The Castaway - Chapter 2

So how was I going to identify the body of a 12 to 15-year-old child from skeletal remains? At this point she was listed at the Coroner's Office by a number, "U-02018." The "U" stood for "Unidentified." We referred to her as little Janie Doe.

Dental impressions were taken from the skeleton and they were entered into the Department of Justice computer for comparison against the nationwide database. But dental impressions are not as accurate as fingerprints and the results can often be unreliable. It's always best to have a list of possible matches to compare them with. It also makes the process much faster. If I submitted the dental records without a name to compare them with, the examination and results could take up to a year. If I submitted a list of possible matches then the examination and results would only take a couple of months. So where was I going to start my search for possible matches?

Considering this was the 21st Century, naturally my best resource was the Internet. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) was developed in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan. This program created a national database of infomation that could be shared by law enforcement agencies across the country. When a child went missing, their information was entered into this database.

I was familiar with the NCMEC because I had taken hundreds of reports in my career of missing and runaway children. I had entered their names in the system when their parents reported them missing, and I had removed their names when they were located. What I did not realize until I worked this case, was how many children were reported missing every year.

797,000 children are reported missing in the United States every year. That's 2,100 children every single day. This was like searching for a needle in a haystack. I knew my victim was female, but that only reduced the number of possibilities by a small margin. I had to somehow narrow my search parameters if this was going to work.

In addition to searching only female victims, I focused on Southern California, specifically Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Orange, and Los Angeles Counties. I now had a list of 10,000 missing children to search through. I was amazed at how many children had been reported missing and never returned. Where in the Hell were all these children? My jaded view of humanity made me picture these massive graves with the bodies of hundreds of children all over Southern California. That's just insane!

Out of these 10,000 missing children, a very large percentage were from Los Angeles County. I decided to narrow the parameters even more and remove Los Angeles from my search. This brought my list of possible matches down to 4,000. Since the location of the body was on the border of Riverside and San Diego County, I removed San Bernardino and Orange Counties. My list of possible matches came down to about 1,800. Based on the information provided by the Forensic Anthropologist, I narrowed my search down to children who were reported missing between 1975 and 1995. That drastically reduced the number of names down to about 300. 300 hundred little girls between the ages of 12 and 15 years old who disappeared from Riverside and San Diego Counties from 1975 to 1995 were never found. This was a horrifying revelation. Why doesn't anyone ever talk about this? What happened to all of these little girls?

Okay, so 300 names was a workable list. Not easy, but workable. The only way for me to narrow the list even more would be to enter any specific information about Janie Doe that I could. Height, weight, hair and eye color, race, anything I could learn about this girl would help. I went to the morgue and tried to find out anything I could about our little skeleton.

The Deputy Coroner brought out a small bag from the refrigerator and put in on the examination table. It was kind of creepy to see how a disassembled body could fit into a bag the size of a pillow case. The Forensic Anthropologist was also there and we began laying the bones out anatomically on the table. I held up a bone that looked a little bit like a drumstick and I wondered where it belonged. I thought to myself, "I'm building a human jigsaw puzzle."

There were a few small pieces of hair still attached to the skull. The hair was extremely deteriorated but we were able to determine that it was originally blonde. This was also helpful in narrowing my search parameters to Caucasian or Hispanic and eliminating African American and Asian. Obviously there could be exceptions, but I was willing to take any help I could get.

I asked if it was possible to determine the victim's eye color. The answer was, "No." Eye color can sometimes be determined by DNA analysis but not skeletal examination. I asked if we could determine the victim's height. The Forensic Anthropologist then attempted to explain the complex scientific process involved in determining a person's height by measuring the femur and pelvic bones and inserting a mathematical formula. She told me this cannot be done with a child because the bones have not stopped growing yet. I could tell she was trying to be careful not to insult my high school education and my limited scientific knowledge. I looked down at the skeleton laying on the table and asked, "Does anyone have a tape measure?"

I measured the skeleton from head to toe and obtained a height of 5' 7". For a 12 to 15 year old girl, 5' 7" was pretty tall. This was possibly the best piece of information I had obtained in narrowing down my search parameters. When I eliminated African Americans and Asians from the search and then searched only blonde females, the list came down to about 170, but when I inserted a height between 5' 6" and 5' 8", the list dropped to only 12 names.

I looked at the final list of 12 names that I obtained from the NCMEC and I wondered if little Janie Doe was one of them. This was all completely dependent upon a few important factors. Was she actually reported missing? Was she ever properly entered into the system? Did I narrow my search parameters too far and unintentionally eliminate her name from the list?

I submitted the list of 12 names along with the dental records to the Department of Justice for comparison. About two months later I got the good news. Little Janie Doe was #11 on the list. She was actually 13-year-old Shelly Phillips from El Cajon and she was reported by her parents as a runaway in 1988.

Now the real work was to begin. How did Shelly Phillips end up stuffed into a canvas bag on a hillside in Riverside County?