Remains of missing Florida man identified 41 years later
Source: Associated Press, via the Washington Post
By Associated Press
July 7 at 9:12 AM
LAKELAND, Fla. Some 41 years after 19-year-old Mark Duane Woodard disappeared, Florida authorities have finally identified his remains.
Diann Wells tells the Ledger (http://bit.ly/29PzfsP) that Polk County Sheriffs deputies told her last week that remains found in the north Florida woods in 1977 were recently matched to her brother.
Woodard went missing on April 14, 1975. His body was spotted by two people in a heavily wooded area about 70 miles north of Lakeland in March 1977. ... Thirty-two years later, the medical examiners office sent a bone to the University of North Texas to have DNA samples extracted.
Polk County Sheriffs deputies came across Woodards name while reviewing missing persons cases in 2015. They sent DNA that had been provided by his parents and the match was made June 23.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/remains-of-missing-florida-man-identified-41-years-later/2016/07/07/71393014-4444-11e6-a76d-3550dba926ac_story.html
Autoplay video at Ledger site.
LBN, because these stories show that decades after someone goes missing, there are still people on the case.
Silver_Witch
(1,820 posts)Such a long wait would be horrifying to me.
Historic NY
(37,449 posts)Missing persons that are reported are entered in the FBI computers systems. They are updated regularly by the entering agencies as new info becomes available. None of this was in use when he went missing. Now remains like his that were found are entered to locate matches as this one was decades old.
http://namus.gov/ & https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/vicap
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,350 posts)And I'm not sure a national databank of DNA and fingerprints is warranted. I wouldn't want that data collected from newborns and held in a sort-of-secure federal computer system. Maybe if the system were voluntary.