I maintain a searchable spreadsheet listing over 16,000 missing persons from the four most used missing persons sites (Charley Project, NamUs, DoeNetwork, and NAMPN).
I set the parameters for the particulars provided for "Asian Male"
* Male
* Age 17-23
* Asian
* Missing between 1-Jan-2000 and 31-Jan-2006)
I further filtered it for persons missing in the Northeastern states and Eastern Provinces of Canada. There is no reason why "Asian Male" might not be from another region, but I prefer to focus on the northeastern states and provinces. My initial screen doesn't filter for height, as height estimates are notoriously unreliable, but I will still consider the height after evaluating the resulting list.
This yielded only six names.
* Brian Lee (23) from Queens NY -
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/l/lee_brian.html
* Siphet Chao (19) from Portland ME -
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/c/chau_siphat.html
* Neil Louis Boware (21) from Akron OH
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/b/boware_neal.html
* Mo Zheng (17) of Yorktown Virginia
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/z/zhang_mo.html
* Kevin Lim (18) of Scarborough Ontario (Canada)
http://www.nampn.org/cases/lim_kevin.html
* Jackie Li (18) of Scarborough Ontario (Canada)
http://www.nampn.org/cases/li_jackie.html
We can probably eliminate Brian Lee due to his height (6 feet 2 inches), and his facial shape is not particularly close to the reconstruction.
Siphet Chao's facial structure is also inconsistent to the reconstruction.
Neil Boware was part African American in addition to his Asian ancestry. That probably would have been noted by the Anthropologist. Also, the circumstances of disappearance appear to suggest a suicide. He was last seen atop a bridge in Ohio.
Kevin Lim and Jackie Li look like interesting possibilities. They went missing with Li's girlfriend and are persons of interest in the death of a friend of theirs. Jackie would probably be too tall at 5 feet 10. Kevin's height (5 feet 8 inches) is closer to the John Doe's height of 5 feet 6. If they were evading the law, they might have a reason to dress in women's clothing. However, Canadian Law Enforcement believes that these two young men and their female friend are in Hong Kong. Nothing here to rule them out, but they aren't particularly compelling as possibly being this John Doe.
The one person on this list that I do find compelling is Mo Zheng. Here he is side-by-side with the facial reconstruction of the "Asian Male" John Doe.
We have no information to suggest that he had a missing front tooth, or a musculoskeletal disorder that may have affected his gait (as AMJD did). We also don't have any suggestion that he was a cross-dresser. Mo's dental and medical records aren't available to know one way or the other. Nor is there any available information pertaining to his lifestyle. The fact that something isn't mentioned should not lead one to presume that those characteristics don't exist with this person.
As for the information that is available on Mo Zheng, it matches up very nicely with the particulars of AMJD.
* His height 5'5" is within an inch of AMJD's estimated height.
* His age 17 is within AMJD's 17-23 age estimate.
* His date of last contact (09-Aug-2006) is consistent to AMJD's estimated date of death (i.e., 5-10 years prior to the 2011 discovery)
* His circumstances of disappearance aren't clear. However, his disappearance was thought to be voluntary with no suggestion of foul play at the location of his last contact (Yorktown Virginia).
And what is very interesting is the consistency of his facial structure to the artist's estimation of what AMJD might have looked like based on the shape of his skull.
I've done animated GIF image clips in a couple of other cases to show how a person's face aligns up to a facial reconstruction.
I thought that this technique would be appropriate in this case to show how closely Mo Zheng's facial structure aligns to the facial reconstruction sketch for Asian Male.
The few minor differences in the eyes and breadth of the nose are well within the tolerances for this type of facial reconstruction based on purely skeletal remains.
I called to the LISK taskforce hotline back in 2011 to suggest that they look at Mo Zheng. However, I have no way to know if they ever looked into the tip. The task force doesn't publicize rule-outs.
According to NamUs, there are no identifiers of any kind (DNA, fingerprints, or dental records) on record for Mo Zheng. If that is true, so there would be no way that they could verify this tip even if they wanted to. Based on the lack of identifiers, I would have to presume that this is still an open issue as to whether Mo Zheng is AMJD.
