Anonymous in death

March 29, 2006
The Beaumont Enterprise
By: Sarah Moore, The Enterprise

It wasn't business as usual Feb. 19 when a customer went into a Gateway Shopping Center store and told an employee there was a body in a small wooded area behind the store.

To the employee's horror, it was true.

At first, investigators thought the corpse was that of a woman, because it was surrounded by women's clothing. A large pair of black pumps sat next to the body, thought to have been dead one or two weeks.

An autopsy revealed the body belonged to a man, said Detective Sgt. Robert Broussard of the Beaumont Police Department.

Beyond that, nothing much was known about him.

Including his identity.

This man is one of a growing number of unidentified bodies found each year.

Some are identified within a matter of days or weeks.

Others never are.

An FBI database lists about 108,517 unidentified bodies in the United States as of Feb. 28, with 593 in Texas.

The statistics fluctuate as some cases are solved and new ones filed, but many unsolved cases get colder and colder with no resolution in sight.

Volunteers nationwide at The Doe Network work to put the pieces together, said Todd Matthews, an advocate for "the murdered, missing and unidentified."

"You've got to find ways to make people heal," Matthews said in a telephone interview from Tennessee. "People are left so empty of hope."

In one recent case out of Little Rock, Ark., Matthews is working on creating a reconstruction of the victim's head and has been investigating leads based on a gold and silver bracelet found on the victim.

Beaumont investigators had an advantage over most of the cases in the Doe Network's database, because papers found on their John Doe contained a name and date of birth - James Calvin Donnahoe, 50 - most likely the man's identity.

"We're 95 percent sure that's who it is," Broussard said, adding that so far a positive identification has been impossible. As of Friday, investigators were unable to find his sister, supposedly living in Houston, or dental records.

The man, who died of a heart attack, is believed to be from Houston or somewhere in Louisiana.

If, however, it turns out his name isn't Donnahoe, he could be on his way to a place on the Doe Network.

The Doe Network profiles hundreds of cases of unidentified bodies, including six in Southeast Texas.

Two are women who were found in Chambers County.

One woman, found May 31, 1986, had been dead somewhere between one and two months. She was a small woman, about 5 feet tall, weighing about 110 pounds. She had gray eyes, auburn hair, and both her ears were pierced twice.

The possibly mixed-race woman wore a floral print sundress and a gold hoop and a gold stud earring in each ear.

Beyond that, not much is known about her.

More recently, on Jan. 21, 1993, remains of another woman were found.

She had been dead for three or four years and her bones rested about 45 yards from "a burned-out, two-door white Lincoln Continental with red pinstripes and a sun roof," according to a profile of her case on the Doe Network Web site.

She was a white woman thought to be about 5 feet tall and between 26 and 36 years old. Her weight, hair and eye color were not determined.

On New Year's Day 1984 in Orange County, the skeletal remains of a young woman or girl were found in Orange County.

The white female, estimated between 14 and 18 years old, had brown hair and possibly had worn braces on her teeth at one time.

In Port Arthur, December 20, 1993, the body of an unidentified black man was found in a small wooded area in a median on Texas 73 at U.S. 69.

The man, estimated to be between 32 and 43 years old, wore several layers of clothing and appeared to be a transient, Harrison said.

He'd been dead only about a week, but the cause of death was not determined.

Many times, the unidentified dead are transients, with no fixed address and no one to report them missing, authorities said.

This can make for a frustrating investigation.

"Sometimes we get lucky," said Detective Sgt. Rodney Harrison, supervisor in charge of Port Arthur Police Department's criminal investigation division.

DNA science breakthroughs help.

When a skeleton was found in a wooded area near Central Mall in September 2000, investigators quickly narrowed down the possibilities.

The young woman was thought to have died in the early 1990s. When detectives searched the files, they found three women reported missing around that time period.

"We found two out of the three in one day," Harrison said. "That narrowed it down."

The third was a young Port Arthur woman who went missing in 1993.

Police were optimistic that this was their Jane Doe.

But it took longer to prove it positively.

In 2001, DNA samples proved the remains belonged to Laura Williams.

Her death was ruled a homicide, which is still under investigation.

smoore@beaumontenterprise.com

(409) 833-3311, ext. 419