1,000+ Unidentified Persons Added to Uncovered!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – April, 24, 2023 – Lafayette, Colorado

Contact: Dana Poll, Head of Community – dana@uncovered.com

More than 1,000 Unidentified person cases added to the nation’s largest cold case database.

Uncovered has partnered with Doe Network: The International Center for Unidentified and Missing Persons to add 1,150 unidentified person cases to the nation’s largest cold case database of missing and murdered people.

Dana Poll, Head of Community at Uncovered, explains why this collaboration is so important, saying, “From the beginning we knew that in order to better serve victims and their families, we would one day add Doe cases to the Uncovered database. Our partnership with the Doe Network has made this possible and we could not be more excited to share these cases.”

Todd Matthews, ‘the first citizen detective’ and founding member of the Doe Network agrees: “I can’t express the value of strategic collaborations such as this one. Each of us is doing what we do best and building on each other’s progress.” Matthews is grateful that organizations like Uncovered see this work as a humanitarian effort and not a competition.

According to the National Missing and Unidentified Person’s System (NamUs), in the United States, 4,400 unidentified bodies are recovered each year and approximately 1,000 remain unidentified. The 2018 Census of Medical Examiner and Coroner Offices (CMEC) report indicates that this is a cumulative problem that has left more than 11,300 unidentified descendants waiting to be identified.

Swathi A Kumar, Ph.D., Senior Director, Human Identification and Forensics, QIAGEN, understands the importance of bringing awareness to unidentified person cases. He believes that, “This addition by Uncovered is a significant step in giving nameless victims the dignity of their names, enabling civic-minded citizens to participate in righting this silent mass disaster, and ensuring that no missing person falls through the cracks of an overburdened justice system.”

The Doe Network is a 100% volunteer nonprofit organization whose mission is to give the nameless back their names and return the missing to their families. Since 1999, the Doe Network has been devoted to assisting investigating agencies in bringing closure to national and international cold cases. Since its inception, the Doe Network has helped solve 113 cases. 

Established in  2019, Uncovered is the nation’s largest cold case database. Today, our database features nearly 50,000 missing, murdered, and unidentified person cases.

Tomorrow, that number will grow.

Rachael Rosselet, Head of Research and Data, explains, “With the help of the public, we crowdsource the information needed to add and update cases every day. Our Contribute To A Case feature invites you to turn your interest in true crime into advocacy.” 

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