Forensics Director explains rationale behind reopening cold cases from 1998

As we reported yesterday, the National Forensic Science Service is renewing efforts to identify approximately twenty sets of human remains recovered across Belize between 1998 and 2020.

Some have remained unidentified for as long as twenty-eight years. NFSS Director Gian Cho explains that limited information about possible relatives has made it difficult to determine their identities.

Gian Sho, NFSS Director: “Since we started the project recently we were able to hand over one set of skeletal remains to the next of kin through a representative. In the next month or two we’re expecting DNA results to come back for about three additional cases that we have already over the past few months set abroad for testing. So if those three come back as positive identifications we’ll also be doing the reunification or the handing over of those remains to their next of kin or their loved ones because that’s the ultimate goal. We have approximately 20, I say approximately because some of the scenes that were processed several years ago, they may have two sets of remains in the set. That’s why you say approximately. No, sometimes when you get the skeletal remains combined, it’s a bit, you can’t definitively say it’s one person, it might be two and so that’s why we round it out. We don’t use exact numbers and say exactly this. In addition to us going out and trying to review old archive case files which will take some time. In parallel to that, we’re also having this public outreach which we had already envisioned from a few years back. Once we had enough information that we’re ready to make it accessible to the public to provide information on their relative or their friends. That way the information comes to us as well as we’re working with police to try and track down some of these very old information, media reports, police reports from late 1990s, early 2000s. So you could imagine the difficulty in trying to obtain some of the dates, the possible names, the possible locations. We have been using a lot, thankfully, media reports. I mean, the media has done a very good job over the past several decades in documenting not only when skeletal remains was recovered but also when they interviewed family members. So we’re using those as well as part of the information gathering process. Parallel to police and forensics trying to reach out to some of these possible relatives and now this public form that we’re asking individuals to submit.” 

The NFSS has introduced an online form for relatives and friends of people who went missing during that period. If the information submitted matches a case, the respondent may be contacted to voluntarily provide a DNA sample for comparison with the remains.  Cho says the NFSS is also working closely with the Belize Police Department, since some of the remains may be connected to criminal investigations.

Gian Sho, NFSS Director: “The remains are in our custody. Police is supporting the process but right now forensics is leading the process of identification, the process of reaching out to families and when the time comes to hopefully hand over the remains the forensics department is the one that passes the custody, whether directly to the family member or to their funeral home representative. But police has to be present to witness these certain parts of the process, especially if, and bear in mind, some of the missing persons may have been individuals who were lost at sea, or who got disoriented and maybe got lost on farmland but also some of them are homicide victims. And so that’s why it’s important to keep police involved in every step of the way should one of these cold murder or homicide investigations that have gone cold over the years is able to be reopened or reactivated to pursue new leads that this process might provide. The online form that we posted is asking when the missing person report was made so we can try to correlate if it’s one of these remains that were covered from 1998 or 2020. Where the person was last seen, their name, what they might have been wearing the last time they  were seen, any distinguishing features or marks. Bear in mind that we don’t, it’s not the full body that we have that was recovered. It’s just bones, it’s just skeletal remains. So if they had like certain things that you could determine from a skeletal examination, like a broken bone, knee surgery, arthritis, that can help us to narrow down and say this particular set of skeletal remains might be this person. And their contact information is probably the most important part so we can reach out to them because again, that’s the problem right now. There’s a gap in information in who these persons might be. We can collect samples. We have from many of the skeletal remains we’ve done what we call an anthropological examination. This was about three years ago where we determined estimated age, estimated sex, estimated height, estimated ancestry, so we have what we call bio-profiles. We could extract DNA from the skeletal samples and get a genetic profile but without someone’s DNA to compare it to, to determine if it’s their relative, whether their son, their daughter, their parent, their sibling, etc. Without that DNA profile to compare it to, then all we have is still an unidentified person.”

If a positive identification is made, the remains will be returned to the deceased person’s family for burial. The service is completely free, and the NFSS says it will never request payment or banking information.  The form is available through the QR code on the agency’s online notice. For further information, call 205-2164 or email info@forensics.gov.bz.