Families of people who’ve been missing for long periods say each day can feel like an endless wait for answers.
And for police working missing persons cases, the challenge is piecing together fading clues from years past before they vanish.
That’s why the city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner each year gives families the opportunity to come to the agency’s headquarters to access free support services, connect with law enforcement and hopefully get closer to finding their loved one.
The office will host its annual Missing Person’s Day on Saturday, which since 2014 has helped identify the remains of dozens of individuals in New York and across the country. The chief medical examiner's staff will work with families of people who have been missing for 60 days or more, gathering photos, personal histories and DNA reference samples in hopes of helping them eventually find some measure of closure.
“I think the biggest difficulty with these cases is if we don't know who is missing, we don't have anyone to compare these people to,” said Dr. Angela Soler, the director of forensic anthropology at the chief medical examiner's office. “ By knowing who is missing, we can then connect the dots to who is unidentified. And that's really what we're trying to do for these families, especially those who have been missing a loved one for a very long time.”
The NYPD does not explicitly share how many people are missing across New York City at any given time since the number fluctuates rapidly. But according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs — the only national database for missing, unidentified, and unclaimed persons that allows the public limited access — at least 266 New Yorkers are currently missing across the five boroughs and at least 1,199 people who died remain unidentified.
The medical examiner said there are roughly 1,300 cold cases in the city's jurisdiction, going back to the 1980's.
Soler said two staff members from the medical examiner's office will interview relatives, asking questions about their loved ones, including when and how they went missing and whether they have any unusual physical characteristics, like tattoos.
That information, along with DNA samples, will go to specialized identification investigators or forensic anthropologists, who comb through the office’s morgue records to search for a match.
The process can still take time, but Soler said new forensic genetic genealogy sites — publicly accessible databases where individuals can input their DNA and opt to have it searched against missing and unidentified persons cases — have also led to far more results than were possible in the past.
“ Unfortunately, we would be giving them an answer that their loved one is possibly deceased, which is not what they would want to hear,” Soler said. “But at the same time, it's providing an answer and bringing them out of that liminal state into a place where they can process what happened to their loved one.”
The event also gives families access to free, confidential support and counseling from organizations like the Red Cross, and gives them the opportunity to speak with NYPD detectives if they suspect any criminality in their case. Representatives from missing-persons clearinghouse NamUs and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children also will be there.
The event will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the chief medical examiner's Manhattan headquarters on East 26th Street and First Avenue, next to Bellevue Hospital. The agency is encouraging anyone who wants to attend to make an appointment by calling 212-323-1201. A virtual option is available for those who cannot attend in person, and interpretation services will be available.
”We obviously may not be able to resolve all of these cases,” Soler said, “But we really do care deeply about what these families are going through, and we are committed to doing what we can on our end to try and bring them some answers.”
