Giving Names To Jane, John And Baby Doe

A Committed Network Of Sleuths Uses Computer Technology To I.D. The Unnamed Dead

(AP)  Four days a week, Todd Matthews earns $11.50 an hour working for an automotive parts supplier. After work he drives half a mile to his little beige house on a hill where he spends the next seven hours immersed in a very different world.

The faces seem to float from his computer - morgue photographs, artist sketches, forensic reconstructions - thousands of dead eyes staring from Web sites as though crying out for recognition. John and Jane and Baby "Does" whose bodies have never been identified.

His wife, Lori, complains that Matthews, 37, spends more time with the dead than he does with the living. You need a hobby, she says, or a goal.

I have a goal, he replies, though he describes it as a "calling".

He wants to give "Does" back their names.

His obsession began two decades ago, when Lori told him about the unidentified young woman wrapped in canvas whose body Lori's father had stumbled on in Georgetown, Ky., in 1968. She had reddish brown hair and a gap-toothed smile. Locals named her "Tent Girl."

Tent Girl haunted Matthews. Who were her siblings? What was her name?

Matthews began searching library records and police reports, not even sure what he was seeking. He scraped together the money to buy a computer. He started scouring message boards on the nascent Internet.

In the process, Matthews discovered something extraordinary. All over the country, people just like him were gingerly tapping into the new technology, creating a movement - a network of amateur sleuths as curious and impassioned as Matthews.

Today the Doe Network has volunteers and chapters in every state. Bank managers and waitresses, factory workers and farmers, computer technicians and grandmothers, all believing that with enough time and effort, modern technology can solve the mysteries of the missing dead.

Increasingly, they are succeeding.

The unnamed dead are everywhere - buried in unmarked graves, tagged in county morgues, dumped in rivers and under bridges. There are more than 40,000 unnamed bodies in the U.S., according to national law enforcement reports, and about 100,000 people formally listed as missing.

The premise of the Doe Network is simple. If the correct information - dental records, DNA, police reports, photographs - is properly entered into the right databases, many of the unidentified can be matched with the missing. Law enforcement agencies and medical examiners' offices simply don't have the time or manpower. Using the Internet and other tools, volunteers can do the job.

And so, in the suburbs of Chicago, bank executive Barbara Lamacki spends her nights searching for clues that might identify toddler Johnny "Dupage" Doe, whose body was wrapped in a blue laundry bag and dumped in the woods of rural Dupage County, Ill., in 2005.

In Kettering, Ohio, Rocky Wells, a 47-year-old manager of a package delivery company, scoots his teenage daughters from the living room computer and scours the Internet for anything that might crack the case of the red-haired Jane Doe found strangled near Route 55 in 1981.

And in Penn Hills, Pa., Nancy Monahan, 54, who creates floor displays for a discount chain, says her "real job" begins in the evening when she returns to her house, turns on her computer and starts sleuthing.

Monahan's cases include that of "Beth Doe," a young pregnant woman strangled, shot and dismembered, her remains stuffed into three suitcases and flung off a bridge along Interstate 80 near White Haven in December 1976. And "Homestead Doe," whose mummified body was found in an abandoned railroad tunnel in Pittsburgh in 2000. Her toenails were painted silver.

"It's like they become family," Monahan says. "You feel a responsibility to bring them home."

[stingray811]

It''s a great true story.

[stingray811]

It''s a great true story.

[eyewideopen]

The article was written by Helen O''Neill, AP Special Correspondent

[casperangel]

What great work they do in an unselfish and unknown way..

It''s a shame that the AP doesn''t credit the author of this excellent piece, which balances hard facts and human interest without slighting either. This is "soft" journalism at its best.

[runningralph]

I hope the good work these people are doing will lead to clues so police can figure out who murdered these victims.

[skidee27]

Wow!! I have often thought of trying to join up with some volunteer cold case team but didn''t really know how. I never knew a group like this existed and I am amazed at the passion some of these folks have felt for people they don''t know. It humbles me b/c honestly my interest was more academic and kind of a puzzle solving thing. While I can see that is part of their passion, the caring for the families seems to be the overriding drive. I''m impressed and grateful for such wonderful people!!

[sumarongi]

Good for you people. It''s a shame there are so many "nonentities" under the radar in our country.
Somewhere there are families who desire closure, and some villians who fear exposure. Keep up the good works.

[moon15108]

good work!