Missing Without A Trace (15 page)

• are 21 and older and who do not meet any of the above criteria but for whom there is a reasonable concern for their safety (classified as Other—EMO).

In 1999, the NCIC implemented an optional Missing Person Circumstances (MPC) field, which allows the law enforcement agency entering the data to code the missing person as Runaway, Abducted by Non-Custodial Parent or Abducted by Stranger.

Once local law enforcement enters the missing person data into NCIC, the information is accessible nationwide. During a search, any criminal justice agency or federal, state or local law enforcement agency can pull up the file, instantly. But, before acting on any information
obtained in the NCIC, an inquiring agency must contact the agency that originally entered the report into the database to ensure that the information is accurate and up to date. After confirming the record, if the inquiring agency has made a match, they can return the missing person to their home. For persons who are not located, initiating law enforcement agencies are required to send a validation report to the NCIC annually, stating the cases that are still open. To keep the database pristine, the NCIC removes from the database any records that the originating agencies do not confirm or validate.

In some cases, the NCIC records do not include sufficient information to identify a person. In May 2005, to address this problem, the NCIC implemented another field in the missing person database, allowing law enforcement agencies to store, access and supplement dental records. The National Dental Image Repository (NDIR) field helps to facilitate the identification of missing, unidentified, and wanted persons.

Law enforcement can also file a report with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which can assist with making and distributing wanted posters and age-enhancement technology, tracking, notifications and research. Families can also contact NCMEC on their hotline at 1-800-THE-LOST for help and support.

Another important tool at the national level is the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs). Developed to help solve cases, NamUs is the first online repository for records on missing persons and unidentified persons. Accessible to the general public, NamUs provides access to coroner and medical examiner offices, and allows you to narrow search results by searching multiple characteristics, such as sex, race, dental information, and tattoos.

Suzanne’s Law

Prior in 2003, law enforcement agencies were only required to report missing persons who were under the age of eighteen. As a result, countless numbers of missing people over the age of eighteen stayed missing and many of them still have not been found. One such person is Suzanne Lyall, a student at State University of New York at Albany. She has been missing since she exited a bus at Collins Circle on the University at Albany Uptown Campus on March 2, 1998. Police did not begin investigating until nearly two days after her disappearance and, as a result, her family has waited for answers for more than twelve years.

Suzanne’s case inspired President George W. Bush to sign “Suzanne’s Law,” which requires police to notify the NCIC immediately when someone between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one is reported missing. Suzanne’s Law also amended Section 3701 (a) of the Crime Control Act of 1990, eliminating twenty-four-hour waiting periods, which were common practice for most law enforcement agencies. Now, law enforcement agencies cannot enforce any waiting period before they begin an investigation of a missing person under the age of twenty-one.

In August 2008, President Bush took Suzanne’s Law a step further, signing a bill entitled The Suzanne Lyall Campus Safety Act, which amended the Higher Education Opportunity Act and required colleges to have policies outlining roles for law enforcement agencies at the campus, local and state level in the event of a violent crime on campus. The Suzanne Lyall Campus Safety Act was designed to minimize delays and the confusion of roles in investigation.

In response to Suzanne Lyall’s disappearance, New York also enacted its state’s Campus Safety Act in 1999. This Act requires all colleges in New York to “have formal plans that provide for the investigation of missing students and violent felony offenses committed on campus.”

Adam Walsh Act

On July 27, 2006, President George W. Bush signed another important piece of legislation, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006. This Act was named after Adam Walsh, the six-year-old son of John Walsh, creator and host of
America’s Most Wanted
. Adam disappeared while shopping with his mother, Reve Walsh, in July 1981. Two weeks later, after extensive searches, a fisherman found the boy’s severed head in a Florida irrigation canal more than one-hundred miles from home.

Two years later, a drifter named Ottis Toole confessed to killing Adam Walsh. Though Toole told police that he and his lover—serial killer Henry Lee Lucas—abducted and killed Adam, the details didn’t add up. Police began interrogating harder and learned that Lucas had an alibi: He had been in a Virginia jail on a car-theft charge and could not have been involved in the case. Faced with the evidence, Toole admitted that he had lied about Lucas’s involvement and, finally, police had the kidnapper/murderer, and a confession. Toole even provided details of the case consistent with police findings and described a wooded area where he claimed to have left Adam’s body. But police were unable to locate the child’s remains and they had no physical evidence to validate the confession. The state attorney declined to prosecute the case. Toole subsequently changed his story and, three months later, he recanted his confession.

According to John Walsh and others, sadly, several lapses (including the loss of DNA evidence) marred the investigation. Though Toole twice confessed to killing Adam, he never served time for murdering the boy, though he served five life sentences for other murders. On his deathbed in 1996, he confessed to his niece that he was, indeed, the killer. In 2008, authorities finally announced that they had closed the case on Adam’s murder after definitively determining that Toole had killed him.

Two years before authorities closed the case, John and Reve Walsh hoped to save countless other families from dealing with the horror they had endured. They set forth the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, legislation that established a national sex offender registry and made significant changes to sexual abuse, exploitation and transportation crimes. The act also created new substantive crimes, expanded federal jurisdiction over existing crimes and increased statutory minimum and/or maximum sentences. As part of this program, the Act established a three-tier classification system for sex offenders:

• Tier III. The highest tier is “a felony sex offender convicted of aggravated sexual abuse or sexual abuse, or abusive sexual contact of minor under age thirteen; non-custodial kidnapping; or any sex offense committed after the person becomes a tier II offender.”

• Tier II. This includes “a sex offender convicted of a felony charge or attempt to commit sex trafficking, coercion and enticement, transportation with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, or abusive sexual contact; if it involves use of a minor in a sexual performance, solicitation of a minor to practice prostitution, or production or distribution of child porn; or any sex offense committed after a person is labeled a Tier I offender.”

• Tier I. This covers any sex offender not classified under the second or third tier.

Depending upon the classification level, sex offenders must remain registered for a specific period of time, and it is a felony for a sex offender to fail to register. Tier I sex offenders have a registration requirement of fifteen years but they can appeal for reduction after five years or removal after ten years. Tier II registrants are required to register for twenty-five years, and Tier III offenders must register for life, though they can appeal for removal or reduction after twenty-five years.

National and State-based Alert Systems

The actions and options available to families and law enforcement are slightly different if the missing person is a child or an adult.

In cases of missing children, law enforcement agencies can issue an AMBER Alert if the case meets certain criteria. First, law enforcement must confirm that an abduction has happened and assess the level of risk to the child. If the child is abducted by a stranger, the level of risk is much greater than if the child was abducted by a family member. So, authorities can release an AMBER Alert if:

• a child is at risk for serious bodily harm or death;

• there is sufficient descriptive information on the missing child or possible abductor;

• and the child is seventeen years or younger.

In these cases, AMBER Alert data is immediately entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and the case is flagged as a Child Abduction. This expands the search from the local level to the state, regional or national level, increasing chances that the child will be located. A Child Abduction flag will also trigger an immediate response from the FBI and NCMEC, which will contribute resources to aid in locating the child.

For missing persons over the age of seventeen, other alert systems are available and, often, these vary by state. (This chapter includes resources in specific states.)

State of Washington Procedures

In the State of Washington, police will go into action if an adult is missing under certain circumstances. To activate an EMPA in Washington:

• the person must be missing under unexplained, involuntary, or suspicious circumstances;

• the person must be believed to be in danger because of age, health, mental or physical disability, in combination with environmental or weather conditions, or is believed to be unable to return to safety without assistance;

• law enforcement must be given enough descriptive information that could assist in the safe recovery of the missing person.

Once police
at the appropriate local jurisdiction
determine that the missing person meets these criteria, they will activate the action plan and prepare an Endangered Missing Person Advisory (EMPA) through a central computerized system. This notifies all Washington law enforcement agencies including the Washington State Patrol Missing Persons Unit (MPU). The local jurisdiction should follow up with the State Patrol’s MPU to verify receipt of the EMPA. The MPU can issue the EMPA locally, regionally and statewide. The EMPA is also sent to the media and is entered into the NCIC database as well as a similar, state database, the Washington Crime Information Center (WACIC), which includes information on missing/unidentified person cases.

As soon as authorities obtain a photograph of the missing person and/or suspect, they add these into the databases and email them to the State Patrol’s Missing Persons Unit. The MPU can then provide the investigating agency with electronic posters that include details of the missing person. If the missing person is twenty-one years of age or younger, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children encourages the investigating
agency to make contact with them.

The investigating law enforcement agency assigns a Public Information Officer (PIO) to handle press inquiries and provide updates to the media as much as possible. This is an important component. Missing-person cases rely on the media to garner maximum exposure, as this encourages the public to relay any leads to the investigating agency or dispatch center. When the investigating law enforcement agency receives new information, they then can update or cancel the EMPA, as appropriate.

In Washington, the State Patrol’s Missing & Unidentified Persons Unit is also available to assist local law enforcement agencies in locating missing persons. The MUPU works with other state, national and international organizations to compare and share information on missing persons cases; it has a repository for dental records, DNA and human remains information so that they can match up any recovered, unidentified persons or their remains with missing-persons cases.

The State of Washington is also home to the Missing and Exploited Children Task Force, which assists local and state law enforcement agencies by conducting investigations relating to crimes against children.

Several national organizations also provide additional help at no charge to searchers. A Child is Missing, for example, uses an automated telephone system to contact local residents and businesses if a child, elderly or disabled person goes missing. Team Adam provides agencies with child abduction investigators, technical assistance and equipment during investigations that involve missing, abducted, or exploited children. Additionally, Project Alert offers the help of retired federal, state, and local law enforcement officers to assist in investigations of missing, abducted, or exploited children.

One major complication in missing persons cases in Washington and elsewhere is the lack of evidence pointing to where a person has gone, or—if they were abducted—evidence pointing to a specific suspect. This
often leaves investigators with little information to go on. According to Washington law RCW 68.50.320, if a person is still missing thirty days after the initial report, the police
must
file a missing person report with the State Patrol’s MUPU. DNA, therefore, should be collected from the missing person’s belongings, as well as from their family members, so that law enforcement can conduct DNA testing. Law enforcement will also ask the family or next of kin to give written consent allowing officials to obtain dental records for comparison.

What went wrong in the Rider case?

The State of Washington in general and the Seattle area in particular have come under scrutiny for inattentive and even sloppy handling of missing persons cases for many years. In 2003, the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
published a yearlong, ten-part exposé entitled “Without a Trace” by Lewis Kamb.
¹
This series documented that Seattle-area police (as well as agencies around the nation) made frequent and costly errors in missing persons cases.