[Music]
>> Well, this morning we're
going to demonstrate how
to enter a case
on the Unidentified
Persons site of NamUs.
And the first thing we want
to do during this tutorial
is make sure we're all
at the training site.
So go to this url that we've
highlighted right here and open
up the training site as
you're practicing putting
in these cases into the
Unidentified Site of NamUs.
And once you're there, we will
immediately go to the new case,
add a new case, and
run the first screen,
the Case Information
screen, where we will have
to enter specific information.
And if you see the highlighted
area here required fields marked
with the red asterisk, those are
the minimum requirements to fill
out to put a case into the
unidentified site of NamUs.
The first case information
we should enter would be the
specific case number.
Each decedent should
have a medical examiner
or coroner's number that
should be unique to that office
but may not be unique
nationally.
And that won't be a problem,
because we will assign --
NamUs will assign
a 4-digit number,
currently a 4-digit number,
that will be unique
within the system.
Now, a word about putting
information in to NamUs.
If you're familiar
with the case file,
if you're only doing
entries from your coroner
or medical examiner's
jurisdiction,
you may be very familiar
with the contents
of each individual case file.
If you are, you can probably
very quickly go through 15,
20 minutes and find
all the information,
at least the minimum
required information,
to put into NamUs
from that chart.
If you're working with
someone else's charts
that you're not familiar
with, we do have a form,
NamUs has a form called the
NamUs Unidentified Person Case
Data Entry Form, which
is a 6-page form,
but you can at your leisure,
fill in all the blanks
on this paper form from the
chart that you're using.
And then by using the 6-page
form you can expedite the entry
into NamUs.
So I have one of these forms
that I'm currently using
because I'm entering
a case from a chart
that I am not familiar with.
And I've already, in addition
to adding the case number now,
I will add the date found which
is another required field.
And we see that this
individual was found
on the 5th of January, 2009.
So with the mouse, we just
pick the month and the year
and then the date, and we
have 1/5/09 as the date.
If you know the time, exact
time that the body was found
or the person was pronounced
dead, you can fill that in;
otherwise you can
typically just put 00.
So that's the required
information for the first page
of the NamUs Unidentified
Persons System database.
So we're going to
save our entries.
And by doing that if you
follow the mouse over here,
you'll see in addition to
the ME/Coroner Case Number
that I entered, we now
have a unique number
within NamUs, 8833.
That's unique within the
Unidentified Persons System,
or the UP system.
There are other numbers
that are unique
on the missing persons
site of NamUs.
Now, we get a red warning
that this case does not
meet requirements to be sent
to a case manager, but
that's understandable
because we've only filled
out two fields on one page.
So we're going to
go to the next page,
which is the demographic
page and fill
out those minimum fields.
Now, the age of this individual
was estimated to be 40 to 65,
so I will put down initially
that it's an adult pre-70
and I will set the minimum age
at 40 and the maximum age at 65.
Race is said to be white.
One word on race.
If you're unsure, use
the unsure dropdown.
By using the unsure dropdown,
we ensure that the algorithms
that are searching the
missing person site
of NamUs do not falsely
exclude somebody
because the race was put wrong.
We'll go back and put white
because that's what the data
from the case files tell us.
We're also told that this is a
white female, so we check that.
Again, right now we're filling
out the required information
to submit this case to NaMus.
There's additional
fields we could fill in,
but right now we're just going
to do the required fields.
These remains were skeletalized,
so we don't know the weight,
so we're going to
put cannot estimate.
We would never weigh the
bones and put that in.
That would be obviously
way too low
to be an accurate weight
estimation for the person.
And for the height, we have
approximately 64 inches,
but that was estimated from
the length of a long bone,
so we can't put down measured
because there's an error
associated with that estimation,
so we're going to
put down estimated.
The body condition field
has to be filled in,
so out of this dropdown
we're going to pick the one
that most likely matches
our case, and that would be
that face is not recognizable
because of nearly complete
or complete skeletalization, so
we're going to choose that one.
And then we're going
to save our changes --
excuse me, save our fields, our
data entry into these fields,
look over it, make sure
there's no obvious mistakes.
We've filled in all
the required fields.
And then we can move
on to the next page,
which is circumstances.
You still get the red warning
that we have not put
enough information
in to send this to
a case manager.
The required fields here
are state and county.
If you had GPS coordinates,
please put those
in on the top line.
Address 1 and address 2 could be
anything from a street address
to 4 miles south of a mile post
on a highway on a rural area.
It could be between
the two large rocks
in Box Canyon, New Mexico.
Anything like that
could be helpful.
So the more information
on location the better,
and however way you
can describe it.
This person was missing
in Ohio, in Hardin County.
So we will first find
Ohio in the dropdown.
It's near Michigan
but it's not Michigan.
That will then populate
the counties
and we can find Hardin County.
So we have the state and
the county filled in.
There are other fields as you
can see that we could fill in,
and we may go back later
and edit those fields.
The only other required
field that we must put
in are circumstances of death.
So you can make this
brief but descriptive.
So we can say, human skull
was found by hunters,
then a complete search of the
area resulted in the discovery
of additional skeletal remains.
It could be as simple as that.
You could reiterate the location
if you'd like, but something
that will describe the
circumstances surrounding the
discovery and recovery of the
remains is essential to put in.
We then want to -- after
seeing that, we have filled
in the three required
fields on this page.
We will save our data.
Before you exit any page,
you want to save the data,
quickly review to make
sure that's what you'd
like to see in there.
Let me go ahead and just
do a quick edit here,
remove my period, put
in a comma, save that.
And now we can close
this page out
and move to physical/medical.
The physical/medical page has
everything from the eye color,
hair color, all the
things that most people,
most missing people
descriptions would have.
Two other features that are
on the skeleton including
the teeth, that some people
who know the missing person very
well, may not even know about.
So you may have to find
hospital records or look
for hospital records
on missing persons site
to actually find
some of these items.
So because they're skeletal
remains with no hair,
would you say unknown
or completely bald?
Because the eyes are
not present anymore,
we put unknown or missing.
It's always good
to enter something
into the field rather
than leave it blank.
And under other distinctive
features,
we're going to click this
button here that says
"distinctive features
as described below."
We'll come down to Scars
and Marks and we'll put
"possible scar at left ankle."
And we'll also come down to
Skeletal Findings under Medical
and put "healed fracture
of left ankle."
We know the bones
were fractured.
We know they heeled.
We don't know about the scar,
but we'll put possible scar
because somebody who knew the
decedent, if she did have a scar
at that side of the broken
ankle, may know about the scar
and not the ankle
being fractured.
We will save these changes,
quickly review them.
You want to be very careful,
too, in your spelling
because all of these
textboxes are searchable.
So if a family puts
in heeled fracture,
fracture would be
found but the word,
since I had misspelled
the word "healed,"
that would not be found.
So take some care to review
your entries to make sure
that the spelling is correct
and everything appears the
way you want it to appear.
Save. And you can see now,
because we've added some
pretty good information,
we now have two yellow stars
in this five star panel,
five stars being the highest
identification potential
that NaMus can award.
So the goal is to get as many
of those five stars
lit up in yellow.
We're two-fifths of
the way to that goal.
We're now done with the
physical/medical page.
We go to the fingerprint page.
Because these remains were
skeletal and there were no skin
on the hands, we just have
to click the button that says
"fingerprint information
currently not available,"
and we just say, "due
to skeletalization."
[Typing]
>> Save those changes.
It's about all we can say
on the fingerprint site.
Going down to clothing
and accessories.
If there's no clothing
or accessories,
any kind of personal
effects that were found with
or near the body
or the skeleton,
you click the first button.
In this case, there was
a tarp, and we don't know
if that tarp was with the body
or was associated with the --
we don't know if the tarp was
personal effects or something
that came to be put on
the body at a later time.
So other items found on the
body, we can just say a tarp.
If there were sweatpants, for
instance, on this skeleton,
near this skeleton, we
would type in sweatpants,
blue in color, size unknown.
Anything about color, size,
brand that you can enter
into these fields on this
page could be very helpful.
Many family members are
searching the unidentified
persons site and using
clothing descriptions.
This is all we have on
this particular page,
so we will save those changes.
Move on to the dental page.
Now, NaMus has a variety
of specialist DNA people,
anthropologists, dentists
that can help enter data,
help explain information
that can be gleaned
or cannot be gleaned at autopsy.
And one of the things that's
very essential within the NaMus
UP site is to get
accurate information
about the dentition,
about the teeth.
So if you can have
that in autopsy report
or anthropology report
or odontology report,
then you can just
enter that data.
If you don't have that
contained within the case file,
I encourage you to contact one
of the NaMus subject matter
experts, especially a dentist,
and NaMus can provide
that expertise to you.
Links to the resources
for NaMus can be found
at the TTW training site.
So here we have dental
information
that I have transcribed
from the autopsy records
onto the NaMus UP form.
We do have x-rays available,
so we're going to click that.
We do have photographs
for the teeth available.
We're going to click that.
we'll come down and go
through these fields and say
that there are one or
more teeth present.
The upper jaw had no teeth.
The lower jaw is present,
but the lower jaw
does have some teeth.
And you can fill in the
32 teeth, 1 through 32
that most adults have or had
sometime during their life.
You can fill them in with
very simplistic dental codes.
You can also fill them in
with more complex dental codes
from the NCIC system.
So if you have those
codes available,
usually from an odontologist,
dentist that would
examine the decedent,
you can certainly put
those NCIC codes in.
But if you don't have those
you can simply just go through
and use these simple codes
with A being antemortem loss,
which means there were no teeth
in the person's mouth at death.
He lost those, she lost
those before she died.
So we can populate
the whole upper part
of the mouth, the
maxilla with A's.
>> And then P being postmortem
loss, which means it's a tooth
that fell out after the person
died, which is not unusual
for the anterior teeth.
So the lower teeth in the
front of her mouth had fallen
out after death and the
posterior teeth, the molar teeth
that were absent during life.
So that's minimal information.
We could have more
information with the NCIC codes,
but because the A's mean that
the teeth were missing in life
and the P's mean that the
teeth were no longer there,
there's really nothing to judge.
There's no teeth left.
There's no crowns to look
for fillings or cavities.
So this may be as good as it
gets with someone like this
who skeletalizes and was
missing many teeth in life,
and then was missing the rest
of her teeth after death.
So we'll let it go at that
and we'll save these changes.
If you do have comments let's
say on some of these P's,
these postmortem loss of
these lower anterior teeth,
we could say something
like, teeth number 26
and number 27 have
root tips only.
So we want to say the tooth
is lost because we don't want
to say it's present because just
a couple of root tips are there
and by saying it's
present and unrestored,
then we actually create a false
description of this person.
Whenever a crown is
missing on a tooth
and you can't evaluate the
crown, you want to put down P,
even though there could
be some root tips there.
We put the root tips
only comment in because
since we have dental
radiographs of this decedent,
if a missing person did have
radiographs of her front teeth,
it's possible that the shape of
those root tips could be used
as points of comparison
and actually could be used
to exclude or identify her.
So we want to get that
information in there.
Come back and save the changes.
Quickly review our
dental information.
And again, if you're not
comfortable putting dental
information in, NaMus has
odontologists who are more
than happy to assist you with
this part of the data entry.
We'll move on from
dental to DNA.
we have required fields --
before we start to talk
about DNA, if you looked
at with the dental
information that we put in,
we've now gained a
third yellow star.
So we've increased
our potential,
according to the NaMus system,
to have this person match
with a missing person, whether
than person is a missing
person inside of NaMus or not.
We have good quality
information to get 3
out of the 5 stars thus far.
Now, for DNA, the
best we can do here is
that a sample is available
in all these cases,
unidentified remains.
At least one tissue
sample should be taken.
Usually it's a bone sample;
sometimes it's blood.
But those samples should be
taken at autopsy or closely
after autopsy and eventually
submitted to a DNA laboratory.
So all we know now is that
the sample is available
but it has not been submitted,
so we will save that change.
And now you see that
we're green-lighted
to submit this case to NaMus,
the red warning telling us
that we did not have
the required information
in to submit to NaMus.
That's been replaced with the
green congratulatory statement
saying, please submit
your case to NaMus.
So when that comes up, I would
suggest that you submit it,
even though you haven't even --
we haven't filled
in all the fields
that we're going to fill in.
But we now have this in
the queue to be approved
within the NaMus system,
and usually within 24 hours
this case will be visible
to everybody who has
access to the Web site.
Now, we are on the
training site, of course,
so we're not actually
publishing this,
but these are the
same steps we would go
through if you actually
were putting a case
into the NaMus Web site.
So with the DNA page completed,
we can move on to images.
Now, there's probably no more
important page to the family,
the families of the missing
than the images page,
because the families will have
some memory, obviously the face,
descriptions and memories of
tattoos and perhaps clothing
and hair color and eye color
and skin tone and freckles
and a variety of
things like that.
So you never want to
underestimate the power
of the images page when putting
images in of postmortem remains,
because the families
of the missing will be
searching that page.
Now, I'm going to hold off
the images page until the end
of these entries because it's
more involved because we have
to uphold a few things.
Likewise, with the documents
page, which is the next page,
we can make PDF files if
you will, and load those.
But I want to show you -- I want
to finish doing the data entry
of the other pages and then
come back to the two pages
that require uploads and show
you the kinds of materials
that we have and then
how we can either,
if they're in electronic format
already, quickly enter them
into NaMus, or if they're paper
records, how we can scan these
and then turn those into jpeg
or PDF files and put those in.
So we'll move from documents
of police information.
And the police page is
a very important page,
because if you think
there's sensitive information
that you don't want the general
public to see, the casual user
or the viewer of NaMus, we can
put this on the police page.
And the information on the
police page is only available
to people with the highest
level of access to NaMus.
So we'll click this button here,
open up the page in the fields
and at minimum, you
want to put the state,
even those these are required.
We filled in all
the required fields
so this information is not
required to get into NaMus,
but I strongly urge you
to enter this information
on the police page
if you have it.
So we're going to
use the Glendale,
Ohio Police Department.
Their case number 090105627.
And you just might type in
notes that police are suspicious
of cause and manner of death
due to tarp that was found
with body or bones, we can say.
So that lets any police
agency that's cruising
through the police pages
of NaMus who may be looking
for a particular method
or a set of circumstances
where that might match perhaps
a homicide in a nearby county
or nearby state, and the
police can use this to track
that kind of activity.
We don't know if the tarp, she
took the tarp out there with her
and died naturally; we
don't know why she died.
There are no marks on the
bones to suggest why she died.
So the cause and manner of
death, which are never viewable
to the public, are undetermined.
Each are undetermined
in this situation.
But that doesn't mean
it's not a homicide.
So this information about
the tarpaulin may actually
be useful.
The police may have a report
of a woman who was wrapped,
killed somewhere else,
wrapped in a tarpaulin
and then dumped out
in the woods.
So this is a page, a police
information page, where you want
to put these things at --
you don't need the public to
see this, but you certainly want
to make sure the police have
access to the information.
So we finish with
the police page.
The exclusion page will show
once a case is published,
any cases on the missing
persons site of NaMus
that have been excluded, but
we have not done that yet.
We will later in
the demonstration,
show how to do matches
and exclusions.
But right now this
page is empty.
But as you monitor, as
you manage this case
as the case manager, you will
eventually find possibilities
on the missing persons
site of NaMus
that could be your
unidentified person.
So we will go through this
system of how to make exclusions
and how to make potential
matches,
and then we will record
all the exclusions
on this exclusions page.
And of course, if
there's a match,
then the person becomes
identified and then is removed
from other searches
within NaMus.
So right now, you see we have
under the next field,
possible MP matches.
We have 105.
So we could, if we wanted to,
go through all the 105 cases
on the missing persons site
of NaMus and see which ones
of those could be excluded.
Certainly at least
104 could be excluded.
Only one could possibly
be our Jane Doe.
But we'll go back
to this matching
and exclusion exercise
a bit later.
Okay, under reports, you
don't have to enter anything
into the reports, but the
reports page is essential
because you can generate
one-page flyers
to show all the information
you have,
the complete description
of the decedent.
You can go to a case activities
log which shows comments
by other people that have access
and to editing your cases --
or not editing your cases
but viewing your cases
and then making comments
about their case
potentially being linked
or not linked to your case.
And then you have the
case chronology log,
which is very important
to open occasionally,
because it will record the
time the case was created
and the time and the date the
case was sent to the manager
and eventually, the time and
the date the case was approved
for publication in NaMus.
So very important page
to monitor your cases
with the reports page.
And then the contacts page.
The contacts page is
the last page in NaMus.
We don't have to do
any data entry here.
We could edit if we wanted to,
but this page is autopopulated
by information previously
put into the case file.
So you see we have the Hardin
County Coroner's Office,
which has jurisdiction over
the decedent, the case manager,
I logged in as a TTW user today,
since this is a training
exercise as part of a TTW
that you have all attended.
And then there's a regional
system administrator,
somebody within NaMus that can
answer additional questions
and can administer, manage
these cases at a higher level
than the case manager.
Okay, let's go back to
the images page and put
in a couple of jpeg images.
That could be anything from
photographs of the face
if the decedent is viewable,
facial reconstructions
or approximations if you're
dealing with skeletal remains
or decomposed remains,
photographs of tattoos,
photographs of dental
conditions,
especially anterior teeth,
crooked teeth, stained teeth,
dental restorations to those
teeth especially up front
that show when a person
smiles, photographs of clothing,
photographs of jewelry,
anything like that that you have
in the case file, even
if they're paper records
or they're photographs,
paper photographs.
They can be scanned
and digitized
and then they can be
turned into jpeg files
and then entered into NaMus.
An additional paper document
that many times is found
in a case file is a
ten-print fingerprint card.
You can scan those
fingerprint cards and put those
into the fingerprint page.
So a variety of paper documents
exist in most paper files,
the charts of the decedent,
postmortem examination file.
And these paper records can
be turned into jpeg files
and uploaded into NaMus.
So we'll go to the images
pages, we'll start here.
We already have a couple
of images that are jpegs,
so we'll go ahead
and choose one.
Now, it's important
for the blue man here
to be changed into something.
And you see when I click on
it, we get a no photo banner.
We need to change that
to something more useful
than the blue man.
Facial photograph is best, but
then a photograph of a tattoo
or of clothing or jewelry,
anything that could
draw the public's eye
to this case is going
to be advantageous,
so you want to get
rid of this blue man
and put in some image there.
Now, the only way to replace
the blue man with an image is
to make it the first uploaded
image under facial ID.
So under the category
here you see
under the dropdown we have
facial IDs, fingerprint cards,
dental charts, a variety of
things that are just labels
for the individual image.
But if you want the image to
appear up here on the banner,
we're going to call it
a facial/case ID photo
and make it the first
one that you upload.
Additionally, I'll just
come in here and say
that it is a facial
approximation
that a forensic artist
did in consultation
with a forensic anthropologist
to recreate what the
face may have looked
like on these skeletal
remains that we found.
After we fill out those fields,
we have a box here that says,
do we want to make it
viewable to the public?
Well, of course, we do.
This particular image, we
want the public to see this.
There may be some photos that
you want to put into NaMus
that you don't want
the public to see.
If that's the case, we
can just unclick that box.
But here, we want the photo
to appear, so we're going
to leave it checked in green
and we're going to go ahead
and click the Add Image button,
and now we have a profile view
of the artist reconstruction
or approximation
of what this individual
looked like.
We can return to and
add some more images
by just hitting upload, go
back to browse, find your files
where they may be,
add the image,
and you'll see we have
a second photograph.
Now, had I chosen to put
this photo in initially,
that would have been
the photograph
that you see in the banner.
So up to you as to what
photograph that you want
to appear on the banner,
but it'll always be,
it can only be the first
image under facial ID.
So let's save these changes.
Now, we have a couple of images
that might attract
the public's eye.
And let's move down
to documents,
the other page we
skipped over temporarily.
And the documents can be
almost anything, PDFs, jpegs.
It's a good place, the
documents page is a good place
to put additional reports,
anthropology reports,
dental reports, DNA
reports if you desire that.
So we'll go to the
same upload bar here.
We'll browse our files.
And let's pick one of
the dental records.
We're going to call it,
we're going to change it
from category to dental chart.
And up to you whether or not
you want these to be viewable
to the public on most
images, but as you'll see,
I cannot make the dental
images viewable to the public.
Fingerprint records and dental
information are never viewable
to the public, so only
people high enough access
to NaMus can view these
things, but the public can know
that these documents exist;
they just can't see them.
So we can't make it
viewable to the public.
We will add it anyway.
And it should appear
then under No Title.
We can click on that.
Open it, and you see that
we have an NCIC unidentified
person's dental chart that was
created by a dentist who looked
at this decedent's mouth and put
in the appropriate
information in the NCIC codes.
So this will be very important,
could be very important
for any dentists who are
looking, helping families
of course, look for
missing persons
that are currently in NaMus.
By going through the
unidentified persons site
of NaMus and on the dental page,
we can then direct this person
to this PDF file of
this NCIC dental form
on the documents page.
So we're going to save
this to the documents page
and then we're going to go
back to the dental page.
Then we're going to put an
additional comment in the box
that just says, "see
documents page for NCIC chart."
We'll save that.
So then not only do we have the
document on the documents page,
but the primary people
that will be using
that document are dentists,
forensic odontologists,
and now we've directed
them to that page
and they can actually
open that document.
Okay, well, we finished
putting in the minimum amount
of information in this case
file, our case number CC09-00055
from Hardin County, Ohio.
NaMus assigned it
the UP number 8833.
That is a unique identifying
number within the NaMus
UP site of the system.
We have some additional
information
that wasn't required,
like the photographs
of the artist's reconstructions
and the dental information,
and we have a 3 star case.
If we think about the DNA page
and that we do have a sample
but we haven't submitted it, if
we were to come in here and find
out a month later that
these samples were submitted
and completed and let's
so both mitochondrial
and nuclear DNA were
extracted and profiled.
Let's say that was at the
University of North Texas,
we could save those changes.
You could see now,
just by the virtue
of having DNA information,
we've increased the
potential up to 4 stars.
So the more information you can
put into a UP case into NaMus,
the greater likelihood you can
get 4 or 5 stars which makes
that case very, very likely to
be matched against something
on the missing persons side of
NaMus, and then it takes people
like anthropologists, dentists,
pathologists, DNA experts,
to go through those matches
or potential matches and see
in fact which ones can
be excluded and which
of the cases cannot be
excluded, and of those
that cannot be excluded,
which of those may
in fact match your
unidentified person.
[Music]
