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Could the young woman who is buried in a "potter's" grave in the Nevada desert be Laureen Rahn, a 14-year-old Manchester girl who disappeared 25 years ago this month?
Rick Jones, an investigator for the Clark County coroner's office in Las Vegas, believes it is possible.
Last week, Jones tracked down the former Judith Rahn with his suspicion that one of the 159 "unidentified" bodies his office is trying to identify could be her missing daughter. Laureen's mother has since taken back her maiden name, Judith Swanson, and lives in Florida.
Jones was searching national databases of missing children when Laureen Rahn's photo caught his eye. The Manchester girl bore some resemblance to a young woman whose nude body had been found by a passer-by, off a desert road in Henderson, Nev., on the night of Oct. 5, 1980.
Jones said it was the 1980 Jane Doe and another unidentified young woman who inspired him to look into these kinds of cases when he first joined the coroner's office in 1998. They reminded him, he said, of his own daughter.
"I just felt like if this was my daughter missing . . . I would never stop looking. And I fully believe that these families of these missing people have never stopped looking for their loved ones."
So he now spends "every free moment" working on the "Las Vegas Unidentified" Web site. "As far as we're concerned, they may be buried, but they're never forgotten," he said. "We're never going to stop looking."
And Jones is not the only searcher.
Gerald Nance is the senior case manager for the special case unit at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va. It's a unit he set up two and a half years ago.
A former homicide investigator, Nance deals now only with long-term missing and unidentified individuals; he refrains from using the term "cold cases."
"We call them special cases, because no parent wants to hear their kid's case is a cold case," he explained
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=53462
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=53462
Rick Jones, an investigator for the Clark County coroner's office in Las Vegas, believes it is possible.
Last week, Jones tracked down the former Judith Rahn with his suspicion that one of the 159 "unidentified" bodies his office is trying to identify could be her missing daughter. Laureen's mother has since taken back her maiden name, Judith Swanson, and lives in Florida.
Jones was searching national databases of missing children when Laureen Rahn's photo caught his eye. The Manchester girl bore some resemblance to a young woman whose nude body had been found by a passer-by, off a desert road in Henderson, Nev., on the night of Oct. 5, 1980.
Jones said it was the 1980 Jane Doe and another unidentified young woman who inspired him to look into these kinds of cases when he first joined the coroner's office in 1998. They reminded him, he said, of his own daughter.
"I just felt like if this was my daughter missing . . . I would never stop looking. And I fully believe that these families of these missing people have never stopped looking for their loved ones."
So he now spends "every free moment" working on the "Las Vegas Unidentified" Web site. "As far as we're concerned, they may be buried, but they're never forgotten," he said. "We're never going to stop looking."
And Jones is not the only searcher.
Gerald Nance is the senior case manager for the special case unit at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va. It's a unit he set up two and a half years ago.
A former homicide investigator, Nance deals now only with long-term missing and unidentified individuals; he refrains from using the term "cold cases."
"We call them special cases, because no parent wants to hear their kid's case is a cold case," he explained
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=53462
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=53462