The Fort Worth Star Telegram
The Providence Journal
Denton Record Chronicle
News 24 Houston

February 8, 2004

BOSTON - A network of amateur Internet detectives is becoming increasingly important in helping law enforcement crack hard to solve missing persons cases.

Members of the Doe Network never visit the scene of the crime or search for forensic evidence, but they surf Web sites and try to draw connections.

The network has helped solve 17 cases around the country within the last few years, including the case of a man wrapped in a tarpaulin found floating in the Sudbury River in Framingham in 2002. Law enforcement had one clue: the letters "PK" tattooed on the man's right shoulder.

Bobby Lingoes, a civilian dispatcher with the Quincy police and a member of the Doe Network, posted the details on the group's Web site.

"I just threw it out there to the network," he told The Boston Sunday Globe. "Two hours later, I got a response."

Another member remembered reading about a Texas man missing for about a year with "PK" tattooed on his arm. Lingoes contacted Framingham police with the information, and it was determined the man was Peter Kokinakis, 40, of Houston, who had disappeared from Texas in 2002.

Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley credited Lingoes with helping solve the case.

Ordinary citizens have long had an interest in crime, but now they are applying that interest on the Internet, said Robert McCrie, a crime historian and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

"It's not at all surprising," he said. "We have tens of millions of people interested in lost-and-found issues and detective stories."

The Doe Network, which has about 200 members, is trying to create the first Web-based international clearinghouse on missing persons.

"The police tend to be busy focusing on current cases," said Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University. "What's left is those missing persons cases that are more difficult. That's where the average citizen can make a difference."

Another Doe Network member, Sheree Greenwood, got involved after the disappearance of Warren neighbor, Molly Bish in 2000. In 2001, she and other members of the Doe Network helped identify a murdered woman found in Baltimore.

Many members are consumed by one particular case. For UMass-Lowell student Hillary Keller, the network's Massachusetts coordinator, it's the Lady of the Dunes. The woman's body was discovered by a teenager walking her dog along the Provincetown coast in July 1974.

Lingoes was gripped by the case of a young woman killed in 1992 after she was struck by a train in Waco, Texas. The woman had several tattoos, including one with the word "Tonk." He sent a query to the National Crime Information Center and discovered that the woman was Angela Marie Parks, 23, a mother of two from Kentucky.

The discovery soothed a grieving son's pain. "When she left for so many years, he thought she left because she didn't love him," Lingoes said.

Copyright 2004 Associated Press