Updated: 5/18/2007 9:21:21 AM
In March, Campbell County deputies cracked a cold case they had worked on for almost a decade. The case involved a woman who was found stabbed and strangled off exit 144. For 10 years, no one could identify her.
But with the help of an organization called the Doe Network the body was matched with Ada Elana Torres Smith who was missing from Texas.
The Doe Network is not as well-known as some other missing persons websites, but is just as important. It not only works with families to find their loved ones, but also works for those without a name.
Roger Jeffreys from Henderson, Kentucky used to be just a face on the Doe Network's website.
His former wife Loretta Gish says, "Roger hitchhiked up and down the road all the time, but he always came home. He would got to Texas. He would go wherever, but he was back home in a week or two.
But the trip to Canada in 1984 was his last. He called his mother from Maryland and that was the last time anyone heard from him.
Left behind to wonder and wait were his wife and baby twins. "I knew he was gone and dead, but it was like a mission for me to find my kids' dad and bring him home," says Gish.
After years of searching, Loretta heard about the Doe network, an internet database full of the missing and the unidentified. The site was founded in part by a man from Livingston, Tennessee.
"We had a cold cases discussion group, Yahoo discussion group, of people who was kind of interested in that sort of thing," says Todd Matthews, co-founder of the Doe Network.
Now, five years later, 38 bodies have been identified thanks, in part, to their organization. "I'm very proud of the identifications that have been made," Matthews says. They certainly helped Loretta and her family. After almost two decades, she found a match.
"I started pulling up bodies in Vermont. There it was in black and white, the clothes he was wearing, the blood type, the previous broken arms," says Gish.
Information posted on the Doe Network helped bring Roger home. "Without them Roger would still be buried in a number nine grave in Burlington, Vermont," says Gish.
Now she and her family have a place to visit. Loretta says she feels like she did her teenage sweetheart justice. "I was driving home and honestly, I don't know how I made it home because inside my car was so much love and warmth like Roger had just wrapped himself around me. It was like the biggest thank you for never giving up."
Hundreds of faces are now where Roger's once was, some who have families that also haven't given up. Some are from Tennessee.
"We have nine John Does and 13 Jane Does that we have information on," says Matthews.
And Doe Network hopes to help them too.
"To me, they're a lifesaver. They are a gift from god," says Gish.
