so how can we tell if any of the suggested matches are serious possibilities? Its not like anyone of these possible matches seems to be considered the 'one' that would most likely match this Jane doe? In my opinion only.
If one of us feels strongly about a possible match, we will either call it in, or send an e-mail to one of the contacts (either for the UID case, or the MP case) indicated in DoeNet or NamUs. Throughout this forum people suggest possible matches, but more often than not, they are not called in because there is some inconsistency, or it just doesn't look right. Many of the agencies throughout US (and especially Canada) will never let you know whether your possible match panned out. But LSU Faces Lab is pretty good about that. If you call in a possible match, you usually get an answer. And if you don't get an answer, you can drop them an e-mail a few months later, and they will let you know.
What bothers me is that she has not been claimed before now by family members - do they think she is alive still, have they not contacted the right people, did no one care or is some of the information about her so wrong that she cant be identified?
That's the story not just for this case, but for many of these cases involving children or teens. Many of these cases involve children who have run away from disfunctional homes or Child Protective Services.
A case was just solved recently of a young girl - a foster child who had frequently run away from CPS and her adoptive family, and on one of those occasions while she was out living on the street, she was murdered and left in the Arizona desert. That was in 1992, and she remained unidentified for 18 years because nobody cared enough to figure out whatever happened to her.
There are probably thousands of young children who flee from disfunctional families or CPS, and travel around the country catching rides from truckers, or get involved in a creepy underworld. Some of them end up deceased and listed on DoeNet and/or NamUs. For these children, their families and/or CPS have given up on them.
It's quite possible that this unidentified girl, and others such as Valentine Sally, Walker County Jane Doe, Caledonia Jane Doe, are from circumstances such is these.
In other cases, the children are murdered by their parents. And since their parents are not firmly rooted in a community or extended family, the crime is never reported, the child is never reported missing, and nobody (except for the perpetrators) is even aware of the child's absence.
The little girl who was decapitated and left in the basement of an abandoned building in St. Louis is probably such a case.
