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About Cannon Beach gazette. (Cannon Beach, Or.) 1977-current | View Entire Issue (July 21, 2016)
5A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2016 Remains: DNA is ‘not the magic bullet everyone thinks it is’ Continued from Page 1A the elected attorneys balanc- ing heavy legal caseloads with death scene investigations, decisions about who should be autopsied, and searches for next of kin. As such, Bigelow is part of the loosely organized nation- wide network of family mem- bers, cops, volunteers and others who try, against long odds, to match the names of the missing with the remains of the unidentifi ed. There is plenty of work for them to do. According to the National Institute for Justice , there are as many as 85,000 active missing persons cases in the U.S. at any given time. About 4,000 new unidenti- fi ed remains are found every year, and about 1,000 of those have not been identifi ed after a year. E xperts believe there are at least 40,000 known unidentifi ed human remains in the U.S. NIJ Journal edi- tor Nancy Ritter has called the situation “a silent mass disaster” — a crisis with casualties that accumulate continuously. Recognizing the need for a centralized source of infor- mation about missing per- sons and unidentifi ed and unclaimed remains, the insti- tute created the National Missing and Unidentifi ed Per- sons System, or “NamUs” database in 2007. NamUs lists 565 miss- ing people in Washington alone, stretching all the way back to spring 1951, when 20-year-old Alvin Matlock disappeared from his home on Brown’s Mountain in east- ern Washington. The real numbers are probably higher — some disappearances are never even reported to police, much less entered into the national database . Bones on river banks The source of so much life, the Columbia River’s deep waters and swift currents are also implicated in a lot of deaths. According to an ongo- ing Oregonian analysis, at least 36 people have drowned in the Columbia since August 2006. The river also inevita- bly tempts individuals faced with the pressing dilemma of where to dispose of a body. In September 2006, a cou- ple found a large bag fl oat- ing in the river near Portland. It contained the dismembered remains of Doug Adamson, 52. In August 2012, Grant County, Washington, deputies recovered 75-year-old Toshio Ota, a missing Seattle man. He was the victim of a homi- cide by blunt-force trauma. In January 2015, boaters discov- ered the body of Jessica New- ton, 40, on Bachelor Island near Ridgefi eld. She, too, had died a violent death. Bigelow knows all about the misfortune that can wash in with the tide. In 1998 — well before he was elected — a local found a dead woman on a small island in the river. To his regret, no one has ever been able to identify her. “I am going to keep it until I can hand ( the remains) to her next of kin and they can give them a respectful burial. There’s someone out there who’s missing that per- son … ,” Bigelow said, but he acknowledged that he has exhausted all of his ideas for fi nding her identity. “I can’t think of a single thing I can do to contribute to that investigation,” he said. In 2013, a beachcomber discovered an accumula- tion of bones strewn along the riverbank. Some of them appeared to be human, including a partial skull with the upper row of teeth still intact. Bigelow sent the bones to Washington State Foren- sic Anthropologist Dr. Kathy Taylor, who determined which were human, and sent them on to the forensic labo- ratory at University of North Texas. Experts there extracted DNA from the bones, and entered the results into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, a database of DNA records. Nearly two years after the discovery, Bigelow and Tay- lor had an answer: The bones belonged to 44-year-old Molly Newton-Waddington, a beloved but troubled Kelso mother and wife who was last seen in Kelso on March 14, 2012. Kelso police continue to investigate Waddington’s death, which they consider suspicious. ‘That was when I realized the heartbreak’ Coroner duties consti- tute a relatively small part of Bigelow’s workload, but he takes them seriously. By carefully examining the lat- est remains, he found a few clues: The man spent at least a little time in western Wash- ington, died after spring THE DAILY ASTORIAN T HURSDAY E VENING A (2) (-) (-) (6) (-) (8) (9) (10) (12) (13) (-) (20) (-) (29) (30) (31) (32) (34) (35) (36) (38) (39) (43) (44) (45) (46) (47) (48) (49) (50) (51) (52) (53) (54) (56) (57) (58) (61) (63) (64) (65) (162) L KATU KOMO KING KOIN KIRO KGW KRCW KOPB KPTV KPDX KCPQ TBS KZJO ESPN ESPN2 NICK DISN FAM FMC LIFE ROOT FS1 SPIKE COM HIST A&E TLC DISC NGEO TNT AMC USA FOOD HGTV FX CNN FNC CNBC BRAV TCM SYFY RFD (2) (4) (5) (-) (7) (-) (3) (10) (12) (-) (13) (20) (22) (29) (30) (31) (32) (34) (35) (36) (38) (39) (43) (44) (45) (46) (47) (48) (49) (50) (51) (52) (53) (54) (56) (57) (58) (61) (63) (64) (65) (162) 6 Missing persons statistics Since it was founded in 2007, more than 26,000 documented missing persons cases had been entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) as of April, 2016, and more than 10,500 cases had been resolved. Around 13,300 unidentified persons cases were entered during the same period, and just 2,150 cases had been resolved. Number of unsolved disappearances in Pacific County. Number of unidentified remains cases in Washington. Men went missing in Washington during the time when the Pillar Rock man likely died (roughly two years beginning in spring, 2013, according to NCIC). Number of unsolved disappearances in Washington. Year of the oldest unsolved disappearance in Washington. Estimated number of missing persons cases in U.S. at any given time: 85,000 Estimated number of known human remains in U.S. that have still not been identified: 40,000 2013, and had probably been dead for about two years. He was probably middle-class, and middle-aged. He prob- ably died elsewhere, and his body then traveled up or down the river with the cur- rents and tides. Bigelow sent a detailed press release to media outlets and asked the public for tips, just as he had done in 2013. “With Molly Wadding- ton,” Bigelow recalled, “all we had was a skull. We didn’t know height, weight, gender, practically nothing. When I asked for assistance, the world called me. Everybody who was missing anybody. That was when I realized the heartbreak — how many people had people missing.” Bigelow began to feel guilty about “giving so many people hope of closure.” “They have some particu- lar person deeply at heart, and they’re just scanning all the time, looking, and when they see one of these things, they pick up the phone and call,” Bigelow said. This time, he was able to provide more detail in his release. “As a result, I got very few calls, ” Bigelow said. People are often slow to fi le reports about people who have tran- sient lifestyles, but it’s rare Sources: National Institute of Justice; National Crime Information Center; National Missing and unidentified Persons System Natalie St. John and Alan Kenaga/ EO Media Group for a middle-class person’s disappearance to draw so lit- tle attention. “This guy seems like the kind of guy that people would be looking for,” Bigelow said. “He had Vibram-soled shoes — those things are like $20 a toe. It’s odd.” Getting to ‘maybe’ With small staffs and little technology at their disposal, rural coroners research cold cases on evenings and week- ends, or whenever they can borrow a few minutes from the reams of appeals, briefs and dense county reports that continuously pile up. And they seek help wherever they can fi nd it. Bigelow took the man’s teeth to a dentist, who cre- ated records and turned them over to the Washington State Patrol. State patrol , in turn, entered them into the National Crime Information Center , an FBI database. The database compared the Pillar Rock man’s tooth charts to records going back to the 1980s, and spit out a list of 141 men who had gone missing in Wash- ington during the time period when he likely died. NamUs, other databases, and tipsters added still more names to Bigelow’s ever-expanding list. When investigators ran Waddington’s DNA profi le through the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System , it quickly found her identity, but such clear-cut results are fairly rare. “Sometimes, you can come pretty close to knowing,” Bigelow explained. “Other times, depending on the qual- ity of the dental records or the remains, all you can do is say, ‘I can’t exclude this per- son .’” After that, it was down to Bigelow to fi gure out which of the many missing men he could cross off of his list. Hours upon hours of reading, dialing, researching, and wait- ing, waiting, waiting on return calls, police reports, search results. “There’s a lot of detec- tive work, even when there are other potential matches,” Bigelow said. All over the country, other investigators are trying to do the same thing. “I got a call from a guy in Phoenix — a detective — about a guy who appar- ently disappeared from in front of a Circle K, leaving an 18-month-old baby in the car,” Bigelow said. The Pillar Rock man’s records looked like a possible match, but the timeline was all wrong. “The baby is now old enough to drink. It couldn’t possibly be the same guy.” Bones, everywhere Bigelow again called on Taylor, the forensic anthro- pologist, for help. In her lab, Taylor will remove the man’s remaining fatty tissue, then examine and preserve the bones. Just as with Wadding- ton, she will send samples away for DNA testing. A Washington native who earned her doctorate at the University of Arizona, Taylor has worked out of the King County Medical Examiner’s offi ce since 1996. Though it’s a relatively new fi eld, the demand for her unique ser- vices is growing. “Let’s just say I do not lack for work — I am very busy!” Taylor said . Taylor sometimes responds to scenes when bodies turn up. People regularly call on her to ‘Everybody should get a name’ Taylor cautions that DNA testing is “not the magic bullet everyone thinks it is.” Frus- tratingly, sometimes there’s just not enough to work with, especially with old, weath- ered remains. “What we have to do then is put it on the shelf and wait for the technology to get bet- ter, and then you resubmit it,” Taylor said. “You never give up.” It’s too soon to say whether this man’s bones will provide usable DNA, or other clues to his identity. Without a name, investigators are unlikely to ever fi gure out how he died. Sometimes though, fami- lies do get answers against all odds. Taylor and her col- laborators recently solved a seemingly hopeless cold case from 1989. When she fi nally met the victim’s sister, Tay- lor’s fi rst words were, “I have been waiting 20 years to talk to you!” “Every one of these people that are in my care have fam- ilies and are loved by some- body. It’s excruciating not to be able to fi gure out who they are. You know that they are being missed. You just don’t know by whom,” Taylor said. “You want to return them to their families. Everybody should get a name. They came into this world with a name. They should leave it with a name.” W A NTED Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber N orth w es t H a rdw oods • Lon gview , W A Contact: Steve Axtell • 360-430-0885 or John Anderson • 360-269-2500 LISTINGS A - Charter Astoria/ Seaside - L - Charter Long Beach examine bones, or photos of bones found around the state. “A lot of what I’m doing is evaluating a bone and asking, ‘Is this human?’ Because there are bones everywhere,” Tay- lor said. In addition to using the databases, she works with police, the media, and other experts, including a forensic artist. She also spends a lot of time talking with the families of the missing, encouraging them to do their part to keep investigations active. “We really try to explore every avenue,” Taylor said. “If you know of somebody that’s missing, you have to report them, and you have to be vigilant to make sure that somebody is getting them into the system.” Evening listings THURSDAY J ULY 21 PM 6:30 7 PM 7:30 8 PM 8:30 9 PM 9:30 10 PM 10:30 11 PM 11:30 KATU News 2016 Republican Convention (L) HattleHots (N) Greatest Hits ":990-:995" (N) Wheel of Fortune Jeopardy! 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