The Unidentified

Every day Law Enforcement receives reports from people who are concerned about a friend or relative how has gone “missing”. It’s  hard to disappear, particularly in today’s culture of personal identification, data tracking and governmental oversight. So in the vast majority of cases the missing person is soon found and balance is restored to the social order. At the same time each and every day there are bodies, or bits and pieces of bodies, found and never identified. You would think that identifying a found body would be somewhat easy, but people who are trying to hide someone they have killed can be innovative in making it difficult for law enforcement to identify the body. I recently read that there is a minimum of 40,000 unidentified bodies and cold cases at any moment in the United States, and there are indications that that figure might be too small by as much as 50 percent.

Americans believe that success is largely due to hard work and the many law and order shows that litter the networks supports that belief. When was the last time you watched one of those shows and seen them admit that they had failed and the case had gone dead? But in real life cases do go cold and law enforcement is inundated by fresh cases with higher priority and ultimately a large percentage of missing person cases are put aside, filed away and finally forgotten. Too many families and friends never know what happened to their friend and too many morgues have unidentified cases languishing in their files. There is a bureaucratic disconnect in merging reports of missing persons and bodies found elsewhere. Police, medical examiners and coroners do not have a well developed and linked reporting system and are often reluctant to share information.

But in a society that has grown up on TV crime and reality shows there is a (relatively) large and articulate audience that has a desire to link the missing in one jurisdiction and the found elsewhere and to provide closure to families and solutions for law enforcement. They have three weapons they bring to bear on solving this problem; Public records, usually found via the Internet, an empathic drive to solve a problem and the grit to override the initial reluctance of many in law enforcement (and administration) to recognize that a “civilian” can solve a case they have given up on.

I don’t know if I have the ability to expend the time and energy it takes to link together disparate bits a data and develop a coherent case. But I have to admire the people who spend their own resources to close long dead cold cases and bring families back together again. If you want to learn more search the Internet; NamUs, Doe Network and Websleuths are good places to start.

A Tale of Two Cultures

Texas is a study in extremes, climate, people and the social culture are variables that continue to surprise people as they travel across the state.

Two Texas sized incidents illustrate my point.

Texas City is located in the Houston metro area and is an industrialized, unionized city with about forty thousand residents. Mason County, on the other hand is located in central Texas, is mainly agriculture and has a population of around four thousand people. And that explains the different events that happened recently.

Earlier this year four pit bulls in Texas City broke through a fence and killed the neighbors beagle. That's a terrible thing to have happen and the neighbor was almost certainly upset when their pet was killed by the owners dogs. Rather than apologizing for the event and making restitution, the pit bull owner has now sued the neighbor for "failing to securely confine and restrict the beagle". In short she wants to be paid for her failure to keep her dogs from invading the neighbors property and causing the death of the beagle. In my mind the owner is a perfect example of the "gimme society" that the politicians are trying to encourage with their blatant disregard of humanity and common sense.

Up in Mason County a local rancher acquired a beagle mix dog from the animal pound and about four months later the dog proved that good deeds are worth while. The rancher was experiencing chest pains and difficulty breathing and the ambulance crew decided to transport him to the nearest hospital, about ninety minutes away. About twenty miles into the run the ambulance was flagged down and told that there was a dog riding on the side step of the ambulance.

The dog, named Buddy, had decided that his owner/companion was important enough to him to justify the dangerous ride on the ambulance step. Rather than kicking the dog off, to fend for himself the crew brought Buddy inside to be with his owner and informed the hospital by radio what had happened. To its credit the hospital admitted both owner and dog and both are now reported to be safely (and happily) home.

Culture does indeed make a difference and I'll take the culture of Mason County Texas over the culture of Texas City any time.