Tough Cases to Crack

John Doe No. 203 lay lifeless amid coroner’s investigators who worked to match a name with his badly burned body.

That this Doe was a foreigner compounded the difficulties of identification. Eight days passed with no conclusion to the case until investigator Erik Arbuthnot, with the help of local forensic dentists and dental records flown in from Japan, ended the mystery and confirmed the dead man’s name and age--Kataro Seto, 39.

This type of dilemma is faced all too often in Los Angeles County, which plays host to visitors from all over the world and is home to more than 9 million people. And sometimes, despite investigators’ best efforts, no identification is established.

Of the 210 John Does who passed through the coroner’s doors in 1997, 37 men remain unidentified. Eighty-six Jane Does required identification in 1997, and eight of those women remain unidentified, said Gilda Tolbert, one of 28 county coroner’s investigators.

Also, the identities of six infants found dead in 1997 mystify investigators.

“They’re probably dumped babies,” said Tolbert, whose job frequently takes her out of the office to families in grief.

Identifying foreigners who die here is a particular challenge, said county coroner’s department Capt. David Campbell. “We work heavily with several consulates in Southern California.”

When rescue crews recovered Seto from a wrecked 1998 Pontiac Grand Am on Dec. 22, they found few clues, said Gretchen Jacobs, a spokeswoman for the California Highway Patrol. No driver’s license, check cashing card or wedding ring turned up to identify the motorist, who veered off Angeles Crest Highway near La Canada Flintridge and plunged more than 150 feet.

One lead emerged quickly, though. The motorist drove a Hertz rental car and investigators obtained Seto’s name as its renter.

Still, what if Seto had loaned the rented auto to a friend? What if the car was stolen from Seto? Identifying foreigners’ bodies with precision takes more than circumstantial evidence.

Coroner’s investigators often must navigate a variety of diplomatic channels to obtain from far-off places such aids as dental records, fingerprints, photographs or X-rays.

“We get several Does coming in just about every day,” Tolbert said. “We use any means and every means of identification.”

Many of those victims, like Seto, are badly burned. Others are skeletons found in nearby deserts, Tolbert said.

Workers clearing ground in Castaic for a housing development recently unearthed the skeletal remains of eight people believed to be part of a pioneer family that settled the area more than 100 years ago. Coroner’s investigators were called to the site after a lawyer for the development company alerted authorities to the find.

Tolbert said that when an unidentified body arrives at the coroner’s department, an investigator’s first duty--if physically possible--is to take fingerprints to cross-check with Los Angeles Police Department records.

“If that comes back negative, we’re just hoping that the public helps,” Tolbert said. “I’ll go back out to the scene. . . . I will pretty much collect everything I can on this person.”

At the scene of the fatality, Tolbert asks eyewitnesses, local business owners, neighbors and often the homeless for help as she shows them a coroner’s photograph of her John or Jane Doe.

“I’ve gotten pretty lucky sometimes,” Tolbert said. “They’ll say his name is so-and-so and he’s from Guatemala or Mexico. It just varies.”

When Tolbert has the good fortune of a lead, potential family members or acquaintances become her next targets. Tolbert requests photographs, dental records and skeletal X-rays to compare with the body.

In cases like that of Seto, when dental records are used, the coroner’s office consults forensic dentists from USC.

With the remains of foreigners, the process can encounter snags. “Different countries use different types of ID,” Campbell said. “It isn’t just dental records.”

Even when snags are minimal and leads good, the sheer distances that separate Los Angeles from the homes of its visitors cause delays in investigations.

“Sometimes they can take weeks,” Tolbert said. “Some take months.”

When hurdles arise, investigators contact area consulates for help in contacting families or officials in other countries for more information. Diplomats make handy translators, Tolbert said.

Ann Morton, vice consul at the British Consulate in Los Angeles, said she deals with the coroner’s office frequently, helping to identify not only British visitors to the United States, but British citizens who resided here permanently before their deaths.

“The more information [the investigators] can give us, the better,” Morton said. “We can fax London and check.”

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British officials send local police to notify next of kin that a relative has died here, Morton said.

Any records needed, such as dental records, usually arrive within a matter of days.

The Japanese Consulate makes a point of helping the relatives of those who die here to arrange hotel reservations and make funeral plans, said Takeshi Fujita, vice consul at the Los Angeles consulate.

“There are several cases a month because there are a lot of tourists here from Japan and there are many car accidents,” Fujita said.

Another type of case--illegal immigrants with fake identification--has sent frustrated investigators chasing leads that rarely elicit useful information, said coroner’s spokesman Scott Carrier.

And if people use an alias unknown to family members, chances are high that investigators might unwittingly turn away distraught relatives in search of their dead loved one, Carrier said.

Carrier said the coroner’s office will keep an unidentified body up to six months before burning the remains at the county crematory.

“It happens a lot,” he said. “If we don’t know who you are, how do we know where to go?”