[ Music ]
>> With all serious--
seriousness, Kary,
thanks for inviting me
to come talk about NamUs.
Most of you know about NamUs.
Many of you are users,
case managers.
So what we're gonna talk
about today is a
little bit simplistic.
But for those of you who
don't know enough about NamUs
or anything about NamUs,
everything you've learned
so far this week, the
results of those analyses,
you can put into NamUs.
So if you have unidentified
people in your jurisdictions,
you can put all of that
and a whole lot more
into the unidentified,
the UP side of NamUs.
Why am I standing here?
Well, Kary, you have
to answer that.
But I've been involved
with NamUs for four
or five years I guess
before it was NamUs.
It started out with Randy
Hanzlick in the UDRS system
out of Fulton County in Georgia.
And then they started
building a missing person site.
So, NamUs actually evolved.
Even though it's one set--
it's a set of two databases,
missing person databases,
unidentified persons
database linked together.
But it started out as
two separate databases.
The missing person's
database was developed chiefly
at the NFSTC in Largo, Florida.
The unidentified side was
developed just down the highway
at Central Florida
under Carrie--
>> Whitcomb.
>> Whitcomb's group.
But they are merged.
We have been live now since
I think January of 2009.
And it's a growing set
of records both missing
persons and unidentified.
For you anthropologists and
you people who work, you know,
in the death investigations
field,
it's the best tool you're
probably ever gonna see
in your career for managing
unidentified cases and trying
to link them to missing
person's cases.
I can't hardly envision how we
function before we had NamUs.
Our office has 600
unidentified people going back
about 20 years, and even
though we still use paper,
binders, 3-ring binders, yeah.
NamUs now allows us-- when we
get a phone call or an email,
we just go right to NamUs.
We don't go to those binders
first although they have a lot
of information in it.
We don't even go on our own,
our own database for our office
which is VertiQ, we
go right to NamUs.
So I know a lot of
you do the same thing.
You store all the
information that you have
on your unidentified people in
NamUs and that's a good thing.
That's a good thing.
For the anthropologist in the
office or in the audience today,
what you may not know is that
some 2/3 or 3/4 of all the cases
on the unidentified side of
NamUs are either skeletal
or decomposed which means
they should have gotten
or should get some day an
anthropological examination,
which puts anthropologist
in a really good position.
We made your players in NamUs,
the data entry and then--
data entry and then the good
data entry, quality data entry
because obviously, the
database is only as good
as the information in it.
Then becoming case
managers of those cases.
And then, been waiting
for, as Clyde
and I we're just talking
about, waiting for the emails
from the cyber-sleuth
to come in and say "Hey,
could you check this MP
case with this UP case?"
And you could get a
fulltime job in the future.
Funding maybe-- funding
maybe an issue
but it will become a fulltime
job, has become a fulltime job
for me just managing the
cases that we have in NamUs.
So that's why I'm here.
I know a bit about this
system, our office, my office,
the Pima County Office of the
Medical Examiner in Tucson,
Arizona uses it daily.
And Beth Murray's
name is under mine
because these are her slides.
We've been putting on
these dog and pony shows,
Steve Clark's group, around
the country for the last year
and are gonna do another
one in Los Angeles.
They're called NamUs Academies.
And in the NamUs Academies,
five people, professionals
from each state, usually
a forensic specialist,
one person from law enforce,
one missing person's advocate,
a cop type and MLI are selected.
And these five people from
each state, we've done three
of these academies so far.
The LA meeting in two
weeks will be the fourth.
These five people
are then supposed
to go disseminate the
good word of NamUs,
both on the missing
person's side
and the unidentified
person's side.
But since Beth already came
up with these teaching slides,
we felt why reinvent the wheel
and we'll just slap my name
over hers and we'll
go from there.
So, has anybody here
not put a case in NamUs?
Well, you're gonna want
to, you're gonna want to
and I'm gonna show
you how easy it is.
So this is what we're gonna try
to do in the first hour today
and then after luncheon.
We have a little--
a little hands-on
and we've put some
cases in ourselves.
We're just gonna concentrate
on the unidentified or UP side
because most of us will be doing
that, few of us, although some
of us might put missing
person's cases in.
They're virtually
identical databases.
The screens are virtually
identical
but there are some
little variations.
But let's just concentrate
on the UP side
because that's what most of
your talents will be used
for if you decide to use
NameUs in the future.
And again, the most important
thing about the database is
to put accurate information in.
If you don't know ancestry we
have convenient little drop
down that says "unknown," okay?
What's the use of that?
You don't exclude anybody
on the missing person's
side if you put "unknown."
If you shoot from the
hip and say "Caucasian"
or can I say that word?
I can say Caucasian, I
can't say "Caucasoid."
If you shoot from the
hip and say "Caucasian"
and that person may be Caucasian
but the family doesn't list them
as Caucasian, you'll never
find that person in NamUs.
At least the algorithms won't
find that person in NamUs.
They will exclude that
person so quality data,
quality data is the key.
So that's the first page of the
Unidentified Persons System.
You wanna log in
using that log in.
Now, the URL is an ORG.
Both of the independent
databases are ORGs
but NamUs is actually GOV,
so it's www.namus.gov
is the umbrella URL
but the two databases
are under ORGs.
You can start a case
once you log in
and get the appropriate
permissions and those of you
that are already users,
you know what that means.
You have to be sponsored
by somebody, a coroner
or a medical examiner.
If you're working in that office
or you're forensic
anthropologist for
or medicolegal investigator for
that person, all you need is
that person's permission.
NamUs, the administrators
of NamUs have a list
of every medicolegal official,
the head of all those offices
county by county in every state.
They had their phone number,
they have their address,
they have their email address.
So once you get that person's
approval and you enter
that yourself when you register,
that is easy than a couple
of days' worth of emails
before you activate it.
Okay, so you're in.
You start a new case
and it's what, 10 pages.
NamUs is I think is
10 pages, maybe 11.
The first one is for information
so you can just read
these blogs.
I don't have to read everything.
The red asterisks
though are important
because you can't get a case--
you can't get a case published
in NamUs or approved in NamUs
unless these red asterisks
fields are filled in, so you
have to pay attention to those.
There's a lot of information
you can not put in.
You can wait a while.
You can start a case and
add to it later but you have
to hit these asterisk fields
where it says required fields
marked with that red asterisk.
So probably the most important
number is gonna be the case
number, your medicolegal
case number, your ML number,
your ME number, your MEC
number, whatever you use.
You probably don't wanna use
a police report number here.
There's a police page.
You'll see down here that there
is a police information page.
You can put that-- you
can put that number there.
And you use a calendar
function to get to date found.
That's the date body is found
not the date you think the
person died.
You want to describe the
current location of the remains.
It could be as easy
as just your address
or the Fulton County
Medical Examiner's Office.
If the remains in
some of these cases,
especially the cold cases,
they've been released already
and they've been
buried or cremated.
If you can get that information
from the Public Fiduciary Office
or some other public
office within your county
or your jurisdiction, you
certainly can add that there.
Save your data.
Every-- don't ever leave a
page without hitting Save,
hit it a couple of times.
There's also a nice
floating Save bar.
You don't see on
this printout here
but they've added a Save
bar that floats with the--
as you scroll down the page.
It's a very nice feature but
you gotta save your data.
So you do this and all
of a sudden you come up
and you get your
numbers in there
and you get your
now new number 7333.
That's your NamUs
UP case number.
That is a unique number.
It's-- they're sequential.
We're up in the 9000s
now so this is a year
or several months old.
>> You'll also list your name.
So Beth Murray put this case in,
so now after that first page
is saved she becomes the
case manager.
The case manager
should be somebody
who has access to
all the records.
You may not have access
to the body or the bones
or whatever remains there are
but you should have
access to the case records.
If you can't get
the case records,
you probably should let some
other person who has access
to those records to
become case manager.
And it's very simple to
go to the context page
and change case manager.
Now, in my opinion, it's
better to have someone like you
in the room be case manager
if you know a little bit
about the case than make
somebody who won't answer email.
And the reason I say that
is this email address,
is the address that
the cyber-sleauth
and families are gonna contact.
You're gonna get these emails
and phone calls in some cases
and it's better if
someone conscientious talks
to the families and
the cyber-sleauth
than somebody who doesn't care.
So, if you feel that the
person with all the records
and you can't get them all
and maybe their remains
and they don't wanna
give the remains to you.
If you feel that person won't
do a good job as case manager,
I'll leave that up to you
and tell you face to face.
Then you can remain
as case manager.
Better to talk to a family with
a little bit of information
than to put this in
someone else's hands
who won't answer an email.
And certainly, we have--
I speak from experience,
we have changed our cases
to a different case manager
and then got emails
from people saying, hey,
this person won't return my
calls or answer my emails
and I noticed you
are also listed
or you are listed one time
in the past and you helped me
out on a different case.
So, a word to the
wise on that issue.
You'll get this nice red
highlight or line up here
that says the case does
not meet requirements.
Well, it doesn't yet because
we haven't been to every page
with all these red
asterisks fields.
Once we get to all
the pages and we fill
in all those required fields,
then we can actually
submit this for publication.
And there's the Save bar,
that's the new Save bar there.
That's very, very,
very nice to have.
So we go to the next page.
Now I guess we're gonna
summarize the case
information specifics.
So here I use the one
number and you wanna know--
wanna list something
about the disposition.
Many of these cases
have multiple reports,
autopsy reports, DNA reports,
anthropology reports,
odontology reports.
You may have fingerprint
records in there.
There's a place in
NamUs to list all these.
You don't have-- you can put
a lot in the comment section
on the first page but there
are also specific pages.
And the nice thing about
that comments page is all
that text is searchable.
So for instance, we could
put information like ID cards
on the police page and we do.
But we also wanna put that
name, an ID card that we--
that seemingly can't be
proven to be this person.
But we also wanna get that name
in the text fields
on the circumstances.
Because an ID, the matching
ID could be as simple
as a family typing in their
son's name and searching
and it will search
all the text fields.
That has happened before.
Okay, the demographics
page, so the anthropologist,
anthropologist probably
have something to say
on virtually every
one of these pages.
More so, there's a couple of
pages that MLIs typically do
but anthropologists
can weigh in.
And the results of our
analysis can be entered
in on a variety of pages.
But obviously, this is a big
one, age, race, ethnicity,
sex, height, and weight.
It can all be put under
demographics page.
Now, you can read
all these yourself.
I don't have to read it for you
but as far as weight it should--
it goes without saying but
some people have put the weight
of the bones.
They weighed the bones and
put that in the weight.
Now, weight is a
searchable field in NamUs
so if you put 18
pounds of bones,
you're not gonna find any adult.
You might find some kids but
you're not gonna find any adult.
And this has happened and I
tell you how critical it can be.
There's a way to adjust the
parameters around weight
but we had a case
of a dismemberment a
couple of years ago.
We had everything but the hands
and the feet and the head.
So I don't know what head
weighs or hands and feet weigh,
but we had about 180
pounds of everything else.
This is a 230-pound,
225-pound man.
And the person doing the
data entry saw the 180 and so
that sounds reasonable.
Well, that's kind of
what we do in our office.
So not only I put--
do I put cases,
I mean a lot of students do.
We say if it's, you know, if
it's 90 pounds or 70 pounds
for an adult, someone who
is dehydrated or mummified,
maybe partly skeletal,
don't put that in there.
But if it sounds reasonable, so
we put in 180 pounds and for two
or three moths, we-- NamUs
couldn't find the guy who is
in on the missing
person's side in NamUs
because his family had him 230.
So the primaries I think were
10 or 20 pounds so they went
down to 210 up to 250.
So eventually, we found
that was the right guy
but we could have done it.
We could have done that
the algorithms we found
in this potential match
had we put "unknown."
So, in a case like that of a
dismemberment or decomposed
or dehydrated body
unless you can calculate
to a pretty good degree
of accuracy what you think
that person weighed, just
put unknown or can't measure.
It's better to be broader in
NamUs, it's better to cast--
or intervals are wider,
the algorithms have a better
chance to find that person.
Now, that doesn't mean
NamUs totally requires these
algorithms to find
matches, quite the opposite.
Most of the matches
are found by people.
It used to be that you and I
had to do it, the police had
to do it, or the medical
examiner had to do it.
Now, anybody can do it.
There were kids who
get on this website
and play this we're
told as a game.
You know, here is a
dead guy, go find a list
of missing people
that might match.
Now, whether you want to use
it at that way as a game,
kind of like the
geocaching, if you will,
or you're the mother looking
for her missing daughter.
Still, it's a lot of eyeballs
on the computer screen.
So we're fond of saying in NamUs
that you work 8 hours a day
but your cases are
worked 24 hours a day,
or at least your cases can
be worked 24 hours a day.
So regardless of the
intentions or the motivation
of the people using NamUs,
you get these emails sent
to you saying "Hey, compare
this case with that case."
And sometimes they're right.
Sometimes they have found-- Kary
could tell you more about that.
They have found a match.
So, okay, required
fields, body condition is
in PMI are semi important
although I have to tell you
with PMI you can type in--
you can type in the postmortem
interval like 10 to 20 months
but it won't be saved as that.
So if you didn't know
this, this is important
to point out right now.
Let's say you had somebody--
let's say you had a skeleton
that came in in August of 2011
and you thought it
was one to two years.
You could type in
2009 to 2010 in here.
That will be saved but for
interval, leave that blank
and for the units here, just
drop down, just put years.
Because if you type again 10
to 20 months, it won't come up,
that's the problem with the
NamUs that they're working on.
But what happens is you end up
getting something that says 10
and then you see months.
And then some people could
interpret that as "Oh,
he died 10 months ago."
He was found on this date.
He died 10 months ago to the
day when we know in the room,
you can't estimate
the PMI to the day.
So that's a little
glitch right now
but I think they're
working on it.
But it's something that
for all cases, you entered,
subsequently you should
probably pay attention to that.
If you do have some
cases in NamUs already
and you have a free half an hour
or an hour when you're at home,
go back to that page, all your
cases while you're logged in
and just edit that out.
Edit that out.
You can only-- it wouldn't
be confusing to you
because you'll see and you'll
think what does that mean?
I typed in 10 to 20 months but
to somebody who is searching
and they see that, it
could be confusing to them.
So now we have age,
age range, race,
and sex are all shown 'til
all the highlighted fields
are shown.
If you can't estimate
the weight,
you just put you
can not estimate.
If you reconstruct--
if you-- excuse me.
If you estimate the
stature from the length
of a long bone, then
put estimated.
If that person is
measured prone heel
at the autopsy, then
put measured.
That's the two possibilities,
estimated and measured.
So even though we can't put
in plus or minus 3 inches,
if we say estimated,
it's kind of implied
that it could go a
few inches either way.
>> Are they gonna change
that though 'cause I
have families just freak
out about that.
You said he was [inaudible].
He was actually 6 foot
tall and they got on and on
and it's really exhausting.
>> I think if anything,
we're gonna--
they're gonna stop
using stature.
We stop using weight
as a primary criterion
because of the issue
with the bones decomps
and the dismemberments.
But there is some talk about
not using that anymore,
or educating people to how to
change the search parameters
so you don't exclude
someone like that.
You know, statures
are very problematic.
We, you know, we can as--
anthropologist, you know--
we can estimate and
be pretty sure
that we knew how
tall this person was.
But if the family doesn't
have that recorded or the guy,
you know, lied about his
height or the woman lied
about her height or
didn't know the height.
>> Perhaps we should just
put in estimated regardless
of whether we measured
it or not.
>> Yeah. Well, we do searches.
That wouldn't be a bad idea.
When we do searches we just
go up and we brought that out
to plus or minus 6 inches.
We figure the family
probably knows
within a foot how
tall that person was.
But their families may not
conduct their searches that way.
Okay, so kind of summarizing
the demographics page.
If you say something and
this sounds simplistic
but it's relatively important.
If you estimate an age
to be 45 or 25 to 45,
then you also wanna go to
the drop down that says 350.
If you estimate 30 to 50,
then you should say pre 60
because if you believe
the person could be 50,
then they're not pre
50, they're pre 60.
The age except for the kids
that's pretty straightforward,
always put unsure.
If you're not, if you're
not positive put unsure
because like I said,
those algorithms,
that will exclude people out
if we're wrong and we know
as anthropologists, you know,
we could be wrong on ancestry.
We could be wrong on everything.
We could be wrong on age
and even sex at times.
But always put unsure
if you're not sure.
The mixed ancestry,
if it has a mixed--
if it appears to be of mixed
ancestry whether you're doing
this from skeletal remains or
just looking at a deceased body,
you can describe that in
circumstances of death.
But again, what a family
puts down for the ethnicity
or ancestry or race of a person
and what we put down, you know,
could be different things
and that could be the
basis of exclusion.
So we thought about and we still
might do, we may go for all
of our cases, all 600
change race to unsure.
We're not getting a lot of
hits, we're not getting a lot
of matches, so we thought about
doing that on some cases just
to see if we get more hits.
So you can play around.
You can change things.
And when you're case
manager on your UP site,
you can broaden things out.
So let's say you only have one.
Let's say you're lucky enough
to be in a jurisdiction,
you only have one
unidentified person.
So everyday you can devote half
an hour or an hour to that.
You can go change your
parameters in this and see
under potential matches, you can
actually, you know, get a few
and then you can-- if
there-- obviously the missing,
the missing person's report
has to be in NamUs for you
to do this if the family
hasn't taken the time
to put the missing person that
you have the body of in NamUs,
this is not gonna work.
But if the assumption is that
the person might be in there,
then it's not a bad way
to use some of your time.
Okay, weight and height, you
want to use the estimated
or measured or cannot be
estimated, you have to choose,
you have to choose one of them.
The system will not let you
publish it if you don't do it.
Don't use zeros.
If you can't, leave it blank
and say you can't estimate
but don't put zeros in there.
The algorithms will actually get
confused in the search on that
and we talk about decomps and
skeletons and dismemberments.
Body condition and
time since death,
if you have a recognizable face,
there should be a
photograph of that face.
Now we know some
cases are, you know,
photographs were taken
or they've been lost.
But another power of
NamUs is the images page.
You can put as many images
and are encouraged to put
as many images as you can there
because the families
are looking.
So images of the face are great.
They gotta be relatively
a decent photograph.
Dr. Hanzlick who Mark works
for probably wouldn't
allow a decomposed face
to be put on there.
You can put any image on there
and say don't make it
viewable to the public.
And then only we can see it,
law enforcement can see it.
But if you want the public
to help identify your Jane
or John Doe, just put photos out
there that you think, you know,
the parents or the siblings
or the friends could get
some information from
but they would just--
they wouldn't be horrified
by seeing the condition
of a decomposing face.
Circumstances, so here
we can fill in the state.
You have to fill in the
state and the counties.
It's a drop down.
If the post was done
somewhere else,
you can list the other agency.
You enter cause and
manner if you want.
It's never viewable
to the public
so the public can never
see a cause and manner
if you wanna put in there-- if
you wanna put it there, you can
or you can put it
on the police page
but it's never viewable
to the public.
The circumstances of a
recovery are good because here's
where you can put down
names and some other clues
or some other terms that a
family might be searching on.
And when they do a
search on the UP side,
this is one of the text boxes
that is searched as well
as a few other text boxes.
So it's a good place to put in
two or three or four sentences.
Now, we will cut
you off after about,
I think it's 160 characters.
So there's a space limitation
on this but you can--
you got two or three sentences
to get all the pertinent
information.
We still don't have
enough to be published
but we're working at it.
But you also notice
that we have a star now.
Does the star show up?
We have a five-star system.
So one being the lowest,
actually no stars being the
lowest but the goal is to kind
of get all five of those
stars lit up in yellow.
And you could do that by putting
in a facial image and putting
in fingerprint information and
putting in dental information
and putting in DNA information.
You don't have to have it all
but if you have some combination
of those things, you will
get up to four or five stars.
>> In circumstance
of death here,
is there where you
put the possible name
of the individual if you'd--
>> We do, we do.
We do because again
that's searchable
and if their family just
searches on that name,
it will come up there.
>> [ Inaudible ]
Okay.
>> Yeah. Now, I'll leave it up
to you as far as images page
and we'll get there in a minute.
But we put-- we scan ID cards
especially if they are thought
to be fake or bogus
or fraudulent.
If that person doesn't
appear to exist in that state
or that country and our
investigators say this is a
bogus card, we'll
scan the whole card.
Now, there could be some
sensitive information on there
but we think that by putting
that out there making it
viewable to the public,
if the name is close to
the guy's name or state
or the birth date are the
same for the missing person,
it's a potential lead.
Because this is web based
and anybody has access to it,
you know, you could right
click any image and take it.
You can download
anything up as you want.
And the security issue
is there of course
and I guess what I'm trying to
get at is we haven't been bitten
by this yet, by identity
theft or something like that
where it's been traced back
to us and we had to answer
to why we put that potentially
sensitive information
on the NamUs webpage.
If that happens, we
may change our policy
but right now we think any
and all information that comes
in with that body could be a
clue to identify that body.
And again, we've had
enough fraudulent ID cards
where the name was either the
same except for a middle name
or the name was different but
the birth date was the same.
It's like people won't
lie about everything.
They'll selectively lie but it's
like I can't remember
a whole new identity
so I'll just change my birth
date but I'll keep name.
So who knows on that card what
might actually be something
that's searchable
by the families.
That's our policy.
Each jurisdiction probably may
feel differently about that.
So I just summarize the
circumstances pages.
Address is good.
If you have GPS coordinates,
please get them in there.
If you have two different or
three different ways to describe
like the GPS coordinates
and then maybe 5 miles south
of mile post so and so, on route
so and so, put that in there.
If you have something else
like, you know, three blocks
from the church and
whatever street you can--
and you don't have
street address.
Obviously, if you have street
addresses, that's good.
In Arizona, most of our deceased
are nowhere near, a name,
street, let alone a number.
But if the person dies
in the city of course,
street address is fine, is fine.
>> Bruce? Question, if -- if the
ME's office is going to get DNA,
let's say they think
they have a possible ID
and they're gonna get a DNA
sample, do you or would you wait
to put this in or would you
wait or go ahead and put it in
and just wait for
the DNA results?
>> We've been waiting
more than a year
for DNA results or DNA lab.
>> Then you have to have
[ Inaudible ]
have to be to be in Namus.
>> If you want a free exam at
UNT, they have to be NamUs.
So my answer to you is I would
say put them in right away.
We typically wait about a couple
of weeks to a month to let the--
if they have fingerprints, if
they have anything identifiable.
If the police even act
like they're interested
in helping us identify
this person
which is not always the case,
especially with foreign
nationals, we kind of let
that normal thing run
for two or three weeks.
If bones come in with no
ID cards, we'll put those
in NamUs the day we do
the anthropology exam.
And we'll cut the bone
sample for DNA that day.
So I would say put in
them there earlier just
because of the long
wait for most DNA labs.
>> You mention going back,
what kind of cases do you have
or would we have the
ability to selectively pull
out our own cases
by the case manager.
>> You get a dashboard.
You get a dashboard that shows
you all your cases and then
when you only have
5 or 10 of those,
you know, you can manage those.
When you get up to 100 or 400,
then you could do
some case tracking
so you can get a subset
of all your cases.
Yeah, it's pretty easy to
track your own cases, yeah.
Uh-huh?
>> [ Inaudible Remarks ]
>> Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
>> The GPS coordinates, is
there any preference per system?
>> No, no, no, either--
anyway, either way.
Okay. The physical
medical page, a lot--
I'm sorry, you had a
question, I'm sorry.
>> So you mentioned
case managers,
on our NamUs cases
Jenny[inaudible] case manager
and now I've been entering
some of the cases into NamUs.
But in the past, some of our
cases were out of county.
So as long as Jenny signed
in, she can make adjustments
to those out of county cases.
I can't. I can only
do Harris County.
Is there a way?
>> That's not a NamUs
restriction.
It's maybe something
in Harris County.
All you have to do is
ask Jennifer if she would
or Sanchez, Dr. Sanchez?
>> Yes.
>> Yeah, so Jennifer is
working under his name just
like I'm working under our
chief medical examiner.
All they have to do is act--
I'm sorry, you don't
have to do-- Dr.
Sanchez. You have to get the
coroner or medical examiner
for those other counties
to agree to do it.
>> Okay.
>> So for instance, we currently
have a postdoctoral fellow
and two pre-doctoral fellows and
they're-- they can put cases in,
enter cases in four different
counties in Arizona just
like I can but we had to answer
that change 'cause there was a
time when only I could do that.
So if you want to edit those,
those other county cases,
it's not a NamUs restriction.
You just have to
get the permission
and since Jen must have it,
Jennifer Love must
have the permission
for those county agencies.
>> She generally just makes
those changes but I just wanted
to see if there was a way
around it, or, cause I mean,
if we have-- if I have
to make a change instead
of contacting the justice of
the peace, I just tell Jennifer
to make the change
herself[inaudible].
>> Right, it's right.
That's right we change
it in our office
because I was getting this
list that you gotta go in there
and change it 'cause I
can't get to your case.
So I just ask Steve
Clark who runs ORA,
one of the two architects
in NamUs,
if we could get the fellow's
permission to do those counties.
And the only requirement is that
that medical examiner or coroner
for that county gives
their approval.
They have to know about it.
That's why I said since Jennifer
Love is already the case manager
for those non-Harris
county cases in Texas,
I assume that's already
been done.
So they probably
would be as easy
as having Jen just send an
email to Steve Clark and saying,
"Can you activate Deborrah for
these additional counties."
And then you could
have full edit.
Yeah. So those of you
that only have to deal
with one county that's nice.
But most of us, especially the
anthropologists in the room,
you know, we extend beyond
our county borders and many
of us do multiple counties.
Some of you do the whole state
or may do the whole state.
Some of you go like
Krista in different states.
So that's a whole-- that's
just a difference in degree
and not a difference in kind
so you couldn't be activated
for any of those counties that
you work in Indiana or Illinois
as long as you have
the permission
of those medicolegal officers.
>> But I had a question
about that.
Since coroners are
an elected position
and they rotate out frequently.
Do you have to get
continuing permission
from each new coroner?
>> NamUs monitors that.
The people at ORA monitor this
if not yearly, at least yearly
and maybe during
every election cycle.
Yeah, everybody is--
registration expires
after one year
so whenever you register
12 months later,
you'll get a notice saying,
you know, so you just have
to say I'm at the same
address, I'm at the same this,
you know, my boss is the same.
If anything has changed, you
need to let the administrators
or you can just send them an
email that things have changed
and they'll verify
that and you'll just--
they'll get you up
for another year.
>> We've also gotten a little
more cautious with the address
because we have the
web-sleuths go out to scenes.
Just letting you know that
[inaudible] find anything there
and they're gonna interview
some people in the area
and law enforcement like,
can you kind of make
that a little more vague.
So instead of the southwest
corner of the block,
it's just a vague
intersection or vague area
of town which is unfortunate.
>> Well, yeah, I think I
mentioned geocaching a few
minutes ago and there was
an app, a computer app
that I was asked to sign
off on that was all about--
you know what geocaching is.
So this new app, this new
geocaching game was to go
out and see death sites.
So I didn't sign off on it.
In fact, I told them they
shouldn't do that principally
because some of these areas are
so remote that the person going
out there could die themselves.
But the other consideration I
think as Angela has hinted is
that you can get people when
you put down the address
in grid corners even though
they're kind of fussy.
But if you can get somebody
close and they can see perhaps,
you know, where the person died
by the condition of the soil
and they do a little
search around it.
I'm sure they could find more--
if the person was
partly skeletalized,
they could find more
skeletal elements.
So the last thing we want, we
think, you could argue I guess
that that would be a good thing.
If somebody went back to this
site and got these remains,
but if they don't call
the law enforcement
and you just get these kids
that are out geocaching,
then post something online
that they found what looks
like a rib bone at this grid
coordinates, that's just gonna--
that would create a
nightmare for our office.
So I don't think
they made that app.
We asked-- we told them we
could not participate in it
and told them they
shouldn't do it.
But that's a risk and yeah,
this is all web based.
So, all this information
that's viewable
to the public potentially
is being used
for other than good reasons.
So the greater good is that
a lot of people can see it.
And perhaps and I didn't
stress this strongly enough.
The most important feature in
NamUs has nothing to do with us
in the room unless
you're missing somebody.
The most important
feature of NamUs is
that it allows the families of
the missing to actively search
for their missing loved one.
Whenever they want,
every night, you know.
When the phone calls of
the police are not returned
or the phone calls of private
investigator are not returned
and people just say, "You know,
lady we don't have
any new information.
We don't-- we don't
know what to do."
And which is typical in
a missing person's case
after a few days or a few
weeks or a few months.
Now these families
can go on and log
on every night and
they can search.
And if you and I are
doing our job and putting
in recent unidentified
cases, we may be putting
in the daughter one
of these mothers
who were looking every night
to see if she's in there.
So with that in mind, you know,
good quality information and lot
of images making it
while still technically
and anthropologically
correct, making it, you know,
putting things in lay terms
so the general public can
actually help us solve
these cases.
Okay. The physical page, medical
page, we can put in a variety
of things, hair color,
eye color.
If the person, for the
anthropologist in the audience,
if you've got an old healed
fracture, you can put in that.
One of the things
we're fond of doing
and this has happened several
times is we'll get a sternum
that has 4 or 5-- that
has sternotomy and has 4
or 5 stainless steel
wires around it.
So not only do we
put that in there,
that's our stainless steel
wires in the healed sternum
from open heart surgery, right?
But we also put on on the scar
pages that there would be a--
we say inferred but we say we're
gonna infer a vertical scar
down the chest.
Under medical stuff,
we're gonna say probable
or we're gonna infer that the
person had open heart surgery.
For those wires, they'll
make any other sense then.
Somebody got in there and
touched that man's heart.
So you put all that stuff in
and if you think it, you think,
well, that's kind of redundant.
But what if a cousin knows
he had open heart surgery
but doesn't know
about anything else?
What if his neighbor had
seen him without a shirt on
and knows he has scar
but doesn't know
anything else, you know?
What if he has told somebody,
"Hey, I go to the airport
and that thing goes off,
the x-ray machine goes off,
and I got wires on my chest."
So you don't know what a person
knows about that missing person.
So when you find something on a
bone, especially like a very--
like a healed fracture,
especially a very grossly
healed fracture, you might infer
that there could be
possible scars in that leg
and that would give their
families who don't know
about the bone being
broken but do know
about the scar a
chance to find that.
Always save your data.
Be as detailed as you can.
Don't use all caps.
I don't probably have
to tell anybody in here
but occasionally, we get
cases and cases are entered
with all capital--
all capital letters.
Randy doesn't like that, Dr.
Hanzlick doesn't like that.
None of us like reading
all caps either.
So now, you know, because we
have a scar on this person,
we get a second yellow, we
get a second yellow star.
So we're moving it up the
ladder a wrung at a time
to being a strong case so
that if-- two things here--
if that missing person is
in the MP side of NamUs,
the algorithms could
potentially link the two.
>> But even if that person isn't
in the missing person side,
the family or the friend of
that missing person who's just
cruising the unidentified
website, even as a lurker,
even someone who's even
logged in or registered,
they can see all these things.
This happens a lot.
This happens a lot with people
that aren't even registered,
they just go in there and
they look at pictures and look
at tattoo descriptions and
scar descriptions and come
up with possible matches.
>> Bruce. What do you think
about facial reconstuction
putting them in NamUs?
>> We put them in.
That's the only thing we have.
Now we use the FBI.
We use the FBI for
a couple of reasons.
One of them is boy,
they're lifelike.
They look like people.
Not all forensic artists I think
make a facial reconstruction
or approximation look real.
So these ones at the FBI
have been cranking up for us.
They're very realistic.
Now having said that, do they
look like the person in life?
I don't know.
Our policy is to put those
in if they're lifelike.
However, this banner photo
up here, this blue man
up here, we can turn that.
That will be whatever
photograph--
if you choose to put an
image in under facial ID,
the first one you enter goes
up there and that becomes kind
of the logo for this case.
If we had a tattoo, let's say
we had a skeletalized tattoo
so we had a facial
reconstruction
or facial approximation done
and then we had a heart tattoo
and it said 'Mom' in it and we
have a nice picture of that.
We would choose to
put that as our image.
We would still put the-- and
we'll get to that in a minute.
We would still put that facial
approximation photo in there
but we wouldn't make
it the main one.
But, you know some of
the facial approximations
in NamUs are horrendous,
which is they don't--
to me they don't
look like people.
So I don't know what
good that does.
But then again, I
don't know how good--
what good it does to put
these FBI generated ones
in if they don't
look like the person.
You know, until more research
is done, we're never gonna--
we're not gonna know if
they look like the person
but any image is good.
Anything to replace
that blue man is good.
Now in the case-- we just
started this a few weeks ago,
and we stole the idea from Emily
Craig in Kentucky, but Emily has
for years now when there is
no other image available,
that has a image of
Kentucky and a star in one
of the five quadrants
or five locations
that she covers at Kentucky.
So this is where
the body was found.
So the blue man tells you
nothing except there's no images
and there may be no way
to create an image
if it's just bones.
They mean nothing
to put in there.
There's no-- unless you have
visible teeth, anterior teeth
in a skull, I would
say there's no reason
to put any bone on that banner.
You can put pictures
if you want and images
if you think it might be a
good thing to do, but to put it
up there can't do
any good unless
of course the anterior
teeth are showing.
But even if you don't have
any of that, you can--
and you know where the
remains were found,
you can still generate
some kind of map catch-up
and you can put like
we're putting.
We're putting stars in the--
deep in the desert of Southern
Arizona showing the Mexican
border with US and in case
some families know something
about the crossing
location, that might be enough
to get them interested.
But I would say put
something and get
that blue man out of there.
New York City-- go ahead.
>> I'm sorry.
You were saying you
wouldn't put up a decomp face
but you would put
up a skull with the
[ Inaudible ]
?
>> Well, we would crop it.
We crop it.
>> Okay.
>>So let's say we get something
with a star on a tooth,
a golden star, we would
crop it down into, you know,
what I would consider
not offensive.
>> Should it be then, put
the entire skull photo in?
And would you do the cropping?
>> No, no, no, no.
You would do that-- you
would do that-- yeah.
>> We would do that?
>> Yeah, yeah, you're
the case manager, yeah.
If you creating that
case, you, you--
now you certainly can put
in a cranium, people have,
there are plenty in there,
there are plenty in there.
What good they do when they
don't have any you know,
distinguishing features
on the teeth.
Again, you could argue that
the mother of that, if that's--
if the mother is looking
for her son, that would be
such a turn off that they
wouldn't even consider
that case.
So, you could argue
that actually it does
more harm than good.
>> [ Inaudible Remark ]
patient with a slope.
>> That would be
different, wouldn't it?
That would be different, yeah.
If you had someone with a flap,
a healed flap, parietal flap
and you wanna show, you know.
Certainly, would describe
that, it would describe
that under bony skeletal
findings,
under medical intervention.
I would say, you know,
I wouldn't tell you not
to put a photograph of
that in there, it could be,
it could be a good thing.
It's unlikely of
parents or the, unless,
unless the surgeon is looking
for this missing person,
it's unlikely that
anybody would've ever seen
that but yeah.
We haven't done that yet but I
wouldn't say that's a bad idea.
It might be some.
If you look, if you know your
missing person had cranial
surgery and you're just thumbing
through a bunch of images
like that, I mean that, that
could come, that could come.
And the text box for the
photographs are also surgical
so when you do that, if you do
that photograph you'd also want
to describe that this
is a parietal flap
or prior cranial surgery.
And then that would come up
and you could get another
possible link to that way.
So, we're only concerned
and Dr. Hanzlick
at Fulton County who's a--
who reviews all of these,
we're just concerned I think
with putting insensitive
things up there.
But there is some
decomposed bodies
and decomposed faces
on NamUs, you know.
It would be up to you.
So, we got our second star and
now I think we can move out.
Okay, medical so, here we go.
Poorly healed fractures to the
right clavicle visible on X-ray,
fine, partial hysterectomy.
So, you can infer some of these
scars either from a hysterectomy
or from an appendectomy.
You can infer these things if
your, if you wanna say inferred
or you, you know qualified
you certainly can do that
but NamUs searches for the word.
So, if you put an extra words,
it'll still find hysterectomy,
it'll still find appendectomy,
it'll still find scar.
One thing you won't do is if
you typed in grey, G-R-E-Y,
like I like to do
for some reason,
I must have had a British
professor sometime.
It won't find gray, so G-R-A-Y
hair won't link to G-R-E-Y hair.
So try to use a common
spelling and things
that people would put in there.
>> You can type them both?
>> You can type them both.
>> Medical terms, use
like layman's term
and physician terms 'cause you
don't know what the family has
access to or knowledge of.
>> Yeah, so hysterotomy
would be uterus, not present.
>> Right, you know like
colon and gallbladder.
>> There you go.
It's a good point.
You don't wanna give-- if you
did a search and you got no hits
or only one hit and there's
8,000 missing people in there,
do another search, think about
it for a while like you said,
add a few more words,
think about how else you
could capture the same kind
of condition and you probably
get a few more numbers in that.
>> On the search, is
there and/or function or?
>> No, just words, yeah.
And also those partial
words, right.
So, if you put in
and you'll get grand.
So, sometime, usually what
happens is you get too many
and you think why
and you have to find
out why did this one come up
and then you see what your--
you put in evil on a
tattoo that says evil
and you get all the tattoos
that say devil so you just kind
of have to play with
it that way.
I guess, I guess that's by
design, they wanna do it
that way but I think
it's better to get more,
too many than too
few but if you do,
if you do think you get too few,
and sometimes we do a search
and we think, come on somebody
has gotta have a tattoo
that says Mom, right?
More than three people
have to have it.
And usually if you play
around, you can get that.
Okay, so the phenotypic thing,
the phenotypical things
we can put in there,
any kind of foreign objects.
If it has a, this goes with
respect to circumstances too.
If it's a homicide and it's
like something that has to do
with ligatures, you know you
would never put down, you know,
a scarf that it was holding
someone's hands behind their
back, you wouldn't list that
as personal effect, right?
You wouldn't list
that as a scarf
under clothing nor should you
put it, unless you come up,
you come up with a real good
reason why you think somebody
reading that NamUs page could,
that would be a good clue,
because if you think about it,
only the perpetrators
probably know about that scarf
around that woman's
wrist, but this is,
stuff like that can be put in
great detail on the police page
and the general public can't
see that, only you can see it
and the police can see it,
so things that you might,
and sometimes in the
older cases, you know,
we've done that, and this did a
oops like, oh we shouldn't put
that there because you know
she wasn't wearing that.
Like we've listed one time
a green blanket in addition
to all the other stuff this
person had and had a backpack,
and so you list the backpack
then you list the green blanket
'til you realize that she was
rolled, the body was rolled
up in this green blanket,
there's no reason to think
that was hers, so potentially
all you're doing is alerting the
perpetrator that that's the
body, and if you think about it,
they're probably are,
in homicide cases,
the killers are looking
at NamUs.
By now, 2 years later, it's out
there, people know about it.
I'm sure there are
some cases out there
where men are tracking their
victims or that they see
that the victims were found
and now they're tracking what,
you know what's being
added about the body,
so you don't wanna
give them any,
anymore additional information.
So, you don't want to put things
that are sensitive like that
that might mess up the
police investigation
and really have no ID value
except to the perpetrator.
>> Fingerprints, we can
scan prints and we'll do
that after lunch, if you want.
You have to fill something
out, it's required fields,
so if you can't get
them, you can't get them.
But if you can, you scan them
in and you say that they're
or you say that they're
available in a certain area.
The code is the old, the
old, what do they call them?
The 10, the 10 codes.
>> Henry System?
>> Henry System, some people
put the Henry System in there,
most cases don't have that,
but there's some old timer,
old timer detectives, people
my age, a little bit older,
they're still using
that, and they use
that as a sorting criteria.
So they have a, if they
having a missing person,
and they have the card out
with the Henry Classification,
and they're just thumbing
through which you can do,
you can thumb through a hundred
or a thousand unidentified
cases, just, and you come up,
once you start thumbing
through with the--
you can't see it in this
slide, you can just go
from fingerprint page
to fingerprint page
to fingerprint page.
So, if you're looking at their
classification, it's just kind
of looking at all
these UP cases,
looking for the same
classification,
they can actually exclude
which is a good thing,
we'll talk about that
later or they can say well,
you need to look at
this guy's prints?
See that's the same
classification as my guy,
but most of the cases at
NamUs if you go and look,
they won't have anything
in that block.
And then under comments, you
can say, who has the prints,
whether they have been
submitted to AFIS,
or they have been submitted
to the local, your local AFIS.
Sometimes it's only partial
prints in a lot of our decomps,
that you guys you know you get,
you don't get good ten prints,
you get a few fingers, it
might be okay, so you can put
that in there, which
digits have been printed,
and then if you can
upload, scan those prints,
upload them on the images
page and get them in there.
We have had IDs made from
fingerprint examiners looking at
and this attest to the quality
of the scanned images in here,
looking at the prints at NamUs
and comparing them to prints
in a U.S. government database,
matches have been made,
so if you have good,
if have prints,
especially if they're
good quality,
you never know what
fingerprint guy might, you know,
decide on that day to look
through all the cases,
the new cases maybe for the
last month or last 2 months
that have fingerprints, and then
compare his missing person's
fingerprint to your
descendants fingerprint.
Again, another thing, another
great thing about NamUs,
when you're not working
your case,
or if you have a hundred
cases, and you can't get to all
of them, you never know
when someone else is working
it, that's a good thing.
That's a really good thing.
Save your changes, obviously, go
to the next page, fingerprints
as I just said, everything that
you upload has to be a JPEG
so whatever you have you gotta
convert it, in the images.
You can put PDF into
the documents pages
but JPEGs only into the images.
If you're gonna scan
radiographs,
especially demo radiographs,
I think it's 400 dpi,
400 I can check on this
but I believe it's 400
dpi is recommended.
That's certainly a
good enough quality
to make some valuable
comparisons.
Sometimes prints are unavailable
when you put the case in
or you put the case in and you
don't, you know prints are run,
you get reports that the
prints came back negative,
but you don't know
where they're at.
And if your jurisdiction is
like ours, it might take a week
or a month to get the police
to actually find the actual
print card, lend it to you
for the day so you can scan
it and then get it into NamUs.
But if that's the
case, then just put
down that prints aren't
currently available.
But when you do get the prints,
then go back and edit this.
Obviously, every
field is editable.
You can change anything.
We, I change things from
happy to glad all the time,
and then back to
glad a week later
because I forgot I changed
it from happy so you can,
you can do a lot of
changing if you'd like to.
Clothing and accessories,
MLI's and our [inaudible]
in the office do most of these
information, they collect most
of the information but it's the
anthropologists in our office
that actually put it in.
So if you're in an ME system,
whether you're an anthropologist
or not, you may be
asked to put this in.
Next to the facial
photograph, probably clothing
for the families
of missing people
who know what the person was
wearing when they went missing
and if that person is dead,
probably that person
was killed shortly
after he or she went missing.
The family search the
clothing page all the time,
they're looking for
jewelry, they're looking
for particular colors,
particular styles of clothing.
Now, a lot of families don't
know what the person was wearing
or the person didn't die right
away so, but in those instances
where the family is sure they
know, in an abduction case,
they know what the person was
wearing then these are really
good thing, really good thing
to have, fill that accurately.
>> So Bruce, you were
saying that you wouldn't put
if someone had their hands tied
or something, you wouldn't put
that taking that, thinking that
it might be the perpetrator?
But, what about the used
her own scarf or something,
the blind fold or something,
or could you just say,
a flower was associated?
>> I guess if you knew that,
you thought that was a
strong possibility then yeah,
you could list that in
the personal effects.
You'd also list it
under, but you'd list,
you would list it under,
what, give me an example
where you would absolutely
know that with this dead body,
that had to be her
clothing item.
>> Yeah.
>> Let's say a bra, let's
say a bra was taken off
and her hands were tied with a
bra, okay, bad example perhaps
so let's say, there's something
special about their bra.
On the police page, you
would put that a bra which is
for a ligature, and
she was shirtless
and didn't have a bra on.
But and let's say, there's
a flower or something,
her initials on that bra,
then on the clothing page,
you would just list that bra
just as if it was on her body
when she came in, that's
why you'd have that.
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