By Becki Lee
The Gazette

August, 2003

New Web site offers support, information

Kylen Johnson of Clarksburg has turned her obsession to identify missing people into a calling to help families of the disappeared search for their loved ones and find support.

Earlier this month, Johnson officially launched a Web site for the Maryland Missing Persons Network, which she created to provide resources for families of missing persons and to provide information about missing and unidentified people in Maryland.

Not many people are aware just how many people are missing in the United States, Johnson said. There are more than 4,600 unidentified bodies nationwide listed in the National Crime Information Center's database, and Johnson estimates that there are around 70 in Maryland alone.

"I was horrified," said Johnson, 33, who works in a newspaper pressroom and runs the Web site in her free time. "It's become like an obsession to find out who these people are."

Johnson became especially interested in the missing persons cause after hearing about an unidentified woman's body found in Frederick. Johnson, who used to hang out in the city years ago, said that the body had similarities to a woman she had seen around town back then.

"It hit me -- all these people disappear," Johnson said. "It's like a mystery, trying to put puzzles together. It's very sad."

These puzzles create a sort of motivation for Johnson. Sometimes she will wake up in the middle of the night and feel compelled to do more Internet research on missing persons, she said. And the possibility of the missing persons being homicide victims goads her into working even harder.

"It haunts me. When you have unsolved, unidentified homicides, someone's getting away with the perfect crime," Johnson said.

Johnson, who for three years has been the Washington, D.C., and Maryland metropolitan area director for the Doe Network, a national volunteer organization dedicated to the unidentified and missing persons cause, decided to start a Web site when she realized there were very few such resources available for Maryland residents.

As a result, she got together with police, detectives, Doe Network volunteers and family members of missing persons to create the Maryland Missing Persons Network and Marylandmissing.com.

"I'm hoping this is a base where people can come get info, get support, get direction," Johnson said.

The Web site is divided into several sections, including a list of unidentified bodies found in Maryland and a list of missing persons from Maryland, among other pages. Visitors may peruse the photos in hopes that someone may be able to identify a body or give a tip on a missing person's location.

Sometimes Johnson will browse other missing persons Web sites in hope of finding information about a missing or unidentified Maryland resident. One of the things that trips up investigations sometimes is the fact that a missing person could be six states away and no one knows it, she said.

Forensic dentists are a big help to Johnson and her efforts at finding missing persons. One person in Johnson's network, Warren Tewes, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland Dental School and lead forensic dentist in the state medical examiner's office, has compiled a statewide database that compares missing persons' dental records with the office's dental records of unidentified bodies.

Typically, to screen out "weekend runaways," law enforcement officials wait about 30 days after a person's disappearance to collect the person's dental records and send them to a volunteer forensic dentist in their county. The volunteer dentist will then look over the data and forward it to Tewes, who enters the information into the database and sees if a match appears.

Out of the three ways to identify bodies -- fingerprints, teeth and DNA -- dental records are the easiest and quickest way to do it in missing person situations, according to Tewes.

"Teeth are hard and durable, and they last when tissues like fingerprints decompose," Tewes said. "They're quickly acquired and inexpensive, two big advantages over DNA. And certainly when a family is anguishing, we want to move things along as quickly as we can for them without jeopardizing accuracy."

Johnson also acts as sort of an intermediary between the police, victims' families, other missing person agencies and the public. She provides phone numbers and resources to families, sends information about possible matches to authorities and other agencies and has even helped families put up fliers, to name just a few of her myriad duties as administrator of Marylandmissing.com.

"What I do is advocacy in a sense," Johnson said. "I'm just trying to help the family get the word out."

In addition to the lists of missing and unidentified people in Maryland, Johnson's site features information on what to do if a loved one goes missing and a page of memoirs for identified homicide victims. Johnson said she hopes to add a survivors page with the help of some missing persons' families, so people who are going through such a situation can see how others dealt with it.

"It's the worst hell anyone can go through," Johnson said, "just to lose a family member and not know what happened to them."

Not every missing person case ends with homicide, however. This past June, Johnson helped a woman in Adelphi post hundreds of fliers about the woman's 18-year-old daughter, who had run away from home several months prior. Four days later, the daughter was reunited with family.

Though Johnson has worked on many cases during her time at the Doe Network and will soon be working on more through her Maryland Missing Persons Network, it is the Frederick woman's case in particular that keeps her going, Johnson said.

"I think about this case every day," she said. "It's my pet case. I don't think I'm going to stop [working with missing persons cases] until she's identified."