In Ohio, just over 100 John and Jane Does are waiting to get their names back.
At any given time, it’s estimated there are more than 40,000 sets of unidentified human remains in the United States.We’ve been profiling cases out of northern Ohio for the past five months in our series Unidentified, in hopes someone out there may recognize them or have information that could help solve their case.
“How I realized it was her was by the description of the tattoos I didn’t think anybody else would have, except for Paula,” she said in a video from the National Institute of Justice. “Her sister had been found deceased in Ohio 14 hours after she went missing from Kansas City,” said Chuck Heurich, a former forensic DNA analyst who has been leading NamUs for years.NamUs became fully operational in 2009, not too long before Clack made a connection in her sister’s case.
NamUs has helped resolve tens of thousands of cases, sometimes with the help of families or even web sleuths, who have matched cases on their own and gotten their leads confirmed by law enforcement.