You won’t find John and Jane Does on Zoom
Let’s connect with them while we’re at home with spare time
A lot has happened since my book, The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths Are Solving America’s Coldest Cases, came out in 2014. Back then, I described people braving dial-up and primitive Internet tools to try to connect missing people and unidentified bodies.
Greg May, murdered, dismembered and scattered around Iowa and Missouri by a man he had considered his best friend. Arthur Wuestwald Jr., bound, killed and dumped by an unknown assailant on a Utah mountain trail. Sean Lewis Cutler, buried without his wheelchair in a shallow grave in Vermont. Peter Kokinakis from Houston, found floating in a river west of Boston. Brenda Sue Wright, a skeleton in a Baltimore industrial park. Maurice Marciano, whose suicide note in Phoenix was signed only “M.” All had spent years as Jane and John Does. All were identified with the help of amateur sleuths.
Like Todd Matthews and Tent Girl.
Web sleuths like Matthews, now 49, still living in Livington, Tennessee, where he came across the Tent Girl case as a teenager, initiated a groundswell around the country. Volunteer efforts such as The Doe Network prompted the National Institute of Justice to create the first government-sanctioned national clearinghouse and…
