By Richard Willing
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON � American medical examiners and coroners held at least 14,000 sets of unidentified human remains as of 2004 � more than twice the number of John Doe cases acknowledged by the FBI, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics says.
In a report due out today, the agency says the backlog of unidentified remains � murder and accident victims and missing or homeless people who die of natural causes � grows by about 1,000 each year.
Agency director Jeffrey Sedgwick said in an interview that a large number of the unidentified probably are murder victims. He said advances in DNA technology could make it possible for grieving families "to have some closure" and for "those responsible (to) meet justice."
"The missing link has been a good inventory of remains," Sedgwick said. The John Doe census is the first such survey undertaken by the federal government.
The true number of remains probably is far higher than the 14,000 the agency located, Sedgwick said. In Louisiana alone, there are incomplete or missing records from every coroner or medical examiner, he said. Louisiana's coroners and medical examiners have been challenged since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The FBI's National Crime Information Center, the only other national registry of unidentified remains, has collected information on about 6,200 John Doe cases, according to Justice Department records. Reporting to the FBI's crime center is voluntary, and the FBI has not claimed that the list is exhaustive.
The statistics bureau plans a follow-up study that will describe the remains and where they are stored.
The nation's roughly 2,000 coroners and medical examiners determine the cause and manner of suspicious or violent deaths or deaths without a physician in attendance. The study found that medical examiners, often physicians, are usually appointed, while coroners, often laypersons, are elected.
Other survey findings, which focused on 2004, the most recent year for which data were available:
•Five large offices in New York, California, Ohio and Texas held more than half of all unidentified remains.
•Some coroners and medical examiners dispose of remains rather than store them indefinitely. About 600 John and Jane Does were buried or cremated in 2004.
•About half take DNA or fingerprints from unidentified remains before disposing of them.
William Hagmaier, executive director of the International Homicide Investigators Association, says the survey highlights the need for a "national policy" requiring coroners and medical examiners to take DNA samples from unidentified remains before they are destroyed.
Clark County, Nev., coroner Michael Murphy says coroners and medical examiners should be allowed to post information about unidentified remains cases on a common website. Since 2003, his office has made 12 identifications through postings to its own site.
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