Some may be lost travelers, runaway children, or wanderers.
For one thing, there are no identification papers among the 58 or so remains found at the Honolulu Medical Examiner's Office and no next of kin to claim them: They remain unidentified.
Forensic pathologists hope that advanced DNA testing technology will enable them to link the names of all the unidentified people to the agency. But right now, five cases — all children and teens — have been sent for additional testing thanks to a $50,000 grant from Othrum, a Texas-based cold case resolution company.
These include Daniel K. in 2002. Includes a partial skeleton of a juvenile found in Kihei Lagoon near Inouye International Airport; In 2000, body parts of a 7- to 10-year-old boy were discovered in Vienna; Six fingers of a girl under the age of 4, found in Honolulu in 2012; And in 2015, the skeletal remains of a teenager were found mixed with animal bones inside a vase purchased in Honolulu.
The medical examiner's office would not release additional details about the cases, but medicolegal investigator Charlotte Carter said each represents a person whose family deserves closure.
The five cases sent to Othrum for testing were chosen in part because they were teenagers whose DNA experts felt had a good chance of being identified through advanced technology.
One case involves a 2014 murder, so the medical examiner's office declined to release information while the investigation continues.
In the case involving the severed fingers, it is unclear whether they belonged to a child who died or whether his hands were simply traumatized. There may be other cases of missing children, a possibility that cannot be ruled out until DNA testing is completed.
Carter said he is committed to solving other unidentified cases in Honolulu morgues, especially if DNA testing becomes more accessible and affordable.
“Anyone who is unidentified should have a chance to be located and identified and their name should be returned,” he said.
In June the Honolulu City Council accepted a grant from Houston-based Othrum, which performs forensic genetic genealogy testing that combines DNA analysis with genealogical research.
No samples have been identified yet, Carter said.
Very little information about each case is publicly available through the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NameUSis an organization funded by National Institute of Justice, Which runs a national database of unidentified, missing and unclaimed persons. NamUs representatives did not respond to interview requests.
Little is known about some cases.
For example, for skeletal remains found inside a vase in Honolulu, forensic pathologists could not identify the age range, sex, height, weight, or year of death – only that the person was still a teenager.
Other cases involve more clues. The young boy found in Vienna in 2000 was suspected to have died the same year. It was recovered without a torso and was missing one or more limbs and one or both arms.
A forensic artist recreated his face, which is included in his NamUs profile, revealing what he might have looked like in life. He is listed in the missing children database as “John Vianae Doe 2000”.
Carter said it could take a year or more for DNA test results to come back.
So far, her agency has worked on a successful identity with Othrum.
Skeletal remains discovered by a construction crew in Manoa in 2010 were tested and later identified as those of William Hans Hollings Jr., a Washington man last seen by friends and family in January 1985 Was. Othrum identified Holling's remains and the Honolulu Police Department confirmed their identity. In July. No arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing.
Serial killer-rapist identified through technology
Forensic genetic genealogy testing enables investigators to search for an unknown person's relatives as a starting point and, with the help of public records, build a family tree that they hope will take them closer to an identification.
This method became popular in criminal investigations after companies like 23andMe and Ancestry entered the market in the 2010s. According to former FBI in-house Stephen Kramer, those companies block law enforcement agencies like the FBI from their databases, but investigators can use others, such as GEDMatch, which is public-facing, and FamilyTreeDNA, which the law provides. Allows limited access by enforcement. Consultant and founder of Indago Solutions, a DNA identification company.
Working with the FBI in 2018, Kramer helped identify golden state killer Using Forensic Genetic Genealogy Testing. Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. pleaded guilty to 13 murder and rape charges for crimes committed in the 1970s and '80s and admitted a total of 161 crimes involving 48 victims, including dozens of rapes.
Kramer's company recently identified Albert Lauro as a suspect in the 1991 murder of Dana Ireland on the Big Island.
During a presentation to University of Hawaii law students this month, Kramer said genetic analysis of DNA found on Ireland's body linked him to genealogical information about the suspect. They found that the man was 83% Filipino, meaning he had three Filipino grandparents. He was also 5% European and Scandinavian, with the rest being a mix of Hawaiian, Maori and South Pacific Islander.
He said Kramer was told that the suspect's fourth grandparent was about 30% European and 25% Pacific Islander. Kramer focused on grandparents because it is generally easier to find public records for people of European descent.
They used the records to identify people of this lineage who had moved to Hawaii and married into Filipino families, leaving very few potential pairs. They traced a family tree that included three Filipino grandparents and one grandparent who descended from Europeans, Scandinavians, and Pacific Islanders.
There he found his suspect.
Investigators followed up by picking up Lauro's discarded fork, which was tested against a DNA sample from Ireland's body.
When detectives later brought Lauro in for questioning on July 19, they confirmed his identity with a swab. Hawaii County Police Chief Ben Moszkowicz later said that police did not have enough probable cause to arrest Lauro for Ireland's murder, and they let him go.
Four days later he killed himself.
Factors hindering the use of technology
Lack of funding is the main barrier to more thorough investigations and forensic genetic genealogy on cold cases, Carter said. Each case costs about $10,000, and NamUs pays to send about five cases per year to Honolulu for testing.
The 58 unidentified cases at the Honolulu Medical Examiner's Office date back to 1966 and include people found under a variety of circumstances.
There are many skeletons uncovered at construction sites, Carter said. Other remains discovered by hikers probably belonged to people who were homeless and living in camps in remote parts of the island.
If remains are found on tribal lands, are older than 50 years or are otherwise suspected to be Native Hawaiian, the medical examiner contacts the State Historic Preservation Division of the Department of Land and Natural Resources for confirmation. If the remains are confirmed to be Native Hawaiian, the agency takes custody of them for repatriation.
But some unidentified cases involve people who have recently died and, although they were physically identifiable when found, have not yet been claimed by family members or tracked through any national database. Has not been matched.
Carter said forensic pathologists have not been able to identify the woman who was struck and killed by a car while trying to cross the street on May 21, 2016. According to her NamUs profile, she was between 50 and 75 years old, was of Asian or mixed Asian descent and appeared to be homeless. His DNA was run through a national database and Honolulu police collected his fingerprints and sent them to the FBI but found no matches.
Carter said some people came forward thinking they knew him, but his identity could not be confirmed.
“He's a person who was a victim of a crime,” she said. “But, unfortunately, we have not been able to find out who he is.”
The most recent case occurred on October 9 when military personnel conducting a training exercise found two femurs inside a camping tent near a hiking trail in Haleiwa.
Carter said his office does not keep track of identification data, but said typically one or two unidentified remains are identified through DNA testing each year. If a person is identified but his next of kin cannot be found, his case is transferred to NamUs' unclaimed persons database.
If family members are found, they are able to collect their relatives' remains for burial or cremation, Carter said.
He hopes that as technology improves, testing will become more accessible so that every case can be addressed.
“I think everyone deserves a name and their family deserves answers,” he said. “We have a lot of families who are wondering what happened to the person they loved. And now that new technologies have come in, we're probably going to find that new normal for those people with more closure or “Going to get closer to the family.”