link no longer works to actual article, but I found this article on this forum:
http://icaremissingpersonscoldcases.yuku.com/topic/892
vancnews.com/articles/ 2005/07/07/emporia/news/news02.txt
Decade later, case still cold
Artist's sketch of "Jason Doe," an unidentified man killed in an automobile accident on Route 58 in 1995.
Man died in
car crash, no clues to name
By Teresa Welsh
Staff writer
Some cases seem destined to forever remain unsolved but the police officers who work the cases find it impossible to forget nameless victims, especially of homicide.
For every unsolved mystery there are family members and loved ones who are left wondering day-after-day, year-after-year, for the rest of their lives about what happened and why.
Officers know that solving these mysteries would be a dream-come-true and the answer to many prayers, if only they could uncover the one clue that would lead them to the identities of the bodies.
To know what it is like to never know what happened to a missing loved one is left to most people's imaginations but unfortunately there are families left to ponder those unanswered questions.
Greensville County has at least one unidentified body, the victim of a car crash and Sussex County has two, both victims of homicide.
When a body is unidentified police are left with few leads and few options.
If the person was a victim of homicide it doesn't take long for the trail to go cold when the victim can't be identified. Without an identification the police really don't have a place to begin to kick start the investigation.
Sometimes even the new forensic technology seems of little use-at least until a new lead comes in.
When a case goes cold officers have little choice but to sit back and wait for a new lead after they have sent out bulletins with pertinent information to neighboring jurisdictions, checked missing person reports from around the country, entered the person's information on the national crime information computer and posted the information on missing person websites, said Sgt. Ted E. Jones and Sussex County Sheriff Stuart Kitchen.
Jones has spent the last 10 years hoping that he could finally return "Jason Doe" to his family.
But the mystery remains. Who is the young, unidentified man killed in an automobile accident on June 26, 1995? There are only a few clues to his identity-a note found in his pocket and a sketch by a police artist of the victim and his tattoo. And of course, DNA, which can be used to positively identify him.
Even Unsolved Mysteries, a national television show, has not been able to lead authorities to the man's identity, but they are still hopeful that someone will see a rerun of the episode and will recognize "Jason Doe."
After the program aired a segment on the case in 1995 the state received calls from as far away as California, said Jones, who was the Virginia State trooper who handled the case in 1995. He is now a sergeant in the Richmond office but has not forgotten the case, which he still hopes to solve.
In the past couple of years Jones has received a couple of calls from detectives working missing person cases. At first, the calls both looked like police had found a possible match-but each time Jones was disappointed when forensic evidence proved the person was not "Jason Doe."
"One inquiry was from California. When I first talked with the detective I was hopeful but in the end there was no match," said Jones.
A lot of people have taken an interest in helping to identify the man. Information about "Jason Doe" was put on the Grateful Dead website as well as many missing and unidentified person websites across the country, he said.
A sketch of the unidentified man appears on the Missing and Exploited Children's website along with pertinent information about him and his case, said Jones.
There is also information about him on the Doe Network, a new website that lists unidentified victims from all over the country.
When Jones first started working the case he thought that having an unidentified body was unusual.
"I was shocked to find out how many children are missing and how many bodies of children and adults are unidentified," Jones stated, noting that he feels it is unusual for a person to go unidentified for so long.
"It would be a relief to finally have some closure. I would never have thought it would take this long," he said.
Jones said DNA and records will be maintained at the Richmond Medical Examiner's Office in case someone comes forward to identify the body, which Greensville County had cremated five years ago.
The unidentified passenger and Michael E, Hager, 21, of Inman, S.C., were killed when a van Hager was driving struck a tree on Route 58.
How the unidentified man got to be in Hager's automobile is as much of a mystery as his identity.
Police believe he was hitchhiking between Fairfax and Gloucester and Hager picked him up.
"Jason Doe" was about 20, five foot eight inches tall, weighed 169 pounds and had light wavy hair and brown eyes. He had perfect teeth, no facial hair and a tattoo of a five-pointed star on his left upper arm.
He was dressed in blue jeans, black tennis shoes and a white Grateful Dead T-shirt from the 1995 Summer Tour. He had a pierced left ear, and was wearing a macram necklace and a beaded necklace.
A note in his pocket read, "To Jason, Sorry we had to go. See you around. Caroline O. and Caroline T."
His only other possessions were two ticket stubs from a Grateful Dead concert the weekend before at RFK Stadium in Washington.
Police think Hager fell asleep at the wheel and caused the accident.
Jones asked for help from police agencies throughout the nation and queried a national missing persons database. He also checked reports on John Does and compared other physical characteristics that were similar to "Jason Doe."
Since then, Jones has continued to search for clues to the man's identity-but to no avail.
Kitchen knows how Jones feels because he would like to be able to tell a woman's family that her body has been found, although he would hate to tell the family the method of her death.
The woman was found bound and gagged in a trash bag, which had been thrown away in the trash.
"Unfortunately, we were the dumping ground," said Kitchen, noting that Sussex also has another unidentified murder victim, a child found about 25 years ago dumped on the highway near Stony Creek.
Sussex received a report on May 2, 2000 from an employee of Atlantic Waste landfill that had seen an opened trash bag and a human leg protruding from it.
Trash under and around the body came from the Baltimore, Md. area, said Kitchen.
Maryland police, the FBI and Washington, D.C. police were notified but Baltimore has about 350 murders a year. Detectives came to Sussex when the body was found but with so many homicides the Maryland police have not spent a lot of time on the case, said Kitchen.
"If the Baltimore police is not interested then there isn't a lot we can do," he said. "We're sure she was killed in Baltimore and dumped in the trash, which ended up here. In fact, the only charge we could file would be for dumping the body.
"We have an unsolved homicide on the books but Baltimore is the department that would have to solve it. Obviously, we do not have the manpower to be able to send detectives to Baltimore to work on the case."
Police have not been able to identify the black woman believed to have been in her 20s. No missing person reports matching the body's characteristics have been found, said Kitchen. She was about five foot seven inches tall. No guess can be made on her body weight.
A description of the body was sent to a national crime computer data base.
It is believed that the woman had been dead about three weeks before her body was found.
"Somebody, somewhere is looking for this woman," said Kitchen, "and the family needs to know where she is so they can take her remains home."
When Kitchen became a detective about 25 years ago the body of a 14-15-year-old white female was found. The child had never had any dental work done and there were other indications that the girl was probably a prostitute or lived on the street, he said.
"She was probably never even reported as missing," Kitchen stated.
Police were hoping for closure in that case when serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, a Blacksburg native who killed his own mother, confessed to the murder. Lucas was the partner of Otis Toole, who is believed to have killed Adam Walsh, son of John Walsh of America's Most Wanted.
Lucas confessed to 198 murders, then recanted his confession to many of the crimes. Police reopened the investigation of 90 of the murders but are convinced of his involvement in at least 100 homicides.
But Kitchen does not believe he killed the teen-aged girl in Sussex in the 1980s.
Lucas could not give specific details of the crime or identify the logo of the T-shirt the child was wearing. That piece of evidence was never released to the public, said Kitchen, noting that Lucas later told a Texas Ranger that he confessed so the "nice officers in Virginia wouldn't have to go home without a case."
Just found link that works, thanks to post by Patience
http://vancnews.com/articles/2005/07/07/emporia/news/news02.txt