Lex Talamo

alexa.talamo@shreveporttimes.com

The Center for Investigative Reporting recently released a "Left for Dead" database with county-level counts of the nation's unidentified bodies.

Louisiana currently has 119 unidentified individuals in the database. Orleans Parish has the most open cases, with 33 unidentified individuals, followed by Jefferson parish with 12. Caddo parish has seven cases in the database, and Bossier has two.

Louisiana's laws and procedures are some of the best in the nation when it comes to missing persons and unidentified bodies, officials from the Center for Investigative Reporting say.

In 2006, a Louisiana law passed allowing parish coroners to attempt to identify discovered bodies using their own methods and resources — which many do. But the law also specifies bodies not identified after a "reasonable period" be sent to the FACES Lab in Baton Rouge. Many states have no such facility or law, said CIR reporter G.W. Schulz.

The FACES lab, envisioned by Mary Manhein and currently a part of LSU's Department of Geography and Anthropology, provides services free of charge to Louisiana agencies. Services include animal versus human skeletal identification, forensic imaging using 3D clay facial reconstruction, DNA sample collection and recovery assistance when bones are discovered. The FACES Lab also manages the Louisiana Repository for Unidentified and Missing Persons Information, an interactive online resource and central database of open cases.

"The FACES lab is a wonderful resource for coroners because we help not only with identification but also recovery," said Ginesse Listi, the lab's interim director. "We were one of the first few that we would actively go out and get the information in addition to the establishment of the database. We've had great cooperation with most parishes, and they appreciate what we do."

Kay Gilbert, Bossier Parish Coroner's office administrator, said the parish has had a wonderful relationship with the FACES lab's services.

"When you notify them, they send people up here. They get information back in a timely fashion," Gilbert said. "They really are top notch."

Bossier's most famous case of linking a missing person to an unidentified body came with the 2015 identification of Carol Ann Cole, whose body had been found in Bellevue, Bossier Parish in 1981. The FACES lab created a computer-generated likeness for Cole, which very closely resembled an actual photograph of the young woman. Lt. Shannon Mack of Bossier City police created a Facebook page for the "Bossier Doe" to generate leads. A 911 operator matched a picture of Cole on Craigslist to the Facebook page, and DNA testing confirmed Cole's identity.

'Bossier Doe' case receives TV attention

Mark Bone, Jefferson Parish Coroner's office chief investigator, said the FACES lab provides a "one stop shop" for coroners to connect cases of missing and unidentified persons.

"They'll do the fingerprinting, DNA. We work great with them," Bone said. "We do our due diligence. We try to figure it out before we go to FACES, but they have helped us many times in the past."

Listi said some parishes may choose to use agencies other than the FACES lab, particularly if they had a positive or historic connection to those agencies.

"It's important that a coroner's office is using a forensic anthropologist, who has a specialization in bones," Listi said. "We prefer that they use the FACES Lab because of the funding we get from the state and the service we provide. It will help us be more comprehensive with our database should those individuals remain unidentified. It keeps all the information in a central database."

Amber Migues, secretary for the Iberia Parish coroner, said the parish has never needed to use the FACES Lab. Migues said the parish turns to Louisiana Forensics, which also conducts autopsies for the parish, when in need of help in identifying remains.

"They're an excellent facility. Any time we need anything done, they're always very helpful," Migues said. "They've always been able to meet our needs. We've never gotten to a point where we needed to use FACES."

How do coroners ID remains?

The FACES Lab uploads all cases of unidentified individuals into the National Institute of Justice's National Missing and Unidentified Person's System. NamUs maintains three separate databases for missing, unidentified and unclaimed individuals. Coroners can upload their own cases into NamUs, but NamUs communications director Todd Matthews said the system is not a replacement for the FACES Lab.

"The LSU FACES lab serves an indispensable service to law enforcement, coroners and families in Louisiana," Matthews wrote in an email. "NamUs, very often, is the entry point to begin the process to locate a missing person or name an unidentified body. NamUs is not intended to be a replacement to state labs and clearing houses, but an additional resource."

Parishes with the highest numbers of unidentified bodies on record (data from the Center for Investigative reporting database):

33: unidentified in Orleans Parish

12: unidentified persons in Jefferson Parish

10: unidentified persons in Plaquemines Parish

7: unidentified persons in Caddo Parish

5: unidentified persons in St. Tammany Parish

5: unidentified persons in St. James Parish