This is a shameless plug. Running this weekend is an Associated Press article about The Doe Network. I am included in this article - but this is not about me. It's about why that article includes me and others like me who are desperately searching for clues to bring closure to families with missing persons and to identify the nameless dead and bring them home.
The still-unidentified toddler, known locally as "DuPage Johnny Doe", is mentioned in the article. Not mentioned are the thousands of other Illinois missing persons and the hundreds of unidentified dead. Sometimes their cases are profiled briefly in the media - some cases become media magnets - and still others never get a mention.
At Doe Network, the cases are the same - a missing person that needs to be found and reunited with loved ones, an unidentified body, stumbled upon and examined, with no clues as to identity. Our members search just as hard for each and every one.
Helen O'Neill's article provided a glimpse into the lives of a few of our members, but there are hundreds more behind the scenes, not mentioned but who's work is as tireless, as important and as needed.
Area Directors across the U.S. and internationally reach out to law enforcement and other agencies for information needed to update the databases of the missing and the unidentified. I am blessed here in Illinois to have a number of law enforcement officials that provide assistance and support. I am grateful for each and every one of you.
It is my fervent hope that more Illinois agencies will be compelled by Helen's article to join the rest of their peers here in supporting our efforts by giving us access to their cases involving missing persons and unidentified bodies so that our members can begin the work of sending them home.
Amateur Sleuths Name Anonymous Dead
Posted by Barbara Labels: Dupage Johnny Doe, Helen O'Neill, Illinois missing persons, The Doe Network
Mary Dunbar is going home. The Kankakee Sheriff's Department confirmed today that Mary was matched with a Jane Doe located in 1999. Mary's family has been notified and are coming to take Mary home. Our thoughts and prayers are with Mary's family during this difficult time. We are thankful and grateful to the Kankakee Sheriff's department for never giving up.
Mary was last seen in the Hopkins Park area on June 20, 1997.
No other information has been received regarding the Jane Doe.
It was just another Saturday morning. At least it started out that way, but it didn't end that way. Especially not for five women and their families. Not for me either.
Every Saturday morning we've been taking our newest family member to Pet Smart for puppy classes at the Brookside Shopping Center in Tinley Park. I was planning today to drop off my daughter and granddaughter and puppy and go shopping while they did the class. We were running later than usual and as I came off the expressway ramp I could see ambulances and police cars and flashing lights throughout the parking lot.
I told my daughter that something big must have happened. I assumed that perhaps the Bank located in the shopping center had been robbed or perhaps a bomb scare. When we got to the mall entrance, it was blocked by police cars waving us away. We continued down to the next entrance, which was also blocked. My daughter dug out a Pet Smart receipt and called the store to see what we were supposed to do and was told that ther had been a shooting at Lane Bryant.
We turned around and went home. An hour later we saw the news - 5 women shot to death. I was stunned. I stood staring at the TV, trying to comprehend what I was hearing. It didn't make sense. Why would anyone be shot at Lane Bryant?
As the day progressed, my granddaughter, who is 6, and who had been with us as we watched the police cars was struggling to understand the bits and pieces of conversation she was hearing. Finally she just came out and asked. Why would someone get shot at a store? She didn't understand it. I don't understand it. What could I possibly say to her that wouldn't make her have nightmares forever? What could I tell myself so that I wouldn't have nightmares forever?
The news reports indicate that this was a robbery. A robbery. At Lane Bryant. How much money could they have started the day with? My daughter, who has worked in retails doesn't think more than $150.00. Maybe less. Maybe $100.00. Five lives. Maybe a hundred dollars. Five famiies.
As part of my work for the missing, I am horrified almost every day by something that comes across my desk. I've learned to expect to be horrified when I open an email or research a case. I don't expect to be horrified when I take my granddaughter and her Christmas puppy to the local mall on a Saturday morning.
They haven't caught the shooter yet. Lane Bryant didn't have video cameras. I don't suppose they ever really thought they needed them? Who robs a Lane Bryant store? I hope they catch him. I hope they convict him. I hope he stays in jail for the rest of his life - which is so much more of a chance than he gave his victims.
I am sad. Saturday morning shopping trips will never be the same. I lost a piece of me at the mall today. Another piece of me that wants to believe that the world isn't so bad. But I didn't lose as much as the families of those victims who lost their mother or daughter or sister or niece or granddaughter or wife or co-worker or friend. And the victims who lost their lives. I am sad.
Marlaina "Nikki" Reed wasn't finished being a child. Marlaina was beaten to death – stuffed into a cardboard box and discarded with the trash in a north side Chicago alley. She was located on January 21, 2007 and had been deceased for several days. She was 17 years old.
The last missing person report for Marlaina said she was missing since May 5, 2006. It wasn't unusual – Marlaina ran away often – at least since she was 14. Marlaina was a ward of the state of Illinois, living in a group home on the city's north side. She was listed on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's website as a missing child until the following year, May 2007. Just after her 18th birthday, she was removed from the site. Released from the jurisdiction of the state of Illinois when she reached 18, she was also removed from LEADS and NCIC by the Chicago police department. Perhaps this is department policy, perhaps it was an error, or perhaps it is an inherent flaw in a system that must protect the privacy of adults as well as the lives of children. Whatever the reason, Marlaina not only vanished in life, she vanished from the rolls of the missing and endangered. NCMEC, following federal privacy law guidelines, had to remove her case file when she was removed from NCIC. In fact, by the time her case files were purged from the databases, Marlaina had been lying in the Cook County Medical Examiner's office for 4 months, an unidentified Jane Doe.
God Bless the investigators with the Chicago Police Department who made the extraordinary effort to identify her. For the first time since 1980, the Cook County Medical Examiner's turned to forensic reconstruction to put a face to the young woman whose own face was disfigured by the beating she sustained, as well as decomposition. Forensic artist Karen Taylor did a remarkable job. That face was combined with the knowledge that the teen had once worn braces and sent to an Illinois Dental magazine, where, she was recognized by a Doctor and his nurse. Jane Doe now had a name and Marlaina was no longer missing.
Had Marlaina remained in NCIC and LEADS, perhaps closure to this case would have come sooner – perhaps not. But the fact that juveniles are considered 'missing' one day before they are 18 and no longer missing one day later is a huge crack in the system that is striving every day to bring investigative techniques and cutting edge technology into play to identify the thousands of unidentified John and Jane Does nationwide. Marlaina wasn't on anyone's radar. Even though she remained missing on my own site – I never made the connection to the Jane Doe – I didn't see the forest for the trees.
I am told that there is legislation on the books of several states that mandate that missing juveniles that turn 18 be transitioned to another database – as missing emancipated juveniles or missing adults. Missing children and missing adults are a nationwide problem. It is imperative that we centralize the data so that the missing and the unidentified can be compared on a national basis. We need federal legislation that mandates that these cases be carried over once a child attains the age of 18. I urge you to help me do this. Marlaina's life and death deserve more.
A year ago I lost my best friend. His death was unexpected and it was sudden. I wasn't prepared nor was his family. I didn't personally know his wife or his daughters or his brothers or sister. At least we'd never met. But I knew them through his words, his stories and his love for them. He was a "stand up" guy, honest, forthright, tough and sensitive. And he could make me laugh - not an easy task. Oh, did I mention he was stubborn? He wasn't perfect and there were times when I shook my head in dismay at his antics, but his heart was always good. He made me laugh, he made me cry, he made me a better person for having known him. And when he died, too young and too soon, his family grieved together. I grieved alone...finding out too late about his death which came as Christmas weekend was upon us.
A year later - I find myself grieving still. Less often, perhaps, but with a pain just as intense when it strikes, and I am forever mindful that I never told him things I should have said: that he was my rock, my supporter, and my best friend. Or at least I never told him often enough. Besides, he was way too busy trying to fix all the things that were broken in me to worry about being appreciated for his efforts - although I truly believe I was a challenge that he actually enjoyed. At least I hope so. I know I wasn't the easiest person to have for a friend.
His death left a huge unfillable void in my heart and in my soul. My life has been forever changed.
I went to the cemetery once - a few days after his death. The grave site was piled high with flowers from his family and his friends. Beloved husband and father, loving brother and uncle. He was all of those and more. He was a beloved friend. I alternately screamed and cried, and ultimately laughed when I thought of what he would say to me if he could only do so. I had the cemetery to myself that day, thankfully.
I haven't gone back because I don't really believe he's there. He's in the hearts of his family, watching over them with love and perhaps a little consternation when someone is doing something that he might have 'suggested' be done differently.
So in the whole grand scheme of this awful grief I've felt this Christmas - on the first anniversary of his death - I found myself wishing I could somehow erase this same pain that I know the family members of our missing persons must feel every day that their loved one is gone. My friends death was sudden; bringing the raw, indescribable and undeniable pain that follows the death of someone you care about. It wasn't tangible, but it was real and it was final and it was over. But for the families of the missing - it's worse. They alternate between deep despair and sorrow yet clinging to unfulfilled hope...and they pray, but as every day passes, the wait gets harder and hope becomes a little more distant. It is for them, at the beginning of this New Year, that I pray that their wait will be over soon....that their loved ones will return or be returned into their loving arms.
