To Lee Meadows Jantz, the dead person's reconstructed face shown on the Internet did not reflect the features of a young white woman, as the Web site theorized.
Jantz, coordinator of the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center, believed the remains found floating in the Cumberland River in 1993 were actually those of another ethnicity.
Further, she suspected the person's bones might be in the center's collection right here in Knoxville.
They were, and after a brief examination of the skeleton, she pegged it to be that of a black male, possibly 40 years old.
Jantz, who had seen the image on the Web site of a volunteer sleuthing group, contacted Nashville police with her findings. The remains are being analyzed at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification in connection with a January 1993 disappearance of a black man, said Detective David Achord with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department.
"We've been missing him all these years," Jantz said.
The case highlights some of the pitfalls of connecting names with the remains of unidentified adults, Jantz said.
Tennessee operates a clearinghouse for children reported missing, and the federal government requires agencies to track them as well. But no one is required to look out for the bodies of missing or unidentified adults.
In fact, many of the state's unidentified bodies quickly become cold cases. They end up being buried, cremated, stored in medical examiners' morgues, or donated to Jantz's center. Information gets lost, and identifying them can be extremely difficult, she said.
"If a body doesn't get identified fairly quickly, it falls back in its level of importance, and that is simply a fact of lack of resources," Jantz said.
There are four federal databases that amass DNA and missing-person information, but the FBI's National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, remains the most widely known and used.
Law enforcement agencies can enter remains and must validate entries once a year, said James Van Pelt, FBI special counsel for the Knoxville office. There are codes for fingerprints, dental records and DNA.
Of more than 40,000 unidentified remains known to exist nationwide, only an estimated 6,000, or about 15 percent, are listed in NCIC, according to a January 2007 Department of Justice National Institute of Justice report.
California, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas have laws that focus on locating missing adults and identifying bodies. Texas has a centralized DNA database that collects samples from families of the missing and compiles samples of unidentified remains.
Tennessee, however, has no such missing-person clearinghouse or legislation requiring a systematic filing of information about the cases.
Jantz estimates there are about 100 Tennessee bodies in her donated and forensic collection. While she can't give a definitive number, she's in the midst of an inventory. Her count doesn't include bodies held by medical examiners or buried locally.
Even when Jantz completes her count, she will not be able to enter the bodies in her collection into NCIC. Only government agencies are allowed to catalogue information. All she can do is urge local law enforcement officials who originally investigated the case to compile records and enter them.
The system is broken in many ways, she said.
Limited resources
Jantz and her husband, UT anthropologist Richard L. Jantz, have considered creating their own database of unidentified bodies, but limited resources and the enormity of the project would make it difficult.
Many remains came to the center through the efforts of Dr. William Bass over more than three decades, Jantz said.
The forensic collection contains bones held on behalf of law enforcement agencies. Most of the Does in the donated collection came from medical examiner's offices that signed over unidentified remains after autopsies were completed.
Donated bodies generally are allowed to decompose at the center's outdoor scientific research center, commonly known as the Body Farm, before the bones are returned to storage.
"Last year, we started re-evaluating our cold cases," she said. "We have better methods today and better technology that allows us to provide, hopefully, better estimates of a biological profile."
For example, the center has produced updated reports about a woman murdered in Knox County in 1987. Jantz said she contacted Knox County Sheriff's Office detectives who informed her the file was in the archives, and it might be difficult to follow up on the new information.
Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Martha Dooley said the department follows any new leads that arise in the county's cold cases.
"None of that stuff is in a database. It's all hard copy," Jantz said. "They don't have the resources for cold cases, and right now, they're concentrating on current cases."
Greene County Sheriff's Department Detective Capt. John Huffine said "there's umpteen databases you can query."
Smaller jurisdictions need to send their detectives for more training on Internet and interagency resources, Huffine said. But most of the area law enforcement agencies' detective divisions are stretched thin.
Identifying bodies is nothing like it's depicted on TV crime shows, retired Campbell County Sheriff's Detective Eddie Barton said.
"People think that you go out and just all of the sudden miraculously come up with clues. You can get a DNA analysis in 15 minutes on TV," Barton said. "I just laugh."
Barton chased dozens of leads on two Jane Does dumped in his county in the late 1990s. It took a decade to identify one of them. The other remains in a Campbell County grave marked "Unknown."
Web sleuths
The Web is one aid for law enforcement officers with limited resources, Barton said.
He reported Campbell County's cases to nonprofit Web sites when NCIC yielded no matches. Barton said he personally contacted the Doe Network and requested their assistance with the county's unidentified bodies.
The Doe Network consists of volunteer Web sleuths who try to help law enforcement agencies solve missing persons and unidentified body cases. The group operates its own Web site and lists 13 Jane Does in Tennessee, including the 1993 Nashville listing that Jantz realized was actually a man.
Recently the Doe Network was credited with helping Campbell County solve the case of an unidentified woman.
"They have an incredible goal, but they are in some ways being irresponsible with this," Jantz said of groups that post information that could mislead investigators. "I just think, it's obvious that we've got these bodies, but they're not contacting us."
Todd Matthews, Doe Network spokesman, said volunteers continually work to update information. They take credit for assisting in about 40 positive identifications of bodies.
"Some (volunteers) have missing family members," Matthews said. "People from all walks of life come together for the common good."
He said he knows those cases listed on his network are only a few of the total unidentified bodies in Tennessee. He estimated there are at least 60 across the state.
But again, no one seems to know a definite number.
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_5547154,00.html