The Skeleton Crew (31 page)

171
According to a 2009 National Research Council committee report:
Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward
(Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2009).

171
“The NCIC protocol was lovely”:
Author interview with Marcella Fierro.

171
Police didn't always give families:
“Missing Person File: Data Collection Entry Guide,” U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Crime Information Center, revised Nov. 2008.

171
Harry E. Carlile Jr., who had taught:
Presentation by Harry E. Carlile Jr. at the Missing and Unidentified Persons Workshop, Virginia Beach, Virginia, Sept. 30, 2010.

171
churns through gigabytes of data seeking to match:
“What Is a $.M. Notification?” Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Cross-Match Reference Card.

172
Gary L. Bell, one of the trained forensic:
G. L. Bell, “Testing of the National Crime Information Center Missing/Unidentified Persons Computer Comparison Routine,”
Journal of Forensic Sciences
, JFSCA, vol. 38, no. 1, Jan. 1993, pp. 13–22.

173
the family of a Richmond, Virginia, runaway:
Author interview with Daphne Owings.

173
if medical examiners could even get access:
W. D. Haglund, “The National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Missing and Unidentified Persons System Revisited,”
Journal of Forensic Sciences
, JFSCA, vol. 38, no. 2, March 1993, pp. 365–78.

174
in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing:
“When Off-Line Is Better: Another Way to Search Crime Records,” Federal Bureau of Investigation news stories, Jan. 4, 2010, http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2010/january/ncic_010410.

174
a Jane Doe who had turned up near Waco:
Helen O'Neill, “ ‘Doe Network' Restores Names to the Missing Dead,” Associated Press, April 13, 2008.

176
unidentified skeletal remains that had been discovered:
Author interviews with Sheree Greenwood, Bobby Lingoes, and Vicki Siedow provided the timeline and details of the Brenda Wright case.

177
A 2008 TV show featured the case:
Female Legal and Investigative Professionals (FLIP) founder Vicki Siedow appears in the premier episode of Women's Entertainment Network's program “F.L.I.P. Mysteries: Women on the Case,” air date Aug. 6, 2008.

178
the body was that of Peter Kokinakis:
Associated Press, “Amateur Detectives Help Solve Hard to Crack Cases,” Feb. 2004.

178
In 2003, a ten-year-old boy rounding up cattle:
Afsha Bawany, “Computer Sleuths Solve Vegas Man's Mystery,”
Las Vegas Sun
, Sept. 11, 2003.

180
This John Doe was a big guy:
The Doe Network Case File 799UMON, “Unidentified male, discovered June 28, 1991, in the Niagara River, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.”

180
a statuesque blonde:
The Doe Network Case File 81UFAR, “Unidentified white female located July 10, 1991, in El Dorado, Union County, Arkansas.”

182
earned him the nickname “Bones Man”:
Noah Shachtman, “Face on a Milk Carton? Amateur Sleuths Dig Deeper,”
The New York Times
, Jan. 1, 2004.

182
gone missing from his home in northern Italy:
Robert Sears, “Dot-cop: Civilian Uses Internet to Investigate Missing Persons Cases,”
Quincy Patriot Ledger
, March 26, 2002.

CHAPTER 12

THE HEAD IN THE BUCKET

183
retired trucker Ronald Telfer:
Dozens of comprehensive news reports from 2001 to 2006 by Mary Nevans-Pederson, Becky Sisco, Emily Klein, M. D. Kittle, and other unnamed staff writers for the
Dubuque Telegraph Herald
and the Associated Press provided the details on the discovery of the remains, the arrest and trial of Douglas DeBruin, and the prosecution for perjury of Julie Ann Miller.

184
Jan Buman and her boyfriend, Gregory May:
Author interview with Jan Buman.

185
Ellen planned to show me around:
Author interviews with Ellen Leach and Keith Glass, as well as Kathie Farnell's “Gulfport Sleuth Helps Identify Missing,” in
DeSoto
magazine, April 2008, provided background for this chapter.

190
a skull found at a Missouri truck stop:
Among the sources for this chapter are Frank Bender and Paul Plevakas, “The Head in the Bucket: The Murder of Greg May,”
Vidocq Society Journal
, vol. 18, no. 1, Winter 2007, pp. 1, 4, 5; Daniel Schorn, “The Girl Next Door: Will Forensic Reconstruction Help ID Nameless Murder Victim?”
48 Hours/Mystery
, CBS News, air date Jan. 7, 2006;
Investigation Discovery: Extreme Forensics
, Season 2, Episode 6, “Road Trip Killers,” original air date May 24, 2010; Ted Botha,
The Girl with the Crooked Nose: A Tale of Murder, Obsession, and Forensic Artistry
(New York: Random House, 2008); as well as author interviews with Gary Chilcote, Tom O'Leary, and Don May.

192
May moved between two worlds:
Stephanie Simon, “In Small Town of Bellevue, Iowa, a Stranger Isn't Missed,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 17, 2001.

208
Kies wrote to her:
Letter from John L. Kies to Ellen Leach, dated Oct. 25, 2005, courtesy of Ellen Leach.

CHAPTER 13

THE HIPPIE AND THE LAWMAN

210
remembered her as an out-of-control teenager:
Jonathan Silver, “After 27 Years, Girl's Cold Case Becomes a Homicide,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, Dec. 13, 2007.

214
son of the late “man hunter” Cecil Wingo:
Breck Porter, “Houston Loses Cecil Wingo, Dr. Joe's Longtime Running Mate,”
Badge & Gun
, Houston Police Officers Union, Feb. 2009, http://www.hpou.org/badgeandgun/index.cfm?fuseaction=view_news&NewsID=519.

214
Gault had traveled to Texas from Ohio:
Author interview with Kristy Gault.

215
In his heyday as a detective:
Matt Wingo, as told to “Serial Killers, Drug Lords, Murder . . . Bodies: The Memoirs of a Cop,”
Police News
, Gulf Coast Edition, vol. 4, no. 8, Aug. 2007.

215
Gault revealed she was working:
Gault's e-book,
Unsolved in America
, became available on Amazon.com in Feb. 2013.

216
the bizarre case of Florida death row inmate:
Matt Birkbeck,
A Beautiful Child: A True Story of Hope, Horror and an Enduring Human Spirit
(New York: Berkley, 2004).

217
hosted a funeral service for a headless:
S. K. Bardwell, “Chief ME, ‘Dr. Joe,' Known for Patience, Dies,”
Houston Chronicle
, Dec. 8, 2004, http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Deaths-Chief-ME-Dr-Joe-known-for-patience-1512992.php.

217
the only web-sleuthing crime:
Author phone call with Matt Wingo.

221
an OCCI member called Suzannec4444:
Much of the discussion can be found on the Websleuths thread on Tammy Lynn Leppert (started in July 2004 and by late 2012 comprised of twenty-one pages of posts) by user “Ms Suzanne,” who identifies herself as “Sister of missing Tammy Lynn Leppert”: http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34183. Lauran Halleck also posts on this thread as “monkalup”; plus a separate, archived portion of a contentious Suzanne-Tammy thread can be found on derkeiler.com, a newsgroup and mailing list archive: http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Alt/alt.true-crime/2008-06/msg01620.html.

222
Their mutual animosity:
07020 Edgewater (New Jersey) website, “Jean Marie Stewart,” forums, Of Interest, General Discussion; “Jean Marie, updates and thoughts,” July 2008: http://www.07020.com/forums/index.php.

223
A Florida volunteer who sought:
Dinorah Perry, then head of the Pembroke Pines–based Missing Children International Ministries.

224
Jean Marie's brother held out the hope:
Jonathan Silver, “Victim's Funeral Is Closure for Family: Brookline Girl, 16, Vanished in 1980,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, March 25, 2008.

224
A Pittsburgh TV station reported that her death:
“Family Bids Farewell 28 Years After Teen's Death,” Pittsburgh TV station KDKA, July 10, 2008.

224
A newspaper article said Jean Marie's father:
Ibid.

225
Other reports referred to a gunshot:
Dinorah Perry, Florida missing-persons advocate, wrote on a forum that Jean Marie's skull had bullet holes: http://www.topix.com/forum/city/cooper-city-fl/T8AAKDQ4TU0VRJTFF.

225
a “bullet in the skull”:
Jerome Burdi, “Unidentified Bodies in South Florida to Be Exhumed for DNA Testing,”
Sun Sentinel
, Feb. 11, 2010: http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010-02-11/news/fl-missing-bodies-exhume-20100211_1_dna-testing-gregory-vondell-andrews-national-dna-database.

225
He was curious about Stewart's murder:
See this contentious 2008–2009 thread on the 07020 forum “Jean Marie, Updates and Thoughts . . .” in which Matt Wingo (as abcman) describes Lauran Halleck's alleged hack of OCCI; Kristy Gault's 2008 banishment of Halleck and his reactions to Jean-Marie Stewart identification and homicide case, with copies of posts he had made as texasx on OCCI; and Halleck's possibly responding as “barney5” and “mquizical”: http://www.07020.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-5712.html.

225
a victim of “Beauty Queen Killer” Christopher Wilder:
Michael Newton,
The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers
(New York: Checkmark, 2000).

CHAPTER 14

THE OLDEST UNSOLVED CASE IN MASSACHUSETTS

230
Serial killer Hadden Clark:
Alec Wilkinson, “A Hole in the Ground: Was There a Cape Cod Serial Killer?”
The New Yorker
, Sept. 4, 2000.

232
Meads died suddenly on Christmas 2011:
“Former Provincetown Police Chief James Meads Dies at 78,”
Provincetown Banner
, Dec. 2011.

239
his fabled history and reputation:
Thomas J. Foley,
Most Wanted: Pursuing Whitey Bulger, the Murderous Mob Chief the FBI Secretly Protected
(New York: Touchstone, 2012).

CHAPTER 15

RELIEF, SADNESS, SUCCESS

245
neither Craig nor Todd knew:
Author interviews with Emily Craig.

247
Craig herself climbed down into the hole:
Emily Craig, PhD,
Teasing Secrets from the Dead: My Investigations at America's Most Infamous Crime Scenes
(New York: Broadway Books, 2005).

248
“The Tent Girl is indeed Barbara Taylor”:
Charles Wolfe, “ ‘Tent Girl' Homicide Victim Identified Through DNA test,” AP Online, April 23, 1998.

251
described a missing girl as “an incorporeal mystery”:
Kate Atkinson,
Case Histories
(New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2004) p. 116.

EPILOGUE

253
computer-only dialogue can be rife with misinterpretation:
John Suler, “The Basic Psychological Features of Cyberspace,”
The Psychology of Cyberspace
, www.rider.edu/suler/psycyber/basicfeat.html (article originally published 1996).

254
convened a strategy session in Philadelphia:
For the history of NamUs, see http://www.namus.gov/about.htm.

254
-255
remarks he had made at a forensics workshop:
University of North Texas Center for Human Identification Forensic Science Training Workshop, “Utilization of Volunteer Organizations in the Investigation of Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Cases,” audio recording, April 19, 2010, http://www.cedata.org/cd/HID2010FL/index.html.

256
For a decade Wahlstrom had worked almost constantly:
Author e-mail exchanges with Helene Wahlstrom.

257
her ambition was to grow the group:
Angela Ellis, “Doe Network Member Profiles: Helene Wahlstrom,” December 5, 2003 http://www.doenetwork.bravepages.com/profiles/HWalstrom.html.

258
law enforcement's too important to be left to the police:
Noah Shachtman, “Face on a Milk Carton? Amateur Sleuths Dig Deeper,”
The New York Times
, Jan. 1, 2004.

258
Internet groups such as the Doe Network are “digital-age throwbacks”:
K. Carlson, “Cyber Sleuths: Shelley Denman's Sister Was the Private Investigator, Not Her,”
Na
tional Post
, June 9, 2012, http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=cefc5c3c-be1a-4ea9-bc09-79c1e55d4b7f.

258
“The advocate is a tide washing”:
Author interview with David Van Norman, San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, Coroner Division.

259
Adams envisions web sleuths:
Author interview with George Adams.

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