The Girl Next Door

Will Forensic Reconstruction Help ID Nameless Murder Victim?

(CBS) 
Ellen Leach belongs to the DOE Network, a group of amateur gum shoes from all over the country who scour the Internet with one mission.

"A group of 500 people. We’re dedicated to helping law enforcement solve cold cases," explains Leach. "Searching for missing persons and unidentified persons and matching them up."

Ellen will try to match Jane's sculpture with reports of missing kids from around the world in hopes of reuniting Jane with her family.

"We have so many unidentified out there. They need their name back. Their families need to know what happened to them," says Leach.

But there's another case Leach is anxious to solve, where the family's anguish has haunted her for more than a year. It's the case of Greg May, a father of two who one day seemed to vanish into thin air.

Why was she intrigued by the case?

"He seemed like somebody that was decent, somebody I wanted to try to find," says Leach.

As it turns out, the case of Greg May and Jane Doe would echo each other in ways no one could imagine. Each case would rely on forensic reconstruction to solve the mystery.

Forensic artist Frank Bender would travel down the same road as Gloria Nusse to try to solve the case of Greg May.

That case starts in Bellevue, Iowa, a historic, small town along the Mississippi River, where Greg May was an antique dealer with a passion for Civil War memorabilia.

Although his children, Don and Shannon, settled in California, the three made sure to always keep in touch.

"Always, we were a close family. Even with the distances between us," says Don May.

So it was strange when weeks went by and they hadn’t heard from their father.

"The more we reached out, the more we were realizing that nobody had heard from him. And he just wasn't turning up," says Don.

May's children then discovered their father’s house was empty and his phone had been disconnected.

Don and Shannon notified Bellevue police. Three months into the investigation, the first disturbing clue surfaced, when Greg May's car was discovered 141 miles away in a parking lot in Illinois. Greg May’s wallet was found inside.

Days later, Don May received more ominous news. His father’s antiques were being sold at auction.

"A friend of my father's gave me a call one day and said that he had a catalogue from an auction house and some of the items on the flyer appeared to be my father's," Don remembers.

The auction house led police to Flagstaff, Ariz., where they found Doug DeBruin and his girlfriend Julie Miller. They were selling May’s collection and insisting it was theirs. Police arrested them on the spot.

DeBruin had been Greg May's longtime friend and housemate who helped Greg buy and sell antiques.

"I knew him as a hanger-on at my dad's place of business. And he just seemed to idolize my father," says Shannon.

DeBruin told police, last he knew, Greg May was heading to Illinois.

But Julie Miller told investigators a completely different story. She dropped a bombshell, saying Greg May was dead and DeBruin killed him. Miller insisted it was an accident, the result of a fist fight. She also told police she had no idea what DeBruin did with the body. But to investigators, the writing was on the wall. This was no accident. This was murder.