The Oregonian,
by Margie Boulé
March 27, 2004

Volunteers scour Web for clues When you look through the pages of the missing at Doe Network, you see photos of these children and teenagers. Some have been missing 20 or 30 years. It just gets to you, knowing how their families must feel. ETHEL TAYLOR, ON WHY SHE SEARCHES FOR MISSING PEOPLE L1 E thel Taylor wasn't even living in Oregon in 1972, when someone found a man's remains just outside Bandon on the Southern Oregon coast.

The man had been dead for about five years, authorities estimated. It appeared he'd been an older man when he died. Technology wasn't so sophisticated back then.

But you didn't need much technology to see he'd been shot twice in the head.

The Bandon Police investigated the case for years. But nobody ever came forward to make a missing persons report. For more than 30 years, the man has remained a John Doe.

In 1976, Ethel and her husband Larry took their three children on vacation from Wyoming to Oregon and fell in love with the place. "After we found Bandon, we came out here on summer vacations for the next 10 years," Ethel says. When Larry retired, in 1986, he and Ethel moved to Bandon permanently.

Ethel had never heard of the body found in 1972 until a few years ago, when she spotted a small article in Western World, Bandon's weekly newspaper.

The case was so cold it was nearly in the freezer. But it caught fire in Ethel's brain. She couldn't stop thinking about the unidentified man. "He's been dead for 30-something years," she says. "Somewhere, he has family. Brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews. Perhaps he just disappeared, and no one knows what happened to him."

Last fall, Ethel -- who says she's "sixtysomething" -- decided to help police learn the man's identity. "I thought perhaps building a Web page might bring some more information." So she made an appointment with Bandon Police Chief Bob McBride.

Some law enforcement folks don't believe in sharing a lot of information with the public about unsolved cases. Chief McBride has a different philosophy. "We need as much help from the public as we can possibly get," he says. "So I shared with her basically all the file."

McBride knew his department had worked hard on the case for decades. "And I'm a firm believer if you work on an experiment the same way, you get the same results every time. You have to try something different if you want different results. This case is ancient. The only way it's ever going to get solved is with information coming in. If we shake some trees, maybe something will come up."

Ethel studied the paperwork, got copies of photos of a clay model of the man's face created by a police artist in 1972 and put together a Web site. Before she made it public, she had the chief check it to be sure there was no information that could compromise a prosecution, should a murder trial ever happen.

Then she went to work, seeking the identity of the man. She visited the spot where he'd been found -- what was woods near U.S. 101 in 1972 is a housing development today.

She turned to the Internet, where she discovered the Doe Network (www.doenetwork.org), several hundred volunteer detectives in the United States and Europe who search the Internet, trying to solve aging missing persons cases. Among the volunteers are law enforcement personnel, journalists, forensic scientists, medical examiners, police artists. But most are people like Ethel, who get interested in a particular missing person case or unidentified body and feel moved to get involved.

There are more than 5,400 John or Jane Does in this nation -- human remains not yet identified -- and more than 100,000 missing persons, according to the National Crime Information Center, an FBI clearinghouse. Oregon has 34 unidentified bodies and nearly 1,500 missing persons. Those are just the official numbers. In reality, many unidentified bodies have never been reported to the information center, and a great many missing persons have not been officially listed.

Ethel Taylor decided to become a Doe Network volunteer. Her dedication was obvious right away, and within a few months she was an assistant area director handling Oregon. "She's like a Duracell battery; she just keeps going," says Lawana Phillips, area director for the Northwest who lives in Tacoma. "She really does her homework."

Now Ethel is looking for all the people reported missing in Oregon, and for the identities of all the unidentified bodies in Oregon. She works four to five hours every day on her searches, comparing information from all over the nation on bodies found and people missing.

On a typical day, "I'll pick one, probably one of the older ones." Some people have been missing for decades. "Then I check Washington, Idaho, California, Nevada." If she finds a possible match in terms of time frame, "then I compare height, weight, hair color, any clothing found in the area, or jewelry." If she finds a potential match, she fills out a report that is sent to Lawana, who forwards it to a panel of experts working with the Doe Network.

"We have 17 positive IDs to our credit," says Todd Matthews, national media director for the Doe Network. Todd, who lives in Tennessee, made the first match in 1998 after 10 years of searching. He found information on the Internet that led to the identification of the "Tent Girl," a woman whose body was found in Kentucky in 1968. Todd can understand the dedication that keeps Ethel at her computer for so many hours every day. "That's easy to do," he says. "You feel like you want to make things right -- I actually spend more time on this than I do on my normal day job."

In just five years, the Doe Network has gained the respect of law enforcement agencies across the country, and many now submit cases to be solved. Those cases keep people such as Ethel at their keyboards.

Many, like Ethel, know someone who disappeared. "Years ago, just after World War II, my favorite uncle went missing," Ethel says. "And I know the feelings my mom and my grandmother had, not knowing where he was or if he was all right." Her uncle eventually reappeared, but Ethel feels driven to help other families who still wonder about loved ones.

"When you look through the pages of the missing at Doe Network, you see photos of these children and teenagers." she said. "Some have been missing 20 or 30 years. It just gets to you, knowing how their families must feel. I have three children and six grandchildren, and, thank God, I know where all of them are."

So she spends her days searching. She looks for old Oregon cases that might not have been reported to the crime information center. She pores over photos of missing children. She studies artists' re-creations of the faces of unidentified dead. "They deserve a name," she says.

Ethel never will be able to bring anyone back to life. But she's hoping someday she can help bring a Jane Doe or John Doe, such as the murdered Bandon man, back home.