Examiners Struggle to Put a Name With a Face

The victim was found Jan. 26 wrapped in a blanket along an isolated stretch of California 150. He had been fatally shot. The man, in his mid-40s or so, was believed to be from Mexico.

More than three weeks later, the body remains in the deep-freeze vault at the Ventura County medical examiner’s office, tagged “John Doe.”

So even the most basic questions about him remain unanswered. What’s his name? Where’s he from? Who shot him and why?

“We have so little to start with,” said Senior Deputy Medical Examiner Craig Stevens. “This man is somebody’s son, husband, dad. There is family out there somewhere who are wondering where he is.”

If they succeed in identifying the body, Stevens or one of the other four medical examiners probably will deliver the news to a family member.

Their success rate is good. Of the more than 2,500 bodies wheeled through the doors of the coroner’s office last year, most were identified and released to families.

About 450 of those cases required autopsies, because they involved an unnatural death or otherwise suspicious circumstances. Autopsies are performed by either Chief Medical Examiner Ronald O’Halloran or Assistant Chief Janice Frank.

Deputy examiners often straddle the two worlds of a 21st century forensic technician and an old-time gumshoe, as they work to track down the identity of each of the deceased.

Putting a name with an unidentified face is an unglamorous part of the medical examiner’s job rarely seen in movie or television depictions.

“It’s not a pressure to get them off the books,” Stevens said when asked about the time spent identifying the dead. “There are loved ones who will be wondering. . . . And we are not the ones they want showing up at their door.”

Sometimes mistakes are made. A deputy medical examiner knocks on a door to inform someone their family member or friend is dead, only the experts got it wrong--the person is alive.

“Regardless of how hard we try, we can make a mistake,” Stevens said.

Avoiding that embarrassment and the unnecessary anguish it causes family members explains why so much effort goes into identifying each body, the examiners say.

Fernando Duran died in an Oxnard strawberry field the Friday after Thanksgiving. Years of alcohol abuse finally caught up with him and contributed to his death, investigators said. Nearly three months later, Deputy Medical Examiner Armando Chavez was still searching the alleys and streets of Port Hueneme for anyone who may have known the homeless Mexican immigrant. Chavez has finally closed the case.

He never found anyone who knew Duran’s family or hometown. Chavez ran Duran’s fingerprints through the California Identification System, a database that logs more than 50 million sets of fingerprints. A match turned up in Los Angeles County, where sheriff’s deputies had once arrested him.

The next step was to check his booking sheet for an emergency contact. None was listed. Chavez then contacted local media outlets to help him locate relatives. He interviewed and re-interviewed people who may have shared a bottle with Duran. No luck.

“I spoke to his friends to make sure they didn’t have any information for us. They did not,” said Chavez, who got the case shortly after Duran’s body was found Nov. 24.

“It’s not [unusual] for families to separate and never speak to each other again. We’ll always keep the records, but unless someone comes running up here looking for him,” the case is closed, Chavez said.

Duran’s remains will be transferred to the county administrator and cremated, Chavez said.

The identification database is housed in a Sheriff’s Department crime lab computer. Every law enforcement agency in the county has access to the system, which is hooked up to the state Department of Justice fingerprint databank in Sacramento, said Sheriff’s Sgt. Rick Barber.

Debbi Pearson, a sheriff’s technician in the crime lab, said she gets about 200 requests a year from county law enforcement agencies seeking fingerprint matching information on both the living and the dead.

Even with 50 million prints at the ready, it’s easy for someone in California to go unnoticed, said Pearson and others familiar with the database.

People move. Many don’t have a list of fingerprints registered. The man found on California 150 is believed to be from Mexico based on documents found with his body, Stevens said. Investigators recovered a picture identification, but because of advanced decomposition they were unable to confirm a match, he said.

The case presents a greater challenge, because it involves piecing together information from outside the country.

Pearson said without an identification and a print in the database “you could go a long time without being identified.”

The prints are split into two groups, said Galen Nickey, a fingerprint analyst for the Department of Justice. About 20 million are for convicted felons, repeat offenders and parole violators. The rest are for anyone who has applied for a job requiring a state license. Both portions of the database stretch back to about 1950, Nickey said.

“Transients are often difficult [to identify] because they have no history in California,” he said.

Luz Bueno, consul of Mexico based in Oxnard, said she spends a good amount of time each year helping coroner’s and other county law enforcement officials track down the families of Mexican citizens who die here. She said she’ll often contact a police or military official in a Mexican village or town looking for clues to an identity. Bueno said being discreet is key.

Since November, she has worked with the coroner’s office on the identities of Duran, the unnamed shooting victim and a day laborer who was crushed by a tractor in the Santa Rosa Valley.

“We never make a big noise, because we don’t want the family to get the [death] notice through the newspaper,” said Bueno, who serves Mexican citizens living in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. “It can be very sad for the family.”