{"id":141711,"date":"2025-08-13T06:38:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T06:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/141711\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T06:38:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T06:38:10","slug":"a-look-at-open-cases-in-the-phoenix-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/141711\/","title":{"rendered":"A look at open cases in the Phoenix area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\"><b>PHOENIX (AZFamily)<\/b> \u2014 Arizona has one of the highest numbers of unidentified remains in the country. Out of the 15,460 open cases for unidentified persons nationwide, 2,132 are in Arizona, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/namus.nij.ojp.gov\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/namus.nij.ojp.gov\/\">National Missing and Unidentified Persons System<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">\u201cEverybody deserves to keep their name even in death,\u201d said Stuart Somershoe, a retired detective from the Phoenix Police Department.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">He said the state\u2019s location, which borders Mexico, and the environment play a role in adding to the numbers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">\u201cSome are homicide victims, some are suicide victims, some are unknown deaths,\u201d said Somershoe, who has spent years helping to give names back to the unidentified. \u201cThe desert conditions tend to cause remains to skeletal very quickly here in Arizona.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">The Maricopa County <a href=\"https:\/\/omecasestatus.maricopa.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Office of the Medical Examiner<\/a> tracks their cases online. Currently, 233 individuals need their identities restored, with some cases dating back more than 50 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">According to Somershoe, there are three key areas that detectives investigate when it comes to unidentified remains: fingerprints, dental records, and DNA.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">One group that\u2019s seen success using DNA technology is the <a href=\"https:\/\/dnadoeproject.org\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/dnadoeproject.org\/\">DNA Doe Project<\/a>. Last year, Arizona\u2019s Family reported on how the organization used forensic genealogy to identify <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2024\/10\/24\/womans-remains-discovered-1988-east-queen-creek-identified\/https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2024\/10\/24\/womans-remains-discovered-1988-east-queen-creek-identified\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2024\/10\/24\/womans-remains-discovered-1988-east-queen-creek-identified\/https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2024\/10\/24\/womans-remains-discovered-1988-east-queen-creek-identified\/\">Evelyn \u201cDottie\u201d Lees<\/a>, a woman who remained a mystery for decades.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">\u201cWith forensic genealogy, they take a DNA profile of an unidentified victim and they compare it to family tree genealogy websites,\u201d said Somershoe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Someshoe said that in many of these cases, the people are loved ones whose families don\u2019t realize they are gone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">He urges people to always check in on family, distant relatives, and even friends. If you haven\u2019t heard from them in a while, file a missing person\u2019s report. It\u2019s never too late to do so.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">To see unidentified cases in Maricopa County, <a href=\"https:\/\/unidentified.maricopa.gov\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/unidentified.maricopa.gov\/\">click\/tap here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/page\/send-us-your-feedback\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Please click here to report it<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/community\/user-content\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">it to us here<\/a> with a brief description.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2025 KTVK\/KPHO. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AZFamily) \u2014 Arizona has one of the highest numbers of unidentified remains in the country. Out of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":141712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,7182,68095,84390,84392,1589,7183,84391,84394,84393,69057,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-141711","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-azfamily","12":"tag-dna-doe-project","13":"tag-national-missing-and-unidentified-persons-system","14":"tag-office-of-the-medical-examiner","15":"tag-phoenix","16":"tag-phoenix-news","17":"tag-stuart-somershoe","18":"tag-unidentified-bodies","19":"tag-unidentified-persons","20":"tag-unidentified-remains","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115020084429344750","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}