Transcript

Hello everyone. Boozhoo. Aaniin.

I'm a professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead, and I'm working with a group called the Red Feathers. We're getting trained to assist law enforcement with open-source, passive investigations when they are looking for missing people. And one of the things we needed training on was NamUs. So I reached out to NamUs and asked if they could help, and they graciously said ‘yes.’  And that's all the time I'm going to take from you.

I'm just going to let Alison and Cornelia take it over.

Allison is a cold case advisor for NamUs and Cornelia Perry is a tribal liaison with NamUs, and I'll turn it over to them.

I'm Cornelia Perry. I'm the Tribal Program Specialist for NamUs. I'm also Diné, Navajo from Arizona. I live in Lukachukai, Arizona.

Just a little quick background about myself: I'm a mother, grandmother, wife. And I also am retired law enforcement. I worked as a criminal investigator for 18 and a half years with the Navajo Nation. Not only was I a criminal investigator, but I also was a coroner. And I retired in 2022, right around the same time NamUs offered me this position as a Tribal liaison or a Tribal program specialist.

So my main goal is to register and train Tribal law enforcement in how to use NamUs and just teach them how to use the system. And so that's kind a little background about myself.

Thank you, Cornelia. And you'll hear from Cornelia a little bit later in the presentation. She'll be talking about a case when we get to our forensic services.

So the ”have to” disclaimer there at the bottom that even though we are with NamUs, which is the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs,) which is under the federal Department of Justice (DOJ), specifically at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), which is the federal government's research and technology arm.

And even though we are sent by them, everything that we say today is our opinions and not necessarily reflective of the Department of Justice.

Slide

So just to get a lay of the land before we get into the database itself and the services, I want to just talk about the overall missing person and unidentified deceased crisis and then get into the database and programs that we offer.

So if you are not aware, this has been dubbed the nation's silent mass disaster.

There are over 600,000 individuals that go missing every year in the United States. Many of those due to the great work by law enforcement, families, victim advocates, communities at large, a lot of those missing persons are located and found alive and well. However, there are still tens of thousands who continue to be missing and go into that long-term missing space.

On the other side of the coin, you cannot talk about missing persons, especially long-term or cold cases without talking about unidentified human remains. Our unidentified human remains nationwide is also a large number. There are over 4,400 unidentified bodies that are recovered each year. Again, a lot of the great work that's being done and technology advancements is equaling a lot of identifications, more so now than in decades past. However, we are still carrying over about 1,000 unidentified human remains year-to-year.

The National Institute of Justice or NIJ, again, under the federal DOJ, their response to the silent mass disaster was creating the NamUs program. And the idea was to bring the people, the information, the technology and forensic science together to make a difference.

Law enforcement has specific databases that not all agencies have access to. I'm very aware that many Tribal agencies do not have access to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC). And so, part of creating NamUs was also to bridge any gaps in the systems that were in place, no matter the jurisdictional boundary, to bring these resources to everyone.

NamUs is federally legislated. The services that are provided are vast. It's not just a database, but there are a lot of different services.

The biggest thing to know is that everything is free and accessible to everybody.

I'm going to touch a little bit today on forensic services, our investigative support, analytical support, how the database works, and Tribal case support. If there are questions that come up regarding anything else on these slides, our contact information is at the end, and then please don't hesitate to contact us later for more information.

I know it's a lot of information, but the three things that you need to remember, especially when you're spreading the word. Everyone on this call is not just here to learn about the database and our services, but you're also here to help educate others and be that resource for others who maybe for many reasons, cannot do it themselves or need your assistance.

• This database is free. All of the services are free.
• It is secure. We are hosted on the federal SecureCloud, so there is 24/7 monitoring of the system.
• It is the only nationwide centralized repository to store, share and compare missing person case information, unidentified deceased information, and unclaimed persons.

We're not going to talk a lot about unclaimed persons today, but just be aware if you're not familiar with that term, that is a deceased individual who has their name back. They have been positively identified, but the coroner, medical examiner or law enforcement is not able to locate their family, their next of kin. So they are unclaimed in the sense that the coroner or medical examiner has to make those decisions for disposition and take care of them because their family is not there to do that. And so we do have a part of our database that takes care of those individuals in terms of helping locate their family and families to be able to locate them if they've lost contact via the database.

So you might be wondering who uses NamUs? Just a few quick statistics.

NamUs, the beauty of it and the power of it, I like to say, is that it's accessible by public persons and law enforcement, both sworn and civilian law enforcement, medical examiners, coroners and then all kinds of allied professionals like our DNA experts and fingerprint analysts. Also, family members of the missing and victim advocates, people who have a strong vested interest in missing person cases and finding their loved one no matter what the answer is.

The people using this database are all of these individuals, and I'm going to show you how that works because I know that's confusing.

Historically, we're used to there being closed law enforcement databases that are not available to the public for many good reasons. And then we're used to public websites or open-source databases. This is a hybrid, and I will try to show you a bit with the time we have today, how that works and how law enforcement has certain access that's vetted and secure. And the public has a certain access. And they don't have the same access, of course, but there's a lot of power that the families and the public still can harness with this database.

Here’s just a little breakdown of who's using the database.

In terms of the number of cases in the database, if you remember back to that early slide that talked about the volume of missing and unidentified in the country that's happening each year.

All of those cases are not in NamUs for a variety of reasons.

NamUs is voluntary. Even though it's federally legislated, there's not a lot of teeth, and it is lacking some funding to make some of that cross-pollination happen. 

Some of you might be familiar, especially our law enforcement folks, with the NCIC database — the National Crime Information Center that the FBI houses and law enforcement agencies use. That is a closed system. There are laws that say that NCIC and NamUs need to talk and cross-pollinate on the back end. That is being worked on. Just be aware that every case in NamUs is not every case nationwide. It's only a certain percentage because right now it's based on people putting the cases in voluntarily.

There are just a few states that have laws mandating NamUs usage.

And so you will see more cases in states like Florida, for example, than in Texas.

So let's break it down further. We're here to talk about indigenous missing persons and some of the specific challenges of these cases and how we can all be more of service.

So Tribally-affiliated missing persons, American Indian or Alaska Native. Of the 25,000-plus active cases in the database, there's only 876 that are known to be, or the person entering marked that they are American Indian or Alaska Native. It's a very low number, and this is screaming why we need help from the people on this call and those like you nationwide to be advocating for these missing persons, for their families, and getting these cases in there or helping connect law enforcement to us.

On the other side, again, the unidentified persons, there's almost 15,000 in the database. Only 215 have been identified, and I don't mean identified with a name, but been designated as American Indian or Alaska Native. Generally, this is because the body has been found on Tribal land. That's 20 percent of the cases. Or an anthropologist or some type of other forensic testing has deemed these deceased persons as most likely American Indian or Alaska Native.

So again, a very low number.

A little bit about the technology. I mentioned that the database is secure, that there's 3-in-1. This is a database for U.S. citizens or foreign citizens who were last known to be in the United States.

The unidentified persons are only those found in the United States, and same with the unclaimed persons. The only time you'll see persons who are missing overseas are U.S. military personnel. If they were sadly lost at sea or something happened in battle, the military does enter those cases into our database.

How to register. If you haven't gone to our website, the short way to go there is NamUs.gov. It does link you to the longer database, but that's the easier way to remember it. There's a longer URL.

So on the top right of the database, it's going to ask you to register if you would like, and this is how you enter a missing persons case. Or if you're law enforcement who handles unidentified deceased as well, then you can access all databases through one registration.

So you are either a professional registrant or a public registrant.

You can see there you can pick public or professional. If you're a professional, your role in that drop down is going to give you a few choices. You're going to put your information in. This is not shared publicly. This is just for our IT staff.

It's going to ask you for your contact information. If you are a student, it would be okay to put the university information while you're a student there. You can put your home information. Again, will not be shared, but just, you know, if you're concerned.

For law enforcement, you would only be listing your work information there, not your personal. The agencies are all in the drop down. If your agency by chance is not, please let us know and we will fix that.

This is key.

If you are with a law enforcement agency or a coroner medical examiner, the federal government needs us to have a sponsor. This is part of our tight security for you as law enforcement to have that higher access of the database. So you're able to see case information nationwide that is that holdback information, the PII, which, you know, the medical history, potentially mental health history, all the dates of birth, personal information, where's their family? This is all not public facing, but law enforcement has access. And so we need to vet your role. We need to make sure you are who you say you are.

You're working for a law enforcement agency. And so that sponsor is going to be your sergeant or your chief, someone who can receive our email and say ‘Yes, Sarah is working for this law enforcement agency and has a need for this sensitive case information.”

You're going to go through our privacy policy, and then after that, you'll get an email about activation and know that your account is good to go. In a minute, I'll show you what that looks like when you are logged in.

When you log in, this is the dashboard that everybody sees. If you are wondering if you're logged in or not, you are logged in when you see your name. Instead of Jane Smith, it's going to say Allison O'Neal. And then here in the purple, it's going to say AO, and then it's going to give my designation if I'm a public or professional user. So no matter who you are, when you're logged in, it's going to look very similar to this.

You have a quick search function on the left. And this is if you're looking to see whether this missing person is already in the database or not, or you want to see cases just in your state, for example, or a county, this is where you could go to do a quick search. So you put in your data and you hit search, and then it's going to come up with the results.

I want to just call attention to this missing advanced search real low at the bottom there in the light blue. I'm going to show you what advanced search looks like later, but that's where you can click that. You'll see across the top, you're on "My Dashboard.” I'm sure it's going to feel a little bit overwhelming at first, but once you get into it, it's very user-friendly. If you're doing also for an advanced search, you can click on these magnifying glass images.

You have missing persons, unidentified, unclaimed, so you can do searches that way. Cases that you've entered, this number would change from zero and that would go up.

Do you see that red arrow I added?

Very important. If you are going to add a brand new case into the database, you're going to click  "plus” or  "add missing case,” there on the upper right.

Once you hit that “add missing case,” it's going to go into this draft entry form. Where it says, “Create a missing persons case,” it looks exactly like that.

That's a screenshot, and it's going to hold your hand and walk you through it. If you miss a “have-to” box, it's going to alert you. And once you are done with that first page, you're going to press “Create draft” at the bottom in blue. And what that does is that's going to save your information, and you can go back to it later if you need to. 

NamUs staff can see those draft entries; however, you haven't submitted that case. And so if you're going to still be working on it, that's okay and you can submit it when you are done. So for law enforcement, this is really helpful. You're in and out of the field, you're busy, you're going from shift to shift, and this is a great way to start it now and save it for later.

Once you hit “Create draft,” it'll issue a consecutive NamUs case number that starts with ”MP” for the missing or ”UP” for the unidentified persons, and then you can jot down the number that you're working on.

The minimum requirements are really basic: name, demographic, circumstances. If you are not a law enforcement user, if you're a public user, it's very important to give the investigating agency information. No case can ever make it to our public-facing website without a law enforcement agency name and case number assigned and NamUs staff getting permission directly from that law enforcement agency to post that case public-facing.

We vet every case that comes in. We have to confirm that they are truly a missing person case that a law enforcement agency is assigned to. We fully understand that some of those law enforcement agencies are not actively investigating or looking for that person. It doesn't matter what they are or aren't doing. It just means they have to have ownership of that case.

So if a family comes to you. If you're an advocate in this space and a family comes to you for help, one of the first things that you need to help them do or ask is, have you filed a missing person report? If they have not, you need to help link them to an agency who will take that case. Because that's how we can get their missing loved one populated in these databases, searching and comparing nationwide.

You will find, just as a side note, a lot of families have not, even though for most of us, it sounds like a no-brainer to file a missing persons report. I think a lot of us have lived experiences where there's fear or distrust of law enforcement or a family for one reason or another is afraid maybe because of a criminal past or — I could go on and on about all the reasons. Some families have not gone to law enforcement, and there should not be any blame or shame. We just have to try to bridge that gap, hold their hands, get them to file that report because none of this is going to happen without that law enforcement case number.

You might be wondering when a missing persons case should be entered into the database. NamUs is for any type of missing persons case. We focus on our longer term or cold case missing person cases. However, we fully realize that especially sometimes Tribal cases are not able to go into NCIC for one hurdle or another. There are critical missing person cases, especially critical juveniles who need to be in every system right away. And so, generally, especially for children, Billy's Law requires that cases go in within 72 hours for the children cases. If they're an adult, that's if they're a critical missing, right away is fine. Otherwise, we, in a perfect world, like to have law enforcement do their due diligence and enter the case a little bit later on down the line.

The reason for this is for high volume law enforcement agencies, there's no automatic in and out of NamUs, and so it's human-powered. And if you're putting in a lot of cases and you're having to take them all out right away, if you have a lot of short-term missing persons.

And again, that's agency specific. We're not going to dictate that. If there's no state law requiring it, these are the guidelines. When in doubt, ask us, talk with the law enforcement agency. We have cases coming in in the short-term to get reach out on the internet. We have cases coming in later at the 180-day mark.

So we've registered for the database. we've entered the draft, at least, of starting the demographics and the minimum requirements. And now we're starting to get into some of the additional questions regarding that missing person that are going to help potentially locate them and get resources to their case.

When it's asking about race or ethnicity and you mark American Indian or Alaska Native, the database intuitively is going to ask you if this missing person was enrolled or affiliated with a federally-recognized or state-recognized tribe. If you put “yes,” then it's going to ask you: which one is it enrolled or affiliated, and you'll just follow these boxes.

• What state
• The name of the Tribe. Again, we tried really hard to have all Tribes in there. If we missed something, let us know.

And then once you click “Add Tribe,” it'll populate down below where you can see “enrolled with Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation.” This is just an example.

The database is going to ask a lot of questions. If you don't know it, like, we mostly don't know missing persons blood type, we leave that blank. You just move on and you only add what you have, what you know for that case. If it is an orange, it is a “have-to” question, and it's going to prompt you on that.

• What is their height? If the family doesn't know for sure, then you can enter a range.
• Same with the weight.
• What was the date of last contact?
• Where were they missing from?
• What was their last known location?
• Is that location on Tribal land? Yes or no?
• Was their residence on Tribal land? Yes or no?

Circumstances of that disappearance.

We like to keep this public-facing circumstance box pretty generic. Even though things like their NamUs record get archived, we all know that there are people who capture information from the internet. It's hard to erase what's out there online about yourself. It can come in to play when people are trying to later get jobs and so forth. Also, there's privacy, and we want to maintain that privacy for them and for their family.

And so there are places in the entry where you can enter some of that holdback information where you can enter some additional details that don’t go out to the world, but this could be very important to the investigation. 

I want to call attention these gold colored or yellow shield symbols next to some of the holdback information. Meaning if you are a registered law enforcement user, you will see all of those fields. If you are a public user, you are not going to see those fields.

And so this is for things like their home address, this is the holdback notes I was talking about. Or for their Social Security number, which actually is not visible by anyone after you enter it, but that's going to have the shields. Their medical information or mental health, that's going to have a shield.

I want to call attention to these exclamation marks, and these bolded headers at the top. This is the database intuitively telling you: “Hey, you did not yet enter the agency information. Oh, hey, you did not enter…” and there's actually several things in this example. So it's just prompting you to click “Show More.” And when you click “Show More,” it's going to tell you all the things that you missed and then you can go back and address them.

Everybody sees data and works a little differently. We all learn a little bit differently, and the same kind of thing applies here. So I just want to point this out.

Everyone has a different way of entering a case in NamUs. You have the column going down on your left and you have the headers going across the top. It all gets you to the same place. It's just how you want to enter the information.

So are you somebody who clicks down the side, or are you somebody who uses your scroll wheel on your mouse, and you scroll down through every section? It'll allow you to do that. Or you can click, click, click. So you're not going to miss anything, and if you do, it's going to alert you before you submit your case. So you really cannot make a mistake here.

And what you are entering is not visible to the public. It only is visible to NamUs staff at this point. And so don't worry. If you made a mistake, don't freak out, it's all fixable. Even if it's not something you can edit for some reason, if it's locked or anything, we can always fix it.

So you have entered all of your data. Now maybe the family has provided you some photos, some pictures of any scars, marks and tattoos, possibly some dental records that you got from the dentist. And so this is a place where you can drag and drop into the blue. Or you click into the blue where it says, “Choose a file to upload,” and then you can upload from your desktop or from your files.

Once you give each image or document a title, it has different ones to pick from like dental records or fingerprints, the database intuitively knows that those things are private and only for law enforcement or coroners, and it's going to give that shield symbol like you see there.

If you mislabel it for some reason, don't worry, there's a lot of checks and balances and the NamUs team reviewing that case on the back end will fix that.

By the way, not only will the NamUs team see it, but when they contact the law enforcement agency, if the law enforcement agency did not enter the case, the NamUs team member will review the entry and all of the details and the images with law enforcement to make sure the images that are being put forth publicly are okay for public view and the things that are supposed to be private, are private.

Again, we've talked about unidentified person cases being in the database. The entry is very similar for a coroner, medical examiner or law enforcement who wears that other hat like Cornelia used to.

Just to call out how important it is to not forget the details, the database is not going to help if you're just skimming through and putting very basic information.

This is an example of how the specifics matter. We had an unidentified person case where at autopsy they saw evidence of past trauma prior to the time of death. There was a broken neck that was healing and some facial trauma. How the connection was made was the family of the missing person had told their law enforcement officer handling the case that the missing person had that similar trauma.

And so both parties entered all of those details, and then one of the professional users was able to note those similarities and then start talking and getting those agencies together and working with that family, which led to an identification and resolution of both those cases who ended up being the same man.

So don't skimp on the details.

Advanced searching is part of the database. If you're looking for a missing person and you know that they have, for example, a tattoo that's a butterfly. the database is then going to pop out search results for you, which you can export to a CSV or like an Excel file. And you can then look at those different cases and work on those possible matches.

The database does give our law enforcement users a comparison tool in the database. That's kind of like the next class, so to speak, some of those advanced features. But law enforcement does have some extra tools, and then for our public users, you can do it this way, which is still really helpful.

Those advanced searches are how a lot of families have located their loved one in the database as an unidentified person and which led to a resolution, or how our professional users have been able to find the corresponding case. We know a lot of our missing loved ones do not stay in one place either because they've traveled somewhere else and sadly died, or maybe they've been met with some type of terrible occurrence, some type of crime, and that criminal has transported them out of the area. So we start maybe looking in a geographical area that's close in proximity to where they went missing, but then you've got to start looking out further and they could be across the country, and you didn't even know it.

Again after that entry happens, we talk with the law enforcement agency, the case gets posted, it then is shared, sometimes shared on social media. It is compared. And if a resolution happens through NamUs users help, through the forensic services, or through unrelated, through law enforcement or a coroner, then the case is archived. You have to let us know. We can archive the case, and then it goes into our archives.

All of the forensic services, again, are free. We're going to get into some of those briefly, and then Cornelia is going to talk about an important case here that happened.

Fingerprints, I cannot stress enough. I know people think DNA is really sexy and it's new and there's always advancements in genetic genealogy. Yes, we have money for all of that. Some cases are not going to get solved without DNA because they don't have fingerprints. Perhaps it was a skeletal case. They don't have dental records for the missing person.

But I cannot stress enough how much fingerprints matter.

If your missing person has fingerprints or was fingerprinted, we can get a hold of that. Even if you don't have the physical card, we can get a hold of that record number, and the FBI has a unit who has identified over 700 persons. Since 2018, NamUs and the FBI have identified 700 or more cases that have been in the NamUs database on fingerprints alone.

The FBI is also starting to do tattoo recognition, facial recognition. I mentioned dentists and we have forensic odontologists that NamUs contracts with. They are board certified and help us obtain dental records from the military, law enforcement is collecting or families collect from the missing persons dentist, and we're able to code and search and compare on teeth.

Just a quick example. There was a male who was enrolled with the Navajo Nation, who went missing in 1974. He had served in the Air Force, and the Air Force entered him in NamUs when they became aware of the database.

Separately, unidentified human remains were found in Montana in 1982. That coroner's office was aware of NamUs and entered him in 2014.

Three years later, because both of these agencies had entered these cases into NamUs, we were able to find that there was that link and compare the dental records from both cases and identify this man and bring those answers to his family.

If agencies need anthropology services, they can ask us to link them with anthropology.

We know there is DNA funding. A lot of counties and states and other entities have DNA services. NamUs does as well. There is money set aside for tribal cases. So please, if there's DNA services that are needed, this is not just casework for unidentified, this is casework for missing persons. So direct samples from that missing can go to our lab. Family reference samples from family members can go to our lab.

A lot of times the missing persons law enforcement agency is in one spot and their family is five states away. A lot of times we are asked to help coordinate what's called a courtesy collection, meaning that law enforcement agency cannot travel five states away on their budget. So NamUs will work with our professional partners in that other state. They sit down with the family, answer questions, do the collection if they are consenting and have paperwork signed, and we get that all securely to that other agency for a lab of their choice or it comes into NamUs’s lab directly.

So there's a lot of different DNA services. We are aware that there's a lot of concern often with our Tribal communities in terms of where the DNA is going, where it's searching and if they can get it back when that is complete. For any of those specific questions that a family has, please talk to us more about that.

Engage us. We are happy to answer those questions and can explain it to you to explain it to them. We can talk with the family directly.

I've been in this field since 1999 and I personally can assure you that I only have ever had DNA for missing and unidentified person cases be used for those purposes. Legally, it can only be used for that, and I've ever seen it used for anything different than what was intended.

In the interest of time, I'm going to move on to this case that Cornelia would like to share about that’s a DNA case. This is just a good example of how DNA can help. This is not a NamUs example, but this is a great DNA example.

So, Cornelia, I'll turn things over to you.

Thank you, Alison.

I'm going to kind of give you a background of how I started using the system. Way back years ago, law enforcement, they were trying to ask the U.S. government to come up with some type of system. Prior to 2007, they came up with NamUs.

NamUs was launched in 2007 for law enforcement and the public to use, and it's used nationwide, not only in certain states, but it's nationwide. 

When I was working as a criminal investigator for the Navajo Nation, they would always tell me that we don't have money for you to attend trainings. We had a lack of resources on the Navajo Nation.

”No money”; that's what I was always told.

And so I went to a training, I believe it might have been 2007 or 2008, and I found NamUs at one of these free trainings. And since NamUs was free, I brought NamUs back to the Navajo Nation. I worked in the Chinle District. And I started putting missing person cases into NamUs. And my dashboard started growing.

Within that case file, if you look on the right-hand side, there's a little section where it says tools. This is for law enforcement, where it says tools, you can click on that. That's what I used to click. And then I would create posters for family members, and I would print those posters out. Those are also free. I would share that poster with the families, and then I would also share it with another group that would post these on social media. And that's how I used to get the word out on all the missing persons.

When I worked on Navajo Nation as a criminal investigator, I used to get family members who would come in and say: “Well, our family member, the last time he or she was seen was about a month or two months ago.” They don't report their family member missing within like two days or three days back. This is years ago.

And so by the time it gets to me, the missing person had missing for months. So I would sit down with them and I would ask every question NamUs  the screens in the drop down. I would ask the family members every question about the missing persons: what they were wearing, if they remember all the information, their medical background, if there was a vehicle involved, if they had a cell phone, if they have a checking account, any information that linked to the missing person. I would get all that information while the family member is sitting right next to me.

I would input the information into NamUs and then send that through. I started using NamUs that way when family members would come in. I did that for the Chinle district, the district that I worked in.

The Navajo Nation didn't have an accurate number. I used to always say we need to get an accurate number. This is back in 2008, 2009, 2010. We didn't have a good number. They just kind of just threw numbers around back then.

And then in 2018, maybe 2020, I asked my supervisor if I could go to other districts and input their missing persons. And so, I did that. So, like I said, my dashboard, the numbers, it started growing. And I had also archives, because some of the missing persons would be found either alive or deceased. And so, my archives were also growing. And so that's kind of a background a little bit background of how I started using NamUs. I used NamUs all the way from 2008 until 2022. I think being a professional user showed NamUs how much I used the system, and that's how I was offered this position.

I'm glad I used the system all those years. I helped a lot of families with the NamUs system.

Back to this case, the Christine Lester case, I worked with a Dilkon district police officer. Her name is Arlinda Yesslith. She still works for the Navajo Nation. She inputted this information on this individual that went missing from the Navajo Nation. She's Navajo.

The date of last contact was May 5, 1987, and she left from Dilkon area, and she got on the road and she just left. Family members didn't know what happened to her. In mid-May 1987, the same year, there were unidentified human remains located in California.

Going back, we would get DNA from family members. We would get also dental if we had them, if it's available somewhere, and then fingerprints, just like Allison was saying, those are the three things that we would get on these cases that we were putting into NamUs. And so the police officer got a sample, and she already had all her information in NamUs.

The California cold case investigator, he's the one that brought this unidentified human remains case back up. And in 2023, just a couple of years ago, the CODIS hit on that DNA, and she was identified. They gave a name back to the unidentified person that was found in 1987. So her remains were brought back to the Navajo Nation for proper burial. So that was one case that our officers worked along with NamUs. 

Even as an officer, back when I was a police officer or investigator, I tried to get all the officers for the Navajo Nation to get them to register and to get them to use the NamUs system, even though I wasn't working for NamUs at the time. I wanted all our officers and investigators to know and use the system.

So that way, all the unidentified that we have —  they could be there could be John Does and Jane Does somewhere. And if all the officers — for not just Navajo, but throughout the United States, all the Tribal agency law enforcement — if they could input all the information of missing persons into the system, and then on the other side, the medical investigators and coroners would put in their information as they're already doing on the John Does and the Jane Does, most of those unidentified could be identified if we were to all be putting in the data into the system.

That's what I'm my goal is to help or assist train law enforcement to use the system.

Thank you, Cornelia.

What came to my mind when you were speaking is sometimes what you're doing during your career, all of us, whether we're advocates or students or criminal investigators, coroners, we may not find the answers for these families or give the name back for the unidentified deceased during our lifetime.

But if you can encourage, enter the data, help secure the forensic samples that are needed, then when something's funded or technology changes, then these differences can be made.

It's like a big puzzle.

These agencies, they tried for decades and decades and finally, it took so many things to be in place for Christine to be identified and for the body in California to get their name back, which was Christine Lester.

I know we can get discouraged about, ”Are we making a difference?” or ”We're just entering data.” It's all important and every piece of the puzzle is important.

I think I mentioned earlier, in addition to traditional DNA, we are working with forensic genetic genealogy. Sometimes traditional DNA in CODIS, which is the FBI's combined DNA index. Sometimes that does not make the identification, and we need to go to genealogy and that's again something that we can get into in depth if families have questions, or if you know of cases where traditional means are not working, we can talk about linking you with funding for genetic genealogy.

This is just another example of a long overdue identification. There was a case from 1977 that was found. This is unidentified human remains found in a landfill. And they thought that that area at the landfill came from trash that was picked up in Seattle, Washington.

Remember back then, DNA wasn't a thing, so they didn't know to keep samples. So in 2012, they exhumed, did an anthropological exam, took samples for DNA, and they thought that this person could be American Indian or at least partially. And so a DNA profile was obtained and went up to CODIS, which is, again, that nationwide law enforcement DNA database that has a specific folder for missing and unidentified only to compare. And they compare all the time while we're sleeping, and nothing happened. There was no match.

And, two years later, 2021, the samples went to Othram, which is one of our forensic genealogy contractors, and they were able to identify this 1977 case as Blaine Has Tricks from Washington. And by the way, Cornelia and I don't share any information that isn't already public or out there on the internet. So if you want to read more about Christine Lester's case or Blaine Has Tricks, they are on the internet.

The Snohomish County ME was instrumental, as was the agency who had the missing persons case. So he was from South Dakota, but he had known to have traveled to Washington. He was 38-years-old when he died in 1977, and I don't have the inside information about the investigation or anything like that in terms of, obviously, it seems like, you know, a homicide or something terrible happened for him to end up in this landfill, but I don't have any of that information.

But this was a success based on forensic genetic genealogy, which is a type of DNA, using our ancestry and looking back at our families to get finally to the person.

Basically, when you enter a case in NamUs, a lot of things happen. And once the law enforcement agency approves that case to at least part of it to be public facing, and for NamUs to help work on the case, we are going to throw everything we can at it.

• Do you need odontology?
• What kind of fingerprints do you have?
• Would you like us to do an analytical search, for signs of life?

 Maybe we can come up with fingerprints that the agency was unable to find. Maybe we can get those dental records from the military that the agency wasn't able to get ahold of. So there's a lot of things that happen when that case goes into NamUs and that's the power of the system, is there's a lot of eyes, ears, resources.

The people on the NamUs team, it is a small but mighty team, and you are part of that team. And the call to action for those on this call and for those that you're spreading this word to is we need everybody. We're all part of this.

These cases, especially the most difficult cold cases, are not going to be solved by themselves. It takes the right people and the right places and the resources to bring resolutions to the families of the missing, to give the name back to the unidentified person, and ultimately for the families to be able to make those final decisions.

Something we haven't touched on because sadly, it doesn't happen a lot in these older cold cases. But often, or sometimes, the person is found alive and we're able to make those connections if they want to be connected to their family.

And via law enforcement, at least needs to talk to and see those people and know that they're okay to be able to take them out of the system.

So answers come in many different forms.

My call to action to you is thank you for listening about the NamUs program. Please use it, please spread the word. Please share information to advocacy groups, law enforcement, coroners, medical examiners and be part of that solution for these cases.