lead, law enforcement should follow up on it.''

The idea for the website's format began, Matthews said, when a (Yahoo) group of Web users dubbed "Cold Cases" began sending regular e-mails exchanging information on missing people and unidentified bodies.

The group then helped reorganize the Doe Network, which was originally (a website) started by a Michigan woman, Jennifer Marra.

THE OPERATION

Here's how it works: Guests post links to information about their lost relatives. Users can search a database with information on unidentified bodies and missing people.

Three forensic artists, including Holt, use postmortem photos to create computer-aged photos or three-dimensional busts. These offer guests a glimpse at a not-yet-forgotten face, whose bones may be waiting in a medical examiner's morgue.

Information is pulled together from police agency websites, old newspaper articles, interviews with family members, detectives, medical examiners and missing-person reports.

One particularly haunting case featured on the website concerns ''Donna,'' a teenager crushed by a tractor-trailer on Interstate 95 in Fort Lauderdale in 1982. Officials say she had no identification and believed she was a hitchhiker.

The case is still fresh in the mind of Edwina Johnson, a chief investigator for the Broward County medical examiner's office. She took the unusual step of leaving the body in the morgue for six months, hoping someone would come looking for the young girl. No one did.

Jansen picked up on the case earlier this year and has cross-checked reports, even from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. But like that of the body in the Miami vacant lot, the case seems to have been largely ignored.

''Nobody seems to be missing this girl,'' Jansen said. ``I find it incredibly sad -- her being so young and that nobody missed her.''