Missing in Arizona Day
Missing in Arizona Day, in its fourth year, brings together law enforcement agencies and support services to help the families of missing people.
The agony of loss is universal. Whether it’s a parent, child or childhood friend, losing loved ones makes the world a little dimmer. But a group of people hopes to alleviate a different kind of agony — not knowing whether that person is really gone.
The fourth-annual Missing in Arizona Day event will be held Oct. 27 at the Arizona State University West Campus in Glendale. The event brings together law enforcement agencies and support services all in one place to help the families of missing people, no matter how old the case.
The past three Missing in Arizona Day events have helped investigators resolve 27 cases — 15 in which the person was alive and 12 deceased.
Organizers encourage families to bring any records they might have, including notes, time lines, medical records and photos. Their goals are to open new cases, collect additional evidence for unsolved cases — there are 240-plus bodies found in Maricopa County that have yet to be identified — and to provide support for families who are still waiting for answers.
Forensic experts and law enforcement will be ready to take detailed reports on missing people, even if a report was previously filed with law enforcement.
There are nearly 900 missing-persons cases open in Arizona.
People can go missing for a variety of reasons. Missing people include those with a mental illness, victims of domestic violence and those contemplating su-
icide. Sometimes, missing people are children who have run away from home.
Christen Edgers, an unidentified-decedent coordinator for the Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner, said sometimes the living people they find through law enforcement sources didn’t want to be found.
“For the people that we found alive, we were able to reconnect them with their family,” Edgers said. “Some of them didn’t want to be reconnected with their family, but at least we were able to tell that family member they’re alive and they’re OK.”
But if the person’s dead, it can be a little trickier. When facial or fingerprint identification isn’t available, investigators turn to the body’s most resilient part — teeth.
John Piakis, a forensic odontologist at the Medical Examiner’s Office, X-rays a person’s teeth postmortem and compares them with any available dental records. If the records match, examiners can identify a person within a few hours.
“As soon as we get the X-rays (from) before (death), we can do the comparison right away,” Piakis said, “We can do a dental ID a lot quicker than, say, DNA.”
Piakis said investigators first attempt to contact possible family members to obtain records. A lack of records is the biggest obstacle.
“If we have nothing antemortem, that’s very frustrating, because we can take all the postmortem Xrays I want, and then we have nothing to compare to, and I can’t do the ID.”
Piakis estimates dental records are successfully used in 25- to 30-percent of body identification cases.
Laura Fulginiti, a forensic anthropologist with the Medical Examiner’s Office, examines different bones to assess body characteristics such as age, height and gender.
For example, the front part of a woman’s skull is typically narrower in the front, similar to a child’s, whereas a man’s skull broadens in the front as he ages. Fulginiti also uses the pelvis to gauge a person’s gender and age, and measures femurs to estimate height.
If someone died from an injury, bones can tell investigators how.
Fulginiti said fractures and crushed bone signal blunt-force trauma, whereas blade wounds leave a clean V-shape. Gunshots typically make a clean hole on the outside of the bone and bone fragments on the inside. Fulginiti said cases in which someone was repeatedly hit with a blunt object are the most difficult to identify.
Fulginiti said it’s sometimes challenging to narrow a person’s profile to enable an ID — especially without family members’ help.
“I can give you all the details in the world, (but) if don’t have anything to compare it to, it’s a cold case, essentially,” Fulginiti said. “Missing in Arizona Day is trying to address that by putting all those resources in one place.”
Fulginiti recommends family members and loved ones bring records of the missing person if they attend the event.
“If you’re willing to give a DNA sample while you’re there — if you bring in dental records, medical records, X-rays — all of that is very helpful.”
Edgers said her office examines about 800 bodies per year with about one to fifteen remaining without a name.
Part of that’s because more than half of the bodies her office examines are migrants who died in the desert. Edgers said corpses deteriorate rapidly in extreme heat, making visual or fingerprint identification nigh impossible.
Animals such as coyotes often discover these bodies first and can devour key identifiers such as piercings or tattoos. They can also move different body parts to different locations. Edgers said her office has a close working relationship with Pima County, as animals sometimes cross county lines with key evidence in tow.
Migrants are especially difficult to identify, as their families often live in different countries, such as Mexico or Guatemala. If that’s so, Edgers said she has to contact the appropriate consulate to request records from possible family members on their behalf, which can be a lengthy process.
Officials recommend families with missing loved ones attend the Missing in Arizona event, even if they’ve already filed a missing persons report with law enforcement.
Both English and Spanish-speaking investigators will be on hand.
Families struggling to cope are also encouraged to attend, as support-group staff will be available to help families deal their loss from noon to 2 p.m.
The Missing in Arizona Day event is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 27 in the La Sala Ballroom of the University Center Building at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird campus, 4701 W. Thunderbird Road, Glendale. Free parking will be available on the campus’ south lot.