CINCINNATI (WXIX) – Investigators and investigators at the Hamilton County Coroner’s office say they hope to develop technology that will one day help them identify Jane and John Doe.
Hamilton County Coroner Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco and members of his team are working with the research, even from other districts, to help the police with the investigation of the murder and the unidentified remains.
It can be hard work and Dr. Sammarco says that despite what people may see on television, it can take months if not years to learn someone’s name.
He said: “We still have eight cases in our database of people we no longer know.”
Advances in technology give the auditor’s office access to new tools.
Fingerprinting at the site of the dead has been a great help. Years ago they had to put ink on paper but now it’s digital.
Chief Coroner Maria Stewart said they use an electronic tool that allows them to quickly find publications in national databases.
“It goes from local to federal to find out who and what is in different systems, and it’s no longer just criminals in the fingerprint database. It’s also everyone who enters the situation of public servants,” said Stewart.
Fingerprints helped identify the “Pearl Lady” as Barbara Hess Precht in 2014. Her body was found floating in the Ohio River in November 2006.
In some cases, dental records, if available, may be important. Dr. Sammarco says they have a forensic odontologist on staff.
“He’ll make comparisons between the gaps and the different teeth, roots, implants, in the mouth that he can compare,” Stewart said.
Social media has also become part of the coroner’s office’s investigative work. After a woman’s body and later her head were found in a wooded area in 2023, it was an online post that led them to learn that Jane Doe was Makaila Luckey.
“Believe it or not, somebody passed that on to his sister in Atlanta, and he called her in a week, and we reviewed the information, and with all the information we got, we were able to similar to him,” said Dr. Sammarco.
DNA confirmed the connection and when coroners have DNA, they are able to work with federal and state investigators to try to build family trees.
That’s what they’re doing now to try to identify the woman known only as “Avondale Jane Doe.”
[RELATED: Potential DNA breakthrough could lead to identifying Avondale Jane Doe]
“BCI has been helping us with genealogy, trying to find matches, maybe even close relatives, and being able to find their DNA and try to identify the person,” said Dr. Sammarco.
X-rays are also an option as the images allow investigators to see if someone has any medical implants such as knee replacements or plates.
“We’ll get the pacemakers and things removed during the autopsy, produce them, get the serial numbers off them, call the manufacturer, and identify the person based on whether the person is assigned a serial number,” Stewart said.
Dr. Sammarco said his office is also now one of the few in Ohio with a CT scanner for postmortem imaging.
CT scanners have been used for forensic purposes in other countries for years but have recently become more common in the United States.
“We can reconstruct those images in all three planes and we actually have 3D capabilities to take those images and create a 3D image that we can rotate,” he said. “There are changes in the body related to postmortem changes. It can be related to temperature, humidity, time since death, so there are many other types.”
Another issue they face, Dr. That, Sammarco says, is that postmortem CT scans can be difficult to understand and many people in the field are not trained to read them.
Although a board-certified radiologist with over 30 years of experience, Dr. Sammarco said he learned new things about art almost every day.
He says he would like to see a forensic radiology fellowship developed in the future, possibly at a local university.
Meanwhile, Dr. Sammarco and his staff are committed to solving as many cases as possible using the resources available to them. So far, it has paid off.
“We had a case of an unidentified woman, who we knew was a homeless woman, who was found on the side of highway 75 near Princeton, and it was only recently that we were able to match him with a family from New York,” Dr. Sammarco said. “He had a brother, and a mother who has been looking for his daughter for many years, even in the nursing home. His sister said they have not stopped, that they have continued to look for him.”
While it is impossible to predict whether the coroner’s office will close their eight unsolved Jane and John Doe cases, Dr. Sammarco says they have no plans to give up.
“They had someone who loved them, brought them into this world and wanted to know what happened to them,” he said.
To learn more about open cases, visit the Ohio Attorney General’s website.
See a spelling or grammar mistake in our story? Please click here to report.
Have a photo or video for a new news story? Send to us here with a brief explanation.
Copyright 2024 WXIX. All rights reserved.
#Hamilton #County #coroner #technology #solve #Jane #John #Doe #cases