And what about identifying John and Jane Doe's who happen to be deceased?
The NFSS says they have an array of remains in custody that have yet to be identified.
And, they shared with us how the public can help to guarantee these people and their families the right they have to closure.
Gian Cho, Executive Director, National Forensic, Science, Service
"The unresolved cases of skeletal remains that we have in secure custody and we have in secure custody and we have to make sure that we follow principles or guidelines in terms of ethical stewardship of human remains so that we can bring closure to these cases, some of the cases may be criminal, criminally related some are from just the basic humanitarian need for a deceased person to be identified, it's a human right for them to be identified."
"One of the most important, for me at least is bringing closure or at least making steps towards bringing closure and. Really identifying the remains that we have, these persons and also their next of kin have a right to also receive them and lay them to rest."
Kimberlee Moran, Associate Teaching Professor & Director of Forensics, Rutgers University
"Gian talked about the biological profile and what that means is that, with the skeleton, with the human remains we look at various markers to determine if they were male or female, their age at death, thier stature and along with that we are also looking for indications of thier lifestyle so did they have a broken bone at one point that healed or dental work that took place. So, we can only collect so much data, we really need individuals who have a missing loved one to come forward and provide us with that lifestyle information,. If they say of yes, I had an aunt she went missing. And she had some dental work done she had a few teeth pulled, then we can find an individual who matches that biological profile and you know put the information from the living together with the information that we have gathered from the deceased. So it's really important for people to interface with the police, with the forensic department to provide us that information if they have it."
Those records could also be useful in identifying decomposed remains.
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