Wednesday, May 25, 2011

It all started with the "Tent Girl" - Todd Matthew's Story

There are 100,000 missing people in the United States alone and at least 6,000 unidentified bodies. With the authorities struggling to solve so many cases, thousands of volunteers are using the internet to try to match the missing with the unidentified. Internet sleuth Todd Mathews reports. 
 

Tent Girl's grave
After lying unnamed for 30 years, Tent Girl's name was added to her grave

It all started for me with the "Tent Girl", so called because her body was found wrapped up in a canvas tent bag. I heard about the case when I first met my future wife Lori at school. 


She had come to Tennessee from Kentucky and told me how her father Wilbur Riddle had found a murdered girl in a field near Georgetown in the 1960s. 

Her name, Tent Girl struck my soul. It was as if it were almost familiar. As Lori and her family became part of my own family, so did the Tent Girl. Two of my siblings died of natural causes as infants early in my life. She was no different to them in my mind. 

I had a place to visit my siblings, but Tent Girl didn't have any family. So she became part of my own family. And I became determined to find out who she was. 

Search
I went to her grave many miles away in Kentucky. I visited newspapers in the area to look through hard-copy archives, searching both for stories about the Tent Girl, as well as any accounts detailing a missing person that matched her description. 


Todd Mathews with his father-in-law Wilbur
Wilbur and Todd are to appear in a documentary film featuring 'Tent Girl', entitled Resurrection

For 10 years that is how I conducted the search. I spoke to investigators and journalists by phone or in person, looking for any shred of data. I felt so close yet so far, as if the information was just outside my field of view. 

As I worked, I also learned many things about how to search for information. 

When the internet arrived, the main thing it changed was communication. In the early days the vast online resources available today did not exist. But I could do my searches by e-mail, and information about how to contact government and media offices was easier to find. 

Research was much easier, more affordable and realistic. Distance was no longer an obstacle. 

But perhaps more important was that it ended the isolation of individual investigators. Once the World Wide Web connected the planet, a natural gathering took place. I found other like-minded people doing the same kind of work. 

Websites
The internet gave us an opportunity to gather and share information, to work on a common cause. We could cross the globe in seconds with a click of a computer mouse. 


Body being exhumed in Tennessee
An unidentified body in Tennessee is exhumed for DNA testing


Yahoo-based Cold Cases group was one of the first of these such "virtual" gathering places and out of it grew organisations such as the Doe Network, so called because John or Jane Doe is the name used by the FBI for the unidentified. 

Over the past decade, an increasing number of websites devoted to particular cases of missing persons have been created. One of the first was my own for the Tent Girl. 

There were more people coming online daily with missing pieces in their lives. Message boards intended for other uses were being used to post about missing persons and lost loved ones. 

It was a night like a thousand nights before, when I found what I was looking for at last. I had found a posting by a woman looking for her sister last seen in Lexington, Kentucky. I read on. 


The description was matching the description etched onto the Tent Girl's headstone. The feeling in my heart was greater than the evidence I was reading on the screen. A decade of burden was lifting away and I knew deep inside this was her at last. 

Rules and methods
Tent Girl finally had a name. She was Barbara Taylor, a wife and mother when she died. By now, she would have been a grandmother. 

It was one of the most profound and fulfilling moments in my life. And, I was soon to find, it would have a deep impact on others as well. Already the discovery of her remains in 1968 had led to the establishment of the Kentucky State Medical Examiners Office. 



My colleagues and I get hundreds of e-mails a day from people searching for their missing loved ones
Then, 30 years later, the discovery of her identity in 1998 led to the creation of a state-based website by the Kentucky Medical Examiners office, called UnidentifiedRemains.net. 



The websites work by gathering the information on missing and unidentified cases. A review process then begins. Researchers begin combing the web for any shred of missing information in the news media or public databases or websites. 

Rules and methods have evolved to make the process work better. Data must be validated for accuracy by communicating with law enforcement authorities, and the Doe Network has a protocol which volunteers must follow to prevent them jeopardising cases or putting themselves in danger. 

Case files are in a constant state of review and cross-referenced by members, law enforcement and the public. 

The Doe Network alone has helped bring closure to 38 cases of missing or unidentified people. They have also helped gather data to keep thousands of other similar cases in the public eye in the hope of resolution. 

'Techni-criminologists'
Often people involved in using the Internet to help resolve crimes are called amateur sleuths. I think the amateur effort is becoming an actual science. Those of us who seek the technology of the Internet, but not only the Internet, to find resolve in cold cases have found a niche that truly deserves a name. I suggest the term techni-criminologist after which I have named my website, TechniCriminology.info. 

My colleagues and I get hundreds of e-mails a day from people searching for their missing loved ones.

This is a new age where the ordinary man can step up and make a difference. It doesn't matter your sex, age, race or physical disability. 

There are no boundaries to the level of involvement you choose to take - and for those cold cases that have been filed away by hard-pressed law enforcement, a Doe Network volunteer spending hours on a computer in their back room, may be the only chance of keeping a case alive. 


Todd Matthews presents Internet Sleuths, a Falling Tree production, on Radio 4 on Tuesday 24 April at 1100BST then for 7 days at Radio 4's Listen again page.
 

Sleuth the Truth with Todd Matthews

Investigation Discovery's Todd Matthews 

Todd MatthewsTodd Matthew's calling to be a voice for missing and unidentified persons began when he solved the identity of the "Tent Girl" case, Barbara Hackman-Taylor, after a ten-year journey that ended in 1998. He is also Media Director for the Doe Network, a consultant on a pending series for Emmy-award winning producer Dick Wolf ("Law & Order"), and on the Advisory Panel for the U. S. Department of Justice NamUs.gov (National Missing and Unidentified Persons System) database project.

Todd Matthews has appeared on many national television shows, including "Leeza," "America's Most Wanted," "48 Hours," "TechTV," "Good Morning America," and the "Paula Zahn Show." Articles about him and his advocacy work have appeared in hundreds of newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and People Magazine. He hosts a weekly radio show, called Missing Pieces that publicizes unidentified and missing persons cases.

A documentary broadcast featuring Todd was recently broadcast on the BBC. A second documentary about his life is in production.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Why does Todd Matthews fight so hard for Families with Missing Loved Ones?

How well do you really know Todd Matthews story?
Before you answer this ... it's only fair to say that you might want to "think" again as to if you really do ...
For - If you think you do ... you undoubtedly do know Todd Matthews/his story/himself ... for there's an enormous amount more to it than any of us could ever attempt to discover.


However at the same time if you think you don't really know Todd much of all, don't be so naive as to think that you soon will ... because without question - you still won't have that great of a grasp of Todd's story even after reading this here ...


Todd Matthews spruces up around the grave marker of "Tent Girl" on Feb. 15, 2008 in the Georgetown Cemetery in Georgetown, Ky.

In fact, you undoubtedly won't even be halfway towards knowing it even after reading up on everything you could possibly "google up" in a lifetime about Todd Matthews online.


Yet, there IS a few things you either already know by now (or quickly will learn about) for sure ...

That is that ... he's a wonder ... he's our hero ... he's our voice ... he's our friend ...

Todd Matthew's voice for those missing bellows clearly, at the loudest decibel, from even the highest, most remote mountaintop ...

Gifting our world with a call to action that not only crosses all borders, but is also universally heard and quickly embraced more than any other voice for the missing and unidentified before ... both by "missing persons world outsiders" to those with missing loved ones to everything and everyone between.

The "beginning-ish" of Todd's story can be located on the following link - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23858151/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts

A peek behind the passion within Todd's voice is also located below, via his Missing Pieces show transcript ...

VICKI:  And thank God for volunteers like you, Todd.

TODD:  Well, we’ve got to try because I don’t want to be you, you know, this is really selfish, I don’t want to trade places with you.  I don’t.  I don’t want my children to have to stand in your shoes.  I don’t ever want anybody to have to stand in your shoes.  I can’t do anything about cancer; I can’t do anything about so many other plagues, but this one seems to be something that I can work in, so I think if I didn’t, it would be a sin for me not to.  I don’t think I could be happy with myself if I didn’t keep trying.

VICKI:  There are a lot of people that are grateful, Todd, that you’re out there doing this, truly.

TODD:  I’m trying and I wish I could do more and I feel guilty when I think that
there’s not enough done, you know, that there simply wasn’t enough
done.  I could do one of these a night rather than one a week but, you
know, I’ve got a 5 year old, I’ve got a 15 year old and it’s hard to get
it done…

VICKI:  Yeah.

TODD:  …but I’m thinking, “You can always do more.”

http://missingpiecesshow.homestead.com/MissingPiecesEpisode42Archive.html

**There have been times when I've personally been asked (on a peon level ;-) why I care so much about the missing and unidentified ... and the best answer that I can truly answer with is found above ...

To our Peace4 the Missing admin, Todd ... our hearts are busting with thanks for you.

Todd Matthews - Regional System Administrator, NamUs
Written and submitted by one of Todd Matthews many friends ... Sara Huizenga





 As posted on Peace4 the Missing


Sunday, May 15, 2011

Todd Matthews - Forensic Artist

Lori Culbert - Vancouver Sun - Saturday, December 17, 2005

It was the sad faces, the dishevelled hair, and the startled eyes of the women missing from the Downtown Eastside that bothered Tennessee artist Todd Matthews.


photo
Artist Todd Matthews works on a sketch of Sarah de Vries.
Those grim police mug shots were the only photographs the public have seen of many of the 27 women Port Coquitlam pig farmer Robert (Willy) Pickton is accused of murdering.

In them, the women look tired, scared and worn-down -- a reflection, most likely, of difficult lifestyles that often involved drug addiction and prostitution.

The pictures were not, Matthews thought, a true reflection of the women's inner spirits: they didn't reveal that these women were mothers, sisters and aunts, with families, friends and unfulfilled dreams.

The mug shots sent a message that the women were photographed by police for doing something wrong, and Matthews believed it was important for them to be viewed in a more positive light.

"I think people were seeing a criminal rather than a victim," he said in an interview from his home near Nashville. "I think they were discounted. If they had been 20-something soccer moms, what [public reaction] do you think would have happened?"

Matthews is the founder of Project EDAN (Everybody Deserves A Name), a U.S. group of certified forensic sketch artists who donate their time to make facial reconstructions of unidentified victims for small- and medium-sized police agencies without budgets to hire artists.

Matthews, who has a passion for unsolved crimes and was instrumental in helping police solve the 30-year-old Kentucky "tent girl" murder case, is also media director for the Doe Network, which has volunteers worldwide and profiles hundreds of missing people and unidentified bodies on its Internet site.

On an online cold cases chat group, Matthews met former Vancouver resident Wayne Leng, who was a friend of Sarah de Vries, one of the city's missing women. Leng, who now lives in California, has established a website dedicated to the more than 60 women who have disappeared from Vancouver's gritty Downtown Eastside since the late 1970s, including Pickton's alleged victims.

Matthews saw the pictures displayed on Leng's website, and put out a request to the members of Project EDAN to volunteer their time to create drawings of the women.

He wanted their hair styled nicely and a "Mona Lisa" smile on their lips -- to reflect a happier time.
"I wanted them to have a little touch of pleasantry, because the images -- the mug shots -- it was obviously a very bad point in their lives," Matthews said.

"I just thought it was so sad to leave it like that."

To his surprise, six artists, in addition to himself, were quick to volunteer their time.

The vast majority of the Project EDAN members do not work in law enforcement -- the sketches they do for the police are done on a volunteer basis in their space time.

But Wesley Neville, a lieutenant with the Florence County sheriff's office in South Carolina, is a unique member of the group.

He works full-time for a police agency, doing composite drawings, facial reconstruction with clay, and age-progression sketches of missing children.

He said his volunteer work for Project EDAN -- including drawing 11 of Vancouver's missing women -- allows him to use his artistic talent to give back to society.

"It feels good inside, especially on a project like this," Neville said in a telephone interview.
He based his sketches on the police mug shots, as well as other photos of the women he found posted on Web sites by media outlets, relatives or friends.

Neville's technique was to imagine how the women would have looked when they were happy, healthy and safe.
"I saw through the damage that had been done physically to them. It's obvious their diets were bad, and drugs had taken their toll on some of them. I pretty much take that out -- it's like an age-regression," he said.

"I wanted to try to make them look as lifelike as possible, in a more innocent time."

The sketches by the Project EDAN volunteers are being unveiled for the first time in today's Vancouver Sun. They include drawings of 25 of the 27 alleged Pickton victims. (One victim is unidentified, so she could not be sketched, and the other is not included because her mother requested the picture not be published.)

The drawings in today's newspaper also include sketches of two women, Dawn Crey and Yvonne Boen, whose DNA was found on the Pickton farm, but police say there was not enough evidence to lay murder charges in those cases.

The men championing this project, Matthews and Leng, spoke to a couple of the victims' families about the sketches, but they didn't seek permission to do them -- arguing they were created for the women themselves.

"When Todd first came to me with the idea, I thought, 'Wow, this is fantastic,'" Leng said in a telephone interview.

"[The sketches] takes them away from that mug shot . . . . A lot of people do only see them as an addict and a prostitute. They don't see that this is a real human being. They just look at the ruggedness of what's happened to them on the Downtown Eastside."

Leng said he is sorry one mother didn't like her daughter's sketch, but said he hopes others will be moved by the artists' efforts.

"These sketches are for these women," Leng said. "I think they present [the women] in a beautiful light, as to the way they really were."

The drawings will be posted on his website (www.missingpeople.net), and he hopes they'll eventually be used at a permanent memorial in Vancouver as the city prepares for Pickton's lengthy murder trial, expected to start next year.

Leng searched doggedly for his friend, de Vries, before police announced her DNA had been found on Pickton's farm. He speaks frequently to her mother, Pat de Vries, but hadn't mentioned the sketches to her.

However, in a phone interview from her home in Guelph, Ont., Pat de Vries said the drawings could only be an improvement over the mug shots often published in newspapers.

"I think it's a really nice idea. Those photos were really ugly of some of those women -- unnecessarily so," de Vries said.

Leng had mentioned the sketches to Jack Cummer, the grandfather of Andrea Joesbury. He hasn't seen his granddaughter's sketch when contacted last week by the Sun, but believes the intention behind them is good.

"I thought it was fantastic, if they were painting the inner-picture rather than the picture of the one that was on the [police missing person] poster," Cummer said from his home in Nanaimo.

"They weren't drug-addicted hookers. They were warm individuals and they were somebody's darling."
Cummer said Joesbury, one of the first women Pickton was charged with murdering after his arrest in February 2002, often had a Mona Lisa smile on her face.

Of the seven Project EDAN volunteers who drew the sketches, only one is Canadian: Charlaine Michaelis from Sudbury, Ont.

"This particular group of women were so underexposed in the media, in my opinion. It was just such a joy for me to do it," said Michaelis, who has been a graphic artist for 25 years and recently did artwork for the new Disney movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

She scanned the pictures of the women sent to her by Matthews, and chose to sketch Georgina Papin -- "her face jumped out at me" -- but had only the police mug shot to work from.

Her technique, Michaelis said, was based partly on science and partly on intuition.

"I spent a lot of time examining the photo, looking at the underlying muscle structure to see how the face falls, and then I try to imagine how it would look if that action were reversed -- if she were smiling," she said.

Then, Michaelis watched herself in the mirror, analyzing how her face changed from a frown to a smile.

"Once I had that idea of how the muscles were working, I translated that onto her features," she recalled.

Michaelis said she was solely motivated to provide Papin with a better picture of herself, but added she hopes the woman's family will get some peace from the sketch.

"I would hope they'll think, 'Yeah that's the girl we remember before she got into her situation.'"
Matthews agrees.

"It's sort of like a Christmas gift for the families," he said.
 
lculbert@png.canwest.com

www.missingpeople.net/sketches_express_softer_side_of.htm

Project EDAN
www.projectedan.us/

Monday, April 25, 2011

Amateur Detectives Help ID John and John Doe: NPR




ALISON STEWART, host:
Back in February of 1994, the body of an unidentified teenage girl was found in the middle of a field off a Florida highway. With no way to tell who she was or where she was from, she was buried in an unmarked grave and all but forgotten. Last week, the 14-year-old cold case was finally solved. The body in the grave, 17-year-old Heather Ann Schmoll, a Minnesota girl who was last heard from New Year's Day '94.

RACHEL MARTIN, host:
The ID came with the help of a group of amateur detectives. They're called the Doe Network. It's a non-profit organization of volunteers that uses Internet databases and old fashioned sleuthing to unravel the identities of nameless corpses in public morgues or buried in anonymous graves.

According to federal law enforcement reports, there are more than 40,000 Jane, John, and Baby Does waiting to be identified. Joining us now to explain just what these so-called "advocates for the dead" do is Todd Matthews. He's a volunteer and the media director of the Doe Network, International Center for Unidentified and Missing Persons. Hi, Todd.

Mr. TODD MATTHEWS (Media Director, Doe Network, International Center for Unidentified and Missing Persons): Hi. Good morning, ladies.

MARTIN: Thanks for being here. So, you call the work that the Doe Network does "technicriminology." Walk us through how the network handles a case like that of Heather Ann Schmoll, someone who's been missing and unidentified for such a long time.

Mr. MATTHEWS: You know, it's almost - it seems difficult but it's really very, very simple. We basically get case files from law enforcement, from their website, through their direct submissions, just present them to the public, and often enough the public or law enforcement will benefit from having that information available, and will contact us with possible matches.

MARTIN: So, you're not actually solving crimes usually. You're just putting information out there that other people can make the connections?

Mr. MATTHEWS: Gathering the data, but often, enough some of our very own members actually make the connection in the process of gathering data.

MARTIN: Now, your website details several hundreds of unidentified victims and thousands of unexplained disappearances from all over, really, North America, Europe and Australia. How do you originally get that data? How is it culled?

Mr. MATTHEWS: A lot of this data is gathered through the news media, and then we have to validate it through local law enforcement and that's not very easy. That's the biggest challenge I think we have is gathering and validating the data. So, we're looking at data that has come out in the news media, but then we have to turn around and re-look at it and make sure it's still current, and still actually an open case.

MARTIN: So, you do the research from media reports, you publish all that information through the network, and you eventually try to make a match. What's your success rate, then?

Mr. MATTHEWS: We have over 40-plus solves, and that's direct and indirect, you know, either ourselves doing it or coming from the public or law enforcement using the site. But there are so many hours that go into that. I like to think it's a success, but you know, if you had to fund this, if this was a funded law enforcement organization, I don't think it would be possible to create that type of funding.

MARTIN: Because it's just too time consuming?

Mr. MATTHEWS: Oh, yeah. I mean, if you knew the thousands of hours, you know, people like me spending 40 to 60 hours a week after they come home from their day job doing this, you know, how would a government pay people to do this? There's no way, you know. You have to tap into the volunteer nature of people.

MARTIN: Well, let's talk a little bit about that. Who are these people, yourself included? I mean, that's a lot of time, 40 to 60 hours a week outside of a day job? Who are the volunteers of the Doe Network?


Mr. MATTHEWS: You can see the core team in the volunteers of the Doe Network, the area directors, they're the persons that represent directly the states involved. An area director will gather data, confirm it with law enforcement, and they personally become that person that communicates with law enforcement in that state, a familiar face, so you develop a relationship with law enforcement.

It's easier to get through so you're not submitting a tip blind. And, you know, we have over 500 fairly active members, but the core team is exactly what you see on the website. We'll get a lot of people that will want to volunteer but often you have to screen. There's so much of a screening process that you have to go through for something like this. You don't want to get the wrong person and put them out there as a potential representative of your organization.

MARTIN: Well, let's talk a little bit about that. What are you trying to avoid in a volunteer?

Mr. MATTHEWS: Well, what if it's the criminal, what if it's someone involved in a homicide? You know, we don't have resources to get out there and really screen somebody, so we have to do the best that we can. It takes time. We've got a lot of emails since the AP article - your membership's closed.

And it does say that it's closed on the website, but you can contact our membership coordinator and the directions are on the page, and it's just going to take time. We add people as we need people and, you know, you're looking for that diamond in the rough, you know? You're looking for that person that's the right person. And I think this work chooses you rather than you choosing it.

MARTIN: Now, did you get any pushback from law enforcement officials now? You talk about a collaborative spirit, but at the beginning, I imagine, the FBI or police would say, listen, people, you're not professionals.

Mr. MATTHEWS: Well, I think you might have read the term "Doe-Nuts" in some publications. I think it was, you know, an up-and-coming group, you know, what could we do? You know, that, you know, it happens a lot. You see a lot of little organizations that pop up and chat groups and things that can be annoying to law enforcement. I've been annoyed by massive emails that come in from people that think they have these theories, and you know, we were no more than that ourselves at the time.

But, you know, in time...

MARTIN: Now, Todd, you were involved - your first foray into this whole thing was a case known as "Tent Girl," an unidentified woman whose body was found in 1968, and you really became so involved with this. What is it about this work that is so important to you? What keeps driving you to do this?

Mr. MATTHEWS: It's the people. You know, that one case - I wish the Doe Network existed then. I might have had somebody to go to and I wouldn't have had such - you know, it caused a lot of emotional problems for me, a lot of problems in my relationship with my wife, but if I had a group of people that I could have worked with, then it would have been a lot easier. I was alone at the time.

MARTIN: And it caused problems within your own family, just because of how involved you were?


Mr. MATTHEWS: That case is my sole focus. It wasn't that I was neglecting my family, but I think they felt like maybe I was because I was so involved in it. Three hundred dollar phone bills when you're making minimum wage, how can you explain that?

MARTIN: And so why do you do it?

Mr. MATTHEWS: I had to, with the Tent Girl. The Tent Girl - there was no choice, and I never want to be that consumed ever again, and that's why I like to work with the Doe Network because I can paint with a really broad brush - here, today, advocating for many all at the same time, rather than trying to do that one on one and getting too personally involved in it.

We get personally involved every day, don't get me wrong, but I don't want it to ever take my life over. I don't want to get to that spot again where you have to be on top of everything constantly. Now, I can step back and affect the cause as a whole.

MARTIN: And help a lot of families in the process put names to these missing people. Hey, Todd Mathews, volunteer media director of the Doe Network, thank you so much for sharing your story and your work. We really appreciate it.

Mr. MATTHEWS: Thank you for having me.