The Skeleton Crew: A Conversation with Deborah Halber on the Amateurs Who Are Finding the Missing and Solving Cold Cases
For decades, all across the United States, tens of thousands of missing persons cases have grown cold. At the same time, a mounting number of unidentified remains have been discovered and have been stored in coroner’s offices or buried in potter’s fields. But the Internet has been changing all of that. We talk to Deborah Halber, about some of the challenges and changes in the world of the unidentified dead and those who try to name them.
BIO: Deborah Halber started out as a daily newspaper reporter, then turned to the dark side to do public relations. She worked as a writer and editor for Tufts and as a science writer for MIT, where she chronicled everything from quantum weirdness (that’s the technical term) to snail slime. A freelance journalist since 2004, her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, Inked, Technology Review, and Symbolia. Her narrative nonfiction book, THE SKELETON CREW: HOW AMATEUR SLEUTHS ARE SOLVING AMERICA’S COLDEST CASES, is just out from Simon & Schuster. A member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the National Association of Science Writers, she lives near Boston in a house with a lot of former pets buried out back.
LISTEN: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/suspensemagazine/2014/06/29/crime-and-science-radio-with-deborah-halber
LINKS:
Deborah Halber http://deborahhalber.mit.edu/
NamUs: The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System http://namus.gov
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children http://www.missingkids.com/home
NOKR: The Next of Kin Registry http://www.nokr.org
Black and Missing Foundation http://www.blackandmissinginc.com/cdad
Clark County Nevada Coroner’s Office: Las Vegas Unidentified http://www.clarkcountynv.gov/depts/coroner/unidentified/Pages/default.aspx
Provincetown Site for Lady of the Dunes http://www.provincetown-ma.gov/index.aspx?NID=618
Todd Matthews Tent Girl Site http://www.angelfire.com/tn3/masterdetective2/
Porchlight International http://z10.invisionfree.com/usedtobedoe/index.php?showforum=41
The DOE Network http://www.doenetwork.org
The Charley Project http://www.charleyproject.org
America’s Missing Adults http://americasmissingadults.com/
California State Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit http://oag.ca.gov/missing
Ohio Missing Adults http://www.ohiomissingadults.com/
WDAZ: Remains Found 31 Years Ago in Wyoming Identified as Missing Minnesota Native http://www.wdaz.com/content/remains-found-31-years-ago-wyoming-identified-missing-minnesota-native-0
People Magazine: Murdered Teen’s Remains Given to Her Family 46 Years Later http://www.people.com/article/philadelphia-missing-girls-jane-doe-identified-family
Story About The Skelton Crew by Deborah Halber in Time Magazine: How to Solve a Murder With Just Your Computer http://time.com/2973705/how-to-solve-murder-with-computer/