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'Somebody cares about them. We do.'
Jane Doe cases could be solved 'overnight' if database utilized, police say.
Monday, August 06, 2007
By the time Jane Doe's body had been found in Englewood on Aug. 10, 1987, seven other young women had preceded her as victims of similar crimes. By 1990, three more would follow in the same pattern — 11 young women in all — beaten, strangled or stabbed, their bodies dumped along roadsides and interstate highways.
Soon after, 15 law enforcement agencies in Ohio and surrounding states banded together in a task force to try to solve the 11 killings, including the possibility that at least some of the slayings had been the work of a serial killer.
Extras
Three of the victims were found in the Miami Valley. Seven were found in Ohio. Many had been prostitutes picked up at truck stops.
By focusing attention on the problem, the task force was able to help solve the murder of at least one victim in Tennessee, but none in Ohio, said former Shelby County Chief John Lenhart, who was vice chairman of the task force.
Going back to the 1980s, Lenhart said, more than 400 women across the nation have been killed and dumped along roadways by perhaps more than one serial killer, including Gary Leon Ridgeway, the "Green River Killer" who pleaded guilty in 2003 of murdering 48 women, mostly in the Pacific Northwest.
The arrest and conviction of Ridgeway was aided by new crime-fighting technologies, including DNA testing and computerized databases of DNA and fingerprints that can be shared instantly among law enforcement agencies. There also has been a proliferation of volunteer Web sites for missing and unidentified persons, such as The Doe Network (www.doenetwork.org/), The Cold Cases Group (www.coldcasesgroup.com) and Web Sleuths (www.websleuths.com/).
"It used to be we had very little interaction among (law enforcement agencies), other than phone calls and investigators getting leads based on height and weight matches," said Chief Investigator Harry Brown of the Miami Valley Regional Crime Laboratory,
Guthrie and Englewood Det. Alan Meade, now in charge of the Jane Doe case, said they have gotten "hits" over the years of potential matches between missing persons and Jane Doe, and still do, but none has panned out so far. Her DNA has been sent to a central data bank in the event of a possible match with a family member.
"We follow up on every lead," Meade said, "but either the DNA doesn't match or the eye color doesn't match or the dental records don't match. There's always a bump in the road."
More "hits," of course, would increase the possibility of identifying Jane Doe, as well as the estimated 50,000 to 60,000 dead persons in America who are still unidentified and unclaimed by loved ones, said Todd Matthews, a volunteer and spokesman for The Doe Network, a Web site that assists law enforcement agencies with missing and unidentified persons cases.
Matthews said a major obstacle to solving these frustrating cases is that only one state in the nation — California — currently requires all its local law enforcement agencies to file their missing and unidentified persons reports with the FBI's national database.
The Miami Valley Regional Crime Laboratory submits all its reports to both state and national clearinghouses, including the FBI's and a site maintained by a national association of medical examiners, said Montgomery County Deputy Coroner Kent E. Harshbarger.
Matthews wishes every law enforcement agency would be as conscientious. "If we actually used (the FBI database) to its full potential, I feel we would have many potential matches overnight," he said. "It's a matter of either moral obligation or federal mandate. You have to give good valid data."
Experts estimate that the 6,408 unidentified persons currently in the FBI system, including 34 submitted by Ohio, may be as little as 10 percent of the actual count, Matthews said. "There is still a huge lack of interest" among many law enforcement officials.
Of the seven known Doe cases in the Miami Valley, "we never stop trying to identify them," said Brown of the Miami Valley Regional Crime Laboratory. "They are someone's brother, sister, father, mother, daughter, son — someone out there who may need closure. And if we can identify them, maybe these kind of crimes could be stopped."
"Somebody cares about them," Brown said. "We do."
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2437 or jdebrosse@DaytonDaily
News.com.
