It’s called the nation’s silent mass disaster. Tens of thousands of unidentified people around the country in the custody of medical examiners. NY1 Criminal Justice Reporter Dean Meminger says there are more than a 1,000 such cases in the city. He spoke exclusively to staff at the ME’s office about the city’s first ever Missing Persons Day.
Hundreds have been buried without being identified. Now the city’s medical examiner office is urging New Yorkers and people from across the country to come forward if they have missing family or friends.
“In the last six years, we’ve done a very exhaustive audit of all the cases going back to 1990, and so from 1990 to the present we currently have about 1,200 long term unknown cases. These are individuals we really have no idea who they are,” says Benjamin Figura, the OCME Director of Identification.
The medical examiner’s office says it does have DNA samples of the 1,200 unidentified people. Now it just needs to compare those to DNA from family members to make a match. On Saturday November 8, the city’s ME is hosting it’s first ever Missing Persons Day.
“We are going to have the National Center for Missing and Exploited children here. We are gong to have the Department of Health. We’re going to have the Red Cross. The NYPD will be present as well as a multitude of volunteers that are going to come, whose job is to help families that are missing loved ones,” says Mark Desire, Assistant Director in the DNA Division of the OCME.
DNA technology is rapidly changing and making it possible to identify people who couldn’t be just a few years ago. New DNA samples were taken from bodies at the potter’s field on Hart Island in the Bronx, where the unclaimed or unknown are buried.
“We had those individuals disinterred from city burial, brought back to our office to do another examination and collect information that maybe we weren’t collecting back then, particularly DNA samples,” Figura says.
Those could also possibly match ten of thousands of missing people in other states. Families can show up and provide DNA on November 8.
“You just come in. You just provide a cotton swab. It is like a Q-Tip. It is soft. It goes inside the cheek cell and that’s all the sample we need. There is no blood. There is no pain,” says forensic scientist Jaime Renta.
For family members with missing loved ones it could be rather emotional for them coming here to the medical examiner’s office to talk about the situation, so there will be counselors and spiritual advisors here to help them cope.
“If there are any family members who can’t make it there that day, we’ll also be able to send a DNA collection kit to them at home,” says Desire.
To find out more about Missing Persons Day and to register for the event you’re urged to call 212-323-1201.
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