Thanks for the tip. This is exactly the kind of case I’m looking for. It sounds like she was reported missing at the time, yet they weren’t able to identity her for some reason.
Anyone who has ever worked for the Federal government, including the military, postal service, and those with secret clearances, high level state employees, law enforcement, teachers and school employees, etc etc. It’s far more extensive than just convicted criminals.
By this logic, no-one should ever try to find the identity of an unidentified dead body. You don’t know what you’re going to find until you find it.
Surely you could imagine that for other people in other situations, finally knowing what happened to that loved one provides closure?
Yes, and this is exactly what Act 3 of my movie is all about.
I’ve had a few people drift out of my life only to find out years later they had passed away. There are individuals who just aren’t close to anyone, including their own family members, and sometimes people lose track of each other. As a number in and of itself, 15,000 is a lot of people, but when taken in the context of overall deaths it’s not really that much.
Even so, what you describe probably includes people who number in the millions, maybe tens of millions. There are roughly 342 million people in the U.S.; I strongly suspect that most Americans – and many unidentified bodies – either (a) have never been fingerprinted, or (b) have fingerprints which are in a database that may not be generally available to investigators.
Sure, but I expect testing for familial DNA matches is not cheap. Are they going to do this for every unidentified-decedent case going back decades? It would be nice to think that they will.
What kind of period are we talking about here? 15,000 since 2025 is a lot. 15,000 since 1900 isn’t that many. Not to downplay that every one of them is a tragic tale.
You have to remember that the US has a third of billion living people. I also presume that some of those unidentified bodies remain so for years or decades. It’s not 15,000 people dying unidentified in one year, it’s however many such die in a year plus the backlog minus any that are identified during the course of the year.
Remains that are “skeletonized” will be much harder to identify although that is possible in some cases. Improved DNA analysis has also lead to some identifications. There was also the case of one of the people in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington being eventually identified and returned to the family.
There are other fingerprint databases out there. Many government employees, for example. Military personnel. I believe some states use a fingerprint as part of the State ID/Driver’s licence. I think you need to be fingerprinted in this State if you want a firearm license and that’s probably true elsewhere, too. Not all fingerprinting is based on criminality.
Somebody has to pay for disposal of the corpse, one way or another. So local governments may be keen to find relatives to ask them to pay for it.
From what I read, 15,000 is the total number of active unidentified-decedent cases, not just in the past year. I also read somewhere that between 1,000 to 4,000 new cases are reported each year, but some/many of those cases get resolved eventually.
Yes, but since when? Does it include bodies that were found in the 1950s that are still unidentified? Are bodies no longer active after a certain period? Is there any cut off?
Somerton Man was found in 1948 and identified in 2022. Would he be on the list in 2021? (And yes I know that wasn’t USA. )
This does not surprise me, but I don’t know really what numbers would surprise me. Over the course of the entire time since they’ve been recorded…(1920s? 1870s?..1790’s?)
I would be surprised if the number was 200 or fewer. I would also be surprised if the number was 20 million. But somewhere within the band of 200-20,000,000 I wouldn’t be surprised.
That’s a perfectly normal thing, but for such a person also to die in such a way that they can’t be connected to their past life at all… not near their residence, or the residence of anyone who knows what happens to them, or their car, or their wallet and ID, or bicycle or phone, and nobody looking for them who knew generally where they were, that’s hard to pull off except in cases of homelessness, foul play, suicide, misadventure, etc.
While 15,000 doesn’t seem inordinately high if it’s an all-time figure, it’s still a very exceptional thing to happen.
Nothing about DNA on passport applications (yet). The fingerprints are required for background checks (criminal) as stated. Just the check, the prints don’t go on/in your passport chip.
Are you saying that a background check, including fingerprinting, is part of the passport application process? Because I didn’t know that.
When I applied for TSA Precheck a decade ago, the application involved submitting to a fingerprint check (which I assume was also for a criminal background check). I have no idea if the prints were stored somewhere, and/or who other than TSA has access to them now.
I got a U.S. passport in 1993, and got a new one in 2012 (the old one had expired); I did not have to submit fingerprints on either of those occasions. I can’t speak to what the process is like today.
Right. I provided fingerprints when applying for Global Entry. But for a regular American passport?
I’m not convinced that they are generally required.
This page on the U.S. State Department’s website outlines the requirements for applying for a U.S. passport. Fingerprints are not mentioned anywhere in the process.
https://travel.state.gov/en/passports/apply/adults.html#accordion-e38fdea780-item-b455f1ab75
Sure. That’s why it happens to so few people.